Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/789

748 Miss Miller's fee in this case was less than nothing, her client being a poor negress, born a slave, but the suit established the right of so-styled "poor persons" to fight in court for their right against the rich. "It restored," says Miss Miller, "the rights of the poor to sue, a right of which the court had shamelessly deprived them."

She has always been very much interested in procuring suffrage for women, and has devoted more or less time to that purpose. For a short time in i8g6 she published a little suffrage paper in Chicago. For a number of years she was also connected with various women's clubs, but has dropped her membership in all save the Chicago Political Equality League. She is the organizer of Cook County for the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association, and has devoted considerable time to that work.

Through her acquaintance obtained in the suffrage work, she became interested in the Norwegian Danish Young Women's Christian Home, and is now vice-president of the executive committee which has this home in charge. The home was instituted for the purpose of furnishing Norwegian and Danish servant girls in Chicago a safe, clean, and attractive residence. There is also connected with it a free employment bureau, which investigates the applications for servant girls by employers and ascertains whether they are desirable and safe positions. By this means it is hoped to save numerous girls from white slavery, as they are frequently lured into dens through the employment agencies.

Miss Miller has spoken for suffrage in the automobile tours through Illinois, and at the parlor and hall meetings in the city of Chicago.

For many years the figure of Mrs. J. Ellen Horton Foster was a familiar one in Washington. Familiarity did not, however, dull the respect and honor which the women of the Capital felt for her. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, November 3, 1840, the daughter of Reverend Jotham Horton, a Methodist Minister. She was educated in Lima, New York, and subsequently moved with her parents to Clinton, Iowa, where in 1869 she became the wife of E. C. Foster, a lawyer. She studied law and was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court, of Iowa, in 1872, being the first woman to practice before that court. She followed the legal profession for years, at first practicing alone but subsequently forming a partnership with her husband.

Her fame as a lawyer in Iowa has been equaled by her work for temperance, the Methodist Church, Home and Foreign Missions, Philanthropy, Education, Patriotism and other great reforms. She joined the temperance workers with such ardor that when her home in Clinton, Iowa, was burned it was suspected that it was the work of enemies of the temperance cause.

As a member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union she has been able to give the most valuable service in the legislative department of that organization. Her legal knowledge enabled her to direct wisely the movements for constitutional amendments in many states, aimed to secure the prohibition of the