to any elective school office. At this time, under the liberal provisions of the United States Land Laws, more than one-third of the land in the Territory was held by women.
In this same Legislature of 1887 another effort was made to pass an Equal Suffrage Bill, and a committee from the franchise department of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, consisting of Mesdames Helen M. Barker, S. V. Wilson and Alice M. A. Pickler, appeared before the committee and presented hundreds of petitions from the men and women of the Territory. The committees of both Houses reported favorably, but the bill failed by 13 votes in the House and 6 in the Council.
It was mainly through women's instrumentality that a local option bill was carried through this Legislature, and largely through their exertions that it was adopted by sixty-five out of the eighty-seven organized counties at the next general election.
In October, 1885, the American Woman Suffrage Association held a national convention in Minneapolis, Minn., which was attended by a number of people from Dakota, who were greatly interested. The next month the first suffrage club was formed, in Webster. Several local societies were afterwards started in the southern part of the Territory, but for five years no attempt was made at bringing these together in a convention.[1]
The long contention as to whether the Territory should come into the Union as one State or two was not decided until 1889, when Congress admitted two States. Thenceforth there were two distinct movements for woman suffrage, one in North and one in South Dakota.
NORTH DAKOTA.[2]
On July 4, 1889, a convention met at Bismarck to prepare a constitution for the admission of North Dakota as a State. As
- ↑ At the New Orleans Exposition in 1885 the displays of Kansas, Dakota and Nebraska taught the world the artistic value of grains and grasses for decoration, but it was exemplified most strikingly in the Dakota's Woman's Department, arranged by Mrs. J. M. Melton of Fargo. Among the industrial exhibits was a carriage robe sent from a leading furrier to represent the skilled work of women in his employ. There were also bird fans, a curtain of duck skins and cases of taxidermy, all prepared and cured by women, and a case of work from women employed in the printing office of the Fargo Argus. Four thousand bouquets of grasses were distributed on Dakota Day and carried away as curious and beautiful memorials. All were made by women in the Territory.
- ↑ The History is indebted for this part of the chapter to Dr. Janette Hill Knox, of Wahpeton, corresponding secretary of the State Woman Suffrage Association.
