e who, by reason of sex, can vote only for School Commissioner."

This Act went into effect in April, 1893, and in the autumn Mrs.
Matilda Joslyn Gage registered in Manlius, Onondaga County.
Immediately the board of inspectors were requested to remove her name
from the registry. They refused and application was made to the
Supreme Court to strike off her name, on the sole contention that she
was not a lawful voter on account of her sex. The application was
granted on the ground that the Act conferring upon women the right to
vote for School Commissioner was unconstitutional. The inspectors
obeyed the order. Mrs. Gage appealed to the General Term, where the
order was affirmed, and then she carried her case to the Court of
Appeals. The decision here was in brief that a School Commissioner is
a _county officer_, and that by the State constitution only male
citizens may vote for such officers. The decision closed by saying: "A
Constitutional Convention may take away the barrier which excludes the
claimed right of the appellant, but until that is done we must enforce
the law as it stands."[395]

Thus after twenty years of time, four acts of the Legislature and
three decisions of the highest courts, the School Suffrage for women
is still confined exclusively to those of the villages and country
districts. The law condensed reads as follows:

Every person of full age residing in any school district, etc.,
who owns or hires real property in such district liable to
taxation for school purposes; and every such resident who is the
parent of a child who shall have attended the school in said
district for a period of at least eight weeks within one year
preceding such school meeting; and every such person, not being
the parent, who shall have permanently residing with him or her a
child of school age, etc.; and every such resident and citizen as
aforesaid, who owns any personal property, assessed on the last
preceding assessment-roll of the town, exceeding $50 in value,
exclusive of such as is exempt from execution, and no other,
shall be entitled to vote at any school meeting held in such
district, for all school district officers and upon all matters
which may be brought before said meeting. No person shall be
deemed ineligible to vote at any such school district meeting, by
reason of sex, who has one or more of the other qualifications
require