Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/387

 vote cast at the last election, the signers coming from two-fifths of the counties. This meant 37,752 names from thirty-eight counties. Nebraska has ninety-three counties and an area of 77,520 square miles. Officers elected to serve throughout the campaign were: Henrietta I. (Mrs. Draper) Smith, president; Mrs. Kovanda, vice-president; Miss Williams, corresponding secretary; Miss Daisy Doane, recording secretary; Gertrude Law (Mrs. W. E.) Hardy, treasurer; Mrs. Grace M. Wheeler, first and Elizabeth J. (Mrs. Z. T.) Lindsey, second auditor; committee chairmen; Mrs. Wheeler, Education; Mrs. A. E. Sheldon, Finance; Mrs. Hardy, Publicity; Mrs. Edna M. Barkley, Speakers; Mrs. A. H. Dorris, Press.

Headquarters were opened Jan. 3, 1913, in the Brandeis Theater Building, Omaha, and maintained through the winter of 1912-13. Mrs. Draper Smith had at once assumed her duties as president and appointed Mrs. W. C. Sunderland chairman for the second congressional district, including Douglas, Sarpy and Washington counties. She had asked Mrs. Lindsey to be chairman of Douglas county in which Omaha is situated, who soon had ten precincts organized under capable chairmen, and a little later every ward in Omaha and South Omaha. On February 8 Dr. Shaw, the national president, arrived in Omaha for a conference with the workers. On Sunday afternoon she addressed a mass meeting in the Brandeis Theater at which there was not even standing room. John L. Kennedy presided. The committee of arrangements included the Rev. Frederick T. Rouse of the First Congregational Church; Judge Howard Kennedy, Superintendent of City Schools; E. U. Graff, City Attorney; John E. Rine, C. C. Belden and the officers of the suffrage association. A resolution was before the Legislature to submit an amendment to the voters but it was so evident that it would not be passed that the work for the initiative petition went on rapidly. The last of February thirty-six Omaha women and others from over the State went to Lincoln to see the vote taken in the House. The proposal was defeated, only one man from Douglas county voting for it.

In the early spring the headquarters were moved to Lincoln and the petition work for the State was managed from there,