Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/644

Rh charge well those duties. And it is my sincere hope that at its next session the legislature will make this office accessible to females."

One of the most influential local associations has been that of Chicago, or Cook county. From 1870 to 1876 Mrs. Jane Graham Jones was its president, as well as the leading spirit in the State Society. She was the one to plan and execute the attacks upon the board of education, the common council, and the legislature, holding many meetings in Chicago, and at Springfield, the seat of government. Another flourishing association is that of Moline. We give the following from its secretary:

In May, 1877, Mrs. Eunice G. Sayles, and Mrs. Julia Mills Dunn, secured Mrs. Stanton to give a lecture on woman suffrage in Moline, and at a reception given to her by Mrs. Sayles, a society with 22 members was organized, which has held meetings regularly since that time, with the reading of papers on topics previously arranged by the president. It is a matter of pride that not a failure has ever occurred, each member always cheerfully performing the duty assigned her. An evening reception is held annually to celebrate the organization of the society, to which two hundred or more guests are invited, each member being entitled to bring several outside of her own family. The meetings have been valuable, not only in promoting friendly relations between the members, but also in the mental stimulus they have afforded. Much of the success of this society is due to the literary culture and earnestness of Mrs, Anne M. J. Dow, who was our president for three years. We have sustained a great loss in the death of Mrs. Sarah D. Nourse, who for thirty-five years was an earnest friend of all reforms.

Soon after its organization, our society became auxiliary to the National Association, We have circulated petitions and forwarded them to Springfield and Washington, where they have met the fate common to all prayers of the disfranchised; we have circulated tracts, placed on file in the public reading room all the suffrage journals, and secured the best lecturers on the question. We are organizing an afternoon reading society, to have read aloud "The History of Woman Suffrage," and shall soon place it on the shelves of the public library of the village. While we cannot point to any wonderful revolution in public sentiment because of our work, we are nevertheless full of courage, and under the leadership of our State president, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, we shall go forward in faith and good works, hoping for the end of woman's political slavery.

In concluding this meager record of the methods of earnest men and women of Illinois in their brave work for liberty, we are painfully con-