share of her
time during the entire session to looking after the bill in the House,
and Miss Minnie J. Reynolds was equally untiring in the Senate. Three
other suffrage bills were introduced that session but two yielded
precedence to the one prepared by the association. The author of the
third believed that women could obtain suffrage only through a
constitutional amendment, which was what his bill called for. The
women received such contradictory advice on this point as to awaken
much anxiety. However, they read in their meetings a copy of the
statutes of Colorado, and possessing only plain common sense and not
the legal ability which would have qualified them for a place in the
Supreme Court, concluded that the referendum to the voters, which
their bill provided for, was the proper thing to request.

The opposition came from the usual sources. After the bill was
presented, the _Remonstrance_, the organ of the anti-suffrage society
in Boston, soon appeared on the desk of every legislator. The liquor
influence also was prominent in the lobby.

The bill was reported from the committee to the House on Jan. 24,
1893, with the recommendation that it should not pass and a minority
report in favor. The former was rejected by a vote of 39 to 21. The
bill was brought to a final vote on March 8. A number of the members
of the suffrage club and some other women who approved their cause
were present by request of the friends in the House. Some of the
arguments used were peculiar. Ruth didn't vote and she married very
well (at least at the second trial) nor did any of the women referred
to in the Bible, so why should the women of the United States do so?
One Representative said he always attended to affairs out of doors and
left those within to his wife. He thought that was the right way and
didn't believe his wife would vote if she could. "But she says she
would," declared another, who was prompted by Mrs. Tyler, and a ripple
of laughter arose at the speaker's expense.

There was the customary talk about neglected homes and implied
disbelief in woman's ability to use the ballot rightly, but only one
man tried the weapon of insult. Robert W. Bonynge spoke so slightingly
of the character of women who upheld equal suffrage that one incensed
woman, not a member of the association and presumably ignorant of
parliamentary courtesy, gave a low hiss. Immediately he assumed the
denunciatory and threatened immediate expulsion of all per