Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/567

 first instalment came back in over 500 newspapers and 400,000 words. The papers gave 680,000 words to the story of the Woman's Committee of National Defense. These figures might be continued indefinitely. Plate matter was furnished to 500 papers in sixteen States in May, and the bulletins of facts, statistics and propaganda issued during the nine months would make a book of 25,000 words.

The report of Mrs. Geyer, a trained journalist, was equally valuable. A part of her work had been to organize a press committee in every State, arrange for the collection of news and put it in proper form for the bulletins, the plate service. the Woman Citizen or wherever it was needed and make a roster of the principal newspapers and their position on woman suffrage. She had managed in person the press work for the Maine campaign, the Mississippi Valley Conference in Columbus, O., and the present national convention.

Mrs. Boyd's painstaking, scholarly and efficient report on the service rendered by the Data department showed the vast amount of time and labor necessary to collect accurate data and how unreliable is much that exists. This was especially the case in regard to woman suffrage, which, when compiled from current sources and returned to the various States for verification, always required much correction. The report told of 350 letters sent to county clerks in the equal suffrage States for trustworthy information as to the proportion of women who voted, with most gratifying response. Many such investigations were made of women in office, laws relating to women, suffrage and labor legislation, women's war record, an infinite variety of subjects. Thousands of newspaper clippings were tabulated and a roomful of carefully labelled files testified to the unremitting work of the bureau. Twenty State libraries and some others were supplied during the year with the books issued by the National Suffrage Publishing Company and its pamphlets were widely distributed.

Miss Esther G. Ogden, president of the National Woman Suffrage Publishing Company, made an interesting report and showed how suffrage victories, the thing the company was working for, meant its financial loss, for as soon as a State had won the vote it ceased to order literature. The tremendous demands