th but a slight change of officers and arguments, these
conventions were similar from year to year. There were on all
occasions a certain number of the clergy in opposition. At one of
these meetings the Rev. Mr. McMurdy condemned the ordination of
women for the ministry. But woman's fitness[279] for that
profession was successfully vindicated by Lucretia Mott and Phebe
A. Hanaford. Mrs. Portia Gage writes, December 12, 1873:

There was an election held by the order of the township
committee of Landis, to vote on the subject of bonding the
town to build shoe and other factories. The call issued was
for all legal voters. I went with some ten or twelve other
women, all taxpayers. We offered our votes, claiming that we
were citizens of the United States, and of the State of New
Jersey, also property-holders in and residents of Landis
township, and wished to express our opinion on the subject
of having our property bonded. Of course our votes were not
accepted, whilst every _tatterdemalion_ in town, either
black or white, who owned no property, stepped up and very
pompously said what he would like to have done with his
property. For the first time our claim to vote seemed to
most of the voters to be a just one. They gathered together
in groups and got quite excited over the injustice of
refusing our vote and accepting those of men who paid no
taxes.

In 1879, the Woman's Political Science Club[280] was formed in
Vineland, which held its meetings semi-monthly, and discussed a
wide range of subjects. Among the noble women in New Jersey who
have stood for many years steadfast representatives of the
suffrage movement, Cornelia Collins Hussey of Orange is worthy of
mention. A long line of radical and brave ancestors[281] made it
comparatively easy for her to advocate an unpopular cause. Her
father, Stacy B. Collins, identified with the anti-slavery
movement, was also an advocate of woman's right to do whatever
she could even to the exercise of the suffrage. He maintained
that the tax-payer should vote regardless of sex, and as years
passed on he saw clearly that not alone the tax-payer, but every
citizen of the United States governed and punished by its laws,
had