In 1880 Senator Gaylord of Floyd county made a speech, giving twenty-one reasons why he voted against the submission of the proposition for the enfranchisement of women, which was published in full in the Des Moines Register, and thus sent broadcast over the State. Mrs. Bloomer replied to Mr. Floyd through the same paper, meeting and refuting every objection, thus in a measure antidoting the poisonous influence of the senator's pronunciamento.
In the spring of this year Dr. Harriette Bottsford and Mrs. Jane C. McKinney were appointed by a caucus of Republican women, to the Powesheik county convention, to choose delegates to the State convention. They presented their credentials to the committee, and the chairman reported them as delegates. On motion, they were accepted—but some men soon bethought them that this was establishing a bad precedent, and began maneuvering to get rid of them. This was finally done by declaring the delegation full without them—two men having been quietly appointed to fill vacancies after the ladies had presented their credentials. Mrs. McKinney made a spicy speech, saying they did not expect to be received as delegates, but wished to remind the men that women were citizens, tax-payers and Republicans, but unrepresented.
At the Greenback State convention of 1881, Mrs. Mary E. Nash was nominated as the candidate of that party for State superintendent of schools. Mrs. Nash declined the honor intended, and said that her political flag, if it were to float at all, would be found in another camp. She would not desert her colors for office. In 1884 Mrs. H. J. Bellangee and Mrs. A. M. Swain were regularly accredited delegates to the National Greenback convention, held at Indianapolis, Ind., to nominate a candidate for the presidency, where they were received with the greatest courtesy.
The annual meeting of 1882, at Des Moines, was remarkable for the number of clergymen, representing nearly all the different denominations, who took part in its proceedings, each of the nine seeming to vie with the others in expressing his belief that the ballot for woman, as for man, was a right, not a privilege. Bishop Hurst of the M. E. Church, made an able speech. The executive committee sent a memorial to the Republican convention, held in June for the nomination of State officers, asking a plank in their platform favoring the submission of the woman suffrage amendment. The request was not granted. Leading politicians who professed to believe in equality of rights for women feared that to do so would make too heavy a weight for the party to carry, it having already incorporated a prohibition plank in its platform. The committee also interviewed 500 editors, asking them to open the columns of their papers to the advocacy of woman suffrage. One hundred and twenty replied favorably, while many were courteous and others brusque in their refusals.
A committee on legislation (Mrs. Narcissa T. Bemis, chairman) did good
Blackhawk, Mitchell, Newton, Nichols, Perkins, Thornburg, Wood, Woolson—22. Nays—Bestow, Carr, Clark, Cooley, Dows, Hartshorn, Hebard, Kinne, Larrabee, Lovell, McCormack, Maginnis, Merrell of Clinton, Merrill of Wapello, Pease, Rothert, Rumple, Teale, Willett, Williams, Wilson, Wonn, Wright—23. Absent—Hitchcock (who was sick and died in a few days), yea; Murphy, nay; Shane (resigned on account of being appointed district judge), yea; Stoneham, nay; Young, nay.
