Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/237

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LOUISIANA
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Manion and a quiet committee hearing held, with representatives from the State Suffrage Association and the Woman Suffrage Party. It received 60 ayes, 41 noes in the House, but not the necessary two-thirds. Amending Article 210 had become a city administration measure and was slated for success. A donation towards a Tuberculosis Hospital in New Orleans had been made by Mrs. John Dibert and the gift was municipalized by a-condition which required a certain annual revenue from the city. She desired to be a member of the hospital board, but was ineligible under this article. The Era Club gave notice that it would challenge her eligibility and she supported its position. The long desired amendment was on the way to a successful passage, but went on the rocks because of the club's campaign against a financial measure for refunding the city debt known as the Nine Million Bond issue, in which the provisions for the public schools and the teachers' pay were totally inadequate and it was to be in effect for fifty years! The Era Club and the Mothers' Co-operative Club protested and worked against this political-financial alliance. In retaliation twenty-four hours before the election the order went to the voters to defeat the amendment to Article 210, which would have made women eligible to serve on school and charity boards, and they did so.

1918. Governor Ruffin G. Pleasant recommended in his message the submission of a woman suffrage amendment to the State constitution. The State association had a resolution for it introduced in the House by Frank Powell; the Woman Suffrage Party one in the Senate by Leon Haas, and it passed in both.

Campaigns. There have been two campaigns in the interest of woman suffrage in Louisiana, one for preparing for an expected constitutional convention which would have met in 1915, and the other in 1918 to amend the State constitution by striking out the word "male." A special session of the Legislature in 1915 proposed a convention to revise the constitution and submitted the question to the voters. Immediately Miss Jean Gordon, president of the State Suffrage Association, accompanied by Miss Lilly Richardson and Mrs. Ida Porter Boyer, visited the various parishes and formed working committees in 40 of the 63. The enthusiatic reception wherever they went was prac-