Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/884

 868 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE wished to have a congress the next spring after the Armistice but there proved to be insurmountable obstacles. Toward the end of 1919 an invitation was accepted from the suffrage societies in Spain to come to Madrid in 1920. Preparations were under way when local opposition developed which made it necessary to aban- don the plan. Switzerland had already invited the congress and it gladly went to Geneva. fn the report of Mrs. Coit, the treasurer, she said : You will remember that at Budapest in 1913 a sum of about 2,000 pounds was raised, mostly by promises of yearly donations for the period of two years. This sum was to finance headquarters and the paper till we met in Berlin in 1915. In August, 1914, not even all the first instalments had been received, and from then on, owing to war conditions, it became impossible for some of our biggest donors to redeem their pledges. By the beginning of 1917 we found ourselves with an empty exchequer and facing the possi- bility of closing down our work. It was then that help came from our auxiliary in the United States. Mrs. Catt, with the help of her many devoted friends, raised a sum of $4,333, which was placed at our disposal and has enabled the Alliance to keep going. When speaking of the United States' help I wish to make special mention of the splendid work for the Alliance by Miss Clara M. Hyde, private secretary for Mrs. Catt. To her incessant interest and energy it is due that the number of honorary associates in the U. S. A. now is at least three times as high as in any other country; also she has quite trebled the number of subscribers to the Interna- tional News in the States. Her devoted work is an example of what can be done by a single national auxiliary to further the de- velopment of the Alliance, and I recommend her example for uni- versal imitation. The United States Auxiliary continued to add to the above sum and from May, 1916, to May, 1920, it sent in membership dues, subscriptions to the paper and donations $9,337. Mrs. Frank M. Roessing, president of the Pennsylvania Suffrage Association, was responsible for collecting over $5,000 of this amount. The money for the Congress in Geneva, about $3,500, was raised by a British committee of which Miss Rosamond Smith was chairman and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence treasurer. To this fund the United States, which had not suffered from the war to the extent of European countries, was a large contributor. At the close of the congress there were no funds on hand for the coming