Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/1119

 ters of Temperance, in the face of extreme opposition on the part of both sexes. In the decade following commenced the agitation of the question of Woman Suffrage, and soon conventions in its interest began to be of frequent occurrence, to the joy of the newspapers, most of which treated them with ridicule and denunciation.

The decade ushered in by 1860 brought the long Civil War, during which, in the Sanitary Commission, the Woman's Loyal League, the Freedmen's Bureau and other associations, women displayed an unsuspected power of organization, and at its close their status in many ways was completely changed and greatly advanced.

In 1868 the country was electrified by the advent of Sorosis in New York City and the New England Woman's Club in Boston. These were the first societies formed by women purely for their own recreation and improvement — all others had been for the purpose of reforming the weak and sinful or assisting the needy and unfortunate — and they met with a storm of derision and protest from all parts of the country, which their founders courageously ignored. The last quarter of a century has witnessed so many organizations of women that it would be practically impossible to record even their names. Every village which is big enough for a church contains also a woman's club, and they exist in many country neighborhoods. In the larger cities single societies have from 500 to 1,000 members, and in a number handsome club houses have been built and furnished, some of them costing from $50,000 to $80,000.

From 1850 the annual conventions in the interest of Woman's Rights were called under the auspices of a Central Committee, but in 1869 the National and American Woman Suffrage Associations were formed. Five years later the Woman's Christian Temperance Union sprang into existence. There are now more than one hundred associations of women in the United States which are national in their form and aims, and a number have. become international through their alliance with those of other countries. In 1888, in Washington City, the National Council of Women, a heroic undertaking, was founded to gather these vast and diverse organizations into one great body. By 1900