purpose of organizing a State Woman Suffrage Association, and
inaugurating such measures for the advancement of the cause as
the wisdom of the convention may suggest.[181]

The _Portland Press_, in a leading editorial on the "Moral Eminence
of Maine," says:

Maine has been first in many things. She has taught the world how
to struggle with intemperance, and pilgrims come hither from all
quarters of the earth to learn the theory and practice of
prohibition. She was among the first to practically abolish
capital punishment and to give married women their rights in
respect to property. She is, perhaps, nearer giving them
political rights, also, than any of her sister commonwealths. If
Maine should be first among the States to give suffrage to women,
she would do more for temperance than a hundred prohibitory laws,
and more for civilization and progress than Massachusetts did
when she threw the tea into Boston harbor in 1773, or when she
sent the first regiment to the relief of Washington in 1861.

The leaders of the temperance reform in Maine are fully alive to
the necessity of woman suffrage as a means to that end. At the
meeting of the State Temperance Association of Maine, in Augusta,
recently, Mr. Randall said that "as the woman suffrage convention
has adjourned over this afternoon in order to attend the
temperance meeting, he would move that when we adjourn it be to
Thursday morning, as the work at both conventions is intimately
connected. If the women of Maine went to the ballot-box, we
should have officers to enforce the law." Mr. Randall's motion
was carried, and the temperance convention adjourned.

The Woman Suffrage Association assembled Wednesday, January 29, in
Granite Hall, Augusta. There was a very large attendance, a
considerable number of those present being members of the
legislature. Hon. Joshua Nye presided. He made a few remarks
relating to the removal of political disabilities from women, and
introduced Mrs. Agnes A. Houghton of Bath, who spoke on the
"Turning of the Tide," contending that woman should be elevated
socially, politically and morally, enjoying the same rights as man.
She was followed by Judge Benjamin Kingsbury, jr., of Portland, who
declared himself unequivocally in favor of giving woman the right
to vote, and who trusted that she would be accorded this right