OR LIPPITT: Please accept the resignation of my
commission as a member of the Ladies' Board of Visitors to
the Penal and Correctional Institutions of the State,
conferred by you in June, 1875.

Yours respectfully,

_Westerly, R. I._ ELIZA C. WEEDEN.

Early in the year 1880 the State association issued the following
address:

_To the friends of Woman Suffrage throughout the State of Rhode
Island:_

In behalf of the Rhode Island Woman Suffrage Association, we beg
leave to call your attention to the result of our last year's
work, and to our plans for future effort. We went before the
General Assembly with petitions for suffrage for women on all
subjects, and also with petitions asking only for school
suffrage. The former, bearing nearly 2,500 names, was presented
in the Senate and finally referred, with other unfinished
business, to the next legislature; they will thus be subject to
attention the coming year. The latter, bearing nearly 3,500
names, was presented in the House and referred to the Committee
on Education. This committee reported unanimously:

_Resolved_, That the following amendment to the constitution
of the State is hereby proposed: Article ----. Women
otherwise qualified are entitled to vote in the election of
school committees and in all legally organized
school-district meetings.

This resolution was adopted in the House by 48 to 11, but
rejected in the Senate by 20 to 13.[176] Nineteen members being
required to make a majority of a full Senate, the amendment
failed by six votes. Had the ballots in the two branches been
upon a proposition to extend general suffrage to women, they
would have been the most encouraging, and, as it is, they show
signs of progress; but a resolve to submit the question of school
suffrage to the voters of Rhode Island, ought to have been
successful this year. Why was it defeated? Simply for the lack of
political power behind it. To gain this, our cause needs a
foothold in every part of the State. We need some person or
persons in each town, to whom we can look for hearty cooeperation.
If our work is to be effective, it must not only continue as
heretofore--one of petitioning--but must include also a constant
vig