"I had the property in reach, and the assignees were ready to turn it over to me, but to get it, it was necessary for me to raise $50,000, I borrowed it from a woman. How happy I was when she signed the check, and how beautiful it seemed to me to see one woman helping another. I borrowed the money in June, and was to make the first payment of $5,000, on the 1st of November. On the 29th of October I paid the $50,000 with interest. From June to the 29th of October, I made $50,000 clear. I had also to pay $30,000 to the creditors who did not come under the contract. While I was paying this $80,000 of my husband's debts, I spent but $30 for myself, except for my board. I lived in a little attic room, without a carpet, and the window was so high that I could not get a glimpse of the sky unless I stood on a chair and looked out. When I had paid the debts and raised a monument to my husband, then I said to myself, 'now for a great big pair of diamond earrings,' and away I went to Europe, and here are the diamonds." The diamonds are perfect matches, twenty-seven carats in weight, and are nearly as large as nickles.
In Lansingburgh the women tax-payers offered their ballots and were repulsed, as follows:
September 2, 1885, the special election of the taxable inhabitants of the village of Lansingburgh took place, to vote upon a proposition to raise by tax the sum of $15,000 for water-works purposes. The measure was voted by 102 for it to 46 against. But a small amount of interest was manifested in the election. Several women tax-payers offered their votes, but the inspectors would not receive them, and the matter will be contested in the courts. The call for the election asked for an expression from "the taxable inhabitants," and women tax-payers in the 'burgh claim under the law their rights must be recognized. Lansingburgh inspectors have on numerous occasions refused to receive the ballots thus tendered, and the women have lost patience. They are to employ the best of counsel and settle the question at as early a day as possible. Women pay tax upon $367,394 of the property within the village boundaries, and they believe that they, to the number of 317 at least, are entitled to votes on all questions involving a monetary expenditure. In Saratoga, Clinton, and a number of other places in this State, where elections in relation to water-works have taken place, it has been held by legal authority that women property owners have a right to vote, and they have voted accordingly the same as other tax-payers.
In regard to recent efforts to secure legislation favorable to women, Mr. Wilcox writes:
The impression that the School Act, passed in 1880, did not apply to cities, led to the introduction by the Hon. Charles S. Baker of Rochester, of a bill covering cities. A test vote showed the Assembly practically unanimous for it, but it was referred to the Judiciary Committee to examine its constitutionality. The chairman, Hon. Geo. L. Ferry, and other members, asked me to look up the point and inform the committee, supposing a constitutional amendment needful. When the point was made on this bill, I for the first time closely examined the constitution, and finding there was nought to prevent the legislature enfranchising anyone, promptly apprised the committee of the discovery. The acting-chairman, Major Wm. D. Brennan, requested me to furnish the committee a legal brief on the matter. This (Feb. 19, 1880) I did, and arranged a public hearing before them in the assembly-chamber, which was attended by Governor Cornell, Lieutenant-Governor Hoskins, many senators, assemblymen, and State officers; at which Mrs. Blake, the sainted Helen M. Slocum and Mrs. Elizabeth L. Saxon were the speakers. From that year to the present there has been a "Bill to Prohibit Disfranchisement" before each legislature. In 1881, it was carried to a majority vote in the Assembly. In 1883, two-thirds of the Assembly were ready to pass the bill when the attorney-general declared it unconstitutional. In 1884, Governor Cleveland had approved two suffrage acts, and promised to sign all the friends could carry. In 1885, growing tired of the senseless clamor of "unconstitutionality," I resolved to show how little law the clamorers knew. To the knowledge gained by five years' discussion, I added that obtained by several months' research in the State Library at Albany, that of the New York Bar Association, those of the New York Law Institute and Columbia College, and elsewhere. The result was the publication of "Cases of the Legislature's Power over Suffrage," wherein it was shown, condensed from a great number of authorities, that all classes have received suffrage, not from the constitution but from the legislature, and that the latter has exercised the power of extending suffrage in hundreds of cases. This document received high praise from General James W. Husted and Major James Haggerty, who have manfully championed our bills in the Assembly, General Husted reading from it in his speech and it was signally sanctioned by the Assembly which, after being supplied with copies, voted down by more than three to one a motion to substitute a constitutional amendment.
But while working at this document, I was fortunate enough to make a still greater discovery—that portions of statute law which formerly prevented women's voting were repealed long since; that the constitution and statutes in their present shape secure women the legal right to vote.
February 19, 1885, a hearing was granted to Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Rogers and Mrs. Blake in the assembly-chamber before the Committee on Grievances, on the "Bill to Prohibit Disfranchisement." The splendid auditorium was crowded for two hours, and members of the committee lingered a long time after the audience had dispersed to discuss the whole question still further with the speakers. On the next day Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell and Governor John W. Hoyt of Wyoming Territory had a second hearing. The committee reported for consideration. When the bill came up for a third reading, General Martin L. Curtis of St. Lawrence moved that it be sent to the Judiciary Committee with instructions to substitute a constitutional amendment; lost, ayes 25, noes 75; carried to a third reading by viva voce vote. The vote on the final passage was, ayes 57, noes 56; the constitutional majority in this State being 65 of the 128 members, it was lost by eight votes. Of the 73 Republicans, 29 voted for the bill; of the 55 Democrats, 28 voted for the bill, showing that more than half the Democratic vote was in favor, and only two-fifths of the Republican; thus our defeat was due to the Republican party.
Thus stands the question of woman suffrage in the Empire State to-day, where women are in the majority.[254] After long years of unremitting efforts who can read this chapter of woman's faith and patience, under such oft-repeated disappointments, but with pity for her humiliations and admiration for her courage and persistence. For nearly half a century the petitions, the appeals, the arguments of the women of New York have been before the legislature for consideration, and the trivial concessions of justice thus far wrung from our rulers bear no proportion to the prolonged labors we have gone through to achieve them.
FOOTNOTES:
[200] It has recently been ascertained that the first woman's rights petition sent to the New York State legislature was by Miss Mary Ayers, in 1834, for a change in the property laws. It was ten or fifteen feet long when unrolled, and is still buried in the vaults of the capitol at Albany.
[201] Many years afterwards, lecturing in Texas, I met a party of ladies from Georgia, thoroughly awake on all questions relating to women. Finding ourselves quite in accord, I said, "how did you get those ideas in Georgia?" "Why," said one, "some of our friends attended a woman's convention at Saratoga, and told us what was said there, and gave us several tracts on all phases of the question, which were the chief topics of discussion among us long after." Southern women have suffered so many evils growing out of the system of slavery that they readily learn the lessons of freedom.—[E. C. S.