Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/721

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History of Woman Suffrage.

the leading spirits[1] in this grand movement in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Winona and St. Cloud. Their names will be usually found as delegates to the annual meetings of all the State Unions. The small army of noble girls who have helped to make the Good Templars' lodges attractive and worthy resorts for their brothers and friends, have done an inestimable work in elevating the moral tone of the community all over the State. They have also done their full share in petitioning congress for a sixteenth amendment, in which they have received most untiring help from the young men of the lodges. In 1884 Miss Frances Willard again visited the State, advocating the ballot as well as the Bible as an aid to temperance work. Her eloquent voice here as elsewhere woke many to serious thought on the danger of this national vice to the safety and stability of our republican institutions. It was through Miss Willard's influence, no doubt, that the friends of temperance established a department of franchise for the State, and made Mrs. E. L. Crockett its superintendent.

The women of Minnesota seem thus far to have no special calling to the legal profession. Mrs. Martha Angle Dorsett is the only woman as yet admitted to the bar. She was graduated from the law school at Des Moines, and admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of Iowa in June, 1876. She was refused admission at first in Minnesota, whereupon she appealed to the legislature, which in 1877 enacted a law securing the right to women by a vote of 63 to 30 in the House, and 26 to 6 in the Senate.

In some of the larger cities and towns the literary, musical and dramatic taste of our women[2] is evidenced by societies and clubs for mutual improvement. Many are attending classes for the study of natural history, classic literature, social science, etc. There is an art club in Minneapolis, composed wholly of artists, both ladies and gentlemen, which meets every week, the members making sketches from life. Miss Julie C. Gauthier had on exhibition at the New Orleans Exposition, a full-length portrait, true to life, of a colored man, "Pony," a veteran wood-sawer of St. Paul, which received very complimentary notices from art critics of that city, as well as from the press generally.

In the Business Colleges of Mr. Curtis at St. Paul and Minneapolis, many women are teachers, and many more are educated as shorthand reporters, telegraphers, and book-keepers. These have no difficulty in finding places after completing their college course. Nearly fifty young women are employed in the principal towns of the State as telegraphers alone. Miss Mary M. Cary has been employed for seven years as operator and station agent at Wayzata, for the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba R. R. Her services are highly valued, as well they may be, for during her absence from the station two men are required to do her work. By her talents and industry she has acquired a thorough education for herself, besides educating her two younger sisters. Mrs. Anna B. Underwood of Lake City, has for many years been secretary of a firm conducting a large nursery of fruit trees, plants and flowers. Her husband being one of the

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  1. Miss Carrie Holbrook, Miss Eva McIntyre, Miss Harriman.
  2. See Appendix, Chapter XLVII., Note F.