Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/564

 as one of its various points of contact with the suffrage field. To inaugurate news and feature propaganda and information services that would be live wires of connection between 171 Madison Avenue and the State affiliations all over the country and the Capitol at Washington and the public press was the immediate prospect of the then Press departmentIts accumulated task included not only the conduct of its federal political campaign at Washington, not only its definite program of State propaganda and organization for constitutional amendment campaigns, it had on its hands as well the great "drive" for Presidential suffrage that had been initiated.

By spring Mrs. Catt's custodianship of the Leslie funds had been determined by court decision and plans that she had been mothering since 1915 could be put into execution. Those plans had for their central detail the founding of a bureau for the promotion of the woman suffrage cause through the education of the public to the point of seeing it as essential to democracy, and in March the Leslie Bureau of Suffrage Education was organized for that purpose. From the beginning the outstanding feature of the work was its size, and the outstanding need was to get it housed and departmentalized, with department heads and an adequate clerical staff. This done, the bureau, with a staff of twenty-four, swarmed out over the whole 15th floor, besides two small rooms on the 14th floor. It now includes six departments, counting the Magazine Department, which is an everlasting story by itself.

Miss Young told of merging the Woman's Journal, the Woman Voter and the National Suffrage News in the Woman Citizen, for which 2,000 subscriptions were taken at this convention. The report included those of Mrs. Harper, chairman of editorial correspondence; Mrs. Mary Sumner Boyd, of the research bureau; Miss Mary Ogden White, feature and general news department; Mrs. Rose Lawless Geyer, field press work. There was also a report of the Washington press bureau after the headquarters there were opened, at first in charge of Mrs, Gertrude C. Mosshart, afterwards of Miss Ethel M. Smith. The latter told of the unexcelled opportunities in that city for the distribution of news through the more than 200 special correspondents of the large newspapers and the bureaus of all the great press associations and syndicates. News had to be fresh and well written and 450 copies of each of her "stories" distributed. About half of them were sent to State press chairmen, presidents and others.

Mrs, Harper's work was almost wholly with editors. watching