quired the sanction of the Czar to become
laws. Girls were admitted to the full privileges of the university in
1878 and in the student organization they were on a footing of perfect
equality. Important positions and even places in the civic
administration were open to women. As early as 1863 the Diet gave the
local or Municipal vote to taxpaying women in the country and in 1872
to those in the towns, but not eligibility to office. In 1897 the
Finnish Women's Association presented a petition to the Diet for full
suffrage, which did not reach second reading. Its president, Baroness
Alexandra Gripenberg, had attended the World's Congress of Women
during the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and become
intimately acquainted with Miss Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. May Wright
Sewall and other noted suffragists in the United States. In 1899 the
sword of Russia descended, the constitution of Finland was wrecked and
her autonomy, religion, customs, language, everything sacred was
threatened.

The real movement for the full enfranchisement of women began in 1904,
when bills were introduced in the Diet. In the autumn the president of
the Woman's Alliance Union, Miss Annie Furuhjelm, returned from the
inspiration of the great International Council of Women in Berlin and
the forming of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. With the
political oppression now existing the women were feeling a strong
desire to share in the responsibility for the fate of the country.
Under the auspices of the Union the first public meeting for woman
suffrage was held in Helsingfors on November 7, attended by more than
a thousand women of all classes and all parties. Resolutions were
passed that the complete suffrage should be extended to every citizen
and a petition demanding it should be sent to the Diet. For the first
time the Union included eligibility to office in its demands.
Forty-seven addresses of sympathy signed by hundreds of women were
received from different parts of the country. From this time the Union
devoted all its energies to the movement for the franchise.

In another year the Russo-Japanese War was over and Russia was in the
midst of a revolution. In October, 1905, the long pent-up forces of
Finland broke the barriers and a "national strike" was inaugurated.
Women were members of the central committee elected at a mass meeting
to manage it. Those in the highest ranks of society had for the past
year been members of a secret org