The opponents immediately started an initiative petition to have the law submitted to the voters and on July 22 it was suspended in operation by the filing of a petition for a referendum on it by the Anti-Suffrage Association. Mrs. Barkley with others after inspection concluded it was not a bona fide petition. Accordingly she summoned her board to discuss taking the proper legal steps to prove that it was fraudulent and invalid. There was no money in the treasury with which to undertake expensive litigation and there were those who thought it wiser not to attempt it. The courage and determination of Mrs. Barkley were the deciding factor and it was the same brave and persistent effort that finally won the long-drawn-out legal battle. A full account was given by Mrs. Draper Smith in the Woman Citizen of which the following is a part:
For the larger part of the session in 1917 the Senate had been under great pressure from the public and the press to pass the bone dry law that the House had almost unanimously adopted. Nineteen members of the Senate belonged to the clique led by representatives of the brewing interests. They fought for weeks to secure the consent of the House to a bill that would have made prohibition impossible of enforcement. Into this maelstrom the limited suffrage law was plunged. Only the most careful leadership secured its final passage....
On the 21st of July the opponents caused to be filed with the Secretary of State a petition asking that the law be referred to the voters at the general election in 1918 for approval or rejection. This petition contained the signatures of 32,896 persons who claimed to be legal voters of the State and to live at the places designated as their legal residence.... Tact and patience were employed to get Secretary of State Pool to the point where he permitted the suffragists to make a copy. Eighteen thousand names bore the marks of an Omaha residence. The others were apparently gathered from two-fifths of the counties and presumptively represented 5 per cent. of the legal voters, as required by law. Suspicion that fraud and deception had been used, both in getting genuine signatures and in padding the lists, early gave way to positive conviction. When the investigation was complete it was found that 16,460 of the 32,896 signatures were subject to court challenge and that at least 10,000 of them were the product of fraud, forgery and misrepresentation. Prominent members of the bar volunteered their services—T. J. Doyle, C. A. Sorenson, John M. Stewart and H. H. Wilson of Lincoln, and Elmer E. Thomas and Francis A. Brogan of Omaha. A petition to enjoin the Secretary of State from placing the referendum on the election ballot was filed in February, 1918.
The Omaha workers were under the leadership of Mrs. H. C. Sumney, vice-president of the State association, and Mrs. James Richardson. They discovered that many of the residence addresses given were in railroad yards, cornfields or vacant lots. Many others were of men who had never lived at the addresses given; many affirmed that they had never signed any such petition; others that they had been induced to sign by the representation of the solicitor that it was to submit the question of full suffrage. The work of running down each of the 18,000 names consumed days of arduous labor. It was also found that page after page of the names were written by the same hand. Experts in handwriting from the various banks in Lincoln spent night after night poring over the original petitions in the office of the Secretary of State, picking out and listing the forgeries, which were found to have been scattered all over the State.
The request of the suffragists to the Secretary of State said that the circulators had committed perjury in certifying that these fictitious persons had affixed their names in their presence; that many of the names written thereon were not placed there, as the law required, in the presence of the circulator, but that the petitions had been left in pool halls, soft drink parlors, cigar stores and barber shops where everybody, including minors, was invited to sign, the circulator later coming around and gathering them up. It also said that many of the signatures were obtained by infants incapable at law of properly circulating or certifying to the petition sheets and that a number of circulators named had engaged in a systematic course of fraud and forgery, thereby making invalid all of the names. Attached were twenty pages of exhibits in proof of these charges.
The evidence in Omaha was matched by that in fifty-nine other counties taken by the referee and attorney.
The attorneys enjoined the Secretary of State from putting the referendum on the ballot. Nineteen suffragists appeared as plaintiffs in the case as follows: Edna M. Barkley, Gertrude L. Hardy, Katharine Sumney, Ida Robbins, Grace Richardson, Margaretta Dietrich, Grace M. Wheeler, Ella Brower, Ellen Ackerman, Henrietta Smith, Inez Philbrick, Harriet M. Stewart, Mary Smith Hayward, Mamie Claflin, Margaret T. Sheldon, Alice Howell, Ellen Gere, Eliza Ann Doyle, Katharine McGerr. As the suit had been brought against the Secretary of State the Attorney General appeared for him and was joined by the attorneys of the women's Anti-Suffrage Association. They argued that the plaintiffs were not legally entitled to sue because they were not electors. The court upheld their right. The Secretary of State became convinced that the petition was fraudulent and did not appear in the further litigation. The suffrage forces were prepared with their evidence and wished to proceed at once with the case but all the dilatory tactics possible were used and it was not until the full legal time was about to expire that the opponents were brought to the point on May 17, 1918. Mrs. Draper Smith's account continued:
Inspection of the original petition showed that of 116 petitions secured by A. O. Barclay 68 were in the same handwriting.... The name of one Omaha business man who had died three months previous to the circulation of the petition was found; another who was killed two months before, and another who had been dead for three years. Witness after witness testified that his name on it was forged.
Several other circulators forged so many names we asked that all their work be thrown out. The hearing developed that forty ex-saloon keepers and bartenders had these petitions on the bars in their soft drink places; 831 names were secured by Dick Kennedy, a negro who could neither read nor write. He appeared in court in jail clothes, being under indictment for peddling "dope," and was unable to identify the petitions certified by him. Ten boys, ranging in age from 8 to 15, were circulators. Several men who could not read or write testified that they supposed their names were being taken for a census. Many thought the petition was to "bring back beer." One man was told it was to pave an alley. At one hearing interpreters had to be used for all but two men. The treasurer of the Anti-Suffrage Association, Mrs. C. C. George, whose name appears as witness to the signatures of 81 certificates on the back of Barclay's petitions, testified that she did not remember him. On the back of each petition is a certificate in which the circulator certifies that each man signed in his presence and the signature must have two witnesses. The soft drink men and others testified that although the name of Mrs. George appeared as witness to their signatures they had never seen her. She testified that the petitions went through the hands of her association.
The following question was asked of another "anti," wife of a rector: "Had you known that co-workers with you were Dick Kennedy, an illiterate negro; Abie Sirian; Gus Tylee, employee of Tom Dennison and a detective of doubtful reputation; 40 soft drink men; Jess Ross, colored porter for Dennison; Jack Broomfield, a colored sporting man and for twenty years keeper of the most notorious dive in Omaha, and many others of this character, would you have worked with them and accepted the kind of petition they would secure?" She replied: "It would have made no difference to me. I was working for a cause and would not have cared who else was working for the same."
The testimony showed that the anti-suffrage association of Omaha, under the leadership of Mrs. Crofoot, president, had at first endeavored to employ to take charge of the work of circulating the petitions the man who had conducted the publicity department for the brewers in 1916.
The allegations of fraud were proved to the satisfaction of the District Court. The opponents appealed from its decision, which was confirmed by the Supreme Court in June, and the women entered into possession of this large amount of suffrage. By order of the court the anti-suffragists, together with the State, had to pay the costs of the long legal battle which ended on January 25, 1919, in a glorious victory for the suffragists. The costs were approximately $5,000.
Ratification. The State convention of 1917 was held in Omaha in December and it was omitted in the fall of 1918 on account of the influenza, and none was held until 1919. The Federal Amendment had been submitted by Congress on June 4 and a Ratification Committee had been appointed consisting of Mrs. Barkley, Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Wheeler to secure an early calling of a special session of the Legislature. It was arranged for the State convention to meet in Lincoln at the time Governor Samuel R. McKelvie had called this special session to ratify the amendment. The convention en masse saw the ratification of both Houses on August 2 by unanimous vote and had the joy of being present when it was signed by the Governor, who had been a consistent friend of the cause. The regular session had memorialized Congress by joint resolution to submit the Federal Suffrage Amendment and requested Senator Gilbert M. Hitchcock of Nebraska to vote for it. He voted against it every time it became before the Senate. The other Senator, George W. Norris, voted in favor each time and was always a helpful friend of woman suffrage.
The last State convention met in Omaha June 13-15, 1920, with 104 delegates in attendance. With Mrs. Charles H. Dietrich, who had been elected president the preceding year, in the chair, the association was merged into the Nebraska League of Women Voters and Mrs. Dietrich was made chairman.
On Saturday, Aug. 28, 1920, at noon, whistles were sounded and bells were rung for five minutes in Omaha and South Omaha to celebrate the proclamation by the Secretary of State at Washington that the woman suffrage amendment was now a part of the constitution of the United States and the struggle was over.
In December, 1919, there assembled in Lincoln a convention to rewrite Nebraska's constitution, to be submitted to the electors Sept. 21, 1920. This convention put a clause in the new constitution giving full suffrage to women. Using the power delegated to it by the Legislature it provided that women should vote on the constitution and that the suffrage amendment should go into effect as soon as the adoption of the constitution was announced by the Governor. The rest of it was to wait until Jan. 1, 1921. This was done in order that women might vote at the general election in November, 1920. Before the constitution went to the voters the Federal Amendment was proclaimed and women were fully enfranchised. With women voting the constitution received 65,483 ayes, 15,416 noes.