chool office. At this time, under the liberal provisions of
the United States Land Laws, more than one-third of the land in the
Territory was held by women.

In this same Legislature of 1887 another effort was made to pass an
Equal Suffrage Bill, and a committee from the franchise department of
the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, consisting of Mesdames Helen
M. Barker, S. V. Wilson and Alice M. A. Pickler, appeared before the
committee and presented hundreds of petitions from the men and women
of the Territory. The committees of both Houses reported favorably,
but the bill failed by 13 votes in the House and 6 in the Council.

It was mainly through women's instrumentality that a local option bill
was carried through this Legislature, and largely through their
exertions that it was adopted by sixty-five out of the eighty-seven
organized counties at the next general election.

In October, 1885, the American Woman Suffrage Association held a
national convention in Minneapolis, Minn., which was attended by a
number of people from Dakota, who were greatly interested. The next
month the first suffrage club was formed, in Webster. Several local
societies were afterwards started in the southern part of the
Territory, but for five years no attempt was made at bringing these
together in a convention.[200]

The long contention as to whether the Territory should come into the
Union as one State or two was not decided until 1889, when Congress
admitted two States. Thenceforth there were two distinct movements for
woman suffrage, one in North and one in South Dakota.

NORTH DAKOTA.[201]

On July 4, 1889, a convention met at Bismarck to prepare a
constitution for the admission of North Dakota as a State. As similar
conventions were to be held in several other Territories, Henry B.
Blackwell, editor of the _Woman's Journal_, came from Boston in the
interest of woman suffrage. His object was to have it embodied in the
constitution if possible, but failing in this he endeavored to have
the matter left as it had been under the Territorial government, viz.:
in the hands of the Legislature. To this end, H. F. Miller introduced
the following clause:

The Legislature shall be empowered to make further extensions of
suffrage hereafter at its discretion to all citizens of mature
age and sound mind, not convicted of crime, without regard to
sex, but it shall not restrict suffrage without a vote of the
peop