Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/440

 Jersey City. By midnight complete returns were in from 70 per cent. of the State, due to the splendid cooperation of the county and local suffrage chairmen, who knew only one day in advance that this work would be required of them. A manager of the Associated Press said that they had never handled an election where the returns came in faster or more accurately and few where they came in as well.

The election resulted in a vote of 317,672, a very large one considering that the Presidential vote in 1912 had been only 459,000. The vote in favor of the suffrage amendment was 133,281, or 42 per cent. of the whole; against, 184,391, defeated by 51,110. Ocean county was the only one carried but 126 cities and towns were carried and a number of counties gave from 46 to 49 per cent. in favor.

Two weeks after their defeat several hundred New Jersey suffragists went to New York and Philadelphia to march in the suffrage parades, taking the biggest and best band in the State and carrying at the head of their division a runner twenty feet long reading: New Jersey—Delayed but not Defeated.

The State convention of 1915 was postponed until January, 1916, when it was held in Elizabeth. There were then 215 local branches with a membership of over 50,000. No discouragement was visible but a program of educational work and intensive organization was adopted, money was pledged for the salaries of three field organizers and it was decided to have a bill for Presidential suffrage introduced in the Legislature. Mrs. Ward D. Kerlin, second vice-president, was the only new officer elected. A new constitution was adopted putting the association on a non-dues-paying basis, providing for an annual budget and re-organization of the State by congressional districts.

In June New Jersey was represented at the National Republican convention in Chicago by Mrs. Feickert, Miss Esther G. Ogden, Mrs. E. G. Blaisdell, Miss A. E. Cameron and Mrs. Joseph Marvel. All of the New Jersey delegates were interviewed and twelve of the twenty-eight promised to support a suffrage plank in the platform.

In July the Women's Political Union disbanded and its local branches joined the State association. The national suffrage