Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
Necessarily the campaign was short for the vote was to be taken April
7. Unlike the one preceding, three-fourths of the financial support
came from without the State. Mrs. Ida Porter Boyer of Pennsylvania was
engaged for press and executive work. The National Association
furnished speakers, among them its president, Dr. Shaw, Mrs. Carrie
Chapman Catt, Mrs. Park, Mrs. Celia J. White, Mrs. Susan W.
FitzGerald, Mrs. Glendower Evans, Mrs. Priscilla D. Hackstaff, Mrs.
Ella S. Stewart, Miss Doris Stevens, Mrs. Clara Laddey, Mrs. Clara
Bewick Colby and Mrs. Beatrice Forbes Robertson Hale. Miss Laura Clay
came from Kentucky at her own expense. The State was organized by
counties and the speaking and circularizing were done under the
immediate direction of the county chairmen. In the report of Mrs. Edna
S. Blair, chairman of organization, she stated that there were but
eight counties in the State which had no working committees and only
three of these were in the Lower Peninsula, their total voting
strength being less than 2,500. The amendment was defeated by 96,144,
receiving 168,738 ayes, 264,882 noes. Her analysis of the vote,
prepared from county returns, showed that there was a gain of a little
more than 16,000 negative votes over those of 1912, and 13,000 of
these were in counties having a "wet" and "dry" issue.
The preceding year the liquor forces had not realized the need of
active work. Never in any other State campaign did these forces make
so open a fight as in this one. They paid for columns of space in the
newspapers and circulated vast quantities of the literature prepared
by the women's Anti-Suffrage Association. This was in piles on the
bars of the saloons and, according to reports, in even more
questionable places. The defeat was not due so much to a change in
public opinion as it was to an absence of the favorable vote which had
been called out in the previous year by reason of the presidential
election.
After the election county chairmen and all suffragists were asked to
urge their representatives in Congress to support the Federal
Amendment. This was followed by a trip through the State by Mrs.
Blair, who contributed her services, and at the convention in Jackson,
in 1913, she reported that there were now only four counties, all in
the Upper Peninsula, where there was no record of active workers. Mrs.
Arthur was reelected.[90]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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