Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/574

ciation had been so long and earnestly striving. This was done against the vigorous opposition of the Judiciary Committee, which for the past forty years had prevented the question of woman suffrage from coming before the House for a vote. At this time it reported the Federal Amendment "without recommendation" and tried to prevent its being referred to the new committee. The report of the corresponding secretary, Mrs. Nettie R. Shuler, for 1917, continued the story of the immense amount of work that had been done at and through the national headquarters, beginning immediately after the great impetus of the Atlantic City convention. A nation-wide campaign was instituted under the three heads set forth by Susan B. Anthony at the beginning of the movement Agitate, Educate, Organize. It was decided to center the effort even more than ever before on the Federal Amendment and a wide call was sent out for universal demonstrations in its favor, when a resolution for it would be adopted. Twenty-six States responded, New York leading with 101 such meetings. These were followed by visits to State political conventions to secure endorsements, which met with considerable success, and candidates for Congress were interviewed in most of the States. There was advertising in the street cars of Washington during the sessions of Congress. Carefully selected literature was distributed by the hundreds of thousands of copies to the clergy, the politicians, the business men, the rural population; no class was overlooked. Questionnaires were sent to the equal suffrage States for information which was compiled in pamphlets. The first experiment in "suffrage schools," which proved so successful that they were made a permanent feature of the work, was thus described:

It was the general of our suffrage army, Mrs. Catt, "the country's greatest expert in efficient suffrage methods," who first saw the need of suffrage schools and put them into effect in New York State. She knew the value of systematic training and realized that our failure many times had not alone been due to the fact that numbers of women would not work but that those who were willing were untrained and inefficient. It was at first proposed to charge for instruction in the schools but this plan had to be abandoned and the National Association assumed most of the financial obligation.