Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/323

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MICHIGAN
309

printed on a separate ballot. The Court denied the petition. The case was immediately carried to the State Supreme Court which decided that all amendments must be on separate ballots.

Necessarily the campaign was short for the vote was to be taken April 7. Unlike the one preceding, three-fourths of the financial support came from without the State. Mrs. Ida Porter Boyer of Pennsylvania was engaged for press and executive work. The National Association furnished speakers, among them its president, Dr. Shaw, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, Mrs. Park, Mrs. Celia J. White, Mrs. Susan W. FitzGerald, Mrs. Glendower Evans, Mrs. Priscilla D. Hackstaff, Mrs. Ella S. Stewart, Miss Doris Stevens, Mrs. Clara Laddey, Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby and Mrs. Beatrice Forbes Robertson Hale. Miss Laura Clay came from Kentucky at her own expense. The State was organized by counties and the speaking and circularizing were done under the immediate direction of the county chairmen. In the report of Mrs. Edna S. Blair, chairman of organization, she stated that there were but eight counties in the State which had no working committees and only three of these were in the Lower Peninsula, their total voting strength being less than 2,500. The amendment was defeated by 96,144, receiving 168,738 ayes, 264,882 noes. Her analysis of the vote, prepared from county returns, showed that there was a gain of a little more than 16,000 negative votes over those of 1912, and 13,000 of these were in counties having a "wet" and "dry" issue.

The preceding year the liquor forces had not realized the need of active work. Never in any other State campaign did these forces make so open a fight as in this one. They paid for columns of space in the newspapers and circulated vast quantities of the literature prepared by the women's Anti-Suffrage Association. This was in piles on the bars of the saloons and, according to reports, in even more questionable places. The defeat was not due so much to a change in public opinion as it was to an absence of the favorable vote which had been called out in the previous year by reason of the presidential election.

After the election county chairmen and all suffragists were asked to urge their representatives in Congress to support the Federal Amendment. This was followed by a trip through the