The Massachusetts School Suffrage Association was formed in 1880, Abby W. May, president.[117] Its efforts are mostly confined to Boston. An independent movement of women voters in Boston, distinct from all organizations, was formed in 1884, and subdivided into ward and city committees. These did much valuable work and secured a larger number of voters than had qualified in previous years. In 1880 the number of registered women in the whole State was 4,566, and in Boston 826. In 1884, chiefly owing to the ward and city committees, the number in Boston alone was 1,100. This year (1885) a movement among the Roman Catholic women has raised the number who are assessed to vote to 1,843; and it is estimated that when the tax-paying women are added, the whole number will be about 2,500.
The National Woman Suffrage Association[118] of Massachusetts was formed in January, 1882, of members who had joined the National Association at its thirteenth annual meeting, held in Tremont Temple, Boston, May 26, 27, 1881. According to Article II. of its constitution, its object is to secure to women their right to the ballot, by working for national, State, municipal, school, or any other form of suffrage which shall at the time seem most expedient. While it is auxiliary to the National Association, it reserves to itself the right of independent action. It has held conventions[119] in Boston and some of the chief cities of the State, sent delegates to the annual Washington Convention[120] and published valuable leaflets.[121] It has rolled up petitions to the State legislature and to congress. Its most valuable work has been the canvass made in certain localities in the city and country in 1884, to ascertain the number of women in favor of suffrage, the number opposed and the number indifferent. The total result showed that there were 405 in favor, 44 opposed, 166 indifferent, 160 refusing to sign, 39 not seen; that is, over nine who would sign themselves in favor to one who would sign herself opposed. This canvass was made by women who gave their time and labor to this arduous work, and the results were duly presented to the legislature.
In 1883 this Association petitioned the legislature to pass a resolution recommending congress to submit a proposition for a sixteenth amendment to the national constitution. The Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage granted a hearing March 23, and soon after presented a favorable report; but the resolution, when brought to a vote, was lost by 21 to 11. This was the first time that the National doctrine of congressional action was ever presented or voted upon in the Massachusetts legislature. A second hearing[122] was granted on February 28, 1884, before the Committee on Federal Relations. They reported leave to withdraw.
The associations mentioned are not the only ones that are aiding the suffrage movement. Its friends are found in all the women's clubs, temperance associations, missionary movements, charitable enterprises, educational and industrial unions and church committees. These agencies form a network of motive power which is gradually carrying the reform into all branches of public work.
The Woman's Journal was incorporated in 1870 and is owned by a joint stock company, shares being held by leading members of the suffrage associations of New England. Shortly after it was projected, the Agitator, then published in Chicago by Mary A. Livermore, was bought by the New England Association on condition that she should "come to Boston for one year, at a reasonable compensation, to assist the cause by her editorial labor and speaking at conventions." Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell, invited by the same society to "return to the work in Massachusetts," at once assumed the editorial charge. T. W. Higginson, Julia Ward Howe and W. L. Garrison were assistant editors. "Warrington," Kate N. Doggett, Samuel E. Sewall, F. B. Sanborn, and many other good writers, lent a helping hand to the new enterprise. The Woman's Journal has been of great value to the cause. It has helped individual women and brought their enterprises into public notice. It has opened its columns to inexperienced writers and advertised young speakers. To sustain the paper and furnish money for other work, two mammoth bazars or fairs were held in Music Hall in 1870, 1871. Nearly all the New England States and many of the towns in Massachusetts were represented by tables in these bazars. Donations were sent from all directions and the women worked, as they generally do in a cause in which they are interested, to raise money to furnish the sinews of war. The newspapers from day to day were full of descriptions of the splendors of the tables, and the reporters spoke well of the women who had taken this novel method to carry on their movement. People who had never heard of woman suffrage before came to see what sort of women were those who thus made a public exhibition of their zeal in this cause. In remote places, as well as nearer the scene of action, many people who had never thought of the significance of the woman's rights movement, began to consider it through reading the reports of the woman suffrage bazar.
Female opponents of the suffrage movement began to make a stir as early as 1868. A remonstrance was sent into the legislature, from two hundred women of Lancaster, giving the reasons why women should not enjoy the exercise of the elective franchise: "It would diminish the purity, the dignity and the moral influence of woman, and bring into the family circle a dangerous element of discord." In The Revolution of August 5, 1869, Parker Pillsbury said:
Dolly Chandler and the hundred and ninety-four other women who asked the Massachusetts legislature not to allow the right of suffrage, were very impudent and tyrannical, too, in petitioning for any but themselves. They should have said: "We, Dolly Chandler and her associates, to the number of a hundred and ninety-five in all, do not want the right of suffrage; and we pray your honorable bodies to so decree and enact that we shall never have it." So far they might go. But when they undertake to prevent a hundred and ninety-four thousand other women who do want the ballot and who have an acknowledged right to it, and are laboring for it day and night, it is proper to ask, What business have Dolly Chandler and her little coterie to interpose? Nobody wants them to vote unless they themselves want to. They can stay at home and see nobody but the assessor, the tax-gatherer and the revenue collector, from Christmas to Christmas, if they so prefer. Those gentlemen they will be pretty likely to see, annually or quarterly, and to feel their power, too, if they have pockets with anything in them, in spite of all petitions to the legislature.
It did not occur to these women that by thus remonstrating they were doing just what they were protesting against. What is a vote? An expression of opinion or a desire as to governmental affairs, in the shape of a ballot. The "aspiring blood of Lancaster" should have mounted higher than this, since, if it really was the opinion of these remonstrants that woman cannot vote without becoming defiled, they should have kept themselves out of the legislature, should have kept their hands from petitioning and their thoughts from agitation on either side of the subject. Just such illogical reasoning on the woman suffrage question is often brought forward and passes for the profoundest wisdom and discreetest delicacy! The same arguments are used by the remonstrants of to-day, who are now fully organized and doing very efficient political work in opposing further political action by women. In their carriages, with footman and driver, they solicit names to their remonstrances. As a Boston newspaper says:
The anti-woman suffrage women get deeper and deeper into politics year by year in their determination to keep out of politics. By the time they triumph they will be the most accomplished politicians of the sex, and unable to stop writing to the papers, holding meetings, circulating remonstrances, any more than the suffrage sisterhood.