pertaining solely to the management of schools.

No effort was made to agitate the question, lest more should be
effected in rousing the opposition than in educating the masses
in the few months intervening between the passage of the bill and
the election in November. Mrs. Stearns, however, as the day for
the decision of the question approached, wishing to make sure of
the votes of the intelligent men of the State, wrote to the
editor of the _Pioneer Press_, the leading paper of Minnesota,
begging him to urge his readers to do all in their power to
secure the adoption of the amendment. The request was complied
with, and the editor in a private letter, thanking Mrs. Stearns,
said he "had quite forgotten such an amendment had been
proposed."

At this last moment the question was, what could be done to
secure the largest favorable vote. Finding that it would be
legal, the friends throughout the State appealed to the
committees of both political parties to have "For the amendment
of Article VII. relating to electors--Yes," printed upon all
their tickets. This was very generally done, and thereby the most
ignorant men were led to vote as they should, with the
intelligent, in favor of giving women a voice in the education of
the children of the State, while all who were really opposed
could scratch the "yes," and substitute a "no." When election day
came, November 5, 1875, the amendment was carried by a vote of
24,340 for, to 19,468 against. The following legislature passed
the necessary law, and at the spring election of 1876, the women
of Minnesota voted for school officers, and in several cases
women were elected as directors.

I have given these details because the great wonder has been how
the combined forces of ignorance and vice failed to vote down
this amendment, as they always have done every other proposition
for the extension of suffrage to women in this and every other
State where the question has been submitted to a popular vote. I
believe our success was largely, if not wholly, attributable to
our studied failure to agitate the question, and the affirmative
wording of all the tickets of both parties, by which our
bitterest opponents forgot the question was to be voted upon, and
the ignorant classes who could not, or d