Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/540

 form had been adopted by the party convention and accepted by the party candidate.

Committee: Mrs. Medill McCormick was unable to continue as chairman of the Congressional Committee and the present chairman was appointed by the National Board in January, 1916, immediately went to Washington and lived there eight months, until the opening of this convention. During the entire term of this session of Congress this committee has had some representatives on duty at the Washington headquarters every moment. The service of each member has not been continuous but has varied from a week to three months in length. In addition to the chairman, the committee consisted of Mrs. Funk of Illinois; Miss Hay of New York; Mrs. Jacobs of Alabama; Mrs. Cotnam of Arkansas; Mrs. C. S. McClure of Michigan: Mrs. Valentine of Virginia; Miss Martha Norris of Ohio; Mrs. Elizabeth Higgins Sullivan of Nebraska and Miss Ruth White of Missouri.

Mrs. Funk resigned March 14 to take up other work and in July Miss White was appointed secretary and has done much special work. Because of the amount of travel involved only two meetings of the full committee have been held, on March 2 and September 4. Every plan for congressional work has been submitted to the National Board or to the national president for approval.

Revision of Work: At the beginning of the present year the work of the National Association was revised and departmentalized, the organization branch was separated from the congressional work. made a distinct department, placed under another head and operated from the New York office. This division was advisable, since each task is big enough by itself. The only disadvantage resulted from the distance between the bases of operation of the two departments—one of the paramount reasons for the removal of all the headquarters to WashingtonThe work of the committee in 1916 consisted of the supervision and direction of all activity connected with the Federal Amendment, including lobby work at the Capitol; the stimulating of congressional activity in the States; the cataloguing of information concerning Senators and Representatives; the assembling and filing of all information specifically relating to the Federal Amendment in Congress and in the States; the issuing of newspaper articles; the handling of the large correspondence.

Headquarters: The chairman had been on duty only a short time when the necessity for removing national headquarters to Washington was deeply impressed upon her—so deeply that she made a special trip to New York to labor with the national officers there to this end but was unsuccessful. The headquarters of the Congressional Committee at the opening of this session consisted of two rooms in the Munsey Building at Washington too diminutive to hold even our furniture, to say nothing of our workers. On February 19 it moved to two larger rooms in the same building.