Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/596

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560
HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

Mrs. J. C. Cantrill (Ky.); Miss Esther G. Ogden (N.Y.); Mrs. George A. Piersol (Penn.). Mrs. Brooks, Mrs. Livermore and Miss Ogden were re-elected.

The afternoon session of Tuesday was devoted to suffrage war work, with Mrs. Katharine Dexter McCormick, chairman of the War Service Department, presiding. At the meeting of the Executive Council of the National Association in Washington, in February, 1917, just before the United States entered the war, it formed a number of committees in order that the suffragists throughout the country might do their especial work for it under the same generalship as they were accustomed to, and later chairmen of these committees were appointed to organize and superintend State branches. At the present session of the national convention these chairmen reported as follows: General Survey of War Program, Mrs. McCormick (N. Y.); Food Production, Miss Hilda Loines (N. Y.); Americanization, Mrs. Frederick P. Bagley (Mass.); Child Welfare, Mrs. Percy Pennybacker (Tex.); Industrial Protection of Women, Mrs. Gifford Pinchot (D. C.); Food Conservation, Mrs. Walter McNab Miller (Mo.); Oversea Hospitals Service, Mrs. Charles L. Tiffany (N. Y.), chairman, and Mrs. Raymond Brown (N. Y.) director general in France.

These reports are considered at length in Mrs. McCormick's chapter on War Work of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and they conclusively refuted the charge publicly made again and again by the National Anti-Suffrage Association through its official organ and on the platform that the suffragists were "slackers," unpatriotic, pro-German and concerned only in getting the franchise for themselves. This charge was frequently made by the editor of the paper and president of the association, Mrs. James W. Wadsworth, Jr., wife of the Republican U. S. Senator from New York, also a strong opponent of woman suffrage.

At the close of this very interesting session the convention enjoyed an automobile ride to see the beautiful city and its environs, tendered by the St. Louis Equal Suffrage League and under the auspices of Mrs. Philip B. Fouke. The "inquiry dinner" in the banquet room of the hotel in the evening, with Mrs.