egislature of the Territory passed a bill
conferring the franchise upon women, to which acting-Governor S. A.
Mann affixed his signature February 12. From that time women voted at
all elections, while some of them took a practical interest in public
matters and acted as delegates to political conventions and members of
Territorial and county committees.

The first attempt to elect a woman to any important office was made in
Salt Lake City at the county convention of 1878, when Mrs. Emmeline B.
Wells was nominated for treasurer. She received the vote of the entire
delegation, but the statute including the word "male" was held to
debar women from holding political offices. A bill was presented to
the next Legislature with petitions numerously signed asking that this
word be erased from the statutes, which was passed. Gov. George W.
Emory, however, refused to sign it, and though other Legislatures
passed similar bills by unanimous vote, none ever received his
signature or that of any succeeding governor.

In June, 1871, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Miss Susan B. Anthony,
the president and vice-president-at-large of the National Woman
Suffrage Association, stopped at Salt Lake City on their way to the
Pacific Coast and met many of the prominent men and women.

In 1872 the _Woman's Exponent_ was established, and it is impossible
to estimate the advantage this little paper gave to the women of this
far western Territory. From its first issue it was the champion of the
suffrage cause, and by exchanging with women's papers of the United
States and England it brought news of women in all parts of the world
to those of Utah. They also were thoroughly organized in the National
Woman's Relief Society, a charitable and philanthropic body which
stood for reform and progress in all directions. Through such an
organization it was always comparatively easy to promote any specific
object or work. The Hon. George Q. Cannon, Utah's delegate in the
'70's, coming from a Territory where women had the ballot, interested
himself in the suffrage question before Congress. He thus became
acquainted with the prominent leaders of the movement, who went to
Washington every winter and who manifested much interest in the women
afar off in possession of the rights which they themselves had been so
long and zealously advocating without apparent results. Among these
were Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker and
others of national