NAWSA Subject File Nebrask Suffrage Assocs. NEBRASKA WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION "Equality Before the Law" THE HEADQUARTERS MESSAGE WYOMING . . . . . . . . . . . .1869 COLORADO . . . . . . . . . . . .1893 UTAH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1895 IDAHO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1896 Oregon in 1906 NEBRASKA TO BE NEXT DEAR FRIENDS, MEMBERS OF THE SUFFRAGE CLUBS: In the business world they have a saying that "Money Talks" and that is the only excuse that I can give for talking at this time, that is, being your treasurer, why -- money talks. When our president first suggested that the December Message be prepared by me it seemed incongruous, unfit for the treasurer of a society to address it in anything but numerals, plain figures and not figures of speech, but upon reading the November Message, I felt that after all I did have something to say, something that might pertinently come from the treasurership, something in regard to our membership, and membership means dues, as we know. "The permanency of the organization rests with the local clubs," said our president in her first message to us, and that is the keynote in my message to you. The permanency of the organization! What influence or power can we expect from an organization unless it is permanent? If membership fluctuates, running behind every now and then, yes, if it does not steadily increase how can it be expected to convince the indifferent or antagonistic of the truth of its principles? The permanency of the organization rests rests with the local clubs! That is surely a truism, for the local club is the only tangible thing, the only real thins, in the organization. The local clubs elect certain ones from among their members to carry on the work of the state and states elect those members in the local clubs who are able to give their time and talents to national work, but the unit, the life, the ego is the is the local club. It is the heart of the organization; when it is weak, the organization is weak but when it beats good and strong the pulsation is felt through the state and the nation, and, until we have that pulsation issuing from every town and county of our state we cannot hope to make the motto of Nebraska , that noble motto which is engraved upon her escutcheon, "Equality before the law" a truth and not a falsehood. To bring this great thing to pass we must make the local clubs that are now established be a power in their community for good, be respected, honored and first in all good works. It is not necessary to be a large club to begin this work, but it means sacrifice, sacrifice of our ease and of our inclinations. It is pleasanter I know to meet together once a month or oftener for study and culture, to hear, to read and discuss papers relative to the advancement of our cause and of mankind in general, but that is a selfish pleasure - - self culture, self help and beneficial to the members of our clubs alone. What we need for growth is to give, not to get; to give of ourselves, to do for others, to prove ourselves worthy of that citizenship for which we ask; to show the present voter that we are both capable and willing to help him in bearing the necessary burdens of the commonwealth; to stand shoulder to shoulder with him as brother and sister, in the labor of the home, the town and the state, to consult together, to work together for the good of the whole. The first duty of a suffrage club is to be interested in the schools, for we now have a school suffrage and if we do not use the talent that we have, why should we demand more? Then to be interested in the municipal work, the housekeeping of the town or city where the club has its home. To be interested in the way the money is spent that is raised by the self sacrifice of all, for taxes are levied upon all property alike, whether owned by a voter, a non-voter, a suffragist or an anti-suffragist; we all alike must give our daily toil to support the school, the town and the state. Let the suffrage club be the one to which the citizens turn when they desire help in any public work. Above all, let us work in harmony, forgetting all differences among ourselves whether of church or state; if we be Catholic let us be Catholic in the sense of universal, if Protestant, be Protestants in protesting against all neglect of duty; if democrats, truly believe in democracy, the strength of the people; if republican be so in the sense of interest in the commonwealth or weal; or if prohibition then be temperate ourselves in all things, granting to others the rights that we demand for ourselves; in fact let us be good citizens, not withdrawing from any good work because everyone is not willing to accept our particular view. Why, when we gain the ballot, we can each one then give force to our individual opinion. We can vote as we choose, but now our duty is to work. We must go out into the highways and by-ways seeking opportunities of doing good if necessary, though I believe that we can find them right at our door. We can form classes in sewing among the school children; a crying need at present is a knowledge of mending, darning and all departments of hand sewing. It is so easy to buy ready made garments, and at such a low price that mending and making over has come to almost a lost art; but it is a very useful art as there is still economy in mending and making over garments of good material. Do we consider the rights of our sisters as we should when we buy garments at less than their true worth? Do we think how the poor women and children who have made these garments have given of their lives, have had some of their very hearts blood crushed out in the deadly sweat shops of the great cities to provide us with clothing at less than its legitimate cost? Then there are classes in household economy. We surely all know the crying need of a better understanding of household science. The home is the center of everything. What but it incites man to labour? To make a home better and more comfortable, to provide for wife and children is the aim of every true man, and the duty of every true woman is to use the goods so provided to the best advantage, to so order her household that the best results will be obtained with the means at hand, that there is no useless waste, but that each and every member of the family shall be well nourished and thereby fitted for the work they have to do. To make a home is the natural career of every woman just as to provide the home is the natural career of man, but domestic science, home making, can not be learned without intelligent instruction. We send our girls to normal schools to learn the art of teaching, to shops to learn to be milliners and dressmakers, to business college to learn to be book keepers, stenographers and typewriters, but we expect them in some occult way to learn that most complex and intricate art-the art of housekeeping. I wish I could induce every club in the state, if it only had three members, to start a cooking school, but whatever we do let us at least take up some useful work. I truly believe that the men of Nebraska will thrust the ballot into our hands when they are made to see that we are as ready and willing to stand by their side, and that they have as much need of us in these days of prosperity as they did in the early days, the days of adversity, those days of struggle and hardship when every woman was heroine. It may be that they have forgotten those early days. You know we are all apt to forget in time of prosperity the debt we owe to those who stood by us through adversity, so let us teach the present voter the value of our assistance; let us show him just as in the early times we did our part, so we now stand ready to do our part in the upbuilding of our great state, until we make it the brightest star in the galaxy of states. And now one word from our president. She has asked me to urge each club to send the names of its present officers to her at their earliest convenience. I hope that all clubs will comply with her request. There were so few of the clubs that sent delegates to the convention at Broken Bow, and feeling as I do the advantage and even necessity of each club keeping in touch with the state work, I append a statement of the monies received and distributed in the last twelve months beginning Dec. 1, 1904 when I was elected to the office of treasurer. RECEIPTS Balance Dec. 1, '04...$ 244.58 Collection (Geneva) . 12.21 Dues 1904. . . . . . . . . . 31.50 Cook book . . . . . . . . . 79.50 National pledges . . . . 46.00 Club pledges . . . . . . . 277.95 Personal pledges . . . . 412.15 Dues 1905 . . . . . . . . . . 152.85 $1256.74 EXPENSES (for 1904) Gail Laughlin . . . . . . . $ 63.90 Secretary (receipt) . . . 70.00 Exp. Treasurer . . . . . . . 15.53 National dues . . . . . . . 115.00 Convention (Geneva) . 72.93 (for 1905) Message . . . . . . . . . . . . 39.10 Press superintendent. . 21.84 Removal headquarters 7.39 Convention Broken Bow 88.00 Lincoln Assembly . . . . . 34.40 Salem chautauqua . . . . 24.25 Statefair headquarters 12.12 Pres., pstg and steno. . 12.00 Vice P., pstg and stat . 8.00 Treasurer, books . . . . . 2.65 " stationery . . . . . . . . . 3.25 " postage . . . . . . . . . . . 5.00 Nat. life member . . . . . 50.00 Nat. personal pledges . 46.00 $691.36 Total receipts from Dec. 1, '04 to Dec. 1, '05 . . . . . . . . . . $ 1256.74 Total disbursements, Dec. 1, '04 to Dec. 1, '05 . . . . . . . . . 691.36 Balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $ 565.38 Due National . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61.30 Net balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504.08 Lastly, I wish you all a Merry Christmas, a happy New Year and a large increase of membership. ALICE ISABEL BRAYTON, Treasurer. Geneva, Neb., December, 1905. Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association "EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW" OFFICERS PRESIDENT- Mrs. W. E. Barkley, 1919 D. St., Lincoln FIRST VICE PRESIDENT- Mrs. W. E. Hardy, Lincoln SECOND VICE PRESIDENT- Mrs. H. C. Sumney, Omaha RECORDING SECRETARY- Miss Ida Robbins, Lincoln OFFICERS CORRESPONDING SECRETARY- Mrs. Charles Deitrich, Hastings TREASURER- Mrs. Charles M. Johannes, Omaha FIRST AUDITOR- Mrs. Martin Brower, Fullerton SECOND AUDITOR- Mrs. E. Ackerman, Ainsworth HONORARY PRESIDENTS Mrs. Mary Smith Hayward, Chadron Dr. Inez Philbrick, Lincoln Mrs. Draper Smith, Omaha Lincoln, Nebr. February 7, 1918 Dear Co-Worker: The investigation of the Anti-suffrage petition is completed. We expect to file suit next week to test the validity of this petition. It is so largely a mass of forgery and fraud that we should win. You must remember that we will be opposed by the strongest machine of the state with plenty of money to fight every point in the case. In order to win, we must have money enough to bring in witnesses, take depositions, etc. It must be on hand to use when needed. We therefore ask each organization to send us at once their full apportionment. If you find it hard to raise quickly, there should be a few men and women who are with us in the fight willing to advance the money until you can collect it. Those counties and towns where the anti-petition was not circulated should be most willing, since we have no called upon them to do any of the work of investigating the petition. Men all over the state have asked how they can help. They can do it now with money. Ask for subscriptions through your paper, as every person is interested in maintaining the integrity of the Initiative and Referendum. Have your lists of men who would not withdraw their names from the anti-petition ready to print in the local papers as soon as the case is filed. Get your press to run off enough copies to circularize the town by house to house canvass. This will uncover more fraud, which you should forward to us at once for use in the suit. Let everyone in town hold a complete list and as the frauds are written up your campaign will be made for you, if a campaign is necessary. Notify me when this is done and send me copies of papers printing the lists, that I may send special press work to the papers in exchange. This week alien enemies are being registered. Send the list of men registered in your county at once, that we may check these against the petition. We need them now. We can win this case and avoid a campaign, if we all work together now and do the work on time. Send your money without delay to (Mrs. W. E.) E. M. Barkley, president, Lincoln, Nebr. Respectfully yours, FINANCE COMMITTEE Mrs. W. E. Hardy, Lincoln Miss Ida Robbins, Lincoln Mrs. Martin Brower, Fullerton Dr. Inez Philbrick, Lincoln Mrs. H. C. Sumney, Omaha Mrs. Charles H. Dietrick, Hastings Mrs. E. Ackerman, Ainsworth Mary Smith Hayward, Chadron Mrs. Draper Smith, Omaha the Lancaster district court. If there appears anyone to defend the petition from the onslaught, it is probable the supreme court will have the final decision. The women hope to secure that decision in time for them to participate in the spring election, from which they are now barred by the filing of the referendum. The principal work of circulating the referendum petitions was done by Omaha men, hired for that purpose. The petition filed by the suffragists lists a number of these as former bartenders, professional signature getters, a professional gambler and sport, several personal employes of Tom Dennison, students, small fry lawyers, etc. Most of the work in counties outside of Douglas was done by one or more of these Omaha circulators, assisted in some cases by ex-saloon keepers or bartenders. The petition claims that there are not to exceed 15,000 of the 34,000 that are not vulnerable to a legal attack, either as direct forgeries or the result of fraud or technically invalid because part of those on the sheet are forged signatures. Enough withdrawals have been filed with the secretary of state of names on the referendum petition to bring the total below the legal requirement, and one of the legal points to be decided by the court in this case is whether withdrawals can be made after the referendum has been filed. Nebraska WSA Released for publication on Thursday, February 14. This newspaper article, prepared by a competent newspaper man and guaranteed to be a fair and accurate summary of the contents of the petition filed, is sent you in order that you may have a story of the filing this week. It does not appear in the dailies until that date. Your good faith in observing the release date is taken for granted. Lincoln, Neb., February 14.-Charging that gross frauds and forgeries were committed in the securing of signatures to the referendum petition that has so far suspended the limited women suffrage law passed by the last legislature, a dozen representative Nebraska women filed suit in the district court here today for the purpose of enjoining the secretary of state from further action thereon. The frauds are alleged to have consisted of misrepresentations by solicitors of the nature of the petition when presented to voters. These are alleged to have consisted of saying that it was a wet or dry petition; that it [???] full suffrage for women or that it was authorized by the PROGRAM CALLED CONVENTION NEBRASKA WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION AND CONGRESS LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS OMAHA JUNE 13th, 14th, 15th, 1920 THERMOPAK TRADE MARK REGISTERED Keep Ice Cream Hard from 2 to 4 Hours without Ice or Salt Western Distributors Carpenter Paper Co., Omaha, Neb. Make your desserts in advance. Put them in a Thermopak. Come home and serve them for dinner as fresh as the moment you made them What THERMOPAK Does TRADE MARK REGISTERED Keeps Cold Things Cold - Keeps Hot Things Hot Cracked Ice Sherbets Soup Cereals Iced Tea Salads Coffee Meats Excellent for Milk, Butter, Oysters, and Other Perishable Foods Thermokak is made in two sizes - One Quart $1.50, Two Quart $3.75 Your dealer has it or will get it for you Automobile parties can enjoy their out-door luncheon all the better for a cold salad, a warm bird and ice cream National American Woman Suffrage Association In charge of ratification work Board of Officers President Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt __ 171 Madison Ave., New York City First Vice-President Mrs. Stanley McCormick __ Massachusetts Second Vice-President Miss Mary Garrett Hay __ 171 Madison Ave., New York City Third Vice-President Mrs. Guilford Dudley __ Nashville, Tenn. Fourth Vice-President Mrs. Raymond Brown __ 171 Madison Ave., New York City Fifth Vice-President Mrs. Helen H. Gardener __ 1838 Lamont St., Washington, D. C. Treasurer Mrs. Henry Wade Rogers __ New Haven, Conn. Corresponding Secretary Mrs. Frank J. Shuler __ 171 Madison Ave., New York City Recording Secretary Mrs. Halsey W. Wilson __ 171 Madison Ave., New York City Directors Mrs. Charles H. Brooks __ 1007 N. Lawrence Ave., Wichita, Kan. Mrs. J. C. Cantrill __ 1309 Kenyon St., Washington, D. C. Mrs. Richards E. Edwards __ Peru, Ind. Mrs. George Gellhorn __ 4366 McPherson St., St. Louis, Mo. Mrs. Ben Hooper __ Oshkosh, Wis. Mrs. Arthur L. Livermore __ Yonkers, New York Miss Esther G. Ogden __ Yonkers, New York Mrs. George A. Piersol __ 4724 Chester Ave., Philadelphia, Pa. National League of Women Voters National Headquarters 918 Munsey Bldg., Washington, D. C. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, Honorary Chairman Mrs. Maud Wood Park, Chairman Mrs. Solon Jacobs, Secretary Mrs. Richard Edwards, Treasurer Regional Directors Miss Katharine Ludington, Hartford, Conn., First Region Mrs. F. Louis Slade, New York, Second Region Miss Della Dortch, Nashville, Tenn., Third Region Miss Elizabeth J. Hauser, Girard, Ohio, Fourth Region Mrs. James Paige, Minneapolis, Minn., Fifth Region Mrs. George Gellhorn, St. Louis, Mo., Sixth Region Mrs. C. B. Simmons, Portland, Ore., Seventh Region Chairman Standing Committees Mrs. Frederick P. Bagley, Boston, Mass., American Citizenship Miss Mary McDowell, Chicago, Ill., Protection of Women in Industry Mrs. Percy V. Pennybacker, Austin, Tex., Child Welfare Mrs. Larue Brown, Washington, D. C., Secretary Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, New York, Election Laws and Methods Dr. Valeria H. Parker, Hartford, Conn., Social Hygiene Mrs. Catherine Waugh McCulloch, Chicago, Ill. Unification of Laws Concerning Civic Status of Women Mrs. Edward P. Costigan, Washington, D. C. Food Supply and Demand Mrs. Mary Summer Boyd, Washington, D. C. Director Research Department Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association Honorary Presidents Mrs. Mary Smith Hayward ___ Chadron Dr. Inez C. Philbrick ___ Lincoln Mrs. Draper Smith ___ Omaha Mrs. W. E. Barkley ___ Lincoln Officers President, Mrs. C. H. Dietrich, Hastings First Vice President, Mrs. F. A. Harrison, Lincoln Second Vice President, Mrs. H. C. Summey, Omaha Recording Secretary, Miss May Gund, Lincoln Corresponding Secretary, Miss Mary Williams, Kenesaw Treasurer, Mrs. Jessie M. Dietz, Broken Bow First Auditor, Mrs. E. F. Bell, Lincoln Second Auditor, Miss Edith Tobitt, Omaha Historian, Mrs. H. H. Wheeler, Lincoln Local Arrangements Committee Local Arrangements Committee Chairman ___ Mrs. John N. Baldwin 1st Vice Chairman ___ Mrs. Charles T. Krountze 2nd Vice Chairman ___ Miss Doris M. Goethe Secretary ___ Mrs. E. C. Twamley Treasurer ___ Mrs. Edward H. Scott Place of Meeting ___ Dr. Jennie Callfas Publicity ___ Miss Doris M. Goethe Music ___ Mrs. Doris F. Baxter Registration ___ Mrs. E. S. Rood Automobiles ___ Mrs. W. J. Hynes Courtesy ___ Mrs. J. W. Welch Pages and Ushers ___ Mrs. H. J. Bailey Banquets and Lunches ___ Mrs. Charles T. Kountze Hotels ___ Mrs. C. Vincent Home Entertainment ___ Mrs. James C. Dahlman Ushers and Pages Mrs. H. J. Bailey, Chairman Assisted by Mrs. Wayne S. Halbrook Ushers Miss Marie Niesmann Miss Helen Curtis Miss Mary Thomas Miss Helen Nieman Pages Miss Margaret Falconer Miss Gertrude Thiem Miss Dora Wiese Miss Marion Jones BY MAKING SMALL PAYMENTS --UNDER-- Our Partial Payment Plan Anyone can be a stockholder and share in the earnings of some of the successful enterprises of Omaha where there is ample security, satisfactory earnings, and a sinking fund to retire some of the stock each year. Ask for our Circular Burns, Brinker & Company Investment Securities S. W. Corner 17th and Douglas Douglas 895 OMAHA Sunday Afternoon, June 13, 3:00 o'clock Blackstone Hotel Meeting of the Executive Board Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association Sunday Evening, June 13, 8:00 o'clock First Presbyterian Church, 34th and Farnam Streets March Funebre and Chante Seraphique ___ Guilment Organist, Mrs. Louise Shadduck, A. A. G. O. America ___ By Audience Invocation ___ Edwin Hart Jenks, D. D. Anthem, Bless The Lord, O My Soul ___ Ippelotos-Ivanos From the Russian Liturgy Address ___ The Church and the League of Women Voters Mrs. James Paige, Minnesota Offertory, Organ ___ Largo From the New World Symphony, Dvorak Anthem ___ From Age to Age Frederick Bullard Address ___ An Appreciation of Dr. Anna Howard Shaw Hon. John L. Kennedy, Omaha Benediction Organ Prelude, Toccato and Fugue in D Minor ___ Bach Woodward's Inner-Circle Candies FIND FAVOR --IN-- POLITICAL CIRCLES John G. Woodward & Co. (Incorporated) "The Candy Men" Council Bluffs, Iowa Monday Morning, June 14, 9:30 o'clock Blackstone Hotel Opening Business Session __ Mrs. Charles H. Dietrich, Presiding Convention called to order. Invocation __ Most Reverend J. J. Harty, D. D. Welcome to Convention __ Mrs. E. M. Covell, Omaha Response __ Miss Lucy Clarke, Chadron Greetings from Nebraska Federation of Women's Clubs Mrs. John Slaker, Hastings W. C. T. U. __ Mrs. Lela G. Dyar, Boone Omaha Association of Collegiate Alumnae Miss May Summers Women's Educational Club Miss Elizabeth Shaffer, David City Omaha Y. W. C. A. __ Mrs. Geo. C. Gilmore Farm Women's Congress Mrs. Jessie Bacon, Gothenburg War Mothers __ Mrs. William Berry, Omaha Nebraska Federation of Business Women's Clubs Mrs. Lulah T. Andrews, Lincoln Report of Registration Committee __ Mrs. E S. Rood, Omaha Report of Treasurer __ Miss Nelly Taylor, Broken Bow Report of Auditors __ Mrs. E. F. Bell, Lincoln Report of Special Finance Committee Mrs. H. H. Wheeler, Lincoln, Chairman President's Report __ Mrs. Charles H. Dietrich, Hastings The League of Women Voters __ Mrs. Maud Wood Park Chairman National League of Women Voters Announcements __ Mrs. John N. Baldwin Chairman Local Arrangements Committee Thomas Kilpatrick & CO. Dry Goods We are for Women June Sales Now on Will Interest You Pioneer Luncheon, 12:15 o'clock Dr. Inez Philbrick, Lincoln, presiding. Miss Rosemary Antin, Song Leader Mrs. Henry Cox, at the piano. Reminiscences Mrs. Mary Smith Hayward, Chadron Mrs. Draper Smith, Omaha Social Side of Chicago Convention Mrs. Charles Johannes, Omaha Introduction of Pioneer Women Office Holders Mrs. Effa Tillotson, Mayor of Bassett Mrs. David Stannard, Member of City Council, O'Neill Miss Edith McKeighan, Clerk of the District Court, Red Cloud Introduction of Candidates for the State Legislature Mrs. P. T. McGerr, Falls City, Senate Miss Emma Meservey, Fremont, House Every Woman Seeks Happiness Health is the foundation stone of happiness - the clear eye, the naturally rosy cheek, the firm elastic tread and graceful carriage, are women's by inherent right and are outward signs of health within. No matter how the strenuous life may have worn you, we may have worn you, we may impart new, youthful vigor through health building. THE SOLAR SYSTEM OF HEALTH CONSERVATION - The Road to Better Health - is interpreted by attendants in this institution where scientific application of a wide variety of proven treatments is given to women of refinement amid the privacy modesty demands. Visit our Institution today. The Ladies Bath Department is open from 8:00 a. m. to 6:00 p. m. Call Tyler 920 and arrange for an appointment. The Solar Sanitarium (The Home of Solar Baths) New Masonic Temple Building Two Doors West of Fontenelle Hotel 19th and Douglas Sts. OMAHA, NEB. Monday Afternoon, 2:00 o'clock Recommendations of Executive Board Miss May Gund, Secretary Discussion and Action on Forming a State League of Women Voters. Organizing a League __ Mrs. George Gellhorn, St. Louis Director for the Sixth Region and National Chairman of Organization. Financing a League __ Mrs. Richard Edwards, Indiana Treasurer National League of Women Voters The Child Welfare Program __ Dr. Rude Nebraska Laws __ Mrs. Draper Smith Women in Gainful Occupations __ Miss Mary McDowell, Chicago Chairman Women in Industry Committee Nebraska Laws __ Miss Edna Bullock Librarian Legislative Reference Bureau, Lincoln American Citizenship Program __ Mrs. Solon Jacobs, Alabama Nebraska Laws __ Mrs. James Richardson Banquet, 6:30 o'clock Happy Hollow Country Club Song Leader, Mr. Hugh Wallace Miss Corinne Paulson at the piano Introduction of National Directors League of Women Voters and other distinguished guests Speakers Mayor Ed T. Smith Mrs. Maud Wood Park Mrs. Percy V. Pennybacker Mrs. Solon Jacobs Mrs. Richard Edwards Mr. Francis Brogan Omaha's Highest Quality Grocers Louis Sommer 49th and Dodge Sommer's Specialty Shop Brandeis Theatre Building Open Evenings until 10:30 p. m. The New Delicatessen 1806 Farnam Street Home Baking Home Cooking Picnic Lunches A Specialty Tuesday Morning, June 15, 9:30 o'clock Convention called to order. Invocation __ Rev. Frank G. Smith, D. D. Reading of Minutes. Recommendation of Constitution Committee Report of Nominating Committee Report of Chicago Conference on Unification of Laws Mrs. C. Vincent, Omaha Food Supply and Demand Program Miss Della Dortch, Tennessee Nebraska Laws __ Mrs. H. C. Summey, Omaha Nebraska Economy Campaign Mrs. C. G. Ryan, Grand Island, Director Health Program __ Dr. Valeria Parker, Connecticut Nebraska Laws __ Dr. Jennie Callfas, Omaha The Anna Howard Shaw Memorial Mrs. Louis F. Slade, New York Conference Luncheon 12:15 o'clock Mrs. Addison E. Sheldon, presiding Song Leader, Miss Cora Conaway, York Speakers Mrs. Wallace Perham President Montana Federation of Women's Clubs Miss Grace Abbott, Chicago Secretary Immigrants Commission First National Bank of Omaha -- WE INVITE -- YOU TO OPEN A CHECKING ACCOUNT IN THE WOMEN'S DEPARTMENT OR A SAVINGS ACCOUNT IN OUR SAVINGS DEPARTMENT FOUNDED 1857 Tuesday Afternoon, 2:00 o'clock Citizenship Schools __ Mrs. George Gellhorn, St. Louis Report of Omaha School __ Miss Mary Austin Report of Lincoln School __ Miss Alice Howell Financial Report of Pre-convention Schools Mrs. Edgar Scott, Omaha What the Extension Department of the University May Do for Citizenship Education __ Professor Reed Publicity Methods __ Miss Ada Bush, Indiana Mrs. Emily Newell Blair, Missouri Report of Nebraska Publicity Chairman Mrs. Frank A. Harrison Resolutions Unfinished business Installation of Officers Formal Adjournment Tuesday Evening, 8:00 o'clock Continued Informal Conference with National Directors and Chairman of Committees. Meeting of Executive Board. Every Woman Votes Strand Direction of A.H. Blank Rialto Direction of A. H. Blank Best Motion Picture Houses in -- Omaha -- Songs TO THE POLITICAL PARTIES Tune, "There's a Long, Long Trail A-winding" There's a long, long trail a-winding into the land of our dreams, Where human foes are passing and bright justice gleams; Spare the long, long night of waiting until our dreams all come true, Till the day when we'll be going that long, long trail with you. TO THE PIONEER To thee, Pioneer, we would render our praise, With the gratitude deep and sincere; From the East and the West, from the North and the South We gather, thy name to revere. With taunts and with threats was thy pathway beset, Yet unswerving didst thou lead on; Till today, through thy struggle for liberty's goal, We have reached it and victory is won. PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES Tune, "Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag" Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag And smile, smile, smile; Though there are legislatures bound to lag, Smile, friends, that's the style. What's the use of worrying? It never was worth while, So pack up your troubles in your old kit bag And smile, smile, smile. VIVE LA SUFF Tune, "Vive L'Amour" Let every good suffragist rise in her seat, Vive la S-U-F; And joyfully render the homage that's meet Vive la S-U-F. Vive la, vive la, vive la Suff, Vive la, vive la, vive la Suff, Vive la Suff, vive la Suff, Vive la S-U-F. "Say It With Flowers" Phone Douglas 3000 John H. Bath "The Careful Florist" 1804 Farnam Street Omaha Member of Florists Telegraph Delivery Ass'n Oh! Woman! Woman! Go to --- "Phelps Hut" It's Omaha's Headquarters for Women when they want the best of Candy, Ice Cream, Dainty Luncheon "PHELPS HUT" 1708 Douglas St., Omaha Athletic Building Open after the Theatre Songs Cheer! Cheer! Nebraska's here! What the -- do we care, What the -- do we care, Cheer! Cheer! Nebraska's here! And we have Suffrage now! BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of th Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword; His truth is marching on. CHORUS Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on. He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat. Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on. CHORUS Compliments of The Harding Cream Co. NOVELTIES IN Pleating Buttons Hemstitching Braiding Embroidering Beading Button Holes Mail Orders Promptly and Carefully Filled Ideal Button & Pleating Company Telephone Douglas 1936 300-10 Brown Building Opposite Brandeis Stores Omaha, Nebr. Announcements The committee on Registration will be at the convention headquarters, Blackstone Hotel, Sunday afternoon, June 13th, and throughout the convention and will assign places if hospitality is desired. All visitors are requested to register. The Blackstone Hotel is at the corner of Thirty-sixth and Farnam Street and may be reached from the railroad stations on a car marked "Farnam Street." The eighth floor of the Hotel will be for the exclusive use of the convention. Lunches will be served there on Monday and Tuesday for $1.25 a plate. The Sunday evening service will be held at the First Presbyterian Church at the corner of 34th and Farnam Streets. The banquet Monday evening will be held at the Happy Hollow Country Club. Tickets $2.35, should be secured in advance from Mrs. Charles T. Kountze, 3925 Dewey Avenue, Omaha. The Club is reached easily on the car marked "Dundee" on Farnam Street. All sessions of the Convention will begin promptly. Speakers will be limited in time, and to save every possible moment for the business of the convention, those having a place on the program are requested to take seats on the platform before the opening of the session in which they take part. Dr. Abby Virginia Holmes will take subscriptions for "The Woman Citizen" during the convention. Subscription price $2.00 a year. Those who are going to the Biennial will be taken by automobile from the Blackstone Hotel to the Rock Island Station in time for the 3:05 train for Des Moines. Special attention is called to the firms advertising in this program. HAAS BROTHERS "The Shop for Women" Cloaks Suits Dresses Waists, Skirts, Petticoats of Quality at Reasonable Prices Because of Our Up-stairs Location Balcony Floor, Paxton Block New location after Aug. 15, 1920, Second Floor, Brown Block Matthews Book Store 1620 Harney Street ELDRIDGE Unusual Gifts FOR GRADUATION WEDDINGS The distinction of an Eldridge Gifts is evidenced by the number of beautiful things on the brides table which come from our store. W. H. Eldridge Importing Comp'y 1318 Farnam, Opposite W. O. W Building Woodmen Cafeteria Look Prices reduced at the Woodmen Cafeteria Try us--Basement W.O.W. Bldg 14th and Farnam Streets High Quality Food Reasonable Prices Quick Service Music Daily Papers L. C. Harding What Every Woman Wants National Suffrage Gordon's Chocolates "Made to Suite the Queen's Taste" Gordon-Rainalter Co. Omaha [*From Nebraska*] How Women may Vote at School Board Elections ++++++++ At elections of members of the Board of Education women may vote after taking the following oath, to be administered by one of the judges of election: “You do solemnly swear [or affirm] “That you are twenty one years of age; “That you have resided in this school district for forty “days past; “That you own real property in the district or personal “property that was assessed in your name at the last assessment “or have children of school age residing in the “district, so help you God.” At the election of members of the school board held in South Omaha May 5, 1914, questions arose as to the rights of women to vote, and the rulings were as follows: 1. Women who are citizens and have real or personal property assessed in their names at last assessment or who have children of school age, residing in the district, are entitled to vote for members of the school board. 2. If a women born in the United States marries a man of foreign birth the husband must have full citizenship papers before the wife can vote. A single women born in a foreign country, although she may be a property owner and taxpayer, cannot vote unless she has been naturalized, or her parents were naturalized before she reached the age of twenty-one. 3. A women whose first husband was native born or a naturalized citizen, thereby giving her the right to vote, would loose that right if she subsequently married a man of foreign birth not a citizen. 4. A women born in a foreign country, whose parents were American citizens at the time of her birth, is a citizen. HARLEY G. MOORHEAD, Election Commissioner. [*From Nebraska*] Women Workers Want Vote The National Women’s Trade Union League in Convention (1913) adopted unanimously the following resolution: THE WORKERS ARE THE WEALTH OF THE COUNTRY WHEREAS, The most costly production of any nation, and its most valuable asset, is its output of men and women and the industrial conditions under which over 6,000,000 girls and women are forced to work are an individual and social menace and, VOTELESS WOMEN UNABLE TO PROTECT THEMSELVES ARE USED TO CUT MEN’S WAGES WHEREAS, Working women as an unenfranchised class are continually used to lower the wage standards of men and, as, during the recent uprisings of working women to better their economic conditions it has been conclusively demonstrated that the political powers of the employers are persistently used so as to defeat the organized efforts of the unenfranchised class and, IDLE AND IGNORANT WOMEN OPPOSE VOTES FOR WORKERS WHEREAS, A group of women of leisure, who by accident of birth have led sheltered and protected lives and know nothing of the dangers and hardships confronting the working women, and who never through experience have had to face the misery that low wages and long hours produce, are carrying on an active campaign of propaganda to defeat the efforts of working women to obtain this essential instrument of their industrial freedom and, WHEREAS, Every thinking working women realizes her individual and social responsibility toward controlling these conditions for herself, her fellow workers and the coming generation and wants the power the ballot will give her and her fellow workers, therefore be it ORGANIZED WORKERS PROTEST AGAINST ANTI-SUFFRAGISTS RESOLVED, That the National Women’s Trade Union League of America in Convention assembled, representing the organized working women of America, hereby solemnly protest against the active opposition of these women of leisure, who persist in selfishly obstructing the efforts of the organized working women to obtain full citizenship, thereby making the struggle for the protection of the working people’s homes immeasurably more difficult; and be it further RESOLVED, That a copy of these resolutions be sent to all anti-suffrage headquarters, the press, the National American Woman Suffrage Association, The Woman’s Journal and the International Suffrage Alliance. Presented by EMMA STEPHAGEN, Chicago AGNES NESTOR, Chicago MARY E. DREIER, New York ROSE SCHNEIDERMAN, New York NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE PUBLISHING COMPANY INC. PUBLISHERS FOR THE NATIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION 505 Fifth Avenue New York City From Mrs. F. D. Mead 502 80. 40th st city. [*from Nebraska*] Votes for Nebraska Women! The Woman's Reason BEACAUSE BECAUSE Nebraska women must obey the laws just as men do, They Should vote equally with men. BECAUSE Nebraska women pay taxes just as men do, to support the government, They Should vote equally with men BECAUSE Nebraska women suffer from bad government just as do men, They Should vote equally with men. BECAUSE Nebraska mothers want to make their children's surroundings better, They Should vote equally with men. BECAUSE Nebraska women of leisure who attempt to serve the public welfare should be able to support their advice by their votes, They Should vote equally with men BECAUSE Nebraska housemothers and professional women cannot give such public service, and can only serve the State by the same means used by the busy men–namely, by casting a ballot, They Should vote equally with men. BECAUSE Nebraska women need to be trained to a higher sense of social and civic responsibility, and such sense develops by use, They Should vote equally with men BECAUSE Nebraska women are consumers, and consumers need fuller representation in politics, They Should vote equally with men. BECAUSE Women are citizens of a government OF the people, By the people and FOR the people, AND NEBRASKA WOMEN ARE PEOPLE. They Should vote equally with men. EQUAL SUFFRAGE FOR MEN AND WOMEN WHY? Because Women ought to GIVE their help. Men ought to HAVE their help. The State ought to USE their help NEBRASKA WOMEN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION Lindell Hotel, Lincoln, Neb. 21 Nebraskans for Equal Suffrage E. P. Brown, Former State Senator, Lancaster County. "All women have a stake equal to men in the financial, social, educational and moral conditions of the state. It is but just that those women who desire it should have a direct voice in determining what those conditions are to be." I. D. Evans, Former Member Legislature, Adams County. "Women should have the vote for the same reasons that men should have the vote. Democracy,—the rule of the people—can only be half realized so long as half the people are denied the franchise. Women as well as men need the ballot to enable them to perform their civic duties. A citizen without the vote is like a farmer without a plow, a blacksmith without a forge, a newspaper without type, or a bank without deposits. The ballot is the badge of sovereignty and an opportunity for service—a necessary working tool in the business of government." S. C. Bassett, Former Member Legislature, Buffalo County. "Woman is equally interested with man in good government, and is entitled therein to equal rights and privileges, including the right to uphold and support her views, and wishes, in public affairs, in the most effective manner possible,—by ballot." Chancellor C. A. Fulmer, Wesleyan University. "I know of no reason why suffrage should not be extended to women. I know of many reasons why it should. I believe that woman suffrage would elevate standards of civilization and citizenship. I am heartily in favor of it." M. P. Kinkaid, Congressman. "In my estimation the good reasons are constantly increasing why the right of suffrage should be enjoyed by women. Therefore the proposed amendment to our state constitution providing for woman suffrage shall receive my hearty support." Arthur G. Wray, County Judge, York. "As a matter of right and to protect themselves, their children, homes and property, women are entitled to and should share in government and have a voice in making the laws they are expected to obey. "Equal suffrage, however, rests upon a broader foundation than a mere right. It is a necessary step in the advancement of civilization. The family is the only institution that has survived from the beginning to this hour. The reason the family has thus endured is because both men and women have worked together for its welfare. Both have assumed the obligation of its maintenance, and if democracy is to continue the ruling force in the household of the nations, then women as well as men must assume and meet their full share of responsibility in the government of city, state and nation. Both men and women must perpetuate democracy as both have perpeuated the family." NEBRASKA WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION Lindell Hotel, Lincoln, Neb. [*from Nebraska*] SUFFRAGE AND SOLDIERING By Edwin D Mead. Once in so often nowadays somebody rises to say that no woman should be allowed to vote unless she is able and ready to become a soldier or a policeman, and use a gun or a billy upon occasion to preserve order or defend the State. We suddenly learn that only potential fighters are proper citizens, and that the true State is a latent army. "Government is based on force," is the fashionable phrase which seems to be giving very considerable glee to a little coterie of opponents of woman suffrage. "Eliminate from government this element of force," writes one of them recently to a Boston newspaper, "and its sole excuse for existence is removed. All public functions requiring merely voluntary concerted action of citizens, without force, can be and are performed by private or non-governmental agencies." This notion is to most democratic people at this time of day a little surprising. We are accustomed to think that the conception of the State as the voluntary co-operation of the people for promoting their common ends in an efficient and adequate manner, as could not be done individually or by little groups, is the true conception. This would appear to be not only an "excuse" for the existence of the State, but most modern men would certainly agree that it was its real end and definition. That governments require police and military force for various purposes is unquestionable; nobody certainly ever heard of woman suffragist questioning it. Boston has a few thousand policemen, and the United States has perhaps a hundred thousand soldiers, quite enough for every need of its ninety million people. It has many more butchers and bakers, equally indispensable to every people, and rendering services equally necessary to all citizens, men and women, although, in the proper division of labor, the service, like the police service, is the service of men. Neither the one thing nor the other has anything to do with the voting system, or with qualification for voting. The curious thing is that it is only nowadays and for the sake of opposing woman suffrage that this silly contention has made its appearance. Nobody ever heard eligibility for military service urged as a condition or qualification for man's suffrage. There is no nation on earth where a man is allowed to vote because he can fight, or where he is not allowed to vote because he cannot fight. The mere proposition to subject voting men to such a test or definition would produce a popular outcry about military despotism from the very men now urging the test against women. Yet the only possible excuse or pretext for such a test belonged to the military past, when war was often the regular and almost the chief business of nations. It has no relevancy whatever to the present, when war has long ceased to be that. No contingency is conceivable when even a tithe of our able-bodied young men would be required for national defence. If ever such exigencies should arise as once arose at Harlem and Leyden, we have no doubt that the women in the besieged cities of America would do their part as "manfully" as those women in Holland. I have said that no man ever escaped military service because he was not a voter, or was allowed to vote because he was a soldier. I wonder how many of our people know how many of our soldiers in the Civil War were voters? Out of less than three millions who enlisted more than two millions were not twenty-one years old; there were about 600,000 voters. The millions were literally "boys" in blue. By curious and rather grateful irony, at a time when we were hearing frequently that women should not vote because they are not good fighters, along came Rudyard Kipling with probably the worst of his many bad pieces of doggerel proclaiming that the trouble with woman is that she is so many kinds of a fighter, and such a dangerous fighter. "The female is more deadly than the male." So the Kilkenny cats may be left to fight it out and destroy each other, while rational men and women go on together in the patient and confident work of organizing the world upon a rational basis, which is not the basis of battle or the barracks.—The Woman's Journal. 119 For further information on the history, extent and results of Woman Suffrage, the endorsements and general arguments, and for specific answers to anti-suffrage objections see CATALOG OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE LITERATURE AND CAMPAIGN SUPPLIES Sent free on receipt of two cent stamp for postage Address National American Woman Suffrage Association 505 Fifth Avenue New York City 1913 f the matter shown in this proof sheet are sent to you free of charge upon the order of the Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association We. tements made or opinions expressed in the matter; our connection herewith is solely and only that of a manufacturer and shipper, the metal ight in the usual manner. WESTERN NEWSPAPER UNION Lincoln Omaha Sioux City MAHER ON SUFFRAGE CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR FEARS FOR NEBRASKA'S SAFETY. _ POINTS TO COLORAD RIOTS _ Give Nebraska Women the Ballot, Predicts the Colonel, and Like as Not We'll Have an Awful Miner's Strike. _ Colonel John G. Maher has announced his candidacy for governor on the democratic ticket and his unalterable opposition to prohibition and woman suffrage. "The right to vote," declares the colonel, "has been no advantage to women where the right has been given. We are entitled to be guided by the experience of other states. Women have voted in Colorado for twenty years, and she stands today as the worst governed commonwealth in the union, the only state unable to maintain law and order and compelled to call for federal troops to preserve the peace. The experience of Nebraska is not likely to be different than that of Colorado if we give women the ballot." Mr. Maher furnishes a text for giving a few facts about Colorado. Of Course Nebraska could not possibly repeat the tragic experiences of Colorado unless our prairies should suddenly take to bearing coper and silver and iron instead of wheat and corn. Colorado's troubles are industrial. Accident of mineral wealth has made her one of the storm centers in the world-wide fight for industrial democracy. It has been determined the character of her population. Her richest men have been rich as much from luck as from achievement. A great number of her poor men are illiterate aliens, herded together in rough camps and engaged in a monotonous and exhausting occupation. Wealth has changed hands rapidly in Colorado. Men have been made millionaires over night. Great power has come into the hands of gamblers. Woman suffrage could no more give Nebraska Colorado's battle of Walsenburg than it could give us Australia's kangaroos. There is one field, however, in which Colorado's laws lead the world, and those are the laws which are a direct result of woman suffrage. They are the laws bearing directly upon the protection of women and children. The Interparliamentary Union has declared them the most advanced laws of the kind of any state or country in the world. Colorado's juvenile court law, compulsory education law, laws for the prevention of cruelty to children and [?]ment of fathers to support [???] for the [???y]. HONOR TO SUFRRAGE - SECOND OF MAY CELEBRATED THROUGHOUT UNITED STATES. _ NEBRASKANS GIVE TALKS _ Rain Postpones Outdoor Programs, but State Suffragists Make Rapid Changes of Plan and Celebrate Anyway. _ On May 2, all over the United States, Suffrage Day was celebrated. The largest demonstration was in Chicago, where 11,000 women and 4,000 men formed a pageant by way of thanking the legislature for voting suffrage to women. The women marchers for suffrage in Chicago have always been shown respect by the Chicago crowds, but on this occasion, now that woman suffrage has been granted and an election has proven its usefulness, they were treated with universal enthusiasm and courtesy. In New York open air meetings were held throughout the five boroughs. Boston staged a parade of 7,000. Other cities and towns followed suit according to their needs and resources. It is noticeable that in the western campaign states where the question is to come up before the voters and the suffragists are most busy, the demonstrations were not so spectacular. With the suffragists in the campaign state every day has to be suffrage day. In Nebraska the rain interfered with some of the plans for outdoor demonstrations. The automobile tour of Lancaster county which had been planned by the Lincoln suffragists had to be postponed until May 9. The York parade could not be held. Outdoor speeches and entertainments had to be given under a roof. In Omaha a luncheon was held at the Hotel Loyal, at which ways and means for the campaign were discussed. Officers from Springfield, Herman, Papillion, Arlington and other nearby towns were present. Mrs. James Richardson presided and talks were given by John F. Kennedy; Mrs. Draper Smith, president of the state suffrage association; Mrs. Z. T. Lindsay; Mrs. G. F. Copper of South Omaha; Mrs. W. H. Shoetzer of Arlington and others. In Lincoln the tour of the county was turned into an impromptu picnic supper at Brownell hall, at which the fifty or more men and women who had intended to stump the county got together and exchanged ideas and inspiration and worked off some of the speeches with which they had fortified themselves. Before the meeting had closed almost everybody had broken into oratory. J. C. F. McKesson was the chairman of the evening. Among the speakers were W. B. Price, T. J. Doyle, J. L. Claflin of University Place, Sam Homans, Mr. and Mrs. Fr[???] Harrison, Mrs. F. M. Hall, Mi[??] Grace Ballard, president of the [??] law [*X*] Equal Suffrage Service, No. 2 | NOTICE TO PUBLISHERS: Pla[??] assume no responsibility for any of the remaining our property to be returned by _ [?]n cious and nterests, the corroput poli- gamblers, keepers of immoral resorts and most of the saloonkeepers. They are crying it down there just as they are fighting it in Nebraska. It is true that equal suffrage has not brought about peace between miners and mine owners in Colorado. But the best men and women are working together to secure such peace. It was after delegations of women had gone to Governor Ammons to insist that he appeal to President Wilson for federal aid that he took that wise step. The good citizens are uniting in a campaign to secure legislation for the "peaceful and orderly settlement of all industrial disputes." Colorado may be at the present moment the most disorderly state in the union. That does not prove her the worst governed. And of the men who are working most faithfully to bring peace out of strife and order out of chaos, it would be hard to find one who would agree with Colonel Maher that equal suffrage has resulted in a single evil. _ Howard's Nine Reasons. Dr. George Elliott Howard, professor of political science and sociology at the University of Nebraska, and a scientist with a national reputation, gives nine reasons for his belief in suffrage and for his efforts to make it come to pass in Nebraska next fall. Dr. Howard at present is giving a series of lectures in Lincoln on "Why I am for Suffrage." "Giving" is the right word for it, since in spite of the high cost of living and the not-too-generous salaries paid to university professors, Dr. Howard is not charging the Lincoln suffragists for the best campaign lectures that most of them have ever heard. Here are Dr. Howard's nine reasons for being a suffragist: Because it is humanly right and socially just. Because it will benefit woman herself. Human faculty is developed by use. Woman cannot do her full share of the world's work without an equal part in social control; especially in the making of law and government. Because more and more modern law and administration concern the things in which from the beginning of the race woman has been expert; the welfare of the mother, infant, and child, and the ordering of the household life. Because the ballot is needed to stop the exploitation of the labor of women and children through low wages for high service, thus driving men out of employment. Because, when in the struggle for bread, women are not so often forced by industrial conditions to underbid men in the labor market, they may safely devote themselves more to the household without lowering the aggregate family income. This is why men's labor organizations want votes for women. Because eventually it will do away with the dual standard of morality and thus tend to lessen social disease and the sacrifice of womenkind to male prostitution. _ class of the state university, Ge L. Basye and Gilbert Brown. In York, Mrs. H. H. Wheeler of Lincoln spoke at the Y. M. C. A. and Mrs. Robert Elliott gave appropriate readings. The parade planned at Broken Bow was spoiled by the rain, but in spite of the weather the suffragists marched to a meeting place, where speeches and moving pictures made up the program. At Falls City, Reid Green spoke at the court house square in the afternoon and inside in the evening. At Merna, Ainsworth, David City and many other Nebraska towns the day was celebrated. _ BRISTOW-MONDELL RESOLUTION _ Puts Suffrage for First Time on Calendar of Both Houses. The reporting a few days ago of the Mondell suffrage amendment to the United States house of representatives by the judiciary committee marked an epoch in suffrage work in this country. This report puts the Bristow-Mondell measure on the calendar of the house as well as the senate, where it received a favorable report on April 7th. Woman suffrage has never been debated on the floor of the United States house of representatives and it has never since 1890 got beyond the committee stage in the house; never before has it been on the calendar of both houses of congress. _ College Men are Helping. The interest which university and college students are taking in the campaign for equal suffrage is one of its most notable features. Youth and zeal make these students very useful to the work. School will soon be over and the scholars at the colleges and universities will go home to the four corners of the state carrying with them the convictions and habits of scholars longing to exercise the newly strengthened muscles in the world outside of college. One state university student is a young minister taking post graduate work. Meanwhile he is preparing a revival in the church which he is serving. He goes about this as a good merchant acquires customers provided he has good goods to sell - by advertising. Across the top of the country papers, in display type, his meetings are advertised, and he has sent a printed postal card with his name written in ink to every citizen of the town where his church is located, as well as to every farmer within five miles of his church. This young man who has demonstrated his organizing ability has offered his services to the state suffrage association for the summer. He will still preach Sundays, but the other six days will be given to work for equal suffrage. _ In David City. In the last six weeks the sentiment in David City has perceptibly warmed up. Some kinds of coal heat slowly, but when once thoroughly ignited it throws out more heat than coal which burns quicker. This is the case with David City. Mrs. Case reports that the people there are cordially, warmly interested in equal suffrage, anxious to do their part in helping to bring it about, willing to spend themselves and their money in the cause. [*Briggs*] Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association Thirty-third Annual Convention Convention Hall, Lincoln Hotel November 6 and 7, 1913 Lincoln Nebraska EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW Thursday, November 6th, 10:00 A.M. - Invocation . . . . . . . Rev. F. S. Stein Welcome extended by Lincoln Suffrage Clubs Equal Franchise League . . . . Mrs. T. J. Doyle, President Lincoln Suffrage Club . . . . . Mrs. C. L. Hall, President College Equal Suffrage League . . Miss Alice Howell, President Greetings from Lincoln Commercial Club Hon. C. C. Quiggle Response and Address from State President Mrs. Draper Smith, Omaha Report of Executive Secretary Mrs. F. A. Harrison Recommendations of Executive Board Miss Daisy Doane, Omaha Noon Recess Afternoon Session 1:30 P.M. - Report of Credentials Committee Treasurer's Report . . . Mrs. W. E. Hardy, Lincoln Auditor's Report . . . Mrs. H. H. Wheeler, Lincoln Reports of Standing Committees Education . . . . Miss Jeannette McDonald, Omaha Lecture Bureau . . . . . Dr. Inez Philbrick, Lincoln Literature . . . . . Miss Daisy Doane, Omaha Membership . . . . Miss A. L. Peterson, Omaha Press . . . . . . Mrs. F. A. Harrison Publicity . . . Mrs. M. M. Claflin, University Place Woman's Journal . . . Mrs. Ada Shafer, Omaha Organizing for the Campaign in Nebraska Mrs. Munson, of Kansas Mrs. F. A. Harrison County Organization Mrs. F. M. Hall, Lincoln Discussion Miss Edith Swain, Greeley Mrs. Anna Kovanda, Table Rock Mrs. Geo. Copper, South Omaha Mrs. Margaret Orr, Clay Center Mrs. Z. T. Lindsay Omaha ______________ 4:00 P.M. Conferences Evening Session ________________ Reception to delegates and visitors at the Commercial Club, 11th and P streets, under the auspices of the College Equal Suffrage League. Miss Alice Howell, President, Mrs. W. E. Barkley, Jr. Chairman of Committee ASSISTING LADIES Mrs. A. H. Dorris Mrs. M. H. Garten Mrs. F. M. Fling Mrs. D. R. Leland Mrs. R. G. Clapp Mrs. G. L. Lewis Mrs. M. B. Philbrick Dr. Margaret Sabin Mrs. F. M. Hall Mrs. G. E. Howard Mrs. T. J. Doyle Mrs. F. H. Woods Friday, November 7th Morning Session 9:30 A. M. ________________ Report of Credentials Committee Election of Officers Reports from Clubs Election of Delegates to National Woman's Suffrage Association 10:30 A. M. Petition Work Mrs. Oella Kirkpatrick, Nehawka Mrs. M. Louise Bock, Auburn Financing this Campaign Mr. W. E. Hardy, Lincoln Discussion Mrs. W. C. Sunderland, Omaha Afternoon Session 1:30 P. M. Working Women and the Ballot Miss Minnie Hauck, Lincoln Campaign Methods Mrs. P. T. McGerr, Falls City Mr. J. C. F. McKesson, Lincoln Miss Lillian U. Stoner, Osceola The Newspapers and the State Campaign Mr. W. L. Locke, Lincoln Mrs. A. H. Dorris, Lincoln Mr. J. W. Thomas, Alliance Address "Characteristics of the Ideal Ballot" Rev. I. B. Schreckengast, University Place ________________ 4:30 P. M. CONFERENCES Evening Session -------- ADDRESS "Woman Suffrage, Essential, Just and Expedient" DR. ANNA HOWARD SHAW President National Woman Suffrage Association AT AUDITORIUM Thirteenth Street, between L, and M State Officers _______ MRS. DRAPER SMITH, Omaha President MRS. ANNA KOVANDA, Table Rock Vice-President MISS DAISY DOANE, Omaha Recording Secretary MISS MARY H. WILLIAMS, Kenesaw Corresponding Secretary MRS. W. E. HARDY, Lincoln Treasurer MRS. H. H. WHEELER, Lincoln First Auditor MRS. M. M. CLAFLIN, University Place Second Auditor MRS. CLARA B. COLBY, Beatrice MRS. MARY SMITH HAYWARD, Chadron DR. INEZ C. PHILBRICK, Lincoln Honorary Presidents ___________________ An up-to-date definition of politics:- Parks, Playgrounds, Public Libraries, Care of the Dependent Classes, Pure Food. Is this the business of women? NEBRASKA RECOLLECTIONS by Margretta Stewart Dietrich SANTA FE, 1957 NEBRASKA RECOLLECTIONS by Margretta Stewart Dietrich Dedicated to my sister Ethel without whose insistent urgings these recollections would not have been imposed on my friends CONTENTS I Broken In................................................................. 1 II "Votes For Women"................................................ 6 III Sunnyside............................................................. 23 IV Then Came the War............................................. 36 V Women Become Citizens...................................... 48 VI The League of Women Voters.............................. 54 VII Experiences of a Lobbyist.................................... 74 VIII Practical Politics.................................................. 91 IX My Early Days in New Mexico.............................. 100 Chapter- I BROKEN IN I recall a pamphlet, I think by Jane Addams, in which a certain lady of great age attributed her unusual vigor to the fact that all her long life she had supported unpopular causes. I, too, supported causes, but looking back I can hardly call them unpopular, for with my generation to have "advanced" opinions and to serve on board took the place of sitting up with the sick or carrying baskets of food to the poor. When ratification of the federal amendment grating suffrage to women was announced, I remember going but into my garden alone, ashamed that I did not feel more elation. What I actually felt was, "Now the fun is over." My very earliest effort was in behalf of the Johnstown flood sufferers when I must have been a very little child. I got up an entertainment and raised a dollar or two which I sent with a letter, my hand being guided, to the relief committee. The letter was printed in a newspaper and was carefully saved by a doting grandfather. But my first actual preparation for supporting causes was in what was usually called the Charity Organization of Philadelphia, under the guidance of Miss Mary Richmond, then its General Secretary. Later she became a director of the Russell Sage Foundation. After perhaps three years of trying to solve other people's problems for them I went to Miss Richmond one day and said solemnly that I did not see where we were getting; that it -2- seemed to me all we did was to repeat the same motions. I suppose I expected a comforting reply from Miss Richmond, but what was said was, "Then you had better begin working for legislation." Miss Richmond's face has grown dim in my memory, but I shall never forget her sensitive hands with their long, delicate, almost transparent fingers. I now recall clearly only four of the experiences of those years. My first "friendly visit" has left as its most vivid impression the dank smell of wet plaster and out-of- order plumbing, as I mounted to the second story back rooms where the family lived whom I was to visit. A washtub full of soaking clothes occupied the center of the room I entered and around it, as though it were the hearth, was grouped the whole family --including the father who was too drunk to go to work. A chair was brought for me to join the circle. I sat down feeling not only shy by scared, for I had never before come in actual contact with a drunken person. Fortunately for me, the father was in a stage of extreme politeness and we sat about the tub conversing about pleasant generalities until I thought I had stayed as long as a first call required. When I took my leave, bowed out ceremoniously if unsteadily by my host, I had not even hinted at the object of my visit, which was to say that the Organization could not continue to help the family unless he stopped drinking and got--and held-- a job. Another visit I have not forgotten was on a young woman named Rose, the mother of two babies, one only a month or two -3- old and the other a little more than a year. There was no husband in the picture; he was either dead or had deserted. She was living in a miserable room desitute of furniture except a decrepit, dirty bed, some sort of a table and cook stove, and only newspa pers to burn in it. I said to her, "You certainly are up against it and I should like to help you. What do you want most?" "Well," said she, "if you could get me a becoming hat I'd like that. I'm sick of wearing this old one a lady gave me--it has no style at all." The third visit had to do with another family, with the father sick in the hospital and the mother keeping a store in the house, by which she supported her boy and girl. When the father died I attended the funeral and said the usual banalities to the boy: that now he would have to be the man of the family and look after his mother and sister. The next time I went to visit the family the boy announced proudly that he was taking care of them-- he had stolen a dozen eggs! My fourth recollection is of a meeting I arranged, the first of many during the next fifty years. I had heard Miss Richmond regret the lack of cooperation among the agencies and individuals doing charity work, saying she wished they could all be gotten together. "Why not try?" thought I, and set out to visit every charity and the minister of every church in the district where I worked. I invited them all to a meeting in a settlement house as a surprise for Miss Richmond. There must have been representatives from all the groups My fourth recollection is of a meeting I arranged, the first of many during the next fifty years -4- I had invited for it was necessary to bring extra chairs from the gymnasium to accomodate the crowd. The chairman of our district conference was a Quaker. I had asked him to preside, but had given him no agenda, no program. He opened the meeting by reading a Scripture message from an unfamiliar version and then asked for a moment of silent prayer. There were ministers of several denominations present and probably they all felt slighted. I had expected people to be full of things to say, but no one had come to commit his organization to anything- they all had come out of curiosity or suspicion. Although Miss Richmond made an extemporaneous speech which somewhat saved the day, it failed to come up to the expectations of the audience. I had felt proud and happy at the size ofthe meeting, but went home disappointed and disillusioned. As a result of that experience, at the first large suffrage meeting for which I was responsible, each lady as she entered the hall was presented with a short typewritten speech which she was instructed to read if she did not have any sentiments of her own to express. Each lady who raised her voice in public to favor our cause and was applauded--always a pleasant sensation-- was forever committed to our side of the question. My active participation in the fight for woman's suffrage began after my marriage and I had gone to live in Hastings, Nebraska, a town then of about twelve thousand people. At a Woman's Club meeting one afternoon, when I was still a newcomer in the town, there was a debate on woman's suffrage-- a weak presentation on both sides, it seemed to me. The judges -5- brought in a decision for the negative and something inside of me began to boil. Until this time I had never raised my voice in one of the club meetings, but the boiling got me onto my feet and with a dry mouth and pounding heart I tried to tell the women there about the powerlessness of women in the factory and in the slums as I had seen them in Philadelphia. As I became accustomed to the sound of my own voice and could look about me I perceived that I was doing something quite out of order and was not approved. I ended as quickly as possible and hurried away from the Club rooms. Soon after that we left Hastings for almost a year. On my return I learned that a state campaign for state suffrage was in fully swing; a county chapter had been formed and, because of my speech at the Club, I had been made vice-chairman. It would have been an unimportant position if it had not been that the chairman was quarantined for large part of the campaign because of the contagious illness of first one of her daughters and then another. My career as a promoter was launched. Oh! the tricks were restored to in order to attract audiences, to make unconscious converts, and to extract money from the unwary! I remember a little play given on my lawn with the greatest possible number of parents as our audience. Between the acts a very pretty woman, her three little children hanging onto her skirts, made suffrage speeches. She was Irish and spoke with wit and pathos. Whether it was her logic or the appealing picture she made with her children I do not know, but converts were made and the collection plate was filled. -6- The most remarkable success in getting money easily which I have ever witnessed was achieved by one of our national suffrage organizers, Mrs. Elsie Benedict, who came to Hastings that year. She gave what seemed to me to be a very dull talk full of threadbare moralizing and sentimental quotations. She had been heralded as a very clever speaker and my disappointment was great. On closing she said, as though it were an afterthought, "To carry on this work we have to have money. I shall ask the ladies to take up the collection now and I hope you will all be as generous as you can afford." It was a small gathering of women who never had much money to spend, so when we counted over one hundred dollars as a result of that appeal I felt certain the count was wrong. As we were leaving the meeting Mrs. Benedict said, "I am sorry you had to listen to that speech of mine, but I saw at a glance that it was the only kind for that group." It was my first lesson in the importance of pleasing the many rather than impressing the few. When suffrage was won, Mrs. Benedict organized a highly successful and profitable course in practical psychology, and published a delightful book entitled "How to Analyze People on Sight." Chapter II "VOTES FOR WOMEN" The first duty assigned me as acting chairman of the Women's Suffrage Association in Adams County, Nebraska was to -7- serve as hostess for a speaker and to arrange for a street meeting for her in another town, in the same county, where no suffrage sentiment had yet been aroused. The speaker, Miss Sarah Muir, proved to be a delightful young person, vivacious and goodlooking, but as inexperienced in suffrage work as I was myself. Before I had come to Hastings to live she had taught in the schools there and, by sheer force of her personality, had stood out from the dead level of teachers and had been asked to join the most exclusive clubs and go to the gayest parties. The suffrage tea I had for her was informal and went off successfully. In the evening we went on what was then considered quite a journey, eighteen miles over bad roads, to the town of Trumbull. Trumbull was really no more than a hamlet, with its barber shop, a store or two, a school, a church, a grain elevator and a small cluster of houses. The broken wooden sidewalks were high above the dusty roads. We stopped our car opposite the store where the kerosene lamps were brightest. A cornetist played a few out-of-tune melodies and our "crowd" began to gather. When it was as large as we could reasonably hope for, one of the few men who was courageous enough to support our cause actively introduced the speaker in glowing terms. Miss Muir, standing above the crowd, said all she knew to say in less time than it took to introduce her, and then our program was over. "You will have to speak," the introducer said to me, and without giving me time to refuse, presented me to the audience. -8- I felt rather proud of having spoken on a street corner although I probably talked no longer than Miss Muir, and I wrote to my mother about it. I have saved the letter she sent me in reply: "As I was riding around City Hall (in Philadelphia) in a streetcar today I saw some woman addressing a crowd from an automobile placarded with suffrage banners. Tears came to my eyes at the thought that my own little daughter was doing the same thing. The tears began to stream down my face and I had to leave the car. I hope you will try to avoid making yourself conspicuous." It would be hard to be "conspicuous" in Trumbull, with its population of a few hundred people! This had been Miss Muir's first public speech, but she was wise enough not to have confessed it beforehand. Some years later she became one of the most able members of the Nebraska legislature. Before the words "progressive education" meant anything to the general public, she had her classes conducting themselves, choosing their own subjects without consciousness of guidance, and her courses included everything from journalism to conversation. The ride home from Trumbell was memorable because our lights went out. It was in the days when headlights were run from tanks of acetylene gas, which gave out at unexpected moments. An altruistic attorney from Colorado taught us the real technique of street meetings that summer. He had about twelve short speeches which he could run together, but each was complete -9- in itself, each had a story to catch wandering attention, a joke to put in the crowd in good humor, and a climax. Anyone who listened even a short time got some reasonable ideas to take away with him. With the top down on the car, he would stop on as busy a corner as possible. Standing on the back seat and taking off his coast for action he would call, "Come, friends, we are going to have a little meeting! I have nothing to sell, only something I want to talk about." The suffragists, previously posted, would begin to gather about the car as a nucleus for the audience and he would commence with any one of his twelve speeches, repeating the first one perhaps at the end. When the real audience had gained enough size to grow of its own momentum, we suffragists would melt from the front rows and begin to distribute tracts and handbills. Street meetings were almost as popular then as they became during World WarI. Usually we had several cars and several speakers. I remember at one place we tried to catch the crown which had come out for the weekly band concert, but the moving- picture-show man had also counted on that crowd. When our first speaker began, he yelled through a megaphone from the opposite side of the street, "Oh! the vimmins, the vimmins! You can hear them every day. Vat you vant to hear them now for?" He drowned us out effectively by getting a large bell and ringing it as hard as he could whenever any poor lady attempted to make herself heard. The state office that summer sent out a motor brigade of - 10 - really inspiring proportions, which traveled over a very large part of the state. I was ordered to have the stage set and the audience in place for them at half past seven on a certain Saturday evening. Beyond the most hopeful expectations of our local organization a real crowd had turned out in response to our handbills and placards. But at the appointed hour no speakers had arrived. The principal street corner of the city had been roped off by the police at our request, and they told us that unless we could produce our speakers soon they would have to unrope it. At that point word was brought to me that the members of the motor brigade were already at the hotel. To my dismay I found them sitting in the dining room and heard Mrs. Draper Smith, the beloved and imperturbable president of the state organization, ordering thick beefsteak and French fried potatoes. "You will have to hold the crowd with local speakers," she said placidly, "We have had nothing to eat since noon and we have spoken at eight meetings. I can do nothing more until I have had my dinner." There was a young Irish girl among them, a paid worker, who was presumably as hungry as the rest, but she came to the rescue and held the crowd while the others consumed their steaks. She was witty, she invited heckling and sparkled under it. I was so grateful to her that when at the end of the meeting she astonished me by asking if she might spend Sunday with me instead of going to the hotel where I had engaged a room for her, I could only say Yes. She explained that she was famishing, - 11 - perishing, not for food but to smoke. For a man to smoke cigarettes in Nebraska in those days was qestionable, and for a woman it was almost on a par with getting drunk. My cook was a woman of sharp tongue and with many respectable connections. It would not do to let her know of the cigarettes. My husband did not smoke so there was seldom the smell of tobacco in our house. The antics we had to go through to give the poor girl opportunities to smoke unobserved seem funny to me now, but were serious at the time. We were not very successful, for my cook made a point of saying to me on Monday, "That was a very queer-acting lady. I don't think she'll do you much good." Of course her smoking eventually became known to the state board and because of it, as well as that of her charms for a certain gentleman, she was sent out of Nebraska although she was one of the most winning speakers who ever came there. The gentleman in question was an influential person-- a newspaperman who later went to Congress--whose newspaper had carried bitter attacks on woman's suffrage. The lady of the cigarettes undertook to change his views. She was so successful that he not only admitted his conversation in the public press, but began to follow her about the state, leave his wife at home. However, his conversion was genuine and even after she left the state he remained a loyal supporter of the cause. It was my duty as county chairman to organize suffrage clubs in all the small communities, but Kennesaw, one of the towns in my county, had one of the oldest suffrage organizations in the - 12 - state. Miss Ellen Harn, its president, was the oldest pioneer present at the final convention of the National American Woman's Suffrage Association when it met in Chicago in 1920. She was ninety-one I think at the time. She had spent two days and nights getting to Chicago because she stopped off in Lincoln to see what the state legislature was doing. I asked her when she arrived at the convention hall if she was tired after her journey. "Well perhaps I was a mite tired when I got off the sleeper, but a dish of ice cream fixed me," was her reply. At the time she was still milking her cow and on her ninetieth birthday she had made three speeches and entertained all her relatives and neighbors at dinner. At the Chicago convention she spoke in a clear voice, holding the audience spellbound, not only from amazement that so old a lady was equal to it, but also from the intrinsic interest in her story. Miss Harn was born in Maryland. Her father, an unusually progressive man, believed in educating his girls exactly as he educated his boys, but he could not afford to pay tuition for all of his family at once. There were no public schools then, so they took turns going to a paid school, girls as well as boys, and the one who was attending school had to pass on the instruction to the others after the day's session. It was the foundation for Miss Harn's long fight for equal opportunities for women with men. Miss Harn told us an anecdote, the exact details of which I have forgotten, but the close was, "So lips that have kissed min, kissed Washington." As I have kissed Miss Harn, I am only twice removed from Washington! - 13 - The first time I met Miss Harn was at a meeting of the Kenesaw Suffrage club. She was only in her eighties then and all the other members were her contemporaries except her niece, a far frailer woman than her large, vigorous aunt. For at least a quarter of a century the meetings had been conducted in exactly the same routine, alternating every other week with the W.C.T.U. meetings from which, I am sure, they were hardly distinguishable. They opened with prayer. I can remember distinctly the prayer of the day I attended. "Oh! Lord, bless this work we have undertaken, for it is right. We have made up our minds it is right." After the prayer came the minutes, report of the treasurer, new business, adjournment for refreshments--called lunch--consisting of substantial roast meat sandwiches, coffee and large slices of delicious rich cake. At lunch each lady put ten cents into the glass dish on the table. It was from these ten-cent pieces that their treasury was kept supplied, and they always had money on hand to help out the state organization. The regular routine, admirably put through, did not include any place for a speech from me. The niece several times tried to remind her aunt that I should be invited to speak, but in vain until we were at lunch. She probably considered me a mere chit of a child who would have nothing to say to them, who had known the struggle when the cause was really unpopular and to support it was to be made fun of. When she did at least introduce me she said, "Mrs. Lietrich has come to address us and she can speak now on......well, she can talk about anything she's amind to." She was not willing to admit that I could tell them - 14 - anything about woman's suffrage. I had gone to Kennesaw hoping to find a way to interest younger women in the suffrage club, but I realized that it could not be done with the old guard in the saddle, or at least holding the bridle. I came away hoping that I would known when the time had come to let go, and to content myself with the pleasures of reminiscence, as I am doing now. Chautauquas were still popular in the days of our suffrage campaign, and one was held in Hastings every summer in a city park. We decided to established headquarters there during the week or perhaps ten days when our people pursued culture and self improvement and called it a vacation. The temperature usually sizzled around one hundred. The lecturers and entertainers on the platform melted before our eyes. I can see Senator Robert La Follette (the father) removing first his coat, then his collar and necktie, and next pouring the pitcher of ice water from the table beside him over his head without interrupting his speech or cutting short by one minute his time of an hour and a half. I marvel that we stood it, for although the speakers were hot, so was the audience sitting on the hardest wooden benches in the world, humanity packed close together, radiating heat from each other; flies buzzing, attracted by the candy and popcorn used freely, but not very successfully, in an effort to keep the babies and children quiet. Many people left their convenient and comparatively cool houses and rented tents in the park to live in during the Chautauqua season. It was one of these tents, in a shady location, that we hired for Suffrage Headquarters. Here we made a concoction - 15 - which we labelled iced tea and dispensed free to all of the afternoon audience we could capture as they left the main pavillion. As we had no way to boil the water we tied the tea leaves in a cloth and let them soak in cold water until it had taken on the right color. To this we added a minimum of ice and lemon. People were so hot that anything cool and liquid was tempting. While they drank our tea we distributed suffrage leaflets, circulated petitions, pinned Votes for Women badges on their chests and had home talent speeches in the kind of language our audience best understood. To quote one of my letters written at the time: "Mrs. Brooke was our speaker today. She is delicious, she talks like a whirlwind. She had so much to say in her ten minutes that she did not take time to finish any sentence, but everybody laughed and caught her enthusiasm. She is perfectly appreciative of the effect she produces and laughs with you. I wish I could remember all she said and could reproduce her exactly. She began by referring to an anti-suffrage speech made in town recently in which the speaker talked about the 'flower of womanhood of the south.' 'Flower of womanhood, indeed!; began Mrs. Brooke, who herself had come from a Kentucky family, 'still trying our lard, don't know it is cheaper and better to buy it. Didn't want slavery abolished either, it took a northern woman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, but you know all about that.....And then that poor Lyman Abbott, believing in suffrage fifty years and changed by his wife! That's the kind of strength Adam had. And talking about strength that women aren't supposed to have, -16- I don't see it takes any more strength to sit in the mayor's office than to wheel the baby buggies up and down these curbstones the men have built for us, and who'd say I wouldn't make a better policeman for this town than it ever had before, answer me that!' And so on, until we had to stop her for time." We made such a success of our suffrage meetings that the next summer the Chautauqua program committee arranged for a speaker on the best day of the week. A certain Mrs. Crumpacker, a paid organizer for the anti- suffrage forces came to Hastings and managed to get herself included in an afternoon party, where she talked against votes for women. Loyal friends of mine told her they wished I were there to reply to her. She said she would like to debate with me and went to the newspaper to tell the editor she had challenged me to a debate. He called me to ask if I had accepted, which was the first I had heard of it. However, being still young and inexperienced, I did accept and spent a worried day or two in preparation. The first innings were mine. Mrs. Crumpacker was a large, handsome woman, but she was dressed in a severe tailored suit and stiff hat -- almost the kind of clothes that suffragists were made to wear in the old cartoons. Our meeting was in the evening and I had put on the prettiest dress I owned. The skirt was made of two deep flounces of lace and it had a bodice of flowered silk over a lace tucker. To this day I can feel the pleasurable sensation I had when I looked upon Mrs. Crumpacker, for I knew it was I who looked more feminine. But I fear the last innings were hers. We had arranged by -17- telephone that I was to speak first and was to have five minutes for rebuttal at the end. When I got through my main speech I felt the audience was with me, but when Mrs. Crumpacker began speaking I was so tired from my own efforts I could not keep my attention on what she was saying. Also, she was referring to crimes of which I had never heard, but according to her they seemed in some way connected with women's votes. I have never been able to arouse any interest in newspaper reports of crime -- even the headlines do not register in my mind. I knew my rebuttal was very poor and I did not feel better about it when for days afterward my friends would stop me on the street to tell me what I should have answered her. My humiliation was complete when my superior officers of the State Board let me know tactfully that debates were not to be encouraged, because they gave the anti-suffragists an audience they could not obtain for themselves and, as the listeners at a debate usually come with sympathy for one side or the other and are consequently thinking up arguments instead of the merits of the case, converts are seldom if ever made. Each side goes away more firmly convinced than ever that his own side is right. As a climax for our campaign for a state amendment that would give suffrage to the women of Nebraska, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw came to our state just before the 1914 election. She caught a severe cold and was not able to speak when she reached Hastings. Judge John L. Kennedy, of Omaha, took the stump for her, but Dr. Shaw in her black velvet and Duchess lace collar sat on the platform. -18- Our meeting was held in the Opera House, which was packed. Young women in white with yellow sashes -- suffrage colors -- acted as ushers. The close of Judge Kennedy's address was to be the cue for them to take up the collection, but there was a hitch somewhere and the young women forgot to pass the plates. The audience started to leave the hall. Dr. Shaw knew how desperately we needed money and, turning to the organization officers and town notables seated on the platform she cried, "Do something quickly! Don't let them escape!" But no one had an inspiration except to hurry off the platform to find the ushers. Dr. Shaw, recovering her lost voice completely, stepped to the front of the platform, called to the audience to sit down again and, while the ushers passed the plates for the collection, spoke more entertainingly than I ever heard her at any other time. In spite of the earnestness of our campaign we lost at the polls in November. I remember how cold and gray and dreary the election day was. Women stood at all the polling places over the state to ask every man to vote on the suffrage amendment, for it required not only a majority of the votes cast on the question, but of all the votes cast at the election. No vote was counted as a negative vote. The polling place at which I watched was in a section of the city where the workers in our only large factory lived. The voting had been light all day and it had been easy for me to speak to every man who came in, up to the time when the factory closed down and its entire force, herded by their foremen and political boss, was actually shoved through the door just as the polls were -19- being closed. I tried to speak my word about the amendment, but it was useless. "No time for that now," the boss called. The same sort of thing took place all over the state and the amendment was defeated, but we made plans at once for another campaign. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt came to a convention in Hastings to look us over and decided we were ready. Although at that time I had an inconspicuous place on the State Board of the Suffrage Association, I do not remember by whose inspiration or direction we changed to the easier method of securing presidential and municipal suffrage by an act of the legislature. It was evident that if a number of states secured partial suffrage, it would hasten the passing of the amendment to the Federal Constitution, which would give votes to all the women of the United States by one act. There must have been a great deal of work to put the measure through the legislature, but I had none of the responsibility for it and remember very little about it--no events and only a few persons. After the defeat in 1914, Mrs. W. E. Barkley became our state president and she held that office until Nebraska had ratified the federal suffrage amendment in the summer of 1919. Mrs. Barkley was small, red-haired, fiery, energetic, quick-witted, a bit impatient of slower minds or methods than her own, but generous with her time, her money and in the long run in her judgments. She was slightly deaf, but she missed less than the average person with perfect hearing. When I first knew her she had no regular servants, although -20- she was a woman of wealth whose guests rooms were always occupied. "When our women come in from the country to stay with me they feel more at home and comfortable if I live as they do," she explained to me. I accepted the explanation, but thought the real reason was that she could not tolerate any one near her who was less efficient than herself. However, I had to admit later that I was wrong, for as soon as she ceased to be president of the Suffrage Association she engaged a maid. Every suffragist in the state felt herself welcome at Mrs. Barkley's house. She urged us all to stay with her. "If you have personal relations with people you work better together," she told me. Her house was full of fine old furniture and many books. A glassed-in room was the suffrage office. Here she kept a card index of all the active women in the state; here the suffrage paper was edited and mailed out, and all the other countless activities of the organization carried on. While her guests were still sleeping Mrs. Barkley would get the morning paper from the front porch, take it back to bed with her and read it through before it was time to prepare breakfast. This she did while the rest of us were turning around. Hers was the first really pretty kitchen I had ever seen, I think. It was white, except for a gay floor and beautiful yellow marble tops to the tables and shelves. "I told my husband I would take my marble before, not after, I died," she said. By nine thirty her house was in order and Mrs. Barkley was ready for the business of the day. When Mrs. Barkley came to Lincoln, there was no dean of women -21- at the State University. She offered herself for the position without salary until the regents could include the added expense in the university budget. It was a difficult position to fill until the students had become accustomed to it and Mrs. Barkley, who was small and dressed slightly in advance of the fashions, looked like a student herself. Although it was the thing to laugh at her a little they also admired her. During the hottest weather in Nebraska summers she used to take shop girls home with her to get a comfortable night's rest on a sleeping porch -- just any girl who looked as though she needed it. When her suffrage work was finished, Mrs. Barkley took up the teaching of lip reading, and she got her classes by going to the laundries and factories and asking if any deaf people were employed. It was under her generalship that the Nebraska partial suffrage bill was passed by the legislature. The satisfaction we got from it was of short duration, for the anti-suffrage forces filed a petition to refer the bill to a vote of the people at the next general election. Anyone but Mrs. Barkley would have accepted it as a true petition and not questioned its authenticity. But not so Mrs. Barkley. She insisted on being shown the original petition in the office of the secretary of state. Probably no one had ever examined a petition of so many names before, but she found pages of names in the same handwriting, pages with the names boing in alphabetical order, and an unusual number of "X His Mark." She became convinced that a large part was fraudulent and she set about to prove her contention. -22- First she had the entire petition copied and we were asked to look up the names secured in our own localities. In Hastings we found names that had been copied from the stones in our oldest cemetery and the names of transients in the hotels. Some were the signatures of real people, but some said they signed to bring back beer -- Nebraska was then dry. One signature was that of a clothing merchant who had once signed a suffrage petition for me. I called on him to ask if he had changed his mind or had not understood what this was about. "That is business," said he. "I sign your paper, maybe you buy something." The greatest number of names had come from Omaha and there, too, was found the greatest amount of fraud. Mrs. Barkley asked two young women, both blessed with a saving sense of the ridiculous, to undertake the task of running down the Omaha lists. I remember how they enlivened our state board meetings with the accounts of their detective work. They looked up the man who had circulated the pages which ran in alphabetical order. The address he gave was a boarding house, but he was no longer there. The lady of the house remembered him; she thought he was a literary gentleman because during the two weeks he stayed with her he wrote all day. She thought he scarcely ever left his room. It was the law in Nebraska that the circulators of petitions must know that the persons whose signatures they obtained were qualified voters and understood what they were signing. Also they must sign in the presence of the circulator, who then swears to all these points at the bottom of the page. One Omaha circulator was -23- found in jail, and could identify nothing as he could neither read nor write. Another had recently served a sentence for forgery. There was such a clear case of fraud that it seemed incredible that intelligent people would attempt to defend the petition but the anti-suffragists carried it even to the supreme court, where they not only lost, but were ordered to pay all the costs amounting to about five thousand dollars. By the time they had completed the payments -- the court was lenient enough to give them time -- not only Nebraska women, but all the women of the country had been enfranchised. Mrs. Barkley was also responsible for getting the Governor to call a special session of the Nebraska legislature to ratify the Suffrage Amendment. It was one of the first states to ratify. At that point, with well-earned laurels, she retired from the presidency of the state organization. Chapter III Sunnyside While the women of Hastings were promoting suffrage we also established an old people's home in our town and "did our bit" in World War I. Big Business could have taught us nothing about interlocking directorates. As we worked together for one cause we worked together for all the others. The establishment of the old people's home in Hastings was a protest against the system of Poor Farms then to be found in every county commissioners that a more economical, as well as humane, -24- way could be found to care for the aged. In the early days of the state the Poor Farms had been adequate as places to send tramps and ne'er-do-wells, but as the years passed the state's own pioneers began to need looking after. We argued that it was an ungrateful second generation which put its old people on the desolate farm where the chief distraction was the creaking of the windmill and the most cheering object in the general room was a discarded dentist chair. Pioneers seldom if ever get rich, they are not the type. It is the men who come after them or their children who make the clean-up. Our county was beginning to have many pioneers who could not afford the kind of care they needed because of age and infirmities. The establishment of the Home was the idea of Mrs. Alice Brooke, the one of the enthusiasm and rapid speech in the suffrage cause. Mrs. Brooke's own family had been pioneers and she had helped plow the fields. At sixteen she was teaching school. Shortly after that she married a druggist and, along with raising two children, helped in the store. There she was to be found most of the day. She had made it the general meeting place for farmers, the public forum for politics, the center for relief, and the free checking place for bundles and children. If there were derelict children picked up by the police, Mrs. Brooke took them to her own home until something permanent could be arranged for them. She once got herself appointed guardian for two little orphaned colored boys and boarded them with a respectable Negro family. As there was no Sunday School for them -25- to go to, she started one. I went once to act as interpreter for her when she was calling on a very sick German woman. The old lady kept muttering something in a low voice. "What's she saying?" asked Mrs. Brooke. "She says," I translated, "that she is praying for you. She says she prays for you all day." Gratitude was the last thing Mrs. Brooke expected. "That's all right, tell her I don't mind how much she prays if she keeps the covers up." Not only the very poor, but anyone in need called on Mrs. Brooke. There was no scandal in town which she was not somehow "in on" as she called it. I remember one "scrape" -- as she termed an incident which could not be made public -- which she related to me in the strictest confidence, but which now may be safe to repeat after these many years, and since all the parties to it are dead. She chuckled so much over the story that she forgot how much she had been imposed upon. She was called up in the middle of a cold winter night to come to see a certain Mrs. X who was reported to be very sick. "Why don't you call a doctor?" asked Mrs. Brooke. "No," was the reply, "she says she must have you." Mrs. X was the third or fourth wife of an eccentric old man who had died a year or two before. Mrs. Brooke had not seen her since his funeral. When she arrived at the house she found that Mrs. X had just given birth to a baby, and had made no preparations for the event. In spite of the woman's protests, Mrs. -26- Brooke sent for a doctor who said on his arrival, "I knew Mr. X well, but I had not heard that you were married again." "Indeed I am not," replied Mrs. X. indignantly. "I think far too much of his memory!" The story I like best about Mrs. Brooke was told me when I first came to Hastings. There was a revival meeting going on in town and the preacher at one session excelled himself in picturing corruption in high places. As the highest place we then had in the city was the city council, he pictured corruption there. In the midst of his most dramatic passage, Mrs. Brooke rose in her pew and interrupted him by saying, "You ought not to say that for it is not true. Our Mayor is a fine man and so are our councilmen. I never ask them to do anything good for this town that they aren't ready to cooperate." And then she sat down again. It was at a meeting of the Hastings Woman's Club that Mrs. Brooke spoke of establishing an old people's home for the county. She told of an old couple, Mr. and Mrs. Robb, who had lived for many years in the community. The old man had become too feeble for hard work and had no skill for any other kind. His wife had supported them both for several years by taking in washing, but she had broken her hip an their meager savings had all gone, so now they were "on the county." The commissioners proposed to send her to a hospital and the husband to the Poor Farm, but the old woman had rebelled. "You'll never separate us," she cried. "He can't live without me and I'd sooner die!" She cried so loud and refused so -27- obstinately to be moved from her bed that the commissioners were baffled and, as always when in a quandry, came to Mrs. Brooke for help. The charity department of the Woman's Club had about three hundred dollars in its treasury and Mrs. Brooks found a large house which a friend would let her use for a period of six months for fifty dollars. It was her idea that we open a Home in order to provide for the Robbs, with the County paying a small amount weekly for their board. Everyone in the Club had complete faith in Mrs. Brooke except me, but mine was faith with uneasiness. I had heard Mrs. Brooke say more than once that she never worried about money. "Money is the easiest thing there is to get -- that is nothing. It's work, that's hard." I realized that if I did anything toward getting money Mrs. Brooke would consider me merely the hand of the Lord, which I rather resented, but nevertheless I felt I could not see an enterprise fail on which she had set her heart. I had not lived in Hastings very long and nobody had told me that you could not raise money, or that you should wait for a committee to act. Without consultation I went to ten men and asked each one for a hundred dollars. I remember my argument went like this: "I don't know much about the plans for this Home or the expenses it may entail, but it is something Mrs. Brooke wants because she thinks there is a need in the community and she ought not to be disappointed. I want to hand her a thousand dollars in cash tomorrow." I think there was not one refusal. -28- Then, with the help of a friend, we got another thousand dollars pledged by women in case of need. As a result of this undirected activity they made me chairman of the board of directors. Mrs. Brooke refused even a place on the board the first year. She said all she asked was the privilege of filling the Home. The name, "Sunnyside," was chosen by vote of the woman's Club and I believe it has been an appropriate one. For a few weeks the whole town of Hastings devoted itself to making money to buy the furnishings. An endless chain of silver teas was started. A Russian woman who did cleaning for a living had one of the teas at her little house and she said at last she felt like an American, to be working with us, not for us. It took about a month to repair the house, collect the furniture, curtain the windows and move in. Our opening reception was April Fool's Day, 1914, and our first boarder (we never said inmate) was not an old person at all, but a little boy of six who was brought to us that first afternoon by the county commissioners. We had many children during the first years. Our first matron, Miss Margaret Kealy, naturally attracted them and at one time she had as many as four wee infants to look after. She was a rare saint. She would gladly share her food or her bed with those in her care, and she would work herself to death for them. She survived those early years at Sunnyside only because she could also laugh and play easily. There was no disease which the old people developed so trying or so difficult that she felt they should be sent to the hospital. Instead, they were so much to be -29- pitied that it would be wrong to send them among strangers. Cancer and mental deterioration she cared for with skill and sympathy, making nothing of it. That she was Irish almost goes without saying. We tried another Irish matron after Miss Kealy left us to be married. Although she had good qualities she was not one of the saints and she had a tongue which amused the directors more than the old people. I remember telling her to do something for one of the particularly trying old ladies, and added, "she thinks she is dying." "I'd hate to spare the time, but still I'd be glad to go to her funeral," was her reply. The Robbs, for whom Sunnyside was opened, moved in on the second day and we began calling them by their courtesy titles as used by their neighbors, "Grandpa" and "Grandma," although they had no grandchildren. Grandma Robb had been married once before and she was Grandpa Robb's third wife. They indulged in no petty jealousy of each other's former spouses. Grandpa hung on the walls of their room five life-sized crayon portraits of themselves and their earlier wives and husband, evidently all made by the same itinerant artist, and all in similar massive metal-and-plush frames. Grandma Robb's voice had grown thunderous from living with her deaf husband and if you chanced to look at the portraits -- as you could not fail to do if you entered their room -- she would shout, "That's Robb's first woman and that's his second, and that's my other man." -30- We got Grandpa an ear trumpet, but he preferred not to use it except on the rare occasions of his pastor's visits. He had his foibles, but he was a good old man and he waited on his invalid wife with great patience and gentleness. He died first, from an attack of pneumonia. He knew he was dying and he said to his old wife, "I've been praying to be spared to care for you, but it's not to be. I'd stay with you if I could. The Lord's will be done." Mrs. Robb's loneliness and grief tore our hearts. We got her a new black dress for the funeral, but she would not wear it. Instead, she wore an old, old dress -- "Robb always liked it." Her last parting with the old body was a scene we could not forget. As the undertaker came to close the coffin lid she clasped the dead body in her arms, crying. "You can't take him! You can't! My poor old man, my dear old man! What'll I ever do without you? I can't give you up, my poor old man!" She followed none of the conventional was ways of mourning, she welcomed every gaiety and diversion in the home. "I must be doing something," she said. All of Robb's possessions, his Bible, the family photographs, his old gun, his watch and spectacles, his three wedding rings, she boxed and sent to his unfilial sons in the Mennonite district of Pennsylvania. She sent the box collect and it came back unclaimed. Then she sold her own few trinkets and prepaid the express. We begged her not to, but to her mind it was an act of -31- service and love, a sacred sacrifice. "They're his children by his first woman. Me and his second never had any. The children should have them." In less than a year her body was laid beside her husband's in our burying lot. At the same time that the Robbs were at Sunnyside we had another old couple there who were in striking contrast. Mr. Shaw was the invalid in this case, having to remain in bed most of the time. The poor man was never comfortable that his fussy little wife did not change a pillow or give him water or add a blanket. He rarely spoke and Mrs. Shaw was as rarely silent. If she had nothing else to say she would mutter, "I don't know. Nobody ever tells me anything." She had been pretty in her day and still, at eighty-four, applied hair tonics and paid a good deal of attention to her dress. One day when I went to see them, Mrs. Shaw was shifting the covers on her husband's bed. "I was a fool to marry Shaw," she said to me casually. I glanced at Shaw to see how he was taking it, but he made no sign of having heard. "Didn't you know it, my first husband was an old soldier and I could have been drawing a pension all this time? Yes, he left me well fixed. Didn't you know that? We had a good farm, but Shaw would sell it. And now he's sick all the time. Oh! I was fool to marry him." I wondered if she had been making that lament for the past thirty years. -32- At last Shaw died. The matron telephoned me and I went at once to say a comforting word to his wife for, after all, she had devoted herself to him to the best of her ability. I found her rocking placidly and munching cloves. "Did you know it, Shaw's gone?" she said. "Nobody told me they told you. Yes, Shaw's gone, and now I'll be at peace." I thought it was a slip of her old tongue, so I took it up and continued, "Yes, he was a good man....." "But terrible hard to live with," she finished. She had "In Loving Memory" engraved on the tombstone and wore a heavy long crepe veil. When the funeral was over she came to me and asked, "Are you going to let me stay here alone?" "Certainly, if you want to," I answered. "I didn't know. Nobody told me if you'd want me. It seems kind of homelike now that Shaw's gone." Perhaps Shaw was more wearing then we realized for the old lady improved in every way after his death. At eighty-five she had an operation to remove cataracts from her eyes. When the surgeon first lifted the bandages he said" "Now tell me, Mrs. Shaw, what can you see?" "I can see," she answered promptly, "that you are a very handsome man." Among the many touching or amusing incidents that come back to my mind when I think of Sunnyside and its family is one of an old lady who walked over a mile to town to buy herself crutches to use coming back. She was jealous of a new boarder who was more -33- ailing than herself. And there was an old man who had theological discussions with the ministers who came out to hold services at the Home, much to the distress of all the old ladies. When the matron asked him to desist he agreed, adding, with a humous twinkle, "I only do it to make the old hens think." He was not popular with the ladies and at one time one of the most pious of them refused to let him see her newspaper. He went down town that afternoon and bought a paper with a fine pictorial section. On his return he walked straight to the same old lady, who was sitting in the parlor, and said, "I should be glad to loan you this paper if you care to see it." She refused it and turned away, but he added with a twinkle, "You might find it too hot." We supposed he referred to coals of fire. We also discovered that sex appeal and sex instinct do not die with youth or middle age. There were many love affairs to control. One old gentleman of ninety was helped into the parlor every afternoon and just as regularly proposed in a loud voice to an old lady in her eighties, who was also helped into her chair on the opposite side of the room. She had had a stroke which affected her speech so she could not make her refusals very distinct, but the good side of her face wrinkled up with both pleasure and amusement. Another old lady, who could get about only in a wheelchair, never allowed any silver to show in her golden hair, and she trimmed her dresses with much lace and pretty ribbons. She was -34- an object of such desire to a certain old gallant that after being refused admission to her room by the night nurse he, at peril to his life, climbed into her window by way of a lawn bench, a vine and a water spout. There were times during the early days of Sunnyside when the balance in the treasury was very low -- eighteen cents at one time -- but friends always came to the rescue and there has never been a deficit. In six months we moved to a larger house, which we bought. It burned to the ground soon after and although nobody was injured, there was an almost total loss of clothes and furnishings. Within a week we were settled again in a rented house and almost at once we began building on the old foundations. Upon completion we had, for the first time, a suitable and convenient home for our people. Now Sunnyside has several buildings and sufficient endowment to make it unnecessary for the directors to worry about finances. It all came about, as I look back on it, without any very great effort because it was a matter which appealed to the heart. As I compare the ease with which we secured money for the establishment or Sunnyside to the difficulties in raising funds to carry on political education and reform -- far more important and far-reaching by preventing the need for charity -- I am impressed by the fact that we put the accent on the wrong place. We treat politics as an intellectual matter, we talk about efficiency and economy, but few people are interested in either of these things. What we are interested in is happiness, full stomachs and comfortable living for ourselves and the rest of the world. I am sure -35- wad heelers and Tammany bosses do not talk about efficiency, but about jobs and better food for babies, and honorable funerals. Life is a matter of the heart. I think it was Jane Addams who said she would rather trust sentiment than reason, and told a story to prove her point. It was about an old woman in the Hull House district of Chicago whose ballot Miss Addams was permitted to mark, because the woman could neither read nor write. It was at a special election to vote bonds for certain municipal projects. Without previous instruction the old woman voted as the Citizen's Reform League was recommending except in one case, and in that future developments proved she was right. She had based her decisions entirely on her sincere wish to see "kids decently looked after." For any effort we may have put into the establishment of Sunnyside we have been amply rewarded by the fun and satisfaction we got from it. The County Poor Farm has long since been sold. As an expression of the appreciation of the Sunnyside family, I often think of the sweet old Swedish lady who asked the blessing before meals, varying thee prayer according to the season of the year or the events of the day. On one Thanksgiving, as she sat down to a table laden with turkey and all the good things that go with it, she said, "Oh! Lord, we thank Thee for this Thanksgiving." -36- Chapter IV THEN CAME THE WAR Soon after Sunnyside had moved into its new building and before suffrage was won, we were busily engaged in helping to win World War I. Someone asked me to make recruiting speeches and I have always felt thankful that I was not carried off my feet by the spirit of hysteria which ran riot over the land; I refused to ask any mother's son to enlist. I also called it stupid to stop the teaching of German in our schools and colleges. As a result I was looked upon with suspicion by other members of the local woman's division of the Council of Defense. I was too slow to roll bandages efficiently, dressed in a becoming Red Cross uniform, but I wanted to do more than raise a garden. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw was at the head of the women war workers and she urged suffragists especially to show their patriotism. The Hastings Company of the National Guard had been back only a short time from protecting us on the Mexican border from Pancho Villa when the United States declared war. The boys mobilized their company to full war strength, confident that because of their experience they would be sent very promptly to France. They went into camp in one of our city parks and there they stayed, for some unexplained reason, throughout the entire summer. I wrote to the Captain, as soon as the company was in camp, offering to give French lessons to any of the boys who might be interested. He replied by asking me to come to the camp at half -37- past one the following day. My consternation was great when, instead of the handful I expected, the entire company of one hundred and fifty men in military formation was marched up in front of me. There was no tent or room big enough to hold them so the lessons were out in the open. I hung a blackboard on the back of my car, which constituted the only school setting, and there were not books for so many. When the military lines were almost on top of me they were told to break ranks and the men dropped upon the ground wherever they could find a flickering bit of shade. The trees in the park were all young and their foliage was scanty. I think it was the hottest summer I have ever endured, with the thermometer often beyond the one hundred mark. The lessons, from one-thirty to two- thirty, came at the hottest hour of the twenty-four, but we did not miss a day for two and a half months. A few of the men slept during the lessons, but I begged the lieutenant in charge not to disturb them, for how much of a foreign language could I teach a class of one hundred and fifty anyway? I knew most of the men were not getting enough French to pay for the time spent and I told the captain so, but he begged me to continue with the whole company for, after the inoculations and vaccinations were finished and all the farewell parties had been given, the spirit of anti-climax made the men restive and hard to control. Anything which occupied their time helped to preserve their morale. So day after day as the weeks dragged into months, as they saw draft companies leave to go abroad ahead of them, we talked for an hour as though they would soon be leaving. -38- At last they did leave Hastings, on September 13, 1917. I wrote a letter to my mother describing their departure, which she saved. I quote it now because I think it helps to recapture the spirit of the moment: "Friday our soldier boys left camp. I did not know it was possible to become so fond of a collection of boys as I am of that lot. I do not suppose I know a dozen by name, but I know every face. They haven't much idea of why they are to fight, but they are ready for adventure. One of the most intelligent boys in the company said, 'I wish we were fighting with Germany instead of against her because I can speak German. All my best friends are German. I don't know what this war is all about anyway, but as long as Uncle Sam was raising an army I thought I had better get into it.' "I was surprised and tremendously touched by the boy's appreciation. My hand ached Friday evening form being grasped by so many strong moist hands. They began it Thursday afternoon down town and one boy, who had never said a word in class, pleased me very much by saying, 'We would have had time for another lesson today, but the officers thought we wouldn't want it, but I guess all the men would have voted to have it if we had been given a chance.' "We fixed lunch boxes for every man in the company and the hospital corps that joined them. In each: two ham sandwiches, two cheese sandwiches, deviled egg, doughnut, cookies, large slice of cake, tomato, plum, pear and pickle. Then I put in each box an envelope of jokes cut from old magazines. As the company -39- marched up to the train we handed out the boxes, but I had to stop because every man shook hands with me as though I had been the mayor or some important official. "The send-off had been beautifully planned. There was a parade of all the city officials, all the school children, the G.A.R., the new Home Guard, and 'citizens in decorated automobiles' to escort the company to the train, reaching the station just fifteen minutes before the train was scheduled to start, exactly at noon. But the train also carried companies from four other towns and it did not arrive until four oclock -- just four hours late. The two bands and the fife-and-drum corps did their best, but it was a very trying time. The sun had been in and out all morning and was shining brightly when we reached the station at noon, but by one oclock a steady, wetting rain had set in. "It was splendid to see how well people kept up. The boys themselves looked pretty serious and they held the hands of their little brothers and sisters all the time. That made me gulp -- those great strong care-free boys who were suddenly so tender. My favorite lad, a boy just seventeen, as tall and straight as an arrow, impudent and funny, spent most of the four hours with his little three-year-old sister in his arms and very close to his mother. He tried manfully to make his usual jokes, but his voice came from his boots and his sentences were very short and his eyes very shiny. "My French Canadian was the only one who did not try to cover up his real feeling; he cried with entire abandon. There was another boy who probably showed his real feeling, too. I think he -40- did not have a single feeling of regret or worry or homesickness. He was gamboling about like a young calf. I hunted him up especially because his home is far away and I thought he would be particularly lonely in the midst of the other boys' families, but I found him apparently happier than I had ever seen him. "He has interested me from the first. In the French class there was a group that fought for the front row, but he was not one of them. He dropped down wherever the command 'Break rank' was given and he always looked absentminded, but he was far and away the best in the class. He has a remarkable mind and I should be glad to speak French as well as he does now, although he did not know a word of it when we began. One day I told the lieutenant that I thought him very intelligent, and the lieutenant said, 'Maybe in French, but you don't see it in his drilling. He's the worst in the company. I tried to persuade him to go in the band because he can play any musical instrument, but he wouldn't do it. He ran away from home to enlist and he wants to do real fighting.' He is small and has a soft tenor voice. At first the other boys called him 'sister' but they have stopped that and now call him 'school master.' "When we found they were to have a long wait at the station, (but we never knew how long) we decided to give them coffee. We rushed up town and made raids on the hardware stores for pots and on the restaurants for coffee and cream. We gave out twenty-four gallons. We were all drenched to the skin but we did not care. "Finally the train came in (it was thirty-two cars long) and our boys went off, with all the whistles in town blowing, church -41- bells ringing, and bands playing. They said it was very impressive even up town where everyone stopped while the whistles blew and men stood in the pouring rain with their hats off until the signal was given that the train was out of sight and hearing. I am sorry for all of you who do not live in a little town where you get into the heart of things." They never saw service as a unit, these boys who had enlisted so gallantly, hopeful of being sent across promptly and together. They were used as replacement men and sent to the most dangerous sectors, from which many did not return. The "school master" was the first of Company G to be killed. In Arizona, seven years later, as I drove up to a gas station in the middle of the desert, a young man came up, clasped my hand eagerly and cried, "Why, here's my little French teacher!" At the time Company G left Hastings we were also busy arranging the registration of women for war work , as ordered by Dr. Shaw, who was National Chairman of the women's division of the Council of Defense. I have always felt that Dr. Shaw was laughing up her sleeve when she ordered all women to go to the polls to register for war work on pain of being disloyal. Getting the women out to sign up for the service each was best qualified to give was largely in the hands of the suffragists, and we did not do a bad job of it in our country. A greater number of women registered at the polls for war work than the largest vote ever cast by men. At my precinct, I remember a woman who did not know how to answer the question "Married or Single?" We asked if she were, perhaps, divorced. She answered, "No, but I would like to be." -42- Another was hesitating over the question of her education. We suggested grammar school as the answer, but she said No, that was not it. Taking another guess we said High School. "Yes," she said, "that's it." And she wrote on her card, "Hie". Sometime during the winter of 1917-18, I was one of a dozen women asked to go to the Agricultural College of the University for a week's instruction preparatory to going about to make speeches on food production and conservation. Into that week we crowded lectures on dairying, poultry raising, general farming, canning and drying vegetables and fruit, as well as inspirational talks on the situation in Europe. At the end of the course, the state chairman of Food Conservation made engagements for us to speak. It was ridiculous even for war time that I, who was city born and bred, who scarcely knew the difference between oats and wheat, who had never picked up a live chicken, and was afraid of any horned animal, should be asked to go about instructing farmers and their wives. The most successful part of my speeches, I believe, was my description of my ride on an army tank. How I could possibly connect this story with increased food production I cannot now remember. My first assignment was to speak at a country auction conducted for the benefit of the Red Cross. The platform was a plank resting on two crates containing pigs, and all around me were lambs and chickens making their particular noises, above which my voice had to carry far out into the open. I do not know why, but this setting was in some way inspiring, perhaps because these -43- living creatures, donated for a common cause, were more appealing to the imagination than the more impersonal donation of money. Emotions were very close to the surface in those days and when I saw a man in overall wipe his eyes while I was speaking, I nearly cried myself. It gave me confidence to speak anywhere, even from the grandstand at a horse race, as I was once ordered to do. The most difficult places at which I had to speak were at the gatherings of farm women, always in ill-ventilated rooms with many children to distract the attention of the speaker as well as the audience. Then, at the end of as an eloquent a plea as I was able to make on the importance of conserving butterfats, sugar and wheat, the hostess would produce without apology ice cream made of the real stuff and luscious frosted cakes made of white flour! I always felt hungry after speaking and the refreshments were a sore temptation, especially since at home we used substitutes for butter and white flour and less than our allowance of sugar, in order to be consistent. Whether I took the delicious food on the excuse that it was already prepared and it was polite, or whether I refused for the sake of example, I always went away feeling I had made the wrong decision. Sometimes our speaking trips took us to towns so small there were no hotels, and we had to stay with strangers. I made one such trip following a blizzard and zero weather so that I could not drive my car. After a ride of not many miles but several hours duration on what we called a "combination freight" train -- that is, a freight which carried an antiquated passenger car semi-heated by a stove at one end -- I arrived just at supper time. My hostess - 44 - was a bride and had expressed her happiness and pride in her home by needlework. There were crocheted mats everywhere and ruffled curtains at the windows. Her husband was a plumber, unable to go to war because of lameness. At supper he was uncomfortable in what had no doubt been his wedding suit and hardly said a word, but we got on easily the next morning at breakfast when he was in his overalls. The meeting, I remember, was in a moving picture theater and I spoke from a high, totally unadorned stage without even a table or a water pitcher. When we left the meeting in Chinook wind was blowing, melting the snow and making rivers of the streets. My hostess had no spare room in her little house, for she boarded the school teacher, so it was arranged that I sleep at the home of a family who lived above their grocery store. A steep narrow flight of stairs led up to the second story. As we opened the door at the foot of the stairs a woman clad in a red flannel bathrobe, her hair actually in curl papers, appeared at the top and called to me to come up. She had not been at the meeting. She showed me the bedroom which was to be mine for the night and said, "If you want to wash you can come through our room to the bath room," and, opening her door, displayed her husband in the bed she had just left. I washed neither that evening nor the next morning. My bed was made up with heavy gray blankets in the place of sheets, and they looked as though they had served a long time. The Chinook wind was rapidly changing winter into summer and the one window in the room was firmly nailed down. I thought I should - 45 - die of thirst as well as suffocation, but I knew of no way to get water except in the bathroom. Not only the men in the trenches experienced the horrors of war. The influenza epidemic of 1918 struck our community with heavy force. Most of our nurses as well as doctors had gone to war, and it was necessary for volunteers to care for the sick. One group of Hastings women met every day to prepare food which another group took in their cars to the homes where the women of the third group were nursing. We had night and day shifts, the few professional nurses taking the night work. We were called in only in cases where there was no one in the family well enough to look after the others. There were thirteen sick in bed at the first place I was sent to--father, mother and eleven children. My duties included keeping up the fires in two stoves, (the coal was kept in a shed a quarter of a block from the house) and feeding the chickens as well as the invalids. Two of the little boys were sick at their stomachs when I arrived on the scene, and the whole family had taken senna tea the night before. As soon as I could spare the time I phoned their doctor for instructions. Said he from his office chair, "Take their temperatures and if they have any fever I would like you to give them sponge baths." "Evidently you are not strong on arithmetic," I retorted. "They'll be lucky if I can get all thirteen faces washed." Happily that was the largest family I had to nurse. There was another in which I was taken for a thief. The husband was so - 46 - ill with pneumonia that he was unconscious for some time, his wife was ill with influenza in another room, and there were two babies just able to run around and get into every kind of difficulty. There were fires to be kept going there also. It was harder work than in the family of thirteen. When both invalids were better I arrived rather late one morning to find the wife angrily sweeping out the house. She told me vigorously that she had never seen such a dirty place, I ought to be ashamed of myself, and that her husband wished to see me. He demanded to know where the roll of bills had gone which he had put under his pillow. At last I found it in a soiled pillow case, but until then I could not convince them that I had not stolen it. They were newcomers to town and did not know me. I was only a "nurse sent by the Red Cross." I shall always remember the funeral of one of our soldier boys who died away at camp during that epidemic. There was a large settlement of Russian Germans in Hastings-- Germans who were opposed to military service on religious grounds had gone to Russia under a pledge of freedom from conscription for a hundred years. When that period was over they were again subject to military service, they began migrating to America. I do not know how the first families found their way to Nebraska, but they settled there contentedly. The physical characteristics of the country were similar to the part of Russia where they had been living and they could live pretty much as they had been used - 47 - community around them. When the war came their sons were drafted, their ministers were ordered to conduct services in a language to the old people did not understand, and their schools were closed. This land of freedom had suddenly turned against them and became more tyrannical than the country they had left, for Russia had at least let them keep their own language. The war was doubly hard for them for, in spite of the hundred-year sojourn in Russia, they were still German at heart. Some of the young men go places offered to conscientious objectors, but most of them were sent off to the regular training camps where they were more unhappy than the average. When the first boy died of influenza and his body was sent home for burial, a number of us went to the funeral to show our genuine sympathy not only for the parents but for the whole foreign community of which they were a part. To prevent the spread of the epidemic, all the churches and other meeting places in Hastings had been closed. The German church, high above a half-basement Sunday school room, was approached by two curved flights of steps that met in a landing at the large front door. On this landing the minister took his place. Friends stood in a group in the street below. From a distance of about three blocks the funeral cortege approached the church, the coffin draped in the American flag, carried on the shoulders of six men. Behind them walked a procession of women with black shawls over their heads, all wailing. The coffin was place between the curing stairways. The minister, in faltering - 48 - English which only the outsiders could understand, conducted the service and eulogized the boy. The hymns alone were in German. Accompanying it all was the same ceaseless wailing, the bitter wail of the non-understanding. Chapter V WOMEN BECOME CITIZENS All the women of the United States were entitled to vote at the presidential election of November 1920, but not without a final skirmish. The suffragists were so sure of immediate victory that when the national suffrage association held its convention early in that year it was called its Jubilee Convention, and the organization resolved itself into the National League of Women Voters. It reserved only enough form in the old organization to complete ratification of the federal woman's suffrage amendment. Thirty-five of the necessary thirty-six states had ratified by May, but as no states held regular sessions of their legislatures between then and November, one state had to meet in special session to complete the task. Connecticut seemed the most likely, but Governor Holcomb refused to call the legislature on the grounds that no emergency existed. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, that great General of the Suffrage Army, conceived the plan of getting a women from every state to come to Connecticut for one week to stage a series of mass meetings to demand the session. Petitions to be presented to the governor - 49 - were to be circulated at the meetings. As president of the Nebraska Suffrage Association (I had succeeded Mrs. Barkley) I was chosen to represent my state. Forty- six of us met in New York one Sunday morning in May 1930, and received our instructions from Mrs. Catt. She told us we were to be entertained by Connecticut people, not to save money, but to show that we were nice, normal women. To insure that we made the right impression, Mrs. Catt reminded us that we had come to win suffrage and not to promote any other cause, however dear to our hearts, and if we had any peculiar hobbies, please not to mention them. Riding in the train next day to Hartford, I understand why she had felt the need for such precaution. The representative from one of the states, a young woman of really unusual beauty who would have convinced anyone by her appearance and charming manners that "the best people" wanted suffrage, regaled me for three hours with tales of the high civilization of spiders and ants. She assured me with proofs that our ultimate transmigration is into the ant. After a send-off luncheon in Hartford we were divided into small groups and scattered over the state so that a number of meetings were held simultaneously. I think we spoke sometimes twice a day. I do not remember a word that anyone, said but I do remember my clothes because they distressed me. I had a suit of material that gets shiny--and there was never time between meetings to get it sponged--and my evening dress seemed to carry its label on the outside, "Made in Hastings". Our final meeting was in the Governor's office. He sat behind -50- his desk in the executive chair while we lined the room. I have the impression of darkened windows as though he did not want to see our earnest faces too clearly. The petitions were presented to him, an imposing number, and the representatives of the other states were introduced by Miss Katharine Ludington, president of the Connecticut Suffrage Association. The Governor seldom looked up and as each half-minute plea made the air more tense, more electric, he seemed to shrink more and more into himself until he actually looked smaller. At the conclusion he thanked us in the formula of all such occasions -- he would "take it under consideration" -- but the atmosphere was too vibrant to let it go at that. In a voice that quivered he added, "You ladies think I do not believe in suffrage, but my wife who died twenty years ago converted me to it." We felt sorry for Governor Holcomb. Left to his own counsel we felt he would have called the extra session, but behind him was a political machine which feared change more than the accusation of injustice. His published reply was that although we had proved there was a sentiment in favor of calling an extra session, we had not proved that an emergency existed to justify it. Mrs. Catt next selected Tennessee for ratification and, after a melodramatic battle in which all the forces opposed to woman's suffrage gathered for a last stand, it became the thirty-sixth state to ratify. Governor Holcomb then called a special session to enact legislation required to provide for the registration of women in Connecticut, and at the same time the legislature promptly -51- ratified the amendment. A question then arose in regard to the validity of the Tennessee ratification which had to be decided by the slow process of the courts, so attention swung back to Connecticut where it was found that Governor Holcomb had not given the state legislature the proper certified copy from the Secretary of State. This error made it necessary for Governor Holcomb to call another special session to ratify the certified copy and then to re-ratify their original action, so in the end Connecticut ratified the Nineteenth Amendment three times! Seven officers of the newly organized League of Women Voters and Mrs. Gifford Pinchot, even before ratification was accomplished took the program of welfare legislation which women had agreed upon as most urgent, to the national convention to the other they stopped in Omaha to inaugurate the Nebraska League of Women Voters. The newspaper called it a brilliant meeting. I remember it as a hot and trying one, and at the end of it I found myself the president of a new organization with a new board, most of whom I had never worked with and scarcely knew. Mrs. Maud Wood Park, president of the national organization, stands out in my memory as serenely detached from all the difficulties, unconscious of any inharmonies, and always completely impersonal. She was wearing herself out under the responsibility of leading women to fulfill the promises made in their name. I can see her on one hot June morning when I called on her in a hotel bedroom, the thick gold braids that formed a coronet above her - 52 - lovely, delicate face unpinned and reaching almost to the floor. I liked her natural, feminine vanity which made her leave her hair its full length and thickness although, as she said, its weight often made her head ache. A woman's hair was still her crowning glory in those days and bobbed hair was worn only by the young. I had first met Mrs. Park in Washington where she was in charge of the lobby for the suffrage association. She was sending a group of us to interview our senators and congressmen, and I was impressed by her clarity, her grasp of a situation, and also that impersonal attitude which I felt again later in Omaha. When we returned from our interviews we were instructed by Mrs. Park to write a brief report for the card index, and I remember how sternly she said, "Do not fill the cards with what you said, no matter how clever and convincing it was. We are only interested in what he said." Later when I was a member of the national board of directors of the League of Women Voters and saw Mrs. Park more intimately which made our work a missionary enterprise. We felt she sincerely wished to bring nearer the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, as she said in her pledge of Conscientious Citizens. The Nebraska convention of 1920 had as its climax a large dinner at which all the visiting ladies spoke, including the rich and fashionable Mrs. Pinchot. She had no office in the League, but was going with the others to the political conventions out of personal - 53 - interest and had made herself indispensable by acting as courier, errand-girl, maid. That particular evening Mrs. Pinchot appeared in a dress well in advance of Nebraska fashions. It was of a shortness and tightness we had not yet seen. A note was sent to the platform where we were all seated which read: "Tell Mrs. Pinchot to pull down her skirt." I looked at the skirt and wrote in answer, "There is nothing to pull." In spite of her advance style Mrs. Pinchot made a hit with the audience, especially when she said she had told the census taker that her occupation was "Housewife and Politician". Three years later she became the First Lady of Pennsylvania. That summer I took up the work of promoting the League in Nebraska from an office in my own house which I had converted from a small bedroom. Outside its one window was a fine mountain ash tree into which a wild grapevine had grown. Birds by the hundreds were attracted there. I remember counting as many as ten varieties at a time while I sat at my desk writing innumerable letters to urge women to hold Citizenship Schools that they might vote intelligently, and to organize themselves to obtain by united effort the benefits for which we had wanted suffrage. I had as a secretary that summer the daughter of a farmer living near Hastings. She used to tell me of the family baseball team on which she and her mother as well as her father and he brothers played, challenging all the neighboring teams to Sunday afternoon games; of the little mule colts taught to kick by her brothers; of her grandmother who had buried, ceremoniously, her - 54 - coppercooking utensils and the spinning wheel she had brought west in a covered wagon. This happened when the family moved into the new frame farmhouse and the old sod homestead was torn down. From others I learned that her grandfather had been one of the characters of the early days. He wrote a pink hunting coat and drove a brake cart, whether on the track or merely into town. The birds and Madge were a partial solace for the monotony of that summer and the difficulty I had in soothing my cook who complained constantly that the sound of the typewriter was driving her crazy. The office was at the head of the back stairs which led into the kitchen, and my cook was no feminist. The following spring I was made one of the regional directors of the National League and gladly, with as much speed as possible, I turned the state presidency over to someone else. There was not the same sitting at a desk, not the same ultimate responsibility in the regional work, for although now I had eight states to advise and spur on it is, as everyone knows, much easier to give advice and inspiration than to carry out the work itself. Chapter VI THE LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS Considerable traveling was required by regional work and it was not always on comfortable express trains. I remember getting off at a primitive little place in the mountains of Arkansas where I had to wait several hours for another train. The ruts in the street were as deep as wagon wheels--wagons seemed to be the - 55 - only local means of conveyance. There were no street lights and no restaurant, and the general store--lit by one dim lamp--was full of such rough looking characters that I was afraid to go in. All the men wore full round beards and their women, carrying the babies, walked in their tracks behind them. It was in Oklahoma that I shared a seat in a train with an odd little woman who carried a fine leather bag, silver-mounted, and a gold-headed umbrella. "Do you travel?" she asked me, and without waiting for an answer went on, "What's your line, education?" "Yes," said I "political education." "It is?" said she without any interest, "Mine is jewelry. I think I'd like it better than yours." At one town where I had to change trains in the middle of the night I found that the connecting train left from another station several blocks distant. There were no cabs, no porter. The telegraph operator was alone in his office and there was no one about except one lone man who had got off the same train I had. He picked up my heavy bags as well as his own and we walked down the railroad tracks together in the darkness to the second station. When we got there he suggested that we warm up in the all-night restaurant across the street with coffee and sandwiches. As I looked at him in the full glare of the restaurant lights I thought that by daylight I should probably have hesitated to make the trip on the lonely railroad tracks with him, but thanks to the darkness I owed him a deep debt of gratitude. At the start, the League of Women Voters had been easy to -56- organize. The old suffrage clubs became local leagues automatically and where there were none, the former chairmen of the Woman's Committee of the Council of Defense were easily approached to organize the new groups. But after women had cast a creditable vote in the 1920 elections and the rest of the program was obviously not going to be put through in a short time, officers who liked the dramatic became tired of the slow, steady plod required by the League work and it was necessary to find a more patient, persistent type of leader. Some opposition to the League developed in older organizations of women and in some instances the political party leaders tried to prevent their women from uniting with other women for welfare legislation, in spite of the precedent established by men in their own Medical Societies, Bar Associations, Chambers of Commerce and Labor Unions. In a few cases a political party took the opposite course and organized the League of Women Voters ahead of us. In one state they even incorporated before the National League itself had incorporated in order to pre-empt the name. It all led to confusion and difficulties, more amusing in retrospect than they were at the time. There were examples of every type of opposition in my group of states, some of which were the stronghold of the Federated Women's Clubs, and in some women had voted for years before the rest of the country got suffrage. In these states the women resented the suggestion that they had anything to learn from us. It was the duty of the regional director to find the solution for the various problems presented, a duty she was not always able to -57- perform. In Kansas City, which was in one of my states, a group of women called themselves a League of Women Voters and applied for membership in the state organization. It was in the very early days and the state board, believing all women to be high-minded, accepted them willingly. It was later found that they were the tool of a very corrupt political party. In order to be a part of the state League, in theory at least, the membership had to be the state League, in theory at least, the membership had to be open to all women of any political faith so we urged our friends to join this group, hoping that they and their friends could redeem the city organization, but its reputation was so bad that few of our friends were willing to be affiliated with it. One day I received a letter from the president of that local League inviting me to come to their next meeting in order to take charge of their election of officers. She hinted that there had been trouble at the last meeting and that she would like me to be present at the next to defend her position. After consultation with the state officers I replied that I would be there. I arrived in Kansas City on the morning of the appointed day and lunched with a personal friend and a newspaper woman. They gave me an earful. It appeared that the president of the city League was the handy woman for one of the chief crooks in the city. With the help of a few standbys she had maneuvered a proposed change in the League's constitution in order to keep herself in power indefinitely. She had tried to railroad the change through at the last meeting instead of holding the annual election of officers. The membership had objected, probably not because of - 58 - disapproval of her highhanded methods, but because they believed in passing the honors around. The two factions had a good row, women hit each other and pulled hair, and the police were called in. To gain time for both sides it was voted to postpone the election and to invite a national officer to take charge. I must admit I did not feel very competent. "Of course the dictator and the real power behind all this is the party machine," said the newspaper woman, "and it is so powerful you cannot do anything against it in this city." "What do they get out of such an organization of women?" I asked. "I suppose it's negative," she answered. "I think they are afraid of what the League of Women Voters might do if a decent one were organized here." My friend was slightly less cynical and decidedly more hopeful. She would not attend a meeting of the organization herself for fear of involving her husband in some way, but she had found an earnest, conscientious woman who had joined the League because of its underlying principles, and was perhaps ignorant of the character of its local officers. Her previous activities had been chiefly with missionary societies, but she was willing to accept the presidency of the local League if elected, taking it on in the nature of home missionary service. My friend had also found a disgruntled member of the League who had learned her politics and procedures as a member of the Ladies Garment Workers Union, and was willing to make the necessary nomination. I wished to avoid conversation with the president of the League, so I went to the appointed place for the meeting--a hotel - 59 - parlor--at just the scheduled time. I found the room empty and made inquiries of the hotel clerk. He said the meeting had been moved to another hotel across the street. I never learned whether the move was made on invitation of the first hotel because of the fight at the previous meeting, or whether it was done by the officers to discourage attendance. As quickly as I could I hurried across the street and found a large gathering of women just being adjourned by the president. I heard her say that since the national officer had not come.....and at that, in a loud voice, I announced myself, pushing my way past two policemen at the door. The president was obviously annoyed, although she covered it with police remarks, and added that she regretted I had to make the journey since it was the anniversary of Woodrow Wilson's death and out of respect to his memory the meeting would adjourn. I reminded her that I had been summoned for this particular date and that no government offices were closed. The meeting was in a mood to go on, so she said she would call it to order again in ten minutes and left the room, probably to take counsel with someone. It was a wrong move on her part as it gave us all time. A nervous energetic little person rushed up to me and introduced herself as the member from the Ladies Garment Workers Union, Miss X. "We're going to make this thing go," she said. "Now you tell us, will Mrs. Z. be all right for president?" Mrs. Z. was the woman my friend had mentioned so I said, "Yes." "All right then, I'll fix it. You just step out of the room." - 60 - I stepped only as far as the door where I could watch her go to the end of each row of seats on one side of the room and give her instructions, which were passed down the line. When the president returned to the end of her ten minutes she called the meeting to order again. I listened carefully to the reading of the minutes of the last meeting, which she followed with a very flowery introduction, saying that I would now give them "an inspirational talk." I arose, saying that I had learned from the minutes that this was an adjourned meeting for the election of officers, and that until the purpose of the meeting was disposed of nothing else, not even inspiration, could be considered. Then I sat down again. There was loud and stormy applause from Miss X's side if the room; a look that would kill from the president. There was an effort from her side of the room to show that there should be no election. It was roundly hissed from the other. During the controversy there was some calling of names and some accusations of padded membership lists. At last Miss X made herself heard with a motion, seconded by many, that the regional director be asked to take charge of the election. The chair announced that she would not put the question. There were calls for the vice-president to take the chair. At last utterly routed and very angry, the president gave up the gavel to the vice-president, announcing that she would not be a party to it. During it all I felt as though I were watching a play. It was hard no to think, "The Russian Theater could not do it better," - 61 - and it was incredible that real emotions were involved. The policemen at the door only added to the appearance of farce. The back rows of chairs were occupied by newspapermen busily scribbling notes. Excited women stood against the walls. With the vice-president in the chair the motion was carried to put me in charge of the election. In spite of the feeling of unreality I accepted my position with trepidation and proceeded with great caution. In the midst of the proceedings an excited female pushed her way past the police and up the center aisle, calling, "Personal privilege, question of personal privilege!" I recognized her and, facing the audience from immediately in front of the desk, she began, "I'm here to justify my name. They phoned me that somebody took my name this afternoon and I'm here to justify it (by which I suppose she meant defend). I've come just as quick as I could.." I rapped for order and she turned to me, "I guess I have a right to justify my name, it will get in the papers..." I rapped her down with difficulty and suggested that if she had anything to give to the press she take the newspapermen out into the hall with her. Then I told the reporters I knew the meeting was making a good sensational story for them, but I hoped they would write up charitably for the sake of the good of the League was doing in other places. To their credit it should be recorded that from the newspaper accounts the next day an outsider would have supposed that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Miss X made a motion, which was carried, as to how the election - 62 - was to be conducted, and there was no possible chance to stuff the ballot box or to make a miscount, for everything was checked by five of us out in the open. The voters formed in a line and deposited their ballots personally on the desk in front of me, and the tellers--also in front of me--read the names from the ballots so that not only they but the entire meeting kept count. Mrs. Z was elected. She looked like a gentle, almost timid, woman and I marvelled at her courage in undertaking the presidency of that organization. Her simple, straightforward methods were disconcerting to the boss-controlled element and they ceased to renew their memberships. Respectable women in larger numbers joined or dared to come out in the open, and in time it even became fashionable. Before long it was one of the best city Leagues in the country. Once when I was attending a state convention I was invited to visit a local League meeting in a nearby small city. It necessitated waiting over a few days longer than I had planned and taking a rather uncomfortable interurban trolley trip, but I accepted. There had been rain and sleet and melting snow all day and I arrived at the meeting place miserably chilly, about half an hour early. There were dim lights in the vestibule and corridor only. A man was making a fire in a stove. I asked him where the meeting was to be held. He said he did not know, but pointed to an unlighted room on the left where he said I could wait. Presently a few damp figures straggled in and joined me in the semi-darkness. They seemed to know each other and began desultory conversation. "I sure hope she doesn't talk long, I want to get home. I - 63 - wouldn't have come at all if Mrs S (the local president) hadn't begged me. "Me, too. Mrs. S said she wanted to make a good showing for the national lady. I've no business being out with this cold." There were more remarks of the same general tone until Mrs. S and her husband arrived. They were both very large and radiated a certain healthy force. Mrs. S was dressed in a bright cheerful red and wore a hat with flowers on it. She led us to a room in the basement where she said we would be cozier; certainly we were warmer. It was lighted and a few people were already seated. Mrs. S, her husband and the secretary took the three chairs behind the table facing the audience. Reports of committees were called for and a young Jewess said she had spoken before all the churches on a certain legislative measure the League was sponsoring. I wondered why she had been chosen to address the Christian congregations, but she was satisfied with results for she concluded her report by saying modestly, "And they sure did enjoy it!" Next there was a musical number. A lady sand a group of songs and an encore, playing her own accompaniments. The piano was at the back of the room and as she had to face it, audience and performer were back to back. At the conclusion of the songs, Mrs. S arose with the air of "Now we are ready for the treat." "We have the honor of having with us tonight..." she began, and I, who have never spoken without preliminary nervousness, began to swallow, "our Regional Director..." I sat forward in my - 64 - chair preparatory to rising, "...and Dr. S, who will now address us." Her husband, not I, arose. "I am a mere boy," said he. "I speak only five languages, I have degrees in only six universities in Europe and America. I have practised medicine only twenty-five years. Has anyone here ever heard of my losing a case? There is a reason, buy I am not here to advertise myself..." and he then made a very good argument for ratifying the Child Labor Amendment. Several others were called on, among them a gentleman who looked exceedingly out of place at that gathering. He was dressed in a cutaway with striped trousers and wore a white carnation in his buttonhole. He described with great accuracy the plan of organization of the League of Women Voters, as though he were passing an examination. Finally, I too, was called upon, but it was al- ready time for me to leave for my night train. The gentleman of the cutaway escorted me to the station and on the way he told me that Dr. and Mrs. S were the outstanding citizens of that commun- ity, doing a world of good. Who he was I did not discover. We thought one of our most flourishing city Leagues was in the capitol of one of my states. Early in the fall of one year I received a letter from one of its members saying that a steno- grapher-- not even a member of the organization-- had called her to ask if she wished her dues refunded; that all the officers had resigned and had engaged her to the telephone the membership list that the treasurer would return the dues to all who wished it. When asked what it all meant, the stenographer had been unable to answer -65- except that the officers said they had found the League was not what they had expected. I wrote the ex-president of that League for an explanation and received in reply a brief note stating that they had done what they considered "for the best". The situation seemed peculiar enough to warrant a trip of investigation. My first move was to call on the ex-president. She was very polite and non-committal. Her family had been in politics for two generations and she had learned diplomacy in Washington. She said she found the organization was becoming very partisan. She had called the executive board together to resign from the presidency, but all the officers had resigned at the same time, so there was no group left to fill the vacancies. The treasurer, who was among those who resigned, said she did not wish to hold the funds so she had had the membership called to ask how they wanted their dues disposed of. All but a very small number had asked to have them returned as they, too, wished to resign. She regretted very much that her calendar for the next week or two was so full that she could not possibly have the ladies meet me informally at lunch or dinner; she was sure it would be a pleasure on both sides to meet socially, if not in the League. I suggested that perhaps all the ladies were not as busy and that I should like to have them lunch with me the next day; that i would not expect them to reconsider their action, but I would like an opportunity to set them right about the aims and methods of the League. It was unfortunate that I had mentioned this, for I am sure -66- she had already called the ladies and prepared them before I could get to the telephone in my hotel. With complete unanimity they begged to be excused. One, whom I could not reach on the telephone, answered my note with one of her own, that due to a previous engagement, etc. Since I had no invited guest for lunch the next day I went with one of the few faithful members to lunch at a tea room. Across the room, lunching alone, was the lady who had sent her regrets by note. The devil entered into me. I had my companion take me over and introduce me. Said I, " I see your engagement is broken. Perhaps you will lunch with us now." The lady grew apoplectic. " I thought I made it clear enough that I didn't want to meet you." I felt ashamed and apologized as best I could for having had the persistence of a book agent. During the conversation with the ex-president she had several times mentioned a certain Mr. W. I thought I smelled a rat. On inquiry I found he was the national committeeman from that state for one of the major political parties. He was also the president of one of the largest banks in the city. I called on him in his office and found him also very polite and diplomatic. I told him ( on a guess) that I thought he had been responsible for the disruption of the League and asked what he had against it. He answered that it was not safe for women of different parties to get together in an organization for political education; it would inevitably lead to a desire to influence legislation. I admitted -67- that desire already existed on the part of women, and asked why women of all parties should not unite for the interest of babies if bankers could unite in their associations for legislation favorable to banking interest. That, he said, might come later, but we were still too inexperienced; we must first learn to "play the game." Before I left the city I found that a certain senator of his party was up for reelection and his record showed that he had consistently voted against every measure endorsed by the women's organizations. The ex-president of the local League had been appointed committee woman for the party, a fact she had not thought it necessary to impart, Happily the events which I have described were the only ones of their kind. Most of the league meetings were such normal affairs that they merge into each other or I have forgotten them. As a happier experience, I remember a reception which followed one of the meetings which I had attended as Regional Director in Oklahoma City. It was in a very fine large house set in the midst of well-planted grounds. The hostess took me through the principal rooms and then into a half basement where a room was fitted up with homely, comfortable old furniture. "This is where I generally sit in the evening," she said, "it is my own old furniture." Then she told me that her daughter had married a man who had become very wealthy through oil, and on the first anniversary of their wedding he had asked her what he could give her -- pearls, -68- diamonds, anything she wanted. She had replied that more than any jewels she would like a comfortable house for her mother, so this beautiful place, furnished and endowed, was the anniversary gift. A few days later I met the daughter in her small apartment in Tulsa. She was charming looking and a pleasure to meet. With delightful naturalness she showed me her new fur coat and her Chinese embroideries, gifts from her husband. When it was lunch time she set about preparing it herself. "Cooking is the only talent I have," she explained. "Why should I give up something I enjoy just because I can afford a cook?" I can recall many fine state conventions and brilliant national ones. Lady Astor spoke at one of them and the large hall was so crowded that it was necessary to have an overflow meeting as well. Lord Astor spoke at it and we like him almost as well as his lively wife. She wore the dress she had designed for the evening sessions of Parliament, a soft gray crepe with white organdy collar and cuffs. As the first woman in Parliament she had had no precedent to follow. The men wore evening clothes, but she had felt that the usual low-neck evening gown was not suitable. In the daytime, she told us, she wore a plain blue suit without a hat, although the men in British Parliament were rather apt to keep on their tall gray toppers. The Pan-American Conference of Women, which was held in connection with the National League convention, brought a woman delegate -69- from every country in the Americas. We were so busy looking out for the sensibilities of our neighbors in South America that we were constantly overlooking the Canadians. At the conclusion of the gala evening when we were addressed by ambassadors, and all the delegates sat upon the platform, the orchestra played the national anthem of every country, again excepting Canada. While "The Star Spangled Banner" was being sung notes were hurried to the platform, and hastily the orchestra leader was told to play "God Save the King." To the strains of this the audience started singing "My Country 'Tis of Thee." It was difficult for us to behave toward our Latin ladies with all the ceremony they considered fitting. It was very much on their minds that they were present officially. One lady said it would be impossible for her to stay as a guest in a private house because she could stay nowhere unless the flag of her country floated over her. The representatives of two South American countries which were on the verge of war had to be kept well separated from one another. A special dinner was arranged to honor the representative from Haiti -- a very gentle, highly educated Negress -- because the Negro caterer refused to serve the convention banquet if a colored woman was to be among the guests. Instead, the dinner was given in the private home of one of the most distinguished families of Baltimore, to which other Baltimorians who spoke French were invited. The reason given for the special dinner was that the Haitian delegate might enjoy herself more at a dinner where her own language was spoken. -70- The outstanding woman among them all was Dona Bertha Lutz of Brazil, secretary of the National Museum in Rio de Janiero, and chosen by all the women's organizations of her country to represent them. She was a young woman of unusual charm and beauty. She did not look thirty. Her English was so fluent that she had many invitations to speak in various parts of the country. She came to us in Nebraska and I travelled with her from Lincoln to Wichita, Kansas, where she had another engagement. We went to Kansas City by night and had to change early in the morning to a local train for Wichita. There was very little time between trains, so I hurried to get us some sandwiches while Dona Bertha went to attend to our tickets. We left our luggage with the Negro porter, among which was a large pasteboard dress box belonging to Miss Lutz. When I got back to the gate I noticed first that the porter had gone white, and that hopping about his feet were many frogs which had escaped from the box he was holding by its string. "Are dese yours?" he asked in a voice shaken by fright and disgust. Dona Bertha appeared at that moment and collected her pets, pushing them back into the box, and we boarded the train. We had not gone far when she thought it was time to water them. I went with her into the tiny dressing room of the day coach, but there was not room for both of us and the box with the door closed, so we left it open. She put the frogs in the basin of water, but they quickly hopped out of the basin, out of the door, and down the length of the car -- not by the aisle but under the seats. We had -71- to scramble about on the floor to retrieve them and it was easy to trace their progress by the alarmed raising of feet. We had the whole car in an uproar and enjoyed ourselves very much. A garden party had been given for Dona Bertha in St. Louis where she had heard the croaking of frogs for the first time in her life. She deserted the party and with the help of the young son of her hostess, captured a number which she intended taking back to Brazil with her. She told me her brother had joined the suite of the Queen of the Belgians as caretaker for a kind of frog peculiar to Brazil which the Queen wished to take home to her own country. Lord Robert Cecil was another notable speaker at a League convention. He brought with him as secretary a young Englishman who had gone to Quaker Haverford College near Philadelphia, because his people liked Quakers. After his address Lord Robert (he was not Lord Cecil then) met informally with the Board to the League and asked us many questions about the sections of the country we came from and how each of us had reacted to the war and the League of Nations. I saw Lord Cecil again in Geneva when he was at the head of the English delegation in the Assembly. He lectured at the University of Geneva a few times and at the Students Union, but the most vivid impression I carried away is that of Lord Cecil going up onto the platform at the Assembly to cast the vote for Great Britain, and the Negro from Haiti going up at the same time from the other side, both depositing their ballots at the same moment and both of equal value. -72- In the League's own membership I can think of many distinguished women. I saw Florence Allen of Ohio, the first woman to be elected to a Supreme Court, at one of my earliest suffrage conventions. She was only a newly graduated lawyer then, but with independent views. Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, who was then National Republican Committee woman, introduced her to the meeting by saying, "I have brought some girls along with me. I don't always agree with them, but I wish you would listen to this one, for, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings…" She was already Judge Allen when she spoke at the League convention. To think of Mrs. Upton is to smile. She added spice to any meeting and her story of the pink fairy became a classic in our gatherings. Like children crying for a story they know by heart we demanded it at every opportunity. We knew just how it would begin, "There is one thing I can do and that's dance..." which was probably true, for heavy people are often light on their fee, but we would look at her great size and the large mouth of the born comedian, and we would begin to laugh. We were never quite sure of the ending, for after relating how she had danced as a fairy in a pink dress in the midst of the dainty white fairies, she would have that audience of her childhood make remarks which pointed a moral to suit any occasion on which the story was told. The last time I saw Mrs. Upton was shortly after her husband's death, and I think she had already retired from her position on the National Republican Committee. "I don't feel like going any more," she said, "I didn't -73- realize how many thing I did for the fun of telling Mr. Upton about them afterward." Serene, noble Alice stone Blackwell was at all the League conventions, usually on the platform, feet flatly on the floor, knees together, her hands folded in her lap. She nodded through many a speech, but at the end seemed to know what had been said. But once Mrs. Park told a story on her. A clergyman pronounced an unusually long invocation and Miss Blackwell dozed off. She came to just in time for the Amen, but instead of Amen she said in a clear, loud voice, "I second the motion." I can see Miss Blackwell at the last suffrage convention. A sort of frame had been set up in which the women appeared who had made suffrage history, to be introduced to younger workers. As Miss Blackwell appeared in the frame, her white camel's hair shawl about her shoulders, she was greeted with such a burst of spontaneous, long-drawn-out applause as no one else had received. Her face, usually imperturbable, expressed more and more surprise, and I think until that moment she had never known the love and esteem we felt for her. Miss Julia Lathrop, the first chief of the Children's Bureau, became an advisor to the League of Women Voters. She was one of the most sympathetic and approachable women, and a delightful speaker before a sophisticated audience, but for the average group she was too witty, too subtle, she left to much for inference, because she could not bring herself to repeat the commonplace. -74- Chapter VII Experiences as a Lobbyist The first united activity of the women of the United States after getting suffrage, as in the case of Canada and other countries, was to work for legislation to help reduce the death rate of mothers and infants. We also obtained independent citizenship for married women whereby an American woman could retain her citizenship although married to a foreigner. Then we secured, with extraordinary ease, the passage through Congress of what we confidently expected to be the Twentieth Amendment to the federal constitution, which everyone called the Child Labor Amendment. As soon as it had gone through Congress and had been ratified by one or two states, the groups which would be economically affected by the removal of child workers from organized industry, joined by the group still hostile to political activity on the part of women, began to propagandize the country against the amendment. We expected the middle west and far west to ratify easily since there was almost no child labor problem in those states, but not the New England and Atlantic seaboard states where children were employed in the mills and factories. The southern states were also in question, as many New England factories had moved or established branches in the south because of cheap labor, which included even more child labor than in the north because of the absence of child labor laws in these states. There would have been no difficulty if almost the entire press of the country had not suddenly made a right-about-face on the subject, -75- and if a bogus farm organization -- a product of the manufacturers -- had not sent speakers into the west to persuade farmers that it was a dangerous measure which would take children entirely out of the control of their parents. They also said it had been inspired by Russia, than which nothing more damning could be said, even at that time. To Chambers of Commerce and other mens' organizations they talked of the dangers of bureaucracy, too much tampering with the constitution, which had been good enough for the founders of the Republic and should be good enough for us, etc. The result was the wholesale defeat of ratification by the legislatures of 1925. However, an amendment to the federal constitution may be introduced again and again for ratification; only affirmative action is final. As a last charge before retiring as president of the National League, Mrs. Park urged us to press on, listing the states to work on first. Among them was Nebraska. The Nebraska League at this time was little more than a spirit, as every possible misfortune seemed to have descended on its leaders. In 1926 I again assumed the presidency, and in 1927 moved to Lincoln to be at the capitol during the legislative session where I might lobby more effectively for the amendment. A poll showed that we could not expect to win in the House even by a miracle, but there might be a chance in the smaller Senate. We concentrated our attention largely there, arguing that if we could win the Senate in '27, we could win both houses in '29. We were not very hopeful, for every farm organization in the state had passed resolutions against ratification, and our legislators were either farmers or men whose constituents were farmers. The members -76- from Omaha liked to feel they were in line with the big business forces of the east by opposing ratification. There was a young but ardent manufacturers' association there, gladly taking dictation from the national body and feeling important in so doing. It looked like an impossible task to convert enough of these legislators, but as Mrs. Park pointed out, their own pocketbooks were not going to be touched by this amendment, which should make them more amenable than in states financially affected. We had a public hearing on the bill before the Senate committee to which the bill had been referred. We had asked to have it in a large room, but were refused by the chairman of the Senate Committee, who said, "Our chamber will be plenty big enough." We worked hard to get an imposing crowd to impress the gentlemen, but we were surprised ourselves when not only the seats but the aisles, the windowsills, the doorways were filled with eager, tense women who came to attend the hearing. Some had brought their babies with them. Senator Wilcox, the chairman of the Senate Committee, was from the western part of the state. He had refused to commit himself and we feared he was unfavorable, yet, to get our bill out of his committee, it was almost essential that we have his vote. Our first speaker was a woman from his own town. He knew she had started in the middle of the night and had traveled very uncomfortably for several hundred miles in order to attend the hearing. The whole state of Nebraska knew Miss Annie Kramph, a banker, a probation officer, a social worker and a Person in her own right. She always dressed in a plain tailored suit, a man's shirt, collar -77- and tie, sensible shoes and, just because she was really feminine and must break out somewhere, a hat with trimming. But perhaps she was aware of the incongruity, for she would pull it off almost as easily as a man, showing a fine head and severely drawn-back iron gray hair. I remember she took it off as she spoke at this hearing. She had a deep resonant voice, the kind that commands attention. It rang out in the Senate Chamber as she made her defense of the Child Labor Amendment. "Gentlemen," she commenced, on her way down the aisle, "I am going to say it first to get it over with. I am an old maid, but not from choice. I have never borne a child and therefore should know nothing about them, but at that I think I know as much about bearing children as you gentlemen of the Committee. I am here because nobody knows how my Senator is going to vote. I have not come to threaten or coerce; I have come only to appeal to his judgment and yours, and to quote from my experience as a probation officer." We all felt that she was great, in fact all our speakers were good and to the point. We had planned the field each was to cover and each of the many endorsing organizations were represented on the list of speakers. We had taken the enemy by surprise. Only the Secretary of the Farmers' Union appeared to speak against us and everything he said could be answered by every woman in our study groups. From all sides of me came whispers and notes telling me to say this or that in rebuttal. I had not expected to speak at all, but prompted by at least a dozen women, I made what was probably the best five- -78- minute speech of my life. We went back day after day to learn how the Committee had voted, but the number of our bill was not posted. At last I asked Senator Wilcox if he had not called the Committee to take action. He looked very serious and inquired if I really wanted the Committee to act, no matter how they might vote. Keeping a brave front I said, "After the splendid hearing, I am not afraid how your committee will vote." "Very well, I shall call a meeting this afternoon." In spite of my brave answer, my relief was intense when I learned the Committee had voted favorably. The next step was the vote in the Senate itself, but we believed we had exactly enough votes to carry. About six of us, all officers of the state League of Women Voters, occupied the visitor's seats behind the rail. All our senatorial friends were in their places. Then two of our pledged votes walked out of the room while other bills were being debated, but we expected them to come back before ours was called. The debated on ours was long, for every man wanted to speak to the question, not for the benefit of each other, but as an explanation to his constituents. I made notes of the speeches on the backs of envelopes until my paper gave out. Said a Bohemian farmer: "If this Amendment isn't aimed at the children on the farms then it's discrimination, and the farm child is going to support city children in idleness and that's not fair. I say let 'em all be treated alike, farm children and city children. Let 'em all work or let 'em all spend their time riding round in -79- automobiles, like most of them are doing anyway, and let their poor old fathers and mothers work to pay their fines. That's what I say and I am agin this amendment." A callow young lawyer, who seemed to be the leader of the opposition, made what I am sure he termed a powerful speech. He said as an introduction: "I am the youngest Senator here and for that reason perhaps I remember my own youth more clearly. I have always been thankful that I had to help my widowed mother from earliest boyhood and have had to work for all my opportunities. At the cradle of my new-born infant son, I swore I would always protect him in his sacred right -- the privilege to work." A kindly old Senator arose to reply, and in a pleasant drawl he said: "I used to live neighbor to the Senator's widowed mother and we all thought she was pretty well fixed. She had a whole section of land and kept plenty of hired help, but then it is hard work for some boys to have to go to school. I guess that is what the Senator had in mind. I remember him well as a little fellow and his mother thought he helped her most when he kept out from under her feet." Senator Wilcox was one of the last to speak. He had taken no part in the debate, but when his name was reached in the roll call he said he wished to explain his vote. He said he knew that the women would keep working on this matter until Nebraska had ratified and he wished to release their energies so they might work to stop the smoking of cigarettes by young women at the State University, -80- so he would vote "Aye". We had not dared count on his vote and we then felt confident of success, but the two senators who had gone out of the room had not returned, even when their names were called for the second time, and the ratification was declared lost by one vote. We moved from the visitor's seats into the hall where we could mourn openly. One young woman was in tears; she had worked hard and earnestly and had been optimistic up to the end. Senator Wilcox came out to join us, wanting our congratulations for his own favorable stand. When he saw the tears, he looked amazed. "My dear young lady," he said. "Don't take politics like that, I promise you will win easily two years from now." "But two years makes such a difference in the life of a child," she answered. There was another young woman with us who took the Senator's arm and said sweetly, "I think it is only fair to tell you that I smoke myself, and I won't help you at the University." At the moment I would have enjoyed annihilating her, but Senator Wilcox evidently liked it, for he was our most helpful ally and friend two years later. I feel sure the sight of genuine, honest emotion had its effect on him. As soon as our bill was disposed of, the two absent senators reappeared. I waited to speak to them. One excused himself by saying he had gone to get shaved. "Was it necessary at that particular moment?" I asked. "Oh well, if you must know, when Senator B voted for my old -81- age pension bill, I had to promise him not to vote for this bill. There is no use being shocked; that is the only way legislation is put through." The other senator eluded me for several days, but at least I caught him. "To tell you the truth," he said, "it was my wife who wrote you that I would vote for your measure. I did not want to vote against it on her account, so I left the room." As a result of our experiences in the 1927 legislature, our campaign for the 1929 session was better planned. We polled the votes very carefully at the beginning of the session and, with a State map before us, we selected enough men to convert to make a safe majority from districts within a day's trip of Lincoln. Then we began to bombard their constituents, with meetings, petitions, publicity and newspaper accounts, putting marked copies on the desks of their legislators. We spoke at every kind of meeting and under every sort of circumstance. I remember with exhaustion sitting up all night in a small town hotel because the bed was not fit to get into, and then making three speeches the following day, driving myself from town to town. I sat through many Rotary, Kiwanis, Lions and Chamber of Commerce luncheons, waiting for my turn to speak for five minutes. Sometimes the programs which preceded were interesting, but more often they could be classified only as relaxing. There was one in which the men spent the time guessing the number of children in the County schools. The man guessing the nearest correct number received pennies to the exact number as a prize. -82- At one of these luncheons in Lincoln I was seated next to a man whose name I had failed to catch. We were speaking of the vast number of trivial bills introduced at every legislature and I said cheerfully, "Have you seen the bill which says that the two front feet of the crow must be presented to the country clerk in order to collect the bounty?" "Yes," he replied, "I introduced it." I became so accustomed to these luncheons that they ceased to excite me very much, so when I was called by telephone one rainy Saturday and asked to address a group that noon, I went without taking time to dress up for it or prepare anything new to say. The name of the group was new to me, but I supposed the members would be much the same type of men as in the regular luncheon clubs. But to my horror I found myself in the company of only Justices of the Supreme Court, a few lawyers of the greatest distinction, and some professors of political science. These were the men to whom I was to speak on the subject of amending the constitution! To my surprise I found them the easiest audience I had ever talked to. They laughed at all my jokes and applauded my points and, what was even more helpful, they suggested additional ones to use in future talks. We were asked to speak at missionary society meetings and adult Bible classes, and twice I was given the sermon time at regular church services. The text was obvious: "Money is the root of all evil." As I was bringing my sermon to a close at one of the country churches I said I was sorry that convention probably would -83- not permit the congregation to ask questions, but in such a short talk I had certainly left much unsold and unexplained. At that a bearded farmer in the second row rose and announced that it would be impossible to make a law protecting children from factory work which would not also keep them from farm work. I read him the text of the two national laws which had prohibited child labor and pointed out that they had not affected farm children. I also explained that these laws had been declared unconstitutional which made an amendment to the constitution necessary. He next argued that children were better off working. That was always the most difficult argument to meet because few of our farmers had the imagination or experience to picture industrial conditions in the cities. They, themselves, had worked since they were little fellows and they believed we were trying to make the coming generation soft. Fortunately I did not have to answer this time. A middle-aged man in poor clothes arose at the back of the church and told his own story. All his boyhood he had worked in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. After he was married and his first son was born, he had walked most of the way from there to Nebraska so that his children would have a better childhood. It was falteringly told -- I imagine his first speech in public -- but more effective on that account. We divided the wives of the legislators among hostesses in Lincoln, who agreed to make friends with the and to talk about the Child Labor Amendment. I remember a farmer member, a Swiss who spoke with a strong German accent, who was won to our cause by a good home-cooked dinner and a book of pictures of the Swiss Alps. -84- He told us the story of his first years in Nebraska. He had settled in the western part, far from markets, and were desperately poor. They owned their farm and a few cows, but there was no one to whom they could sell milk. They made the milk into cheeses and stored them. When their last cent was spent they borrowed five dollars from a friend, almost as poor as themselves, and bought one ticket to Denver. The wife -- because she spoke better English -- and the baby took the night train, with the cheeses packed in a little trunk they had brought with them from Switzerland. In the morning she hired a wagon with the little change she had left from the five dollars and started out to sell her cheeses from door to door. She was doing very well when she was arrested for peddling without a license, but when she told her story to the police magistrate he let her go without even a fine. She returned home with quite a sum of money, and with established markets to which they continued to ship their cheeses. They prospered from that time on; their two daughters had had University educations and were holding fine positions. Yes, he believed that all children should have a chance at as much schooling as they could take, the same as his own girls. Some wouldn't amount to much anyway, but all should be given a chance. Some of our friends of the 1927 session became as excited as we were and worked almost as hard to make converts for us. One of these legislators, in great secrecy, gave us a list and told us to get a certain state officer "to talk to these fellows. They'll do as he says." We realized, although the words had not been mentioned, that we had probably been given the list of the Ku Klux Klan in the legislature and the state officer was the head of the organization. -85- We did not approve of the Klan, which was strong in Nebraska during this period, and debated if we should ask and accept help from it. We decided that since we had not been told in so many words that it was the Klan organization, we would call on the State officer. After all, as citizens, we had a right to do that, but I remember now with amusement how secretly we visited his office, waiting until the corridor was empty before opening his door. It was easier to talk to members of the legislature away from the atmosphere of the Capitol and members of the League board invited a few of the less shy ones to lunch with us at the most exclusive club in Lincoln. One of these was a young lawyer, a Senator from Omaha, listed as opposed. We fed him as well and talked to him as earnestly as we knew how. He had been elected form a district in which most of his active constituents were certainly against ratification, and all through the interview he gave us their arguments. It was not until we were leaving the dining room that he said, to our astonishment, that he knew it would spoil his future political chances, but he would vote for the amendment. Things looked so hopeful to us that when we met in groups to compare notes, we would say to one another, "It could be done." We used the radio whenever we were offered the chance, but we did not have the money to pay for the time ourselves. One of the strangest impressions I have of that year is speaking from the Clay County Station at the incubator factory. I had not expected to speak and had no manuscript from which to read. I had to sit at the microphone and talk to an invisible audience while seeing, through the glass partitions, the High School orchestra which was -86- was to follow me on the air and listen to them strumming their instruments. At the same time I could see and hear the baby chick in the brooders on the other side of me. My own voice came back to me from the loud speaker an instant later, sounding like an echo. The vote on the amendment in the Senate was called for a Friday afternoon. It is the custom in the Nebraska Legislature to adjourn from Friday evening until Monday morning, but many of the members would leave at noon on Friday. We saw that we did not have friends enough left to carry the amendment so one of the members asked for a postponement until Monday afternoon. Several bills were scheduled for consideration ahead of ours on Monday, but I had gone early to the Senate Chamber to catch each man for a final check as he came in after lunch. One of the men who had promised to vote for ratification said he had changed his mind. I knew we had few votes to spare. The harder we worked for ratification the more active had grown the opposition. The secretary of the Farmers' Union was checking his men as I was doing mine. One of the best known attorneys in the state, whom we suspected of being retained by the manufacturers to oppose ratification, was busy in the corridor. When the session opened there were so many absent that postponement was asked for all the bills in advance of ours, but as ours had been postponed once it had to be considered then. My heart sank for, as I checked my list, I saw that we did not have enough present to carry. I had no friends with me in the visitor's gallery as no one had expected the bill to be brought up so early. A strange woman -87- was in the seat next to me who had come there in the interest of a bill to be considered after ours, to establish a State bird or flower or something of equal importance. It was the first legislative session she had ever attended and she would ask me in whispers to explain the procedure. She said she hoped my bill would not take long as she had an engagement. She wanted to know what the Child Labor Amendment was about; she had never heard about it. (And I had thought that we of the League had talked to every man and woman in the State of Nebraska about it!) I could not bear to be near her any longer and changed my seat; but the move placed me where I could not even catch the eye of the Senator in charge of our bill, and my heart beat so loud I could scarcely hear the speeches. The Senator had been provided with a list of the men who had promised to vote favorably and he too saw that several were absent. He demanded a "Call of the House," which was sustained. A "Call of the House" means that until every man is in his place, all business is suspended. The Sergeant-at-Arms must round up the members no matter where they may be. He closes and locks the doors so that no one already present may escape. All the absentees were discovered in the Capitol Building except our young lawyer from Omaha, and on his vote depended whether we won or lost. It came to my mind that he was trying to avoid the vote as the two Senators had at the 1927 session. We had not felt too sure of him and undoubtedly the pressure in Omaha over the weekend had been against us. The Sergeant-at-Arms reported after telephoning that he had left Omaha by car to drive to Lincoln. We sat locked in the Senate Chamber doing nothing. Several unsuccessful attempts were made to -88- raise the "Call" as the time dragged on. As a registered lobbyist, I was not permitted to speak to the members while the Senate was officially in session. Three quarters of an hour or more passed and then the Sergeant-at-Arms ushered in the young Senator. He walked very deliberately to his desk. "How do you vote on Senate File 470? called the clerk. He took out his file of bills and began looking it up. Someone across the room called, quite out of order, "It's the Child Labor Amendment." "Oh yes," said the Senator. "I vote Aye." I breathed again, we had carried. It was a slim margin but enough. The "Call of the House" was lifted, the doors opened, and I rushed out to spread the news to the women who had been waiting as anxiously outside as I had on the in. As I came out I noticed the secretary of the Farmer's Union and the special attorney hurrying off together in the direction of the House. We had had a hearing before the House Committee, but it had taken no action. If the measure failed in the Senate they would not need to go on record. If the measure failed in the Senate they would not need to go on record. We had polled the Committee very carefully, however, and felt entirely confident of a favorable vote. We were aghast, therefore, to learn that the Committee had met very promptly after the action by the Senate, and had voted to kill our bill. A group of determined women met to decide what to do next. It was permissible to have a bill called up before the whole House by a two-thirds vote, if done within a short time after it had been -89- killed in Committee. We were not certain even of a majority in our favor, so we decided it was better to persuade the Committee to reconsider its action. No one had ever heard of a legislative committee doing such a thing, but we could find no rule against it. Never, I think, have a group of men been waited upon by a more serious, determined body of women. We went to every member of the Committee. The traitors to our cause, looking very sheepish, explained that they had expected to vote favorably, but just as they were on their way to the Committee meeting the Farmer's Union lobbyist told them something which we women were supposed to have said detrimental to their judgment or character. We convinced them it was false, and said we had held them in the highest esteem until they had failed to keep their pledges. The Chairman of the Committee called it to meet at his desk at the close of the morning legislative session. The men were tired and hungry, and none too pleased to take back their action, but we women made an enclosing circle about them. They voted to reconsider, so the vote was changed from negative to affirmative. The parliamentarians among our friends saw no objection to the action of the Committee, but we had failed to appraise properly the power of the Speaker of the House. We had known from the start that he was opposed to ratification, and had interviewed and fed him, hoping he would change his heart, but he was a young Legionnaire feeling his oats and not the age or type to have his mind altered by women. He had a loud, resounding voice, excellent for presiding in a room with poor acoustics. His district was in the sugar-beet section of the state, -90- where children were used profitably to thin and weed, top and harvest beets. They were taken from school in April and not returned until Thanksgiving. The sugar companies shrewdly avoided state laws by taking Nebraska children to Colorado and bringing Colorado children to Nebraska. Any agitation against child labor made the sugar companies nervous and their representatives in the legislature were vigorous in their assertations that the trouble with the country was that children did not work enough. Consequently, when the Chairman of the Committee asked to have our bill put back "on General File," the Speaker ruled his motion out of order. There was objection to the ruling, followed by heated debate on both sides. Even those who opposed ratification argued that there was too much interest throughout the state to have the bill killed in committee. A majority voted to overrule the Speaker, but the Speaker again ruled that it took a two- thirds vote to carry the motion, so the motion was lost. We were defeated. There still remained a day in which the bill could be called up by members on the floor, but that too required a two-thirds vote. We consulted one of the leaders of the House, a young man who had served in three sessions and was politically ambitious. The Child Labor Amendment meant nothing to him personally and he would vote for or against it as he thought his vote would affect his future career. In the League of Women Voters he saw one of the most influential groups lobbying at the Capitol, and he said he wished to serve it. He tried to bargain with us by offering to introduce the motion to call up the Amendment from the floor and trying to swing -91- votes to carry it, provided we would support him in his next campaign. But the League of Women Voters does not endorse candidates. We could not even promise to prevent a woman from running against him. We had nothing to offer him for services rendered. We knew that without pressure, which we could not apply without some trading of votes, no miracle could give us the necessary two-thirds of the House. Disappointed and exhausted we retired from the field. To keep up our courage we talked about two years hence, but we knew the time was passing rapidly by in which it could be considered a reasonable period for the ratification of a Federal Amendment. By that time I had taken up my legal residence in New Mexico. Although the Child Labor Amendment was never ratified by the States, the provisions in it were incorporated into federal legislation and the constitutionality of these laws have not been questioned. Chapter VIII Practical Politics My first essay into practical politics was as delegate to our County Convention when I was still living in Hastings, Nebraska. I filed as a candidate and to my own, and I think everyone's surprise I was elected, defeating Phil Yaeger. He had been the representative from our ward and also County Chairman for as far back as memory could reach. In ordinary life he was an honest, likable sort of man, a baker. His lunchroom, which was run in connection with his bakery, was jokingly called the Millionaire's Club, for all the -92- business men of Hastings met there at noon and discussed all their world affairs, while consuming their pie and excellent coffee, dipping their spoons in the common sugar bowl. Phil, in shirt sleeves and a big white apron over his great rotundity, sat at the head of the board and expressed his opinions freely out of one side of his mouth, the other being engaged by a large, unlighted cigar. I was informed that he spoke very freely when he learned of my election. I liked Phil, but he was a politician of the old school which opposed any innovations. He had been an ardent anti-suffragist of the "woman's-place-is-in-the-home" type, and he believed a political worker should be rewarded in some tangible way, such as getting a postmastership for his son or what-not. It was the rule that a County Chairman held office until his successor was duly elected and qualified, so Phil attended our convention and called it to order. I had taken the precaution, as I thought, to find out who was being considered for the new county chairman to succeed Phil. I was told it was Harry Russell, a fine, progressive young man to whom the whole community pointed with pride and satisfaction. He had been born and educated in the county, but he had the appearance and manner of an Eastern capitalist. I was delighted that such a fine, disinterested man was taking up politics. When I took my seat at the Convention I looked around for Harry to tell him so, but he was not present. I learned later that he had been taken off duck-shooting. However, he was nominated and elected for County Chairman, but since he was not present, Phil continued to preside throughout the meeting. The next day I heard -93- that Harry had declined to serve when notified of his election, which left Phil Yaeger in his old position as County Chairman. My informant added that in the excitement over what he termed his victory over me, he lighted and smoked his cigar to a finish. My next experience in the political field was on the invitation of Governor Adam McMullen of Nebraska. I was to be a candidate on the Norris ticket as a delegate-at-large to the Republican National Convention, which met in Kansas City in June, 1928. Senator George W. Norris was a candidate for the nomination for President. There was no man in politics whom I admired more sincerely or would rather have rewarded with a vote of appreciation. No one supposed there was a chance of his actual nomination, for he had never played the game with any political machine, either State or National. Before accepting the invitation I asked what being on the Norris ticket implied. I was told that the delegates on this ticket would vote for Norris on the first ballot and until released; then the other delegates intended to vote for Lowden and then for Dawes, Dawes being the man they actually wished to nominate. I was assured that after a courtesy vote to Norris I was then free to vote for whom I pleased. I have never understood why I was asked to go on the ticket except perhaps it was because the Democrats were nominating a woman and it seemed wise to offer a sop to the feminist Republicans. Nebraska had a preferential primary, and at the same time elected delegates to the two national conventions. At this particular election George W. Norris received an overwhelming -94- popular Republican vote for president, but with absurd inconsistency, more than half of the elected delegates were pledged to other candidates. The contest over delegates waxed strong before the elections. When the results were announced the newspapers stated that the one and only woman candidate had been defeated. It was not for some weeks later, when the official count was taken, that I learned I had been elected. Although there were men candidates who had received fewer votes than I, my name was invariably placed last on the list by the state newspapers, although the lists were ordinarily printed in the order of the popular vote. As soon as my election was conceded I wrote the Republican State Chairman that I wished a room reserved for me at the Nebraska headquarters in Kansas City. In the course of time I received a form letter giving the name of the hotel to which the Nebraska delegation had been assigned. The letter also stated the Chairman's regret that the City would be so full it would be necessary for the delegates to share not only rooms, but beds. I was not really alarmed, for I knew those men would be as much afraid of improprieties as I. On my arrival in Kansas City I went straight to the hotel with no misgivings, but perhaps the other delegates did not have the same confidence, for I found myself the only Nebraskan at the Nebraska headquarters. I had never before attended a national political convention and I felt a thrill of excitement as I arrived at the Kansas City station, decorated, crowded, a band playing. "Is the crowd waiting for something special to happen?" I -95- asked my Negro porter. "Yes'm," he replied, "Secretary Mellon is expected. He is the Secretary of the Treasury and now he is coming from Pittsburgh. The nomination is going the way he says." I fought my way through the crowd to the station lunch counter. I took a seat on a high stool next to a well dressed middle- aged woman. "Do you know what is going on here that there is such a big crowd?" she asked me. "It is the Republican National Convention," I answered. "Is that so? Is that where they elect a President?" And women had been voting for eight years, I thought despairingly! The next day Governor McMullen called on me at the Nebraska Headquarters to tell me there would be a meeting of the State Delegation that afternoon, and before it the Norris group would caucus. "I'll send for you when we are ready. The room will be full of tobacco smoke and not very comfortable. You won't want to wait there before our meeting really begins." When I was sent for I saw at a glance that the real caucus had been held and that I was called merely as a matter of form, or to be instructed. The Norris group saw that they were likely to be out-voted by the other group at the State meeting, but there were one or two uncertain votes which might change things. Since the numbers in the faction were so nearly equal and the Governor of the State was with the Norris group, it was felt that concessions might be made to it if properly managed. I was instructed to -96- nominate the Governor for Temporary Chairman of the meeting, and we were to get him elected as our representative on the Credentials Committee if it could be worked. We went into the full State meeting in a parlor of the Nebraska Headquarters hotel. Newspapermen were excluded, but could watch the proceedings through the glass doors into the parlor. According to instructions I nominated the Governor for Temporary Chairman, and it was agreed to by all. Then I was nominated for Secretary. Men love to honor women with positions of no importance but with work attached. The Governor took the Chair and called for nominations for permanent Chairman of the Delegation. It was customary to make the temporary Chairman the permanent Chairman, but it was not so in this meeting. The other faction had its candidate picked, put him up, and elected him. Next in order was the selection of members for Convention committees. The Governor made a speech about sharing the positions between the two groups, but a motion was made by the other side and carried to nominate by ballot. The first ballot was for the Credentials Committee. The vote was a tie between Governor McMullen and a member of the other group, Governor McMullen spoke again about dividing the honors and since he was not heading the Delegation, this position could be given to him. There was some discussion and the Governor spoke again with some heat. He said he would admit he wanted the position in order to vote against seating Hoover delegates, and that we might as well have a show-down as to how Nebraska was going to go. My sense of justice and fair play was incensed and I rose in -97- the meeting to say that if the Governor wanted the position for that purpose, I wished to withdraw the ballot I had cast for him. I thought it was the job of the Credentials Committee to examine into the merits of contests in order to determine the will of the voters, not to decide cases according to the pleasure of the committee. There was a pause, during which I felt both embarrassed and futile. Someone said I could not withdraw a ballot after it had been cast, and no matter for which side I might vote I would still be voting for a man who would act from the same motives. "Then I shall not vote at all," said I. Since there had been a tie, it was necessary to ballot over again and I did not vote, but the Governor was defeated for the position by two votes. When the newspaper men were admitted they surrounded me. "What did you say that made the men look so astonished? It would be a good story. Tell us." "I won't unless Governor McMullen will," was my reply. "You were kept out of the room so we were free to say what we pleased." During the middle of that night I was awakened by the telephone. A newspaper had got the story from one of the delegates and wanted me to confirm it so that he could wire his paper that the only lady delegate had "sassed" the Governor. That Herbert Hoover was to be nominated was a foregone conclusion from the first day of the convention; all other nominating speeches were perfunctory. Senator Norris was nominated by a delegate from Wisconsin and seconded by a Nebraskan. I felt that much -98- more should have been said about him -- he had never distributed patronage or free seeds, that he never campaigned in his own behalf and yet had received at the election the highest popular vote of any candidate in the state, and without the help of any political machine. The Republican Organization in Nebraska would rather see a Democrat elected than George W. Norris. Such obvious characteristics as his courage and integrity were spoken of, but not his hollow-eyed weariness as he battled almost alone in defense of the common people against protected privilege. At the conclusion of nominating speeches the supporting delegates arise, making as much demonstration as possible. After Norris's name had been put in nomination the Wisconsin Delegation rose to a man, and some from the Dakotas. I looked for a single person from the Morris half of the Nebraska delegation, and to a man they tried to look unconscious . "Is no one going to get up!" I cried indignantly, but I got no response from the men who had used the power of Norris's name with the electors in Nebraska that they might be sent to the Convention. Now they were unwilling to give him so much as a handclap. Alone I arose, the only representative on our side of the great auditorium. The other Norris delegates tried to look as though they did not see me. It was former Governor McKelvie of the other Nebraska faction who said, "I am sorry I could not stand with you, but I am glad you had the courage to do it." I could have done no less for Senator Norris, who had probably done more effective work for the measures in which women were interested -99- than any other man in the United States Senate. There was a short welfare program which the League of Women Voters wished included in the Republican platform, and I was more interested in being appointed to the Platform Committee then to any other. It was an appointment that was of least concern to either of the Nebraska factions, but the men were not willing to concede even this least desirable position to a woman. However, the man who was appointed arranged a meeting for me with Senator Reed Smoot, Chairman of the Platform Committee. Senator Smoot received me in a doorway, one foot in, one foot out, sorting over a lot of papers as he listened to me with half an ear. "No need putting those things in our platform," he said. "Republicans do them anyway." This struck me as an open confession of how little value the experienced politician sets on party platforms. The following autumn, a month or so after the election, I was asked to analyze the Republican National Platform before a group of men and women in Nebraska. I was an Santa Fe, New Mexico, when I received the letter and went at once to the Republican State Headquarters to obtain a copy for study. There was none to be had, but New Mexico is different, I thought; I can get a copy in Denver on my way through. I went to the Colorado State Republican Headquarters and asked the young woman in charge for a copy of the National Platform. She looked at me in bewilderment and said she would make inquiries. An efficient-looking man emerged from an inner office to ask personally what I wanted. I explained my errand. He at least knew what -100- I was talking about, but he said they did not have a copy in the office. As he held the door open for me to leave, he remarked meditatively, "I suppose that is really something we ought to have on hand, but this is the first call we have had for it." Eventually, from a member of the League of Women Voters, I secured a pamphlet with both the Democratic and Republican platforms printed in it. As it has been said, "the English stand, the Americana run on their platforms." Chapter IX My Early Days in New Mexico I thought my "promoting days" were over when I came to New Mexico, unless, during the early days, it could be called promoting to help toward keeping Indians as little demoralized as possible by their contacts with the white man, and to give the poor ignorant white man (of whom I was then one) some appreciation of the value of Indian culture and art. In the 1920's and 30's, New Mexico was a good place for a feminist to live, for in the states where Spanish common law prevailed, the wife had -- and still has -- joint property rights with her husband. The woman did not need to lose her name when she married -- Valentina Abeyta was still Valentina Abeyta -- but she added her husband's name, as "de Montoya", for the sake of identification. Their children could use either name or both, as "Tranquilino Abeyta" for -101- everyday use, and adding "y Montoya" for formal occasions. Descent among the Indians was then and still is in the female line. In the early days the husband came to live with the wife. The house and all that was in it was hers. She could, but seldom did, divorce her husband at will by the simple method of putting his extra moccasins and few belongings outside the door. The Indian woman led a healthy, busy life. She helped in the fields, plastered the house inside and out, kept the floors in order with fresh and goat's blood. She made the clothes -- all but the boots and moccasins -- did the cooking and, of course, bore innumerable children. But with all this she found time to dance and grind the corn ceremonially, to winnow the beans and wheat in a basket held over her head, to wash the wheat as she stood barelegged in the stream. She also made beautiful pottery and did accurate, handsome embroidery. One of the best Indian painters in those days was a woman, Tonita Pena, of Cochiti. In the midst of many babies only a year apart, she made exquisite watercolors of Indian ceremonials, pure in color, fine in composition and detail, full of rhythm and movement. Tonita once said, "The boys wonder at me, because I am a woman, that I can paint these pictures better than they can." Now there are other Indian women who are fine painters, but it was Tonita who led the way. We have since done what we could through example, even in the schools and missions, to spoil the beautiful life of the Indian Pueblo which they preserved through countless centuries. We have -102- taught the Indian the arts of competitive commercialism and that the measure of success is the dollar. Many have adopted the deforming leather shoe, the ugly hat, the coat trimmed with shoddy fur in place of the colorful shawl and moccasin. I remember vividly my first stay overnight in one of the Indian pueblos. I was visiting Mrs. Reebel, the white nurse employed by the New Mexico Association on Indian Affairs. She had just started on her early morning rounds to see her sickest patients. Life started at sunrise, but very quietly and gently, with no honking of auto horns or deliveries of milk. Not even roosters greet the dawn. Only the sun on the highest mountains, then on the red cliffs across the valley, and at last on the pinkish, tawny adobe of the houses and the blue smoke from all the low chimneys. I had slept on the porch and from there I could watch the village wake up. An Indian riding bareback was driving three horses before him. Another in loose gingham trousers, red moccasins and an embroidery-trimmed shirt had just gone to the corrals. Children were at the windmill getting water to fill the family ollas. Old women were sweeping the plaza with brooms made of twigs. The pace was leisurely, but there was a look of order about all that they did. Lupita, in her pretty pueblo costume topped by a Czechoslovakian- flowered shawl, arrived a few minutes later to get our breakfast. She did the housework for Mrs. Reebel. She was engaged to an Indian boy who had a job in Albuquerque and was to have a baby in a few months, but there was no scandal about it. The priest -103- would marry them on the annual Fiesta day and probably they were already married according to Indian rites. I asked her where she would rather live, in Albuquerque or the Pueblo? Instead of the usual answer, "I don't know," she said promptly, "In the Pueblo. By and by, Abileno, he will come back to stay." At the time of the Exhibition of Indian Tribal Arts in New York, a group of San Ildefonso Indians were taken there. A stranger, who was seeing and rejoicing in Indians for the first time said woefully, as they left Santa Fe, "It is a great mistake to take them to New York. It will make them dissatisfied with the pueblos. They will want to cut their hair and change their dress and become as drab as the white man." Someone else, who had lived for a longer time among them, turned to one of the Indians with red tape neatly braided in his hair, a bright silk handkerchief around his head, and red buckskin moccasins with silver buttons on his feet, and asked, "You have been in New York before, haven't you? Would you still rather live in the Pueblo than anywhere else?" "Yes, I would, " he replied. "And I been to New York and also I been to that place called Paris, France." He seemed rather bored. Another Indian was asked in New York how he liked that city. As sufficient answer he replied, "Have you ever seen Santa Fe?" As the events of my life in New Mexico turned out, my promoting activities were increased even more than before when I undertook the presidency of the New Mexico Association on Indian Affairs, which lasted for twenty years. But that is too long a story to be told here. Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.