ken. The Independent Order of Good Templars and the
Prohibition party indorsed the amendment. The Woman's Christian
Temperance Union lent a helping hand judiciously. All demands and
arguments were non-sectarian and non-political, being based upon the
claims of justice as the only tenable ground on which to stand.

Many of the most self-sacrificing workers came from the liberal and
free-thought societies, which are generally favorable to equal rights.
The Western Central Labor Union of Seattle extended courtesies to the
E. S. A. and kept suffrage literature in its reading-room. The
_Freemen's Labor Journal_ of Spokane, State organ of the trades
unions, supported the amendment. Single Taxers, as a rule, voted for
it. The State Grange in convention formally indorsed it and promised
support.[460]

On Nov. 5, 1898, the amendment was voted upon, receiving 20,658 yeas,
30,540 nays; majority opposed, 9,882. As in 1889, the adverse
majority was 19,392, a clear gain was shown of 9,510 in nine years.

In 1899 a bill was prepared for the State association by Judge J. W.
Langley, amending the constitution so that whenever an amendment
giving the right of suffrage to women should be submitted to the
people, the women themselves should be permitted to vote upon it. John
W. Pratt introduced the bill in the House, but it was referred to the
Committee on Constitutional Revision and not reported. Near the close
of the session Mr. Pratt brought it up on the floor of the House. A
motion to postpone it indefinitely was immediately made and,
practically without discussion, was carried by almost a unanimous
vote.

ORGANIZATION: For twelve years before the women of Washington were
enfranchised, Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway of Oregon was in the habit of
canvassing the Territory in behalf of woman suffrage, traveling by
rail, stage, steamer and on foot, and where she found halls and
churches closed against her, speaking in hotel offices and even
bar-rooms, and always circulating her paper the _New Northwest_. The
Legislature recognized her services by a resolution in 1886, when
accepting her picture, The Coronation of Womanhood. There was not
during all this time any regularly organized suffrage association.
When in the summer of 1888 the women of the Territory saw the
franchise taken away from them by decision of the Supreme Court, a
number of local societies were formed and soon banded themselves into
an association of which the Hon. Edward