favor of that measure as a
necessity for the furtherance of their cause.

On March 31, 1880, Judith Ellen Foster, of Clinton, made an able
and eloquent argument before the Senate Committee on Education
and Labor, at Washington, on Senator Logan's proposition to
constitute the revenue on alcoholic liquors a national
educational fund. At a meeting of the State Union held in 1883,
resolutions were passed, declaring woman's efforts in temperance
of no avail, until with ballots in their own hands, they could
coin their ideas and sympathies into law, and that henceforward
they would labor to secure that power, that would speedily make
their prayers and tears of some avail. This action gave a new
impetus to the suffrage movement. At the State convention, Mrs.
Jane Amy M'Kinney was appointed Superintendent of Franchise.
Circulars were issued advising the Unions to make suffrage a part
of their local work, and the advice was promptly followed in many
sections of the State. At the election on the prohibitory
amendment, June 29, 1882, women rallied at the polls, and
furnished tickets to all whom they could persuade to take them,
and this helped to roll up a large vote in favor of the
amendment.

The laws of Iowa have been comparatively liberal to woman, and
with each successive codification have been somewhat improved. By
the code of 1857, the old right of dower, or life interest in
one-third of the real estate of a deceased husband, was made an
absolute interest; and this is the law at the present time. Of
the personal property, the wife takes one-third if there are
children, and one-half if there are no children to inherit. The
same rule applies to the husband of a deceased wife. The codes of
1857 and 1860 each provided that the husband could not remove the
wife, nor their children, from their homestead without the
consent of the wife; and the code of 1875, now in force, changed
this only so as to provide that neither shall the wife remove the
husband without his consent. Deeds of real estate must be signed
by both husband and wife, but no private examination of either
has ever been required in Iowa. A husband and wife may deed
property directly to each other.

By the code of 1851 the personal property of the wife did not
vest at once in