The president, Mrs. Livermore, was made a Doctor of Laws by Tufts College and was given a great birthday reception by her fellow-townsmen, with addresses by Mrs. Susan S. Fessenden and Mr. Blackwell and a poem by Hezekiah Butterworth.
The May Festival also opened with a Young People's Meeting, Mrs. Howe as "grandmother" introducing the speakers.[312] Mr. Garrison presided at the Festival and the speakers included Alfred Webb, M. P., of Dublin, the Rev. Dean Hodges, of the Episcopal Theological School, Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Stetson and Prof. Ellen Hayes of Wellesley.
A series of meetings was held this year in Berkshire County. Mrs. Mary Clarke Smith was kept in the field as State organizer for seven months. A speaker was sent free of charge to every woman's club or other society willing to hear the suffrage question presented; 13,000 pages of literature were distributed. On October 27 the State Baptist Young People's Union at its anniversary indorsed woman suffrage. In December a rousing meeting was held in Canton, Congressman Elijah Morse presiding, with Mrs. Livermore and Miss Yates as speakers.
Among the deaths of the year was that of Frederick T. Greenhalge—the latest of a long line of Massachusetts governors who have advocated woman suffrage since 1870—Governors Claflin, Washburn, Talbot, Brackett, Long, Butler and Ames.
At the annual meeting, in 1897, the speakers included the Rev. George L. Perin and Augusta Chapin, D. D. As the laws were about to be revised and codified it was decided to ask for an equalization of those bearing on domestic relations. The Women's Journal noted that never before had so many petitions for suffrage been sent in within so short a time. On February 16 the association gave a large and brilliant reception at the Vendome to Miss Jane Addams of Chicago. Col. Higginson presided, and Miss Addams, Mrs. Howe and Mrs. Livermore spoke. On April 17 a reception was given in the suffrage parlors to Mrs. Harriet Tubman, the colored woman so noted in anti-slavery days for her assistance to fugitive slaves, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney assisting.
Mr. Blackwell presided at the Festival, May 27, and eloquent addresses were made by the Rev. Dr. George C. Lorimer, Lieutenant-Governor John L. Bates, Mrs. Florence Howe Hall and many others, while letters of greeting were read from Lady Henry Somerset and Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett of England. It was Mrs. Howe's seventy-eighth birthday and she was received with cheers and presented with flowers.
On July 29 the annual meeting of the Berkshire Historical and Scientific Society, held at Adams, was "a woman suffrage convention from end to end," with Miss Susan B. Anthony as the guest of honor in her native town. Her friends and relatives from all parts of the country were present and addresses were made by the vice-president of the society, the Rev. A. B. Whipple, by Miss Shaw, Mrs. Chapman Catt, Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery, Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton and Miss Blackwell, officers of the National Suffrage Association, and by Mrs. May Wright Sewall, vice-president of the International Council of Women, Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby, editor of the Woman's Tribune and Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, Miss Anthony's biographer.
The Prohibition State Convention in September resolved that "educational qualifications and not sex should be the test of the elective franchise." The next year it adopted a woman suffrage plank.
In December the association held a bazar under the management of Miss Harriet E. Turner which cleared $3,200. During the year the usual large amount of educational work was done, which included 1,024 suffrage articles furnished to 230 newspapers, and the holding of 176 public meetings. The New England Historical and Genealogical Society voted unanimously to admit women to membership. Strong efforts were made to have the Boston school board elect several eminently qualified women as submasters, but sex prejudice defeated them.
The Anti-Suffrage Association published an anonymous pamphlet entitled Tested by its Fruits. The Massachusetts W. S. A. published a counter-pamphlet by Chief-Justice Groesbeck of Wyoming, who testified that some of the laws which it represented as then in force had been repealed many years before, and that upon some "an absurd construction" had been placed.