e an organisation for Women's Suffrage has been in
existence some sixteen years, but it is only within the last five
years that the question has come within the region of practical
politics. The movement suffered from want of concentration of energy.
"At one time the original association, though still in existence, was
rivalled by other societies with the same object, but more or less
tinged with local, class or religious characteristics. This rivalry,
though it tended to the growth of the movement, deprived it of force
and eventually led to divided counsels and consequently to comparative
failure." _The Australian Woman's Sphere_[493] from which the above
words are quoted, goes on to say: "A few years since, largely owing to
the patience and tact of the late Annette Bear Crawford, its first
Hon. Secretary, there was formed the 'United Council for Women's
Suffrage' which aimed at including representatives of all the leagues
that had for their main object, or for one of them, the political
enfranchisement of women."

The formation of this Council has been the sign of a new life in the
question in Melbourne. At the General Election of 1894 a determined
effort was made to secure the return of a majority of members pledged
to vote for the suffrage cause. The Government promised a Bill in the
session of 1895, and on November 26th the Premier, Sir George Turner,
introduced a Women's Suffrage Bill which passed the House of Assembly
without a division, but was lost in the Legislative Council by two
votes.

The Women's Suffrage Bill passed the Legislative Assembly in 1897,
'98, '99, 1900, '01, each time with an increased majority, but each
time its progress has been stopped in the Council.

Nevertheless there are many evidences of increasing vitality in the
movement in Victoria, not the least of these being the rise of an
Anti-Women's Suffrage Crusade. These "New Crusaders" have presented a
petition which purports to be signed by 22,987 "adult women" of
Victoria. But in 1891 before the suffrage was a live subject, before
it had entered the region of practical politics, the women suffragists
in six weeks obtained 30,000 signatures of adult women. The first and
the most natural result of the anti-suffrage movement has been to
bring down enquiries on the United Council from all parts of the
Colony how to help Women's Suffrage.

QUEENSLAND.[494]

The Women's Suffrage question appears to have received its first
awakening in