1917. This year will long be remembered by suffrage workers as one of triumphs and defeats. The legislative session was a continued triumph and showed that public opinion was in favor of granting political rights to women. A great help was the agitation for a new constitution. The present constitution was adopted in 1851. An early court decision that an amendment in order to carry must have a majority of all the votes cast at the election made amending it a practical impossibility and for a long time there had been a widespread demand for a new one for the sake of many needed reforms. The suffragists joined the agitation for it, as this seemed the only way to get the vote by State action. The General Assembly of 1917 was carefully selected to pass the Prohibition Amendment and was known to be favorable to the calling of a constitutional convention. While the suffragists placed their hope in a new constitution yet in order to leave no means untried the Legislative Council of Women was formed at the suggestion of Mrs. Grace Julian Clarke, composed of representatives of eight or ten State organizations, of which the Women's Franchise League was one. Mrs. Felix T. McWhirter was made president and it was decided to present a Presidential and Municipal suffrage bill similar to the one passed by the Illinois Legislature in 1913 and sustained by the courts. The Council had quarters in the State House granted by the Governor; the Women's Franchise League immediately established a bureau there by his consent with Mrs. John F. Barnhill and Miss Alma Sickler in charge and all the women labored diligently for the success of the measure. The work over the State was necessarily done largely by the Franchise League, as it had the local societies necessary. The Council secured the aid of Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch, a lawyer of Chicago, who had been closely identified with the Illinois law. For the first time in the history of Indiana's struggle for equal suffrage there was active opposition by women. Nineteen, all of Indianapolis, appealed to the Senate Committee on Rights and Privileges, which had the bill in charge, for a hearing in order to protest.[48] This was granted but it resulted in an enthusiastic suffrage meeting. The "nineteen," who asserted that they spoke for 90 per cent. of unorganized women in Indiana, were represented by Mrs. Lucius B. Swift, Miss Minnie Bronson, secretary of the National Anti-Suffrage Association, and Charles McLean of Iowa, who was in its employ. Mrs. McCulloch, Meredith Nicholson, Mrs. Edward Franklin White, now president of the Council, former Mayor Charles A. Bookwalter and a number of others spoke for the bill.