Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/1130

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1054
HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

pay taxes and 10,000 of whom voted at the last elections, it has opened directly or indirectly Christian, educational and industrial instruction at forty-seven stations, or in as many tribes; has builded many Indian homes, starting civilized industries in these and in tribes, furnishing agricultural implements, sewing machines, looms, stock, etc., from a loan fund of $12,000. It has various other departments of help for red men — schools, libraries, temperance teaching, etc. — and has expended in all these (besides sending missionary boxes of supplies for the aged and helpless into seventy tribes) from $15,000 to $28,000 annually. It has now a House of Industries where women and girls are taught sewing, knitting, weaving, etc. Altogether forty-one buildings have been erected.

The Association has nearly 100 branches in between thirty and forty States and Territories and has several thousand members. Mrs. Amelia Stone Quinton was general secretary from the beginning for eight years, and has since been president continuously.

The National League of Women Workers was organized April 29, 1897, in the interest of working women and their clubs. It is intended that the League shall stand as a central bureau of information, offering counsel and help when sought, but not placing restrictions upon any club. It has issued various publications, a monthly magazine, The Club Worker, a collection of songs, one of practical talks, another of plays and of entertainments; also a pamphlet entitled How to Start a Club. It has made a collection of all publications issued by the various auxiliary State associations and clubs, which are distributed free of charge to members. Between 8,000 and 9,000 publications are annually sold and distributed. The secretary each year visits from fifty to one hundred clubs to acquaint them with the work of other similar organizations. The League has collected data relating to the management of lunch clubs, vacation houses and co-operative homes for working women.

It is made up of five associations, and includes 100 clubs in Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland, with a membership of over 8,000.

The National Christian League for the Promotion of Social Purity was organized in New York in October, 1885, and a national charter was obtained in 1889. Its object is to elevate opinion respecting the nature and claims of morality, with its equal obligation upon men and women, and to secure a practical recognition of its precepts on the part of the individual, the family and the nation; to organize the efforts of Christians in preventive, educational, reformatory and legislative effort in the interest of Social Purity. It uses every righteous means to free women and girls from financial dependence upon men, not only by seeking to raise the status of domestic service, but by teaching the advantages of self-support in every kind of legitimate business. During the past six years the League has secured employment directly for 3,300 applicants; it has supplied temporal and social benefits.to thousands of distressed women; furnished more than 5,000,000 pages of literature