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An invitation was accepted from Thomas W. Bicknell, one of the staunchest suffragists, to unite with the Citizens' Historical Association, of which he was president, in a joint celebration of the Declaration of Independence by Rhode Island on May 4, 1776, and the passage of the Presidential suffrage bill in April, 1917, and Miss Yates was chosen as speaker for the State association.
Ida Porter Boyer of Pennsylvania, Miss Laura Gregg of Kansas, Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford of Colorado. Miss Laughlin was already there. Added to the able Oregon workers a more efficient body of women never had charge of a suffrage campaign. Centrally located headquarters were at once opened in Portland, which soon became the Mecca for the suffragists from all over the State.
The members of this Conference were chosen by the Speaker, who was careful to give equal representation to suffragists and anti-suffragists. Sir John Simon and Sir Willoughby Dickinson, members of the Conference, were very active and skilful in organising the forces in our favour. The Conference was called into being in October, 1916, and began its sittings at once.
All of the prominent suffragists in the State were doing war work.... There was a depleted treasury. The Campaign Committee was not able to pay for any workers in the field. Money was needed for rent, postage, telegrams, stenographers' salaries, etc. It became necessary for Mrs. Shuler and the organizers, in addition to the detailed work of the campaign, to assume the financial burden as well.
Fortunately the suffragists, as distinct from the feminists, had a perfectly concrete objective, and a very simple one. What the vote symbolizes is not simple, as the ablest advocates and the ablest opponents knew. But the right to vote is a simple and familiar right.
There was apparently no difference between the two dominant parties on that score. Men who had always been pronounced suffragists weakly confessed themselves afraid to speak for woman suffrage in the campaign lest votes be lost for their party. Political campaigners who went into the state, with the exception of Senator Borah and Raymond Robins, were told not to mention suffrage, and they obeyed.
They see readily what, indeed, most outsiders have seen all along, that the failure of the numerical majority in certain Southern States to hold the power to which the law entitled them simply because they were unable or unwilling to fight, has a very important bearing on the fitness of women to participate in the practical work of government, and a well-known writer, "T. W. H.," in a late number of the Woman's Journal, endeavors to show that what has happened at the South is full of encouragement for the woman suffragists.
The Memphis and Nashville members were solid for it from the beginning with one exception Senator John M. Thompson, a violent "anti" from Nashville. Both suffragists and "antis" were invited to speak before the House Judiciary Committee and both accepted, but after two postponements through courtesy the "antis" did not put in an appearance and the suffragists alone were heard.
In Iowa the suffrage ballot was separate and yellow while the main ballots were white. In the North Dakota referendum the regular ballot was long and complicated and the suffrage ballot separate and small. It was easy to teach the dullest illiterate how to vote "No." It might be said that it would be equally easy to teach him to vote "Yes." True, but suffragists never bribe.
After Hannah's death in May 1877, Susan worked off her grief in Colorado, where the question of votes for women was being referred to the people of the state. The suffragists in Colorado were headed by Dr. Alida Avery, who had left her post as resident physician at the new woman's college, Vassar, to practice medicine in Denver. Making Dr.
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