July 9, 1915. 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE and Reminder 15 
TREE PRUNING 
Everything in Forestry . 
== 
R. E. HENDERSON 
BOX 244, BEVERLY, MASS. 
Telephone. 
Mrs. Henry W. Peabody and daughter, Miss Norma 
-R. Waterbury of “Ledgewood”’, Montserrat, left this 
Wednesday for Northfield to attend a week’s missionary 
conference. Upon her return Mrs. Peabody will entertain 
for a few days Dr. and Mrs. William Bancroft Hill of 
Vassar college and Miss Bristol of New York. Last 
Sunday was the day of prayer throughout the world for ~ 
the Christian Peace movement in which Mrs. Peabody 
is taking a very active part. She opened her home Sun- 
day afternoon for the women of Beverly and Montserrat 
to meet in honor of the day and listen to a talk by Mrs. 
John H. Mason of Montserrat on the Christian Peace 
movement and one on the result of the war in India by 
Mrs. William A. Ferguson of India, who is a house 
guest at Mrs. Peabody’s. 
Oo 8 9 
The Sign of the Crane tea room in 
tertained a house party of four young 
week-end and holiday. ‘Last Sunday over 30 guests 
stopped for tea or luncheon. Among the recent luncheon 
parties were Mr. and Mrs. Thayer P. Gates who enter- 
tained a party from Providence, R. I.;-Mr. and Mrs. 
George Lord Gross, also of Providence, a party of. five; 
Manchester en- 
girls over the 
Mr. and Mrs. Newell Tucker of Brookline, six guests. 
The Mass. Federation of Women’s Clubs and Equal Suffrage 
Editor of the North Shore Breeze, 
Dear Sir: 
The passage of the resolution 
favoring woman suffrage at the re- 
cent meeting of the Massachusetts 
Federation of Women’s clubs re- 
quires explanation lest it mislead. 
The endorsement of the resolution 
was not given by the 65,000 club wo- 
men as implied, but by only 203 out 91 
the 397 members registered, who, 
though delegates, were uninstructed by 
the clubs which they represented so 
that their votes are only an expression 
of their individual opinions. The chair- 
man’s ruling that all ‘delegates 
whether under direct instructions or 
not are entitled to vote if they wisn 
to do so” is calculated to give the im- 
pression that they voted as represent- 
ing all of their club members, but this 
is not true, for delegate after delegate 
reported that owing to the arrival of 
the notice of the resolution the clubs 
which they represented had sent them 
away uninstructed=and that they did 
not consider themselves justified 1™ 
voting as representing their clubs. 
Moreover, the 99 opposing votes cast 
by those members who objected to 
the resolution did not represent near- 
ly the full number voting, as the tell- 
ers disagreed in their count of these 
votes, and the recount was made af- 
ter many of the opposing members 
had left the hall. 
The introduction of the suffrage 
resolution at the annual meeting was 
planned by the governing board of 
the Federated clubs, which is almost 
wholly made up of suffragists, some 
time beforehand, but the notice that 
the resolution would be so introduced 
was sent to the presidents of the var- 
ious clubs only during this month of 
June after every club in the state had | 
closed its doors for the summer, and 
SPRAYING AND 
INSECT WORK 
could not be brought together. This 
precluded the possibility of the clubs 
taking any action on the resolution. 
Many  suffragists, however, being 
aware of the likelihood of its intro- 
duction, asked to be sent as delegates 
and were appointed before most of 
the presidents of the various clubs 
understood the situation. As the 
delegates are apportioned among the 
clubs at the rate of two for the first 
hundred members or less and one for 
every succeeding hundred, among the 
smaller clubs the full number of dele- 
gates sent were thus not infrequenty 
suffragists, not from the conviction 
of the club but through this ruse. In 
spite of this careful preparation so 
many anti-suffragists rallied to the 
meeting, and the situation seemed so 
threatening to the machine suffrag- 
ists, that it is understood that. many 
more delegates were hurried down 
from suffrage organizations at the 
last minute in order to swell their 
numbers. 
There is grave doubt whether the 
resolution was constitutional, but the 
chair backed by her board ruled that 
it was, and though the constitution of 
the Federation forbids partisan or- 
ganizations from belonging to it, many 
suffrage clubs have joined it during 
the past year, giving some nominal 
outside work as the reason for their 
incorporation. The packing of a 
meeting of this kind is a perfectly 
simple thing to do for anyone could 
organize a club and thereby acquire 
two delegates in the convention. The 
Anti-Suffrage association with its 130 
local committees could, had it chosen, 
have taken similar action, but it was 
left for the suffragists to break up 
‘the valuable public work of the Fed- 
erated clubs by preventing their ever 
again being the non-partisan body— 
R. E. Henderson 
including in itself so many different 
kinds of women—which has done so 
much good work for the state. 
Two women representing two of 
the larger clubs got up and asked that 
the thousand or more women whom 
they together represented should be 
subtracted from the total number in 
the Federation before any statement 
of the number represented was issued 
to the press, because they did not 
consider it honorable for them to 
vote as representing their clubs when 
these clubs had not been able to in- 
struct them how they wanted the vote 
cast. These women were not alone 
in their action—others representing 
even larger numbers felt and acted in 
the same way, and Mrs. Mulligan, 
the former president of the Federa- 
tion, protested formally, and her pro- 
test, which is spread upon the records 
of the Federation, is as follows: 
“Mrs. Mulligan protests against 
this action being represented to the 
papers as an expression of the Mass- 
achusetts Federation of Women’s 
Clubs of 65,000 members.” 
The Federated clubs of California 
took similar action in May of this 
year, and in consequence of this ac- 
tion on the 9th day of June the Ebell 
club, representing over 1500 women, 
the second largest club in the country 
and called the parent of the women’s 
clubs in California, formally with- 
drew from the State Federation. If 
this could happen in  Californin, 
where women already have the suf-+ 
frage, how much more disastrous will 
the resolution passed in Marion prove 
to the influence of the Massachusetts 
Federation of Women’s Clubs. 
Mrs. BERTRAND E. TAyror, 
Miss Epitu MEtvin; 
Mrs. WILLIAM LowELL PutNAM. 
BEVERLY. - MASS, 
Telephone 
