A bill to let women vote on the license question passed the House by 116 yeas to 88 nays, including pairs, but was defeated in the Senate, 24 yeas, 13 nays.
The bill was passed providing for police matrons in all cities of 30,000 or more inhabitants.
1888—The Legislature was asked for Municipal and Presidential Suffrage and for the submission of a constitutional amendment; also for various improvements in the laws relating to women. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union petitioned for License Suffrage. Several thousand women signed the petition and one hundred the remonstrance. On January 25 a hearing was given on the petitions for Municipal and License Suffrage. Mr. Bowditch, Lucy Stone, Mr. Blackwell, Mrs. Howe and Mrs. Cheney spoke for Municipal Suffrage and Miss Elizabeth S. Tobey for License Suffrage. Mr. Brandeis made an argument as attorney for the remonstrants. Charles Carleton Coffin, A. A. Miner, D. D., Mrs. Claflin, the Rev. Ada C. Bowles and Miss Cora Scott Pond replied for the petitioners.
On February 20 and 25 hearings were given on the petitions for six bills drawn by Mr. Sewall: 1. To give mothers the equal care, custody and education of their minor children. 2. To give married women a right to appoint guardians for their minor children by will. 3. To repeal the act of 1887 limiting the inheritance of personal property. 4. To regulate and equalize the descent of personal property between husband and wife. 5. To equalize curtesy and dower and the descent of real estate between husband and wife. 6. To enable husbands and wives to make gifts, contracts and conveyances directly with one another, and to authorize suits between them.
Addresses in support of the petitions were made by Mr. Sewall, Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Stone, Mr. Blackwell, the Hon. George A. O. Ernst, Miss Robinson, George H. Fall and others. All these measures were refused. Several new statutes for the better protection of women were passed this year, however, at the instance of Mr. Sewall, among them one providing severe penalties for any person who should aid in sending a woman as inmate or servant to a house of ill fame; one prohibiting railroads from requiring women or children to ride in smoking cars; one providing that women arrested should be placed in charge of police matrons.
On April 23 Municipal Suffrage was defeated in the House, 50 yeas, 121 nays. License Suffrage, after a prolonged contest, passed by 118 yeas, 110 nays, and was defeated in the Senate, 20 yeas, 19 nays.
1889—At the hearing of January 31 the attendance was larger than ever before. Prof. W. H. Carruth, Franklyn Howland and the Rev. J. W. Hamilton (afterwards Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church) were added to the usual list of speakers.
On February 4 a hearing was granted to the W. C. T. U. for Municipal Suffrage, and on February 8 one was given to the remonstrants. The Hon. John M. Ropes, the Rev. Charles B. Rice, the Rev. Dr. Dexter of the Congregationalist and Arthur Lord spoke in the negative. They said they were employed as counsel by the remonstrants, whose names and numbers they declined to give. As Mr. Lord was unable to complete his argument in the allotted time, at his request a further hearing was granted on February 11. Extracts were read from letters by Mrs. Clara T. Leonard and Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney.[317] Mrs. Howe, Lucy Stone, Mr. Blackwell, Col. L. Edwin Dudley and Miss Tobey replied. Chester W. Kingsley, chairman of the legislative committee, said that as no petitions against suffrage had been sent in he would ask all the remonstrants present to rise. Not a person rose, but the men standing in the aisles tried to sit down. Mr. Lord suggested that the remonstrants were averse to notoriety, whereupon Senator Kingsley asked all in favor to rise, and the great audience rose in a body.
Among the petitions sent in this year for Municipal Suffrage was one signed by President Helen A. Shafer of Wellesley College, a number of the professors and about seventy students who were over twenty-one. The committee reported in favor of both Municipal and License Suffrage. The former was discussed March 12 and lost by a vote, including pairs, of 90 yeas, 139 nays. The Woman's Journal said: "Although not a majority, the weight of character, talent and experience was overwhelmingly in favor of the bill, as is shown by the fact that the chairmen of thirty of the House Committees, out of a total of forty-one, were recorded in its favor."
License Suffrage passed the Senate, 15 yeas, 12 nays, after a long fight, and was defeated in the House, 101 yeas, 42 nays.