ing allowed to vote upon it.[459]

Only two-and-a-half months remained before election, the women were
practically unorganized, there were few speakers, no money, and the
towns were widely scattered. Miss Matilda Hindman of Pennsylvania and
Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby of Washington, D. C., editor of the _Woman's
Tribune_, came on and canvassed the State. Both were effective
speakers and they received as much local assistance as possible, but
all the money and influence which could be commanded by the
disreputable element that had suffered from the woman's vote were
brought to bear against the amendment, and its defeat was inevitable.

The constitution was adopted Nov. 5, 1889, the woman suffrage
amendment receiving 16,521 ayes, 35,913 noes; an adverse majority of
19,392.

In 1890 the first State Legislature conferred School Suffrage on women
to the extent of voting for trustees and directors.

The political campaign of 1896 was one in which reform of all kinds
was unusually in evidence. Three women sat as delegates in the State
Fusion Convention at Ellensburg. Mrs. Laura E. Peters, president of
the suffrage club at Port Angeles, was a Populist delegate and was
chosen a member of the Platform Committee. Through her efforts a
suffrage plank was inserted in the platform of that branch of the
convention.

The president of the State Suffrage Association, Mrs. Homer M. Hill,
said in her official report: "The People's Party was composed of
Silver Republicans, Populists and Democrats. At the State convention
these met in separate sessions. The Democrats voted down a resolution
demanding that the Committee on Platform bring in a report favoring
the amendment. The Silver Republicans passed one 'commending the
action of the Free Silver party in presenting to the people the
proposed amendment to the constitution.' The Populists inserted in
their platform a plank declaring that 'direct legislation without
equal suffrage would be government by but one-half of the people,' and
unequivocally favored the amendment.

"Although each of these three parties had its own platform, the
combination formed the People's Party and made its fight upon one
composed of eleven planks, or articles of faith, to which all three
agreed, _but equal suffrage was not one of them_. Therefore the
so-called union platform, minus suffrage, was the one generally
published and used as the basis of the campaign speeches. Because of
this no speaker of the People