Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/438

 tion this committee without expressing on behalf of the officers of the association a most thorough appreciation of the service of its chairman, Mrs. Medill McCormick, who has not only given money generously to the work but has added what is more valuable still— steady, hard, personal labor, coupled with an indefatigable good humor, frequently under most trying circumstances

The new State associations formed and the many suffrage Organizations applying for affiliated or auxiliary membership were named and an account was given of the large sums of money, the vast amount of literature and the many workers supplied to the seven State campaigns of the year. These facts and the other activities of the association were related in part as follows:

Miss Harriet Grim of Wisconsin was sent by request to North Dakota to cover the series of Chautauqua meetings in June and July. Miss Katharine Devereux Blake of New York offered her services for only expenses for a month of campaign work in July. Hurried arrangements were made by telegram and as the promptest, most urgent pleas came from Montana, it won her, although later she did some work in North Dakota also. Miss Shaw's special fund was the backing which provided for both tours. Miss Blake made the wonderful record of obtaining from the collections at her meetings enough to cover all her travelling and living expenses. Miss Shaw's fund, which has often seemed like the miraculous pitcher, also provided part of the expense of sending Mrs. Jennie Wells Wentworth to Ohio and Mrs. Laura Gregg Cannon to Nevada. Miss Addams has contributed several weeks of campaigning and Dr. Shaw herself has made an itinerary, giving ten days to each of the campaign States, starting August 27 and ending with Election day.

Another noteworthy feature of the year's work was the establishment of Woman's Independence Day on the first Saturday of May, initiated by Mrs. McCormick and phenomenally successful. There was a wonderful response to the ringing call sent out by the National Board to all the suffragists of the country to meet together in every city and town at a given time and sing a suffrage hymn, declare their faith, pass a resolution and have a speech. A woman's version of the Declaration of Independence was prepared for the occasion and President Wilson was asked by Dr. Shaw to proclaim the day a legal holiday to be celebrated in recognition of the right and necessity that the women of the United States should become citizens in fact as well as in name. The President did not heed Dr. Shaw's request but the women of the country did. Not a State