Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/572

 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE and sandwiches for the laborers and got in their propaganda. On Supplication Day, the last Sunday before election, ministers were asked to preach suffrage sermons. Mrs. Ruschenberger's Bell was the best and main publicity feature and undeniably secured many thousands of votes. It visited all the counties, traveling 3,935 miles on a special truck. Hundreds of appeals by as many speakers were made from this as a stand and it was received in the rural communities with almost as much reverence and cere- mony as would have been accorded the original bell. The collec- tions and the receipts from the sale of novelties moulded in the likeness of the bell helped materially to defray the heavy expense of operating the truck, paying the speakers' expenses and provid- ing literature. Space for the display of advertising cards was purchased in 5,748 street cars for August, September and October. Special suffrage editions of newspapers in all parts of the State, copy and cuts for which were prepared by the State Publicity Department, contributed considerably to propaganda and finance. Throughout the State the general lines of activity were the same meetings of all kinds, parades, hearings before organizations to secure endorse- ments, booths at county fairs, exhibitions, canvassing, circulariza- tion and auto tours. The degree of success in each locality depended upon the kind and amount of work. Millions of fliers, leaflets and booklets original to Pennsylvania were issued in English, Italian, German, Polish and Hebrew and no effort or expense was spared to secure converts through the written word. During the last month of the campaign the county organizations circularized their voters twice once with speeches of Representa- tives Mondell of Wyoming and Keating of Colorado in Congress and once with a personal letter written to the voter and signed by the county chairman or a suffragist in his own community. Four days before election 330,000 of these letters went to the voters. Although a bill for woman watchers at the polls failed to pass the Legislature and the suffragists were thus denied the protection which every political party is permitted, yet in many counties the assistance of the regularly appointed watchers was secured. The Washington party and Socialist watchers were universally help- ful and in many cases the Democratic and Republican watchers