in 1897, '98, '99, 1900, '01, each time with an increased majority, but each time its progress has been stopped in the Council.
Nevertheless there are many evidences of increasing vitality in the movement in Victoria, not the least of these being the rise of an Anti-Women's Suffrage Crusade. These "New Crusaders" have presented a petition which purports to be signed by 22,987 "adult women" of Victoria. But in 1891 before the suffrage was a live subject, before it had entered the region of practical politics, the women suffragists in six weeks obtained 30,000 signatures of adult women. The first and the most natural result of the anti-suffrage movement has been to bring down enquiries on the United Council from all parts of the Colony how to help Women's Suffrage.
QUEENSLAND.[1]
The Women's Suffrage question appears to have received its first awakening in Queensland from the visit of Miss Hannah Chenings, who in 1891 came from Adelaide on a lecturing tour in connection with an effort to obtain a law for the better protection of young girls. Her account of the Women's Franchise
League in South Australia aroused a wish for a similar organisation here, and after a period of silent growth the Women's Suffrage Association was formed in 1894, mainly through the instrumentality of Mrs. Leontine Cooper and Mrs. Maginie, who, as Miss Allen, had been a member of the New South Wales Society.
At the first annual meeting of this association, in March, 1895, the report showed that petitions had been presented with over 11,000 signatures, and that letters expressing themselves as favorable to the measure had been received from thirty Members of the Legislative Assembly. In the General Election of 1897 a large number of candidates declared themselves in favor, but so far the effort to carry a Bill through the House has met with disappointment, and the Women's Suffrage Association are bending their efforts towards inducing the Government to bring in a Bill. Here, as in the other Colonies where they are still unenfran-
- ↑ In 1886 Queensland granted Municipal Suffrage to Women.
