demands that in political life they should have the privilege
over the men.

Notwithstanding this and other testimony of a similar nature the
Commission framed a Code giving a Municipal or local franchise to
certain classes of men and excluding all women, taking away from them
the privileges they always had possessed. The men soon began demanding
their own lawmaking body and in response Congress passed an Act to
take effect Jan. 15, 1907, to provide for the holding of elections in
the Islands for a Legislative Assembly. The Act limited the voters to
"male persons 23 years of age or over," thus again putting up the
barriers against women and including them in the list of the
disqualified as listed--"insane, feeble-minded, rebels and traitors."

The U. S. Government did, however, give women to the same extent as
men all educational advantages, which heretofore had been denied them
and their progress was very rapid. In 1912 Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt,
president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, visited Manila
on her trip around the world and was warmly received. A meeting was
called at the Manila Hotel for August 15 and twelve women responded.
After making an address she helped them form a club which they called
Society for the Advancement of Women. Thirty attended the next meeting
two weeks later and they took up active philanthropic work. In a
little while most of the women of influence were members of it and it
was re-organized as the Woman's Club of Manila. Its work extended in
many directions and it became one of the city's leading institutions.
Other clubs were formed and they joined the General Federation of
Clubs in 1915. There are between 300 and 400 clubs in the Islands
(1920).

Meanwhile the men were not satisfied with their one-house Legislative
Assembly largely under American control, but wanted more power. In
response Congress provided for a Legislature of a Senate of 24 members
and a Lower House of 90, all to be elected except two of the former
and nine of the latter, who would be appointed by the American
Governor-General to represent districts where elections were not held,
the Act to go into effect in 1918. The suffrage was still confined
exclusively to males, although in 1916 the Women's Club had organized
fifty-seven Mothers' Clubs for the welfare of infants; had secured
through women lawyers legal aid for over thirty poor women; had been
instrumental in having 15,000 people make gard