which were copied throughout the State. Mrs. Martha R. Almy, State vice-president, was an active worker.
Women. of social influence in this city, who never had shown any public interest in the question, opened headquarters at Sherry's, held meetings and secured signatures to a suffrage petition. The leaders of this branch were Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, Mrs. Joseph H. Choate, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, Mrs. J. Warren Goddard, Mrs. Robert Abbe, Mrs. Henry M. Sanders and Miss Adele M. Fielde. Among those who signed the petition were Chauncey M. Depew, Russell Sage, Frederick Coudert, the Rev. Heber Newton, the Rev. W. S. Rainsford, Bishop Henry C. Potter, Rabbi Gustave Gottheil, John D. Rockefeller, Robert J. Ingersoll and William Dean Howells.
One of the surprises of the campaign was the organization in Albany of a small body of women calling themselves "remonstrants," under the leadership of the Episcopal bishop, William Croswell Doane, and Mrs. John V. L. Pruyn. Another branch was organized in New York City by Mrs. Francis M. Scott, and one in Brooklyn with Mrs. Lyman Abbott at the head and the support of her husband's paper, The Outlook.
The suffrage forces circulated 5,000 petitions and secured 332,148 individual signatures, about half of them women (including 36,000 collected by the W. C. T. U.) and memorials from labor organizations and Granges, bringing the total, in round numbers, to 600,000.[1] The "remonstrants" obtained only 15,000 signatures, yet at that time and ever afterwards many of the newspapers insisted that the vast preponderance of sentiment among men and women was opposed to equal suffrage.
- ↑ One who was a witness gives this description: "There were no more dramatic scenes during the convention than those afforded by the presenting of the petitions. The names were enrolled on pages of uniform size and arranged in volumes, each labeled and tied with a wide yellow ribbon and bearing the card of the member who was to present it. At the opening of the sessions, when memorials were called for, he would rise and say: 'Mr. President, I have the honor to present a memorial from Mary Smith and 17,117 others (for example), residents of county, asking that the word 'male' be stricken from the Constitution.' Often one after another would present a bundle of petitions until it would seem as though the entire morning would be thus consumed. They were all taken by pages and heaped up on the secretary's table, where they made an imposing appearance. Later they were stacked on shelves in a large committee room. "Mrs. Burt, the president of the W. C. T. U., brought in the petitions of her society all at once, many great rolls of paper tied with white ribbon. A colored porter took them down the aisle on a wheelbarrow."
