Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/455

 high as 50,000 people a day were in attendance and the grounds were covered with our yellow banners. Every prize-winning animal, every racing sulky, automobile and motorcycle carried our pennants. Twenty thousand yellow badges were given away in one day. The squaws from the reservation did their native dances waving suffrage banners, and the snake charmer on the midway carried a Votes for Women pennant while an enormous serpent coiled around her body. I spoke during the fair four and five times a day and held street meetings downtown in the evening. When not thus engaged I assisted Mrs. Pyle and her committee in distributing thousands of pieces of literature and was amazed at the eagerness of the people to receive them. We investigated the fair grounds how much was thrown away and found almost none.

In North Dakota Mrs. Darrow had asked me to go into the untilled suffrage field. In many places they had never heard a suffrage address nor had a suffrage meeting ever been held. I zigzagged s from the southeast to the northwest corners and in Minot was arrested for making a street speech. There was no law that I could discover against my speaking in the street and I was convinced and am still that it was the result of the petty tyranny of town officials unfavorable to women. A fine of $5 imposed upon me by the justice of the peace was remitted by him. I spent twelve days in Montana, travelling about 2,000 miles, and found more general interest than in any other State. With 118,000 voters scattered over the third largest State in the Union, with many contending elements, with an acute labor situation, with the political control of the State vested very largely in one great corporation, there was plenty to occupy the attention of a suffragist worker. Miss Rankin's organization work had been carried to a high degree of efficiency by the most strenuous endeavor on her part. The Amalgamated Copper Company, striving to defeat the workmen's compensation act, had d hands with the liquor interests, working to defeat woman suffrage, and had put on the petticoat and bonnet of the organized female anti-suffragists. I spoke to thousands of people all over the and while on the surface all appeared well, there was an under of fierce opposition that could be felt but that can not be estimated until the votes are counted. [The State was carried by 3,714.]

Nevada was like a story in a book a big, little State, with 80,000 inhabitants 18,000 voters, and so thoroughly was it organized by Miss Martin that I believe she could address every voter by his first I felt like a fifth wheel. All the work appeared to be finished and hung aside to season by the time I arrived and I was in the unenviable petition of being I sandwiched between Dr. Shaw, who just preceded me and Miss Addams, who immediately followed me. I went over the desert, however, and into mines, and spoke in that wound up with a supper and a dance and came away with the certainty that Miss Martin had two or three thousand votes tucked away in her inside pocket, [The State was carried by 3,678.] On this trip I learned of hun-