Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/131

 In 1916 Miss Safford went for a month to assist the campaign in Iowa, to which the association sent $100, and the vice-president, Mrs. Frank Tracy, directed the State work. New leagues were formed, delegates to the national presidential conventions were interviewed and Florida women attended those in Chicago and St. Louis. Dr. Shaw was present at the State convention where 550 members were reported and the distribution of 750 packages of literature. A series of meetings was held in cooperation with the Congressional Committee of the National Association and work in the Legislature was done.

By 1918 a number of counties had been organized and the State convention, encouraged by the granting of Primary suffrage to women in Arkansas and Texas, decided to make this its legislative work for 1919, and plans were made to raise $5,000 through local conferences. A State organizer was put into the field and the National Association sent its recording secretary, Mrs. Halsey W. Wilson, a trained worker, to assist the State organization. In January, 1919, Dr. Shaw attended a conference at Orlando and $1,000 were raised; later at a conference in Tampa, $198 and at one in Miami and West Palm Beach $260. Miss Elizabeth Skinner was appointed State organizer and the National Association sent one of its most capable organizers, Mrs. Maria McMahon. The 38 county chairmen had obtained nearly 2,500 signatures to petitions to the Legislature and ar active campaign was undertaken for Primary suffrage.

In January, 1919, the National Association's Congressional Committee sent its secretary, Mrs. Minnie Fisher Cunningham of Arkansas, and its press secretary, Miss Marjorie Shuler of New York, to spend several weeks in a quiet campaign to influence U. S. Senator Park Trammell to cast his vote for the Federal Suffrage Amendment, this being considered useless in the case of Senator Duncan U. Fletcher. They secured newspaper comment in favor, interviews with prominent people and resolutions from conventions, but these had no effect. At the annual convention in October the following officers were elected: President, Mrs. John T. Fuller, Orlando; first vice-president, Mrs. Edgar A. Lewis, Fort Pierce; second, Miss Elizabeth Skinner, Dunedin; third, Dr. Minerva B. Cushman, St. Peters-