CHAPTER XXI.
MICHIGAN.[87]
The Michigan Equal Suffrage Association is almost as old as any in the United State, having been organized in January, 1870, eight months after the National Association was formed, and its work has been long and arduous. It has had triumphs and disappointments; gained partial suffrage at two periods and ended in a complete victory in 1918.
In 1900-1901 the principal efforts of the association, which consisted of 14 auxiliaries, were along educational lines. At the annual convention in 1902 a petition was sent to President Theodore Roosevelt to recommend a woman suffrage amendment to the National Constitution in his message to Congress, which was heartily endorsed by the National Grange then in session in Lansing. Little active work was being done with the Legislature but it is the pride of the suffragists that no Legislature ever convened which they did not memorialize and only two years passed without a State convention—1912, and two were held in 1913; and 1917, when a congressional conference was held instead.[88] The presidents during these years were Mrs. Emily Burton Ketcham, Grand Rapids, 1901 (at intervals from 1892); Mrs. Martha E. Snyder Root, Bay City, 1902-3; Mrs. Guilielma H. Barnum, Charlotte, 1904-6; Mrs. Clara B. Arthur, Detroit, 1906-1914; Mrs. Orton H. Clark, Kalamazoo, 1914-1918; Mrs. Belle Brotherton, Detroit, acting president, 1918; Mrs. Percy J. Farrell, Detroit, 1918-1919.
From 1902 to 1906 the work was largely confined to the preparing of public opinion for the probable revision of the State constitution. Legislatures refused to submit a woman suffrage amendment to the voters on the plea that a new constitution would soon be in force. It was decided to make an intensive educational campaign, especially among the club women. To this end suffragists served on club committees working for legislative or civic ends, and the rebuffs of the measures urged by them finally resulted in the endorsement of woman suffrage by the State Federation of Women's Clubs with 8,000 members, at Battle Creek in October, 1908.
In 1906 speakers were sent over the State for lectures and debates. Prizes for suffrage essays were offered in high schools with material supplied. At county and State fairs, church bazars, picnics and meetings of various societies, literature was freely distributed. The Woman's Journal was placed in all public libraries and small suffrage tracts kept in interurban waiting rooms and in rest rooms of churches, societies and dry-goods stores. Birthdays of pioneer suffragists were celebrated by special meetings, local clubs always responding to a call with so concrete an object. A committee of members in all parts of the State attended constantly to press work, sending in items of interest concerning the progress of women, educationally and politically, and answering attacks on woman suffrage.
This year the Supreme Court decided that Mrs. Merrie Hoover Abbott, who had been elected prosecuting attorney of Ogemaw county, could not serve because no woman was entitled to hold office. The association used this decision as a practical lesson on the position of women under the present constitution. Finally the Legislature of 1907 arranged for a constitutional convention. The annual convention of the association promptly met the situation by appointing a Constitutional Revision Committee headed by Mrs. May Stocking Knaggs of Bay City, a former president, and each auxiliary was invited to appoint one woman to serve on an advisory committee. The purpose of this committee was to urge upon the convention the omission of the word "male" from the suffrage clause as a qualification for voting.
The Committee on Elective Franchise of the constitutional convention reported unanimously in favor and on Jan 8. 1908, granted the suffragists a hearing in Representatives Hall. Ten societies cooperating with the State suffrage association were represented—the Grange, two organizations of the Maccabees, Woman's Christian Temperance Union, State Federation of Labor, Detroit Garment Workers, State Woman's Press Association and several women's and farmers' clubs. A petition representing 225,000 names, 175,000 of individual women of voting age, was presented. The State president, Mrs. Clara B. Arthur, introduced the speakers, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch, a lawyer of Chicago, who made earnest addresses. The Governor came in to hear them. The women "antis" circulated a leaflet opposing the change. On January 29 the debate took place in the convention on the proposed revision, and, although not a voice had been raised in protest, the vote stood 38 ayes, 57 noes. Some members who voted "no" did so because they believed that the whole constitution would be defeated at the polls if it proposed to enfranchise women. The hard work of the association was not, however, barren of results, for a clause was inserted in the new constitution giving taxpaying women the right to vote on any public question relating to the public expenditure of money or the issuing of bonds. [In 1915 the Legislature extended it to the granting of public franchises.]
In the spring Mrs. Arthur with Mrs. Maud Wood Park, organizer for the National College Suffrage League, formed branches in the colleges at Albion, Hillsdale, Olivet and Ann Arbor and among the collegiate alumnae in Detroit, of which Dr. Mary Thompson Stevens was made president. In June the fifty-six State delegates to the National Democratic convention were petitioned for a woman suffrage plank in the platform.
The next task was to try to comply with the request of the National Suffrage Association to secure 100,000 names to a nation-wide petition to be presented to Congress for a Federal Suffrage Amendment. Mrs. Fern Richardson Rowe, Grand Rapids, was chairman of the work, which took up the greater part of the year 1909 and went over into 1910. This last year the State association obtained the consent of the Hon. Levi L. Barbour, former U. S. Senator Thomas W. Palmer and the Rev. Lee S. McCollester, pastor of the Church of Our Father (Universalist), all residents of Detroit, to act as an invitational committee in organizing a Men's State League for Woman Suffrage. The charter membership consisted of 100 influential men well known throughout the State. In March a committee of the association went to the Republican State convention to have a woman suffrage resolution adopted but were unsuccessful.