to provide some way for the women to vote in the general election, but he said he could not. Then she went to a full meeting of the State Democratic Executive Committee, held September 16, but no chance to be heard was given her. The next day she attended a meeting of the Fulton County Commissioners, who declared their willingness but their inability to do anything. She then called on Attorney General R. A. Denny, who advised her to go to the polls and make the effort, saying: "The 19th Amendment is above the laws of any State." Women in Georgia, however, were not permitted to vote at the Presidential election two months after they had been enfranchised by this amendment.
Legislative Action. The first request for woman suffrage was put before the Legislature in 1895, the last in 1920, and in the interim every session had this subject before it, with petitions signed by thousands of women, but during the quarter of a century it did not give one scrap of suffrage to the women of the State. From 1895 bills for the following measures were kept continuously before it: Age of protection for girls to be raised from 10 years; co-guardianship of children; prevention of employment of children under 10 or 12 years old in factories; women on boards of education; opening of the colleges to women. Year after year these bills were smothered in committees or reported unfavorably or defeated, usually by large majorities. In 1912 a bill was passed enabling women to be notaries public; in 1916 one permitting women to practice law, which the suffragists had worked for since 1899; in 1918 one raising the age of consent to 14. The suffrage association had worked for it twenty-three years and always asked that the age be 18.
In 1912 another association to further the movement for woman suffrage was formed in Atlanta, the Woman Suffrage League, and Mrs. Frances Smith Whiteside, who had been from early days a member of the old association, was elected president. Mrs. Whiteside was for thirty years principal of the Ivy Street school and during the first ten years of the existence of the State Association she was the only teacher who dared avow herself a member, as the very name of suffrage was so odious to the public. Through her family connections and wide acquaintance
