eakers, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, president of
the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and Mrs. Catharine
Waugh McCulloch, a lawyer of Chicago, who made earnest addresses. The
Governor came in to hear them. The women "antis" circulated a leaflet
opposing the change. On January 29 the debate took place in the
convention on the proposed revision, and, although not a voice had
been raised in protest, the vote stood 38 ayes, 57 noes. Some members
who voted "no" did so because they believed that the whole
constitution would be defeated at the polls if it proposed to
enfranchise women. The hard work of the association was not, however,
barren of results, for a clause was inserted in the new constitution
giving taxpaying women the right to vote on any public question
relating to the public expenditure of money or the issuing of bonds.
[In 1915 the Legislature extended it to the granting of public
franchises.]

In the spring Mrs. Arthur with Mrs. Maud Wood Park, organizer for the
National College Suffrage League, formed branches in the colleges at
Albion, Hillsdale, Olivet and Ann Arbor and among the collegiate
alumnae in Detroit, of which Dr. Mary Thompson Stevens was made
president. In June the fifty-six State delegates to the National
Democratic convention were petitioned for a woman suffrage plank in
the platform.

The next task was to try to comply with the request of the National
Suffrage Association to secure 100,000 names to a nation-wide petition
to be presented to Congress for a Federal Suffrage Amendment. Mrs.
Fern Richardson Rowe, Grand Rapids, was chairman of the work, which
took up the greater part of the year 1909 and went over into 1910.
This last year the State association obtained the consent of the Hon.
Levi L. Barbour, former U. S. Senator Thomas W. Palmer and the Rev.
Lee S. McCollester, pastor of the Church of Our Father (Universalist),
all residents of Detroit, to act as an invitational committee in
organizing a Men's State League for Woman Suffrage. The charter
membership consisted of 100 influential men well known throughout the
State. In March a committee of the association went to the Republican
State convention to have a woman suffrage resolution adopted but were
unsuccessful.

In March, 1912, the association was thrown unexpectedly into a turmoil
when Governor Chase S. Osborn called a special session of the
Legislature to consider, among other things, the submission of a woman
suffrage am