Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/602

HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE that it did not apply to constitutional amendments, the suffra- gists in 1903 at great expense and effort secured the signatures of the requisite number of voters to a petition asking that a constitutional amendment be submitted to the voters. Secretary of State O. C. Berg was criticized for refusing to receive it for transmission to the Legislature but he could not legally do so, as the initiative applied only to Laws. He was not opposed to woman suffrage and in later years his wife worked for it and his son conducted a newspaper which gave it able support. Still under the leadership of Mrs. Pickler, the years 1904 and 1905 passed with the usual routine work and in 1906 another petition was begun which had nothing to do with the initiative and referendum but was merely a petition of women as citizens to the Legislature asking that the question be submitted to a vote at the next general election. This work was carried on all summer by a house to house canvass throughout the State and later at the State Fair, with the result that when it convened the women were able to stage a spectacular event by having pages carry up the aisle of the Lower House a list of names thirty-six yards in length. The resolution was introduced and passed the Senate but failed in the House by ten votes. During all this time Mrs. Anna R. Simmons of Faulkton was president of the State W. C. T. U. and Mrs. Pickler and she did excellent team work, enlisting the aid of many other splendid women. A complete list of them it is unfortunately impossible to secure but many mentioned in Volume IV of the History of Woman Suffrage continued their services. The years 1907-8 were spent in propaganda work and raising funds and when the Legislature convened in January, 1909, the suffrage and W. C. T. U. lobby was on hand to ask once more for the sub- mission of the question to the voters. Two resolutions for par- tial suffrage were introduced in the Senate in addition to the one for the amendment. One would confer the vote on property- owning women only and the other would permit women to vote on the liquor question, the State being under local option. Whether they were presented by friends or were a "half loaf" offered by enemies is not known at this late date. They were probably the former, because a vote on the liquor question by