to the entrance. Later the overflow
meeting moved on to the Common. The huge crowd of women made a deep
impression and was largely featured in the press, which said that
nothing like it had ever been seen in Boston.[85] The hearing was
conducted for the petitioners by Mrs. Crowley and for the "antis" by
Mr. Saunders. He was so impressed by the crowd that his usual sneering
and jeering manner was wholly changed. The suffrage speakers were Dr.
Shaw, John F. Tobin, president of the Boot and Shoe Workers' Union;
Rabbi Charles Fleischer, Miss Josephine Casey, secretary of the
Women's Trade Union League; Henry Abrahams of the Central Labor Union;
Miss Rose Brennan of Fall River, Miss Blackwell, Miss Eleanor Rendell
of England, Winfield Tuck and Mrs. Belle Davis. Mrs. Gorham Dana,
Professor Sedgwick and Mrs. George spoke for the "antis." Mrs. Julia
Ward Howe and Ex-Governor Bates, who were to have spoken for suffrage,
could not get into the room.[86] The constitutional amendment was
debated March 23. The galleries were reserved for women, yet many were
turned away. The vote stood 171 noes to 54 ayes, including 11 pairs.

1910. The hearing February 23 on a constitutional amendment was
unusually impressive. It was held in the evening to enable women busy
by day to attend. In the past two or three members of the Legislature
not on the committee had sometimes dropped in. This year about sixty
were present. Mrs. Crowley and Mrs. Luce conducted the hearing for the
two sides. The petitioners had arranged delegations representing
different groups of women--mothers, home-makers, leisure women,
lawyers, mission and church workers, artists, authors and journalists,
doctors and nurses, Socialists, W. C. T. U., the "unrepresented"
(widows and single women), business women, trade unions, teachers,
social workers, taxpayers, saleswomen, clerks and stenographers and
college women. These 1,500 or more marched to the State House from
Ford Hall, each group under its own banner, and presented themselves
before the committee in turn, the spokeswoman of each group telling
briefly why she, and women like her, wanted the ballot. Then they went
over to Ford Hall, where a big rally was held and the main address was
made by Mrs. Fanny Garrison Villard. An overflow meeting was held on
the State House steps addressed by Edwin D. Mead and others. In order
to line up the labor vote in the Legislature, resolutions by different
labor unions, signed by their