great jury listen not only with patience but with evident
pleasure and enthusiasm, while women representing twenty-six
districts gave reasons for wanting to be enfranchised; and we
also saw the creative body itself turned into a woman suffrage
meeting for three evenings. At the close of the last we learned
that there were in this convention ninety-eight men who dared to
say that the freemen of the State should not be allowed to decide
whether their wives, mothers and daughters should be enfranchised
or not. We learned also, that there were fifty-eight men,
constituting a noble minority, who loved justice better than
party power, and were willing to risk the latter to sustain the
former.[102]

The report of the Press Committee Chairman, Mrs. Ellen Battelle
Dietrick (Mass.), called especial attention to the flood of matter
relating to the woman question which was now appearing in the
newspapers and magazines of the country, to the activity of the enemy
and to the necessity for suffragists to "publish an antidote wherever
the poison appears." The Legislative Committee, Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Henry
and Mrs. Diggs, closed their report as follows:

In a State where there is hope of support from the political
parties, where there has been long agitation and everything
points to a favorable result, it is wise to urge a constitutional
amendment striking out the word "male" as a qualification for
voters. This must pass both Houses in the form of concurrent
resolution; in some States it must pass two successive
Legislatures; and it must be ratified at the polls by a majority
of the voters.

When the conditions are not yet ripe for a constitutional
amendment, there are many measures which are valuable in arousing
public interest and preparing the way for final triumph, as well
as important in ameliorating the condition of women. Among these
are laws to secure school suffrage for women; women on boards of
education and as school trustees; equality of property rights for
husbands and wives; equal guardianship of children for mother and
father; women factory inspectors; women physicians in hospitals
and insane asylums; women trustees in all State institutions;
police matrons; seats for saleswomen; the raising of "the age of
consent."

The report of the Plan of Work Committee, Mrs. Chapman