The suffragists, who, beginning in 1869, had petitioned year after year for the submission to the voters of a legal and straightforward constitutional amendment, which would give women the ballot if the majority voted for it, were disgusted with this sham substitution. Mrs. Livermore, the State president, declared that she would neither take part in the mock vote herself nor advise others to do so. This feeling was so general that at the last meeting of the executive committee of the W. S. A. for the season, in June, it was found impossible even to pass a resolution recommending those men and women who favored equal suffrage to go to the polls and say so.
A number of individual suffragists, however, believed that advantage should be taken of the chance to make an educational campaign and, as the Woman's Journal of June 8 said, "to use the opportunity for what it is worth as a means of agitation." Therefore a Suffrage Referendum State Committee was formed of more than fifty prominent men and women, including U. S. Senator Hoar, ex-Governor Long, the Hon. J. Q. A. Brackett, Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Fannie B. Ames, Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, the editors of the Woman's Journal and others. Mrs. Mary Clarke Smith was employed as organizer, beginning July 10, and as good a campaign was made as the circumstances permitted. By the time the executive committee reassembled in October, every one had become convinced of the wisdom of this course, and the State Suffrage Association and the Referendum Committee worked hand in hand during the last few weeks before election. It was a disadvantage that the bill for the "mock referendum" was passed just before people went away for the summer, and that the vote was to be taken soon after they came back in the fall; nevertheless, a spirited campaign was made, a large number of meetings and rallies were held and a great quantity of literature was distributed.
About six weeks before election a Man Suffrage Association was formed with Francis C. Lowell as chairman, Thomas Russell as treasurer and Charles R. Saunders as salaried secretary.[320] This society was composed wholly of men. It sent out an enormous number of circulars and other documents, spent money like water, enlisted active political workers, utilized to a considerable extent the party "machines," and as far as possible secured a committee of men to work at each polling place on election day and roll up a large negative vote of men. It contained a number of influential politicians who displayed much skill in their tactics. They published a manifesto against equal rights signed by one hundred prominent men. The Woman's Journal, which printed this document on October 19, said:
In the main the protest represents merely money and social position. There are half-a-dozen names on it which it is a pity and a shame to see there. All the rest were to be expected. They are men whose opinion would be of weight on questions of stocks and bonds, but whose opinion on questions of moral reform has only a minus value.... Its signers have pilloried themselves for posterity. It is regarded as discourteous to-day to remind President Eliot of Harvard that his father was the only member of Congress from Massachusetts who voted for the Fugitive Slave Law. Forty years hence it will be regarded as cruel to remind the children of these gentlemen [among whom was President Eliot] that their fathers put their names to a protest against equal rights for women.
At first the two anti-suffrage associations, the men's and the women's, co-operated with the suffragists in getting up debates; but no man ever consented to take part in one against suffrage a second time, and toward the end of the campaign it became almost impossible to secure speakers in the negative. Both sides published appeals and counter-appeals and the question was discussed in the press, at public meetings and in social circles to an extent unprecedented in the history of the State. Even the advertisements in the street cars began with the query in large letters, Should Women Vote? in order to attract attention to a particular brand of soap, etc.
During the early part of the canvass the opponents of suffrage circulated pledges for signature by women promising to vote "No" in November,[321] but they soon became convinced that in trying to get out a large vote of women against suffrage they had undertaken more than they could accomplish. The Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women supplied in plate form to a large number of State papers a series of articles one of which urged women to express themselves against suffrage, warned them that "silence will be cited as consent," and said: "It is our duty in any clear and forcible way that presents itself, to say 'I am not sure that our country should run this enormous new risk.'"
The "antis" have since asserted that in saying "in any clear and forcible way that presents itself," they did not mean to include the most obvious way, i. e., by voting "No" when given an opportunity by the Legislature to do so. Later in the campaign they issued a manifesto declaring that they did not urge women to register or vote, and that silence was not to be interpreted as consent. And finally, just before registration closed in Boston and the other cities, when it was clear that the majority of women were not going to register to vote either way, they issued another manifesto urging women not to vote against suffrage!
This was a transparent device to conceal the fewness of their numbers, and they thus stultified all their previous professions, as they had asserted for years that whenever women were given the right to vote on an important question it would be their duty to do so, irrespective of their personal inclinations, and it was in order to save women from this burden that their enfranchisement was opposed. If they could have brought out an overwhelming vote of women against equal suffrage, of course they would have done so. Since they could not, it was their policy to advise women not to express themselves and thus let the few who were strongly opposed be confounded with the mass of those who were indifferent. The Man Suffrage Association, which professed to be working in full harmony with the women's organization, declared in small and inconspicuous type that it did not urge women to take the trouble to register, merely for the sake of expressing themselves on the referendum, but that it did urge those who voted at all to vote "No." It published a circular giving reasons "why women and the friends of women should vote no," and it covered walls and fences from one end of the State to the other with huge placards bearing in enormous letters the words, "Men and Women, Vote No!"
The main object of this association, however, was not to get an expression of opinion from the women (which would weigh little either way) but to influence the Legislature through a large negative vote from the men. Mr. Saunders was reported in an interview in the Boston Herald as saying that the women who took the trouble to vote at all would probably vote in favor ten to one (it proved to be twenty-five to one), but that if the men would give a good majority against it the Legislature could be relied upon to defeat a genuine amendment for years.
The suffragists spent only $1,300 during the entire canvass. The Man Suffrage Association never made the sworn report of its receipts and expenditures which the law requires of every campaign committee, although even the papers opposed to suffrage exhorted it to do so and warned it that it was placing itself in a false position by refusing, but the treasurer published an unsworn statement, not of his receipts but of his general expenditures, by which it appeared that the association, during the six weeks of its existence, spent $3,576. In addition large sums were expended by the women's anti-suffrage association, which, not being a campaign committee but a permanent society, was under no legal obligation to file a statement.