Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/716

 7OO HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE Youmans. After 1914 it was published at Waukesha, before that at Brodhead, and was discontinued in 1917. Notable speakers from outside the State at conventions of the first decade were Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch, the Rev. Florence Buck, the Rev. Marion Murdock, Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby, Mrs. Belva A. Lockwood, Miss Jane Addams and Dr. Julia Holmes Smith. The association for some time supported a State organizer, the Rev. Alice Ball Loomis, and later Mrs. Emma Smith DeVoe for two seasons. In 1902 headquarters were established at Madison, the capital, in a little room in the State House, for the distribution of literature, and here was kept a register of men and women who believed in woman suffrage. In 1907 the Rev. Mrs. Brown prepared a bulletin for the legislators, giving the statistics of woman suffrage in the United States and other countries. In 1908 Mrs. Maud Wood Park came to Wisconsin and spoke to women students of five colleges, arrangements having been previously made by Mrs. Brown, who took part in some of the meetings, and College Women's Suffrage Leagues were organized. Mrs. Brown prepared a pamphlet, Why the Church Should Demand the Ballot for Women, which was widely distributed. Near the end of 1909 the State association was asked to circulate the national petition to Congress for the Federal Suffrage Amend- ment. Blanks were sent all over the State to schools, libraries and other public institutions and to individuals. The members took up the matter with enthusiasm and worked faithfully. The association did all that could be done in the six weeks allowed and about 18,000 names were signed, 5,000 of them in Racine. Mrs. Wentworth, over eighty years of age, canvassed portions of the city and obtained i ,000 names. During this whole decade resolutions and petitions were sent to Congress and at every session of the Legislature suffrage meas- ures were introduced. Mrs. Jessie M. Luther was chairman of the Legislative Committee during this period, an unrecognized and unpaid lobbyist, but by her skilful work, in which at times she was assisted by Mrs. Nellie Donaldson and others, she kept the Legislature in advance of the people of the State. In 1911 the Legislature submitted to the voters a statutory law giving full suffrage to women, as it had authority to do. Influ-