The amendment was lost by 34,827 votes; 95,302 for; 130,139 against. The total vote cast for governor was 299,231; total vote on suffrage amendment, 225,441; not voting on amendment, 73,790. There was an attempt to keep count of the ballots according to parties, but it was not successful and there was no way of correctly estimating the political complexion of the vote. The vote for Governor Morrill lacked only 1,800 of that for the other three candidates combined, which shows how easily the Republican party might have carried the amendment. Subtracting the 5,000 Prohibition votes which it was conceded were cast for the amendment, it lacked 28,000 of receiving as many votes as were cast for the Populist candidate for governor. Since some Republicans must have voted for it, the figures prove that a vast number of Populists did not do so. In Miss Anthony's journal on the night of the election she wrote: "Our friends remembered to forget to vote for the suffrage amendment, while not an enemy forgot to remember to stamp his ticket against it."
Though she had expected defeat, her regret was none the less keen. In all the past years she had given more time and work to Kansas than to any other State, even her own. Her hopes had been centered there. It having been the first State to grant school suffrage and the first to grant municipal suffrage to women, she had confidently expected that when the amendment for full suffrage was again submitted it would be carried. The events of the campaign confirmed her belief that the granting of municipal suffrage is a hindrance rather than a help toward securing full enfranchisement. By its exercise women naturally become partisan, show the influence they can wield through the ballot, and thereby create enmities and arouse antagonisms which bitterly oppose any further extension of this power. She resolved henceforth to advise women not to attempt to secure fragmentary suffrage, but to demand the whole right and work for nothing less.
FOOTNOTES:
[101] It was the Republicans who framed the original constitution of the State so as to give women liberal property rights, equal guardianship of their children, and school suffrage. In 1867 they gave to women an equal voice on the question of local option. In 1887 they granted to them municipal suffrage. In various State conventions they adopted an unequivocal endorsement of full suffrage for women.
[102] See Appendix for full speech.
[103] The women of the Topeka Equal Suffrage Club, at their next meeting, adopted a resolution thanking the Republican convention for not declaring against the amendment!
[104] It will be cowardice for the Republicans to fail to endorse woman suffrage in their State platform. In past years, when no amendment was pending, the Republican party of Kansas has encouraged the presentation of such an amendment. Will it now attempt to sneak out of the responsibility and go back on its past record? The women of our State have shown themselves intelligent voters, in every way worthy of being entrusted with full suffrage. None of the evils have come upon us which were predicted by the opponents of the reform, and they never will come. To place a plank in the platform will save many votes to the party. It is the right, the brave thing to do. What is brave and right has, in the past, been the thing that the Republican party has done. Let it not now begin to do the cowardly thing.—Leavenworth Times, May 17, 1894.
[105] Miss Anthony did not receive a dollar for her services daring the year in Kansas, and was enabled to make the three trips there solely through the kindness of her brother Daniel R., who furnished transportation. It was also by his assistance that she had made her long railroad journeys from east to west during the past thirty years.
[106] Fifteenth.—We oppose woman suffrage as tending to destroy the home and family, the true basis of political safety, and express the hope that the helpmeet and guardian of the family sanctuary may not be dragged from the modest purity of self-imposed seclusion to be thrown unwillingly into the unfeminine places of political strife.