Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/439

 on the editorial page. Among editors who were particularly strong friends were James Kerney and John E. Sines of the Trenton Evening Times; Joseph A. Dear and Julius Grunow of the Jersey City Journal; John L. Matthews of the Paterson Press Guardian; George M. Hart of the Passaic Daily News; the Boyds of the New Brunswick Home News; J. L. Clevenger of the Perth Amboy Evening News; William H. Fischer of the New Jersey Courier; George W. Swift of the Elizabeth Daily Journal and E. A. Bristor of the Passaic Herald.

Three weeks before the election President Wilson announced himself in favor of the amendment, and he and his private secretary, Joseph P. Tumulty, made a special trip to New Jersey to vote for it. This had a marked effect over the country.

The Legislative Committee having secured a bill allowing women to watch at the polls, watchers' schools were held in every important city under the direction of Mrs. Colvin, with the result that at the election 1,657 of the 1,891 polling places in the State were supplied with trained women watchers.

On election day Nugent and his lieutenants worked all day at the Newark polling places and the suffragists were positive that hundreds of voters were imported from New York and other places, which was possible because men could vote on the amendment without having previously registered. Nugent is reported to have said: "We knew we had the amendment beaten when the election was put on registration day." This was done against the protests of the suffragists. Men voted on it at the same time they registered and in the police canvass made before the general election, the names of several thousand illegally registered were taken off the books in Essex and Hudson counties, all of whom had a chance to vote on the amendment. All day in all the cities the women watchers saw little groups of men taken into saloons opposite the polling places by persons avowedly working to defeat it, instructed how to vote on it, marshalled to the polling place and after voting taken back to the saloon to be paid.

Finding at the last moment that no provision was made by the State to pay for sending in returns from special elections, the State association arranged with the Associated Press to obtain its own returns and a wire was run into the suffrage headquarters in