second year I worked out my highway tax, for which crime I brought down upon my guilty head a severe persecution from both men and women, from clergymen and lawyers, as well as other classes of my fellow townsmen. The tax-collectors came into my house and attached furniture and sold it at auction in order to collect my tax, one of whom made me all the cost the laws would allow. The most incensed town officers threatened that if I resisted taxation the next year, they would take my house from me and sell it at auction. One of the tax-gatherers asked me what I thought I could do alone in resisting taxation. He said he did not believe there was another woman in the State of New Hampshire who possessed the hardihood to take such a stand against the laws. The editor of one of our weekly journals, who professed to be an advocate of woman's rights, and who was a candidate for representative in the State legislature, condemned me through the columns of his paper, in order to secure the votes of his fellow townsmen who were opposed to woman's rights. He had nothing to fear from me, knowing that I was only a disfranchised slave. Such unjust treatment seemed so cruel that I sometimes felt I could willingly lay down my life, if it would deliver my sex from such degrading oppression. I have, every year since, submissively paid my taxes, humbly hoping and praying that I may live to see the day that women will not be compelled to pay taxes without representation.
In 1870 a law was passed allowing women to be members of school committees; and eight years later a law was enacted permitting women to vote at school meetings. On the evening of August 7, 1878, the House Special Committee granted a hearing to the friends[1] of the School-suffrage bill, which had already passed the Senate by a unanimous vote; and the next day, when the bill came up for final action in the House, the following debate occurred:
Mr. Batchelder of Littleton said: This bill is one of the greatest importance, and before we vote upon it let us have the views of the committee.
Mr. Galen Foster of Canterbury called upon Mr. Blodgett to give his opinion as to the power of the legislature upon the question.
Mr. Blodgett of Franklin said he had no doubt of the constitutionality of the bill. School districts were created by statute and not by the constitution; hence the legislature had a perfect right to say who should vote in controlling their affairs.
Mr. Foster said: The mothers of our children should have a voice in their education. We have allowed women to hold certain offices in connection with schools, but we have never given them a voice in the control of the money expended upon them. The mothers take ten times
- ↑ The speakers at this hearing were Mr. Galen Foster of Canterbury, Senators Gallinger and Shaw, Mrs. Abby Goold Woolson, H. P. Rolfe, S. B. Page, Rev. E. L. Conger and Mrs. Armenia S. White.
