Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/502

 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE The Women's Political Union, which under the name of the Equality League of Self -Supporting Women was formed in New York City in the autumn of 1906 by Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch, was an active force for many years. Its object was to bring to suffrage the strength of women engaged in wage-earn- ing occupations and under its aegis trade-union women first pleaded their cause before a legislative committee on Feb. 6, 1907. That spring the league held two suffrage mass meetings, the first for many years in Cooper Union, and the following year Carnegie Hall was for the first time invaded by woman suffrage with a meeting in honor of Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the English "militant" suffragists. The league sent over 300 women to Albany by special train on Feb. 19, 1908, to a hearing on a woman suffrage amendment. The same year it started open air meetings throughout the State. On election day in 1909 the Union distributed literature at the polls and five members tested the right of women to act as watchers. It made the innovation of interviewing candidates and pledging them to vote, if elected, for the submission of a suf- frage amendment to the electors. In 1910 the Union organized in New York the first suffrage foot parade of 400 women, and other larger ones afterwards. In September it began a vigorous campaign against Artemus Ward, Republican candidate for re-election to the Assembly in a banner Republican district in New York City, because of his hostility to the suffrage amendment. Pedestrians could not go a block in the district without hearing a soap box orator trying to defeat him. The night before election eighty-six out-door meet- ings were held. Although it could not defeat him his former majority of 2,276 was reduced to 190. In 1911 it engineered campaigns against Cuvillier in Manhattan and Carrew in Brook- lyn for the same reason, distributing over 100,000 pieces of literature in opposing the latter, who had an adverse majority of over 2,000. In 1911 the Union took 400 women to Albany and in 1912 the largest suffrage delegation which had ever gone there. They practically compelled consideration of the suffrage resolution and after its defeat campaigned against the enemies, ending the po-