Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/470

454 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE districts. The charters of a number of third class cities granted School suffrage to women and some of them included the right to vote on special appropriations for those who paid taxes. This was the situation at the beginning of the century. 1 1901. When Theodore Roosevelt was Governor he advised the suffragists to drop the effort for a constitutional amendment awhile and work for something the Legislature could grant with- out a referendum to the voters. For five years, therefore, they tried to get some form of partial suffrage that could be obtained without amending the constitution. The total result was a law in 1901 giving to taxpaying women in the towns and villages a vote on propositions to raise money by special tax assessment, which was signed by Governor Benjamin F. Odell. Miss Susan B. Anthony considered this of little value but it covered about 1,800 places and when she saw the interest aroused in the women by even this small concession she came to think that it was worth while. In 1910 a legislative enactment increased this privilege to a vote on the issuing of bonds. During the legislative sessions of 1902-3-4-5 the effort was con- centrated on a bill to give a vote on special taxation to taxpaying women in all third class cities those having less than 50,000 inhabitants. Mrs. Mary H. Loines of Brooklyn was chairman of the committee, as she had been since 1898. The special champions of the bill were Senators Leslie B. Humphrey, H. S. Ambler, John Raines; Representatives Otto Kelsey, George H. Smith, Loui Bedell, E. W. Ham. Among the strongest opponents were Sena- tors Edgar Truman Brackett, George A. Davis, Thomas F. Grady and Nevada M. Stranahan. Governors Odell and Frank M. Higgins recommended it and Speaker Frederick S. Nixon urged it. Committee hearings were granted at every session and among its advocates were Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, national president, Mrs. Crossett and Miss Harriet May Mills, State president and vice-president; Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch, Mrs. Margaret Chanler Aldrich, Mrs. Mary E. Craigie and Miss Anne Fitzhugh Miller. Mrs. Arthur M. Dodge, president of the Anti-Suffrage 1 Mrs. EIJa Hawley Crossett, president of the State Suffrage Association, sent a com- plete rsum6 of the legislative action from 1900 to 1913, comprising many thousand words, but the exigencies of space compelled condensation to the bare details.