Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/496

 480 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE parade took place in New York City. The signatures of 1,014,000 women citizens of the State, of voting age, asking for suffrage had been obtained. Those from up-State were pasted on huge cardboards and carried in the parade by delegations from the various counties. Those from the city were placed in 62 huge ballot boxes, one for each assembly district, with the number of them on the outside, and carried by the "captains" of the dis- tricts and their helpers. The largest registration of men voters in the State was 1,942,- ooo; there were nearly 100,000 more men than women of voting age and many more men than women were naturalized, therefore it was evident that 1,014,000 signatures represented a good ma- jority of women eligible to vote. This enormous piece of work was done almost entirely by volunteers. For many months women in every county went from door to door, preaching suf- frage, asking wives to talk to their husbands about it and leaving literature. The effect of this personal education was undoubtedly great and the petition influenced public opinion. The propaganda carried on by the Educational section under Mrs. Howard Mansfield was enormous, including training schools, travelling libraries and 8,000 sets of correspondence courses sent out. Women were trained in watchers' schools for work at the polls and 15,000 leaflets of instructions were furnished. Over 11,000,000 pieces of literature, 7 million posters and nearly 200,000 suffrage novelties were used, in addi- tion to the 5,000,000 pieces used in New York City. The Industrial Section, under Miss Mary E. Dreier, president of the Women's Trade Union League, made effective appeals to organized labor. A series of letters setting forth the conditions under which women work and their relation to the vote were distributed at factory doors as men left for home during the last fifteen weeks of the campaign. Organizers and speakers from their own ranks, men and women, spoke at trade union, meetings, in factories and on the street. The State Federation of Labor endorsed the work and the Women's Trade Union League gave constant help. The Church Section, under Miss Adella Potter, was very successful in its appeal with specially prepared literature and the churches were an active force.