Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/535

OHIO 519 before the ratification of the Legislature was effective. This was designed primarily to secure a reversal of prohibition in Ohio but also to prevent ratification of the suffrage amendment. 1 In collecting their petitions the same old tactics were employed. The personnel of the workers was largely the same, with the addition of a State Senator from Cincinnati as general manager. The money to finance the campaign came principally from that city and this time members of the women's Anti-Suffrage Associa- tion were contributors. The saloons were now closed and pious instructions were given not to have the petitions circulated by saloon keepers or bar tenders. Nevertheless nearly 600 of them were circulated by men who had been connected with the saloon business, some of them now conducting soft drink establishments, and the signatures were plainly of the most illiterate elements. The State Suffrage Association persuaded the National Ameri- can Association to attack the constitutionality of this referendum in the courts and suit was accordingly brought. Eventually it was sustained by the Supreme Court of Ohio and was carried to the U. S. Supreme Court by George Hawk, a young lawyer of Cincinnati. It rendered a decision that the power to ratify a Federal Amendment rested in the Legislature and could not be cd on by the voters. The Legislature in an adjourned session in 1920 gave women Primary suffrage in an amendment to the Presidential bill, but the final ratification of the Federal Amendment in August made all partial measures unnecessary, as it completely enfranchised en.'-' Thus after a struggle of seventy years those of Ohio received the suffrage at last from the national government, but they were deeply appreciative and grateful to those heroic men he State who fought their battles through the years. rral years before the "wets," this time under the name of the Stability League. had initiated an amendment, which, if it had been carried, would have prohibited the submission of the name amendment oftener than once in six years. Thus the suf- fragists in 1916, 1917 *nd 1918 were in the courts for months each year. 1 In thr presidential campaign of 1920 Mrs. Upton was appointed vice chairman of the Republican National Executive Committee, thr highe.ct political jxisition ever held by a woman, and she had charge of the activities of women during that < .inip.ii>-n. Her last work for woman suffrage was during the strenuous effort to obtain the j6th and final ratification of the Federal Amm'lment from the Tennessee Legislature in the summer of 1920, when she went to Nashville at the request of the National Republi. an Committee. Ed.