en lost in
their Lower House by a vote of 47 to 46, with a tie in the Senate. In
the Oklahoma constitutional convention, where the gambling and liquor
forces as usual lined up against woman suffrage, it came so near
passing that a change of seven votes would have carried it. In the
West Virginia Legislature, where the last time it was smothered in
committee, the House vote this time stood 38 yeas to 24 nays. In South
Dakota the measure passed the Senate and came so near passing the
House that a change of seven votes would have carried it. In the
Minnesota House the vote showed a small majority for suffrage but not
the constitutional one required. All these close legislative votes
followed hard upon the remarkable vote in Vermont, where the suffrage
bill passed the House 130 to 25 and came so near passing the Senate
that a change of three votes would have carried it.--_Woman's
Journal._

CHAPTER VIII.

NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1908.

The Fortieth annual convention, Oct. 15-21, 1908, celebrated a notable
event, as it was the 60th anniversary of the first Woman's Rights
Convention, that famous gathering of July 19-20, 1848, in Seneca
Falls, N. Y., the home of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The celebration was
appropriately held in Buffalo, the largest city in the western part of
the State, and was one of the most interesting and successful of the
organization's many conventions.[56] The evening before it opened the
president and directors of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy gave a large
reception to the officers, delegates, members and friends of the
association.

The convention met in the Young Men's Christian Association building
but this proved to be entirely too small for the evening sessions,
which were held in the large Central Presbyterian Church. The
excellent program was the work of Miss Kate Gordon, national
corresponding secretary, and the admirable arrangements were due to
Mrs. Richard Williams, president for the past eight years of the
Political Equality Club, with a corps of local helpers, but an
accident on the first day prevented her from welcoming the convention
or taking part in its proceedings. With the national president, Dr.
Anna Howard Shaw, in the chair, it was opened with prayer by the Rev.
Antoinette Brown Blackwell.[57] Mrs. Helen Z. M. Rodgers, a lawyer of
Buffalo, extended a welcome from women in the professions, who, she
said, "had only penetrated the ante-rooms and the annexes--the