lcott, the publicity, the increasing vote in the Legislature and the
general stirring of the suffrage question, had caused the opponents to
fear that the constitutional amendment would be submitted.
Consequently a bill was filed calling for another referendum like the
one in 1895 which would have no effect after it was taken. The
Executive Board of the State association protested against it but the
situation looked extremely dark. Levi H. Greenwood, President of the
Senate, and Grafton D. Cushing, Speaker of the House, were bitter
opponents of woman suffrage and on the Committee on Constitutional
Amendments there was only one avowed friend, Lewis H. Sullivan of
Dorchester. The association's Legislative Committee worked strenuously
to pledge votes against the bill. A visit to every editor in the city
by Mrs. Page and Mrs. Crowley enlisted them against it and the
numerous editorials that followed were sent day by day to the
legislators: The bill's support dwindled, and on April 18 it was
defeated in the House by 117 to 73, although the Speaker left the
chair for the only time that session to argue in favor of it.

At the hearing on the submission of the constitutional amendment,
Louis D. Brandeis, ex-Congressman Samuel L. Powers, Joseph Walker and
Professor Albert Bushnell Hart of Harvard spoke in favor and letters
were read from Samuel W. McCall, afterwards Republican Governor;
Charles Sumner Bird, the Progressive leader, and Thomas W. Riley, an
influential Democrat. For the first time since 1895 woman suffrage
commanded a majority in the House, the vote standing ayes, 144, noes,
88, but this was not the necessary two-thirds and the Legislative
Committee consented that it might be voted down in the Senate,
provided the "straw" vote bill was defeated at the same time.

It now seemed practically certain that the amendment would pass the
next Legislature. In the fall of 1913 the Boston Equal Suffrage
Association defeated Walter R. Meins of the 21st Suffolk District; the
Legislative Committee of the State Association defeated
Representatives Butler of Lowell and Underhill of Somerville at the
primaries, and Bliss of Malden and Greenwood, president of the Senate,
at the election. This being the first time for many years that a
Democrat had been returned from Greenwood's district, his defeat
caused a sensation.

In 1914 the Progressive party, the State Federation of Labor, the
Socialists and the State Suffrage Association a