Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/407

 vada, was a graduate of the State University; had the degrees of A.B. and A.M. from Leland Stanford University and had been professor of history in the former. She had studied abroad and travelled widely but her whole interest had now centered in woman suffrage. Miss B. M. Wilson of Goldfield was elected vice-president and Mrs. Grace Bridges of Reno, secretary. Mrs. Stanislawsky had removed to California and the organization, with the long wait between Legislatures and no definite work, had but a small membership, no county organizations and no funds. It was obvious to Miss Martin and her associates that, judging by the experience of other States, the legislative vote of 1911 must be regarded as merely complimentary and the real battle must be fought in 1913. Miss Martin therefore began the campaign by organizing the State in 1912. She paid her Own expenses on speaking trips to every county for this purpose, also on journeys to California, to the Mississippi Valley Suffrage Conference at St. Louis in April and to the National Suffrage Convention in Philadelphia in November. Here she enlisted the interest and financial support of national and State leaders and an advisory board of influential women outside of Nevada was formed.

In February, 1913, her report made to the State suffrage convention in Reno showed that the Equal Franchise Society had been developed in one year into a State-wide body, with practically every county organized and a large number of auxiliary town societies, and with nearly one thousand paid-up members. There was a bank balance of several hundred dollars, from collections at meetings, monthly pledges of members and gifts from Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, Mrs. Joseph Fels, Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont, Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, Mrs. George Day (Conn.), and Connecticut and Massachusetts suffrage associations and other eastern supporters, and from suffrage leagues of California, Oregon, Arizona and Colorado. Reports also showed that a press bureau had been organized at State headquarters (principally Miss Martin and Mrs. Bridges) by which Nevada's forty-five newspapers, chiefly rural weeklies, were supplied regularly with a special suffrage news service; that every editor, all public libraries and railroad men's reading rooms, more than