Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/598

Rh Mrs. Marrilla M. Ricker's success at the bar and as a political writer has demonstrated so conclusively the intellectual quality of women that her advocacy of female suffrage has influenced as only a concrete object lesson can.

Mrs. Martha Parmelee Rose's writings on the sewing women and on other laboring questions brought to light the frauds and extortions practised upon her sex without the vote.

Mrs. Elizabeth Lyle Saxon, of New Orleans, has literally spent her lifetime carrying out a promise made to her father on his deathbed, "Never to cease working for unfortunate women so long as her life should last." For years she has been in demand as a lecturer on universal suffrage, temperance, social purity and kindred subjects. Her keen, logical and yet impassioned style of oratory fairly takes her audiences by storm, and has won for her a national reputation as a public speaker. Her great work, however, has always been for the most degraded and downtrodden of her sex.

Mrs. Rosa L. Segur, though born in Hesse, Germany, came to the United States when a child, and when quite young began contributing stories and sketches to the Toledo Blade, always expressing herself a staunch supporter of movements in favor of women's suffrage. To her belongs much of the credit for obtaining the repeal of obnoxious laws in regard to the status of women in the state of Ohio.

Mrs. Mary Barr Clay is the daughter of Cassius M. Clay, a noted advocate for freedom and the emancipation of the slave in a slave state. Through her sympathy with his views, his daughter gained the independence of thought and action necessary to espouse the cause of women's political and civic freedom in that same conservative community.

Mrs. Estelle Terrell Smith's famous "Mothers' Mass Meetings," held in the large city hall in Des Moines, have accomplished much good, especially in banishing from her city disrep-