In 1888 the Munic.i.p.al Suffrage Bill was presented in the Senate by Charles Coggeshall, and in the a.s.sembly by Danforth E. Ainsworth. A hearing in the Senate Chamber on February 15 was addressed by Mrs.
Blake, Mrs. Rogers and the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer of Rhode Island.
The bill was lost in the Senate by a tie vote, 15 ayes, 15 noes; in the House by 48 ayes, 61 noes.
Laws were enacted at this session providing that there shall be women physicians in all State insane asylums where women are patients; and also that there shall be at least one woman trustee in all public inst.i.tutions where women are placed as patients, paupers or criminals.
In 1889 the Munic.i.p.al Suffrage Bill was again presented in the a.s.sembly by Mr. Ainsworth, but it was lost by 56 ayes, 43 noes, not a const.i.tutional majority.
In 1890 the Munic.i.p.al Suffrage Bill was presented by Speaker Husted, but was defeated by 47 ayes, 52 noes.
In 1891 no legislative work was attempted beyond the efforts toward securing a representation of women in the Const.i.tutional Convention, which it was supposed would be held at an early date.
In 1892 an act was pa.s.sed to enable women to vote for County School Commissioners, which received the signature of Gov. Roswell P. Flower.
This year a Police Matron Bill was obtained which was made mandatory in cities of 100,000 and over. This bill had been pa.s.sed several times before and vetoed, but it finally obtained the Governor"s signature.
Even then the Police Commissioners of New York refused to appoint matrons until the matter was taken up by the Woman Suffrage League of that city. This was the end of a ten years" struggle on the part of women to secure police matrons in all cities. Most active among the leaders were Mrs. Mary T. Burt, Mrs. Abby Hopper Gibbons and Mrs.
Josephine Shaw Lowell, backed by the W. C. T. U., the Prison Reform, the Suffrage and various other philanthropic and religious societies.
In 1892 Hamilton Willc.o.x, who had worked untiringly in the Legislature for many years, had a bill introduced in the a.s.sembly to give a vote to self-supporting women. It was referred to the Judiciary Committee, but met with general disfavor. Mrs. Howell being in the a.s.sembly Chamber with friends one evening, three of its members invited her to go to their committee room and draw up a bill for Full Suffrage, telling her they would report it favorably in place of the Working Woman"s Bill. This she did and the new bill was at once reported. The next week she gave every moment to working with the members for it, aided by General Husted, Mr. Willc.o.x and William Sulzer. On Friday morning, one week from the day the bill was reported, it came to the final vote and pa.s.sed by 70 ayes, only 65 being required for the const.i.tutional majority. Excitement ran high at this success and ten minutes were given for congratulations to Mrs. Howell by friends and foes alike. The Monday following she carried the bill from the Engrossing Committee to the Senate. Only three days of the session were left and the committee held no more meetings, so she saw separately each member of the Judiciary Committee and all gave a vote in favor of considering the bill. Mr. Sheehan was now Lieutenant-Governor and presiding officer of the Senate and would allow no courtesies to Mrs. Howell, but one senator, Charles E.
Walker, arranged for her to see every member, and she secured the promise of 18 votes, 17 being required. On Thursday evening, although Senator Cornelius R. Parsons made many attempts to secure recognition, the bill was not allowed to come before the Senate. There was every reason to believe Governor Flower would have signed it.[389]
In 1893 Mrs. Cornelia H. Cary worked for a bill providing that on all boards of education one person out of five should be a woman, but it failed to pa.s.s. The measure making fathers and mothers joint guardians of their children, so often urged, became a law this year chiefly through the efforts of the Women"s Educational and Industrial Union of Buffalo, which had been hampered constantly in its efforts to care for helpless children by the interference of worthless fathers.[390]
A law also was enacted, championed by Col. George C. Webster, giving to a married woman the right to make a valid will without her husband"s consent.
The season of 1894 was given wholly to the work of securing a woman suffrage amendment in the revised State const.i.tution.
In 1895 Mrs. Martha R. Almy, as chairman of the Legislative Committee, began work in Albany early in January and was absent but one legislative day from that time until May. She was a.s.sisted by Mrs.
Helen G. Ecob, and their effort was to secure a resolution to amend the const.i.tution by striking out the word "male." In order to submit such an amendment in New York, a resolution must be pa.s.sed by two successive Legislatures.
Judge Charles Z. Lincoln, the legal adviser of Gov. Levi P. Morton, drew up the resolution and it was introduced January 22 in the a.s.sembly by Fred S. Nixon, and in the Senate by Cuthbert W. Pound. It was favorably reported by the Senate Judiciary Committee early in the session. The chairman of the a.s.sembly Committee, Aaron B. Gardenier, was very hostile, and after every effort to get a report had been exhausted, Mr. Nixon and Mrs. Almy made a personal appeal to the committee and were successful. On March 14 six men brought in the mammoth pet.i.tion for woman suffrage which had been presented to the Const.i.tutional Convention the previous year. The resolution was pa.s.sed by 80 ayes, 31 noes. This was a remarkable action for the first Legislature after the great defeat in the Const.i.tutional Convention only a few months before.
When the measure came to the Senate it was moved by Senator Pound to subst.i.tute Mr. Nixon"s resolution for his own, as they were identical.
But Amasa J. Parker[391] objected in order to make it run the gauntlet of the Senate Committee again, and this gave the anti-suffragists an opportunity to oppose it. He then asked for a hearing for Bishop William Croswell Doane and others before the State Judiciary Committee, of which he was a member, which Chairman Edmond O"Connor granted. The committee met but once a week, and twice the hearing was postponed to accommodate the opposition. The second time, as no one appeared against the resolution, it was again reported favorably. Just after this had been done Mr. Parker appeared and objected, and the chairman agreed to recall it and give the opposition one more chance.
On April 10, the time appointed for the hearing, Bishop Doane sent a letter declining the honor of appearing, but a delegation from New York City came up, and Mrs. Francis M. Scott and Prof. Monroe Smith of Columbia University addressed the committee opposing the measure.
Mrs. Almy and Mrs. Mary H. Hunt replied in its behalf. For the third time the resolution was reported favorably by the Senate Committee, and April 18 the vote was taken. Senators Pound, Coggeshall and Bradley spoke in favor, and Jacob H. Cantor in opposition. It was carried by 20 ayes, 5 noes.
When the resolution went to the Revision Committee it was found that in one section there was a period where there should have been a comma. Mrs. Almy was obliged to remain two weeks and get an amendment through both Houses to correct this error. Finally the resolution was declared perfect, and was ordered published throughout the State, etc.
Then it was discovered that the word "resident" was used instead of "citizen," and the entire work of the winter was void. As it is not required that copies of original bills shall be preserved, the responsibility for the mistake never can be located.
The Senate of 1896, by a change in the term of office, was to sit three years instead of two; and a concurrent resolution, in order to pa.s.s two successive Legislatures, would have to be deferred still another year, so no work was attempted.
On Jan. 4, 1897, when the Legislature a.s.sembled, every member found on his desk a personally addressed letter appealing for the right of women citizens to representation, signed by all the officers of the State Suffrage a.s.sociation and by the presidents of all the local societies. The resolution asking for a suffrage amendment was introduced in the Senate by Joseph Mullen, in the a.s.sembly by W. W.
Armstrong, and was referred to the Judiciary Committees. Repeated interviews by Mrs. Mariana W. Chapman, Mrs. Mary E. Craigie, chairman of the legislative committee, and other members were not sufficient to secure a favorable vote even from the committees, as they were frightened by the action of the preceding Legislature.
The New York Society Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women was at work on the spot, and every legislator received a letter urging him not to consider any kind of a bill for woman suffrage.
Finally a hearing was appointed by the Senate Committee for March 24.
In the midst of a snowstorm, all the way from Rochester came the National president, Miss Anthony; from New York City, the State president, Mrs. Chapman; the chairman of the national organization committee, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt; Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and Miss Elizabeth Burrill Curtis; from Syracuse, Miss Harriet May Mills; and in Albany already were Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Almy, Mrs. Julia D. Sheppard and a number of local suffragists. Miss Anthony, Mrs. Chapman Catt and Miss Mills addressed the committee. As the delegation withdrew one senator said to another: "I do not know what is to become of us men when such women as these come up to the Legislature." Nevertheless the resolution was not reported by the committee.
Under the auspices of a Civic Union of all the boroughs of the proposed "Greater New York," an active campaign was carried on during this winter to secure various advantages for women under the new charter, but it met with no especial success.
In 1898 Mrs. Mary Hilliard Loines was chairman of the legislative committee, and Mrs. Florence Dangerfield Potter, a graduate of Cornell and of the New York University Law School, acted as attorney. The Suffrage Amendment Resolution was introduced the first week of the session by Representative Otto Kelsey, a steadfast friend of woman suffrage. The usual number of letters was sent throughout the State to secure co-operation and a hearing was given March 2 in the a.s.sembly library. The speakers introduced by Mrs. Loines were Mrs. Chapman, Miss Mills, Mrs. Craigie, Miss Margaret Livingstone Chanler and Mrs.
Martha A. B. Conine, a member of the Colorado Legislature. The Rev.
William Brundage of Albany spoke forcibly in favor of the amendment.
No opponents were present. Although the chairman and some members of the committee were in favor, it was learned that the majority were opposed, so a vote was not pressed. The Senate committee being the same as the previous year, it was thought not worth while to introduce the resolution into that body.
In 1899 the legislative work differed from that of the years directly preceding, the executive committee having decided that it might be wiser to ask for some form of suffrage which the Legislature itself could grant without submitting the question to the voters. The following bills were authorized:
1: To make it obligatory to appoint at least one woman on school boards in those cities, about forty-six in all, where the office is appointive.
2: To amend the village law, making it obligatory that in all charters where a special vote of tax-payers is required on munic.i.p.al improvements or the raising or distribution of taxes, women properly qualified shall vote on the same basis as men.
A great many letters had been sent to Gov. Theodore Roosevelt, then newly elected, asking him to recognize the rights of women in his inaugural address, which he did by calling the attention of the Legislature to "the desirability of gradually extending the sphere in which the suffrage can be exercised by women." These two bills, therefore, were sent to him for approval and he appointed an interview at Albany with a committee from the State a.s.sociation. Mrs. Loines, Mrs. Blake, Miss Mills, Miss Mary Lyman Storrs and Mrs. Nellie F.
Matheson went with the State president to this interview, and the Governor cordially indorsed the bills.
Letters were sent to the legislators and also to the presidents of the county suffrage societies, asking them to influence their representatives. The bill for the Taxpayers" Suffrage was introduced into the a.s.sembly by Mr. Kelsey. That good work was done was evident by the vote--98 ayes, 9 noes.
But the battle was with the Senate, where the bill was introduced by W. W. Armstrong. On February 22 a hearing was given in the Senate Chamber before the Judiciary Committee. Suffragists and opponents were there in force. The latter were represented by Mesdames Arthur M.
Dodge, W. Winslow Crannell and Rossiter Johnson. The State president introduced the suffrage speakers, Miss Chanler, Mrs. Blake and Mrs.
Harriot Stanton Blatch, the last being qualified from residence to testify to the good effect of this kind of suffrage in England. Mrs.
Elizabeth Smith Miller, Miss Anne Fitzhugh Miller and others were present. Owing largely to the influence of Elon R. Brown the committee brought in an adverse report.[392] Senator Armstrong moved to disagree and the vote, thus called for, in the Senate stood 21 ayes, 24 noes--a vote on the report, not on the bill, but it put the Senate on record.
The Bill for Women on Appointed Boards of Education, which had been changed under protest of the suffragists to "one-third of the members of the board" from "at least one woman," was voted on April 19. In the a.s.sembly it received 59 ayes, 23 noes; but 76 was the const.i.tutional majority, so Senate action was useless. It was bitterly opposed by many prominent school officers.
In 1900 the Legislature made a glaring exhibition of the position in which a non-voting cla.s.s can be placed. Early in the session a resolution was offered on the motion of Senator Thomas F. Grady of New York City, "that it is not expedient or advisable to attempt at this session any changes in the const.i.tution in regard to woman suffrage."
It pa.s.sed by 26 ayes, 17 noes. Let it be said, for the honor of the State, that there were senators who protested indignantly against such trampling upon the rights of the people. Several who voted in favor of this resolution afterwards voted for the suffrage bill.
The Bill for Woman Suffrage on Tax Questions was introduced the very next day by Senator Armstrong. Soon afterward it was presented in the a.s.sembly by Mr. Kelsey. On March 22 it pa.s.sed with only two negative votes--John Hill Morgan of Brooklyn and James B. McEwan of Albany.
When this bill came to the Senate there were so many before it that April 4 its friends moved to take it up out of order by suspension of rules. Senators Armstrong, Coggeshall and Lester H. Humphrey spoke in favor, Senator Grady against. The vote in favor was 23 ayes, 19 noes (nine of these from New York City), but twenty-six votes were necessary to suspend. The situation, however, was more encouraging than the year before. The legislative committee of the State W. S. A.
this year consisted of Mesdames Loines, Blake, Matheson, Priscilla D.
Hackstaff and Ella Hawley Crossett.
In 1901 the committee was composed of Mesdames Loines, Hackstaff, Craigie, Jean Brooks Greenleaf and Lucy P. Allen. All efforts were centered on the bill to give taxpaying women the right to vote on questions of taxation. A conference with Governor Odell showed his friendliness to the bill and disclosed the fact that he had used his influence to amend the charter of his own city of Newburg to give this privilege to women.
Speaker Nixon, in his opening address, referred to the bill as a measure of justice which he hoped would be introduced every year until it became a law. Mr. Kelsey for the third time const.i.tuted himself its champion, and worked earnestly for its success. Letters poured in from all parts of the State, the W. C. T. U. co-operated cordially, and hearings were granted by House and Senate committees. The bill pa.s.sed the a.s.sembly February 26 by 83 ayes, 29 noes. Of the latter 18 were from New York City. Of the 38 absent or not voting 22 were from that city.
In the Senate the bill was referred to the Judiciary Committee as usual. On March 20 a hearing before this committee was arranged for those in favor and opposed. It was conducted by Mrs. Loines for the suffragists, who were represented by Mrs. Chapman, Miss Chanler, a large taxpayer in Dutchess County, and Miss Alice Stone Blackwell of Boston, but a taxpayer in New York. Mrs. Arthur M. Dodge was at the head of the eighteen women who came from the anti-suffrage society to protest against taxpaying women being granted a representation on questions of taxation. The other speakers were Mrs. Rossiter Johnson of New York City, Mrs. Crannell of Albany, and Mrs. William Putnam of Groton who read a paper written by Mrs. Charles Wetmore. The first took the ground that the bill was unconst.i.tutional. The second protested against the attempt "to force widows, spinsters and married women to vote against their will." The third begged the members of the Senate Committee "not to be hoodwinked into believing this was not a suffrage measure," and a.s.sured them that "many of the members had pledged themselves to vote for it without recognizing that it was a suffrage bill." She also said: "For the last fifty years, while the suffragists have been wasting their strength in the effort to get the ballot, we, and women like us, have been quietly going ahead and gaining for women the rights they now enjoy in regard to education, property and the professions. The suffragists had nothing to do with it."
The friends of the bill in the Senate tried in vain to obtain a report from the Judiciary Committee, the chairman, Edgar Truman Brackett, being opposed to the bill. Finally, on April 11, Senator Humphrey moved "to discharge the committee from further consideration," which was carried by 22 ayes, 20 noes. On April 19 it was brought to a vote and pa.s.sed by 27 ayes, 14 noes, 8 of the latter from New York City.
Mr. Grady was absent.
The bill was signed by Gov. Benjamin F. Odell, April 24, 1901. It was generally understood that U. S. Senator Thomas C. Platt was in favor of the measure. Judge Charles Z. Lincoln, chairman of the Statutory Revision Committee, gave most valuable a.s.sistance.
The effect of this bill was far greater than had been antic.i.p.ated, because of the importance of New York as a State. Before six months had pa.s.sed women in considerable numbers had voted in a dozen different places. Although it applied only to towns and villages, these numbered about 1,800. What was of more importance, the principle had been recognized. There was scarcely a newspaper in the United States that did not contain an editorial upon the subject, which in the vast majority of cases declared the law to be just.
LAWS: Dower and curtesy obtain. If the husband die without a will the widow is ent.i.tled to the life use of one-third of the real estate and, after the payment of the debts, to one-third of the personal estate absolutely. If there are no children she may have one-half of the latter--stocks, cash, furniture, pictures, silver, clothing, etc.--and the other half goes to the husband"s relatives, even down to nephews and nieces. The widow may, however, have the whole if it does not exceed $2,000. If it exceed that amount, $2,000 may be added to her half. If there are no relatives of the husband she may have all the personal property. If there has been a living child the widower has a life interest in all the wife"s estate. If there have been no children he takes all the personal property absolutely, and her real estate goes to her next of kin. If there is a child living he has one-third of the personal property absolutely.
The husband is liable for the wife"s debts before marriage to the extent of any property acquired from her by ante-nuptial agreement.
She holds her separate property, however acquired, free from any control of the husband and from all liability for his debts. She can live on her own real estate, and forbid her husband entering upon it.