of meetings and rallies were held and a great
quantity of literature was distributed.

About six weeks before election a Man Suffrage Association was formed
with Francis C. Lowell as chairman, Thomas Russell as treasurer and
Charles R. Saunders as salaried secretary.[320] This society was
composed wholly of men. It sent out an enormous number of circulars
and other documents, spent money like water, enlisted active political
workers, utilized to a considerable extent the party "machines," and
as far as possible secured a committee of men to work at each polling
place on election day and roll up a large negative vote of men. It
contained a number of influential politicians who displayed much skill
in their tactics. They published a manifesto against equal rights
signed by one hundred prominent men. The _Woman's Journal_, which
printed this document on October 19, said:

In the main the protest represents merely money and social
position. There are half-a-dozen names on it which it is a pity
and a shame to see there. All the rest were to be expected. They
are men whose opinion would be of weight on questions of stocks
and bonds, but whose opinion on questions of moral reform has
only a minus value.... Its signers have pilloried themselves for
posterity. It is regarded as discourteous to-day to remind
President Eliot of Harvard that his father was the only member of
Congress from Massachusetts who voted for the Fugitive Slave Law.
Forty years hence it will be regarded as cruel to remind the
children of these gentlemen [among whom was President Eliot] that
their fathers put their names to a protest against equal rights
for women.

At first the two anti-suffrage associations, the men's and the
women's, co-operated with the suffragists in getting up debates; but
no man ever consented to take part in one against suffrage a second
time, and toward the end of the campaign it became almost impossible
to secure speakers in the negative. Both sides published appeals and
counter-appeals and the question was discussed in the press, at public
meetings and in social circles to an extent unprecedented in the
history of the State. Even the advertisements in the street cars began
with the query in large letters, Should Women Vote? in order to
attract attention to a particular brand of soap, etc.

During the early part of the canvass the opponents of suffrage
circulated