CHAPTER XIII.
NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1913.
The Forty-fifth annual convention of the National American Suffrage Association met in Washington, November 29- December 5, 1913, in response to the Call of the Official Board.[1] The first day and evening were given to meetings of the board and committees, so that the convention really opened with a mass meeting in Columbia Theater Sunday afternoon at 3 o'clock and it was cordially welcomed by District Commissioner Newman. Dr. Shaw presided and a large and interested audience heard addresses by Miss Jane Addams, State Senator Helen Ring Robinson of Colorado, Miss Margaret Hinchey, a laundry worker, and Miss Rose Winslow, a stocking weaver of New York; Miss Mary Anderson, member of the executive board of the National Boot and Shoemakers' Union, and others. It was a comparatively new thing to have women wage-earners on the woman suffrage
- ↑ Call: For the forty-fifth time in its history the National American Woman Suffrage Association summons its members together in council. By thus assembling, one more united step toward the final emancipation of the women of this country is made practicable. . . . To the wise and courageous, to those not fearful of the changes demanded by the vital needs of growing humanity, this Call will have two meanings: first, it will speak of loyalty to work and to comrade workers; of large undertakings worthily begun and to be worthily finished; of the stimulus of difficulty; of joy in the exercise of talents and strength; of the self-control and ability required for cooperation.
Second, it will express — like other summons of women to women throughout the ages — the need not alone for counsel and comfort but also for the preservation of all they hold most high — for that to which they gladly give their lives. It will speak of the struggle for development which individual women have made; of the opportunities they have won for each other; of the unequivocal demand for the best, to which the few have led the many. . . .
To you who grasp the underlying meaning of this struggle; to you who know yourselves akin to those who have preceded and to those who will follow; to you who are daily making this ideal a reality, this Call is sent.
Anna Howard Shaw, President. Jane Addams, First Vice-President. Charlotte Anita Whitney, Second Vice-President. Mary Ware Dennett, Executive Secretary. Susan Walker Fitzgerald, Recording Secretary. Katharine Dexter McCormick, Treasurer. Harriet Burton Laidlaw, Auditors. Louse DeKoven Bowen,
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