ise League was one. Mrs.
Felix T. McWhirter was made president and it was decided to present a
Presidential and Municipal suffrage bill similar to the one passed by
the Illinois Legislature in 1913 and sustained by the courts.

The Council had quarters in the State House granted by the Governor;
the Women's Franchise League immediately established a bureau there by
his consent with Mrs. John F. Barnhill and Miss Alma Sickler in charge
and all the women labored diligently for the success of the measure.
The work over the State was necessarily done largely by the Franchise
League, as it had the local societies necessary. The Council secured
the aid of Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch, a lawyer of Chicago, who
had been closely identified with the Illinois law. For the first time
in the history of Indiana's struggle for equal suffrage there was
active opposition by women. Nineteen, all of Indianapolis, appealed to
the Senate Committee on Rights and Privileges, which had the bill in
charge, for a hearing in order to protest.[48] This was granted but it
resulted in an enthusiastic suffrage meeting. The "nineteen," who
asserted that they spoke for 90 per cent. of unorganized women in
Indiana, were represented by Mrs. Lucius B. Swift, Miss Minnie
Bronson, secretary of the National Anti-Suffrage Association, and
Charles McLean of Iowa, who was in its employ. Mrs. McCulloch,
Meredith Nicholson, Mrs. Edward Franklin White, now president of the
Council, former Mayor Charles A. Bookwalter and a number of others
spoke for the bill.

The calendar of suffrage events in the Legislature of 1917 was as
follows: On January 23 the bill for a constitutional convention passed
the House by 87 ayes, 10 noes; on the 31st it passed the Senate by 34
ayes, 14 noes, and on February 1 was signed by Governor James P.
Goodrich. On February 8 the Presidential-Municipal suffrage bill
passed the Senate by 32 ayes, 16 noes. It also provided that women
could vote for delegates to the constitutional convention, were
eligible to election as delegates and could vote on the adoption of
the proposed new constitution. On the 22nd it passed the House by 67
ayes, 24 noes, and was signed by the Governor. The Legislature also
voted to submit a full suffrage amendment to the electors.

Although it was early apparent that these laws would be carried into
the courts preparations were at once made by the women for
registering. The Franchise League opened booths in the s