Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/169

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ILLINOIS
155

State. She immediately telephoned to Mrs. Harriette Taylor Treadwell, president of the Chicago Political Equality League, to have letters and telegrams sent at once to Springfield and to have people communicate by telephone with the Speaker when he returned to Chicago for the week end. Mrs. Treadwell called upon the suffragists and thousands of letters and telegrams were sent. She also organized a telephone brigade by means of which he was called up every fifteen minutes by men as well as women, both at his home and his office, from early Saturday morning until late Monday night the days he spent in Chicago. She was assisted in this work by Mrs. James W. Morrisson, secretary of the Chicago Equal Suffrage Association; Mrs. George Bass, president of the Chicago Woman's Club; Mrs. Jean Wallace Butler, a well-known business woman; Mrs. Edward L. Stillman, an active suffragist in the Rogers Park Woman's Club; Miss Florence King, a prominent patent lawyer and president of the Chicago Woman's Association of Commerce; Miss Mary Miller, another Chicago lawyer and president of the Chicago Human Rights Association; Mrs. Charlotte Rhodus, president of the Woman Suffrage Party of Cook County and other influential women. Mrs. Trout telephoned Miss Margaret Dobyne, press chairman of the association, to send out the call for help over the State, which she did with the assistance of Miss Jennie F. W. Johnson, the treasurer, and Mrs. J. W. McGraw, the auditor.

A deluge of letters and telegrams from every section of Illinois awaited the Speaker when he arrived in Springfield Tuesday morning. He needed no further proof and announced that the bill would be called up for final action June 11. The women in charge of it immediately began to marshal their forces for the last struggle. Messages were sent to each friend of the measure in the House, urging him to be present without fail.[1] On the eventful morning there was much excitement at the Capitol. The "captains," previously requested to be on hand

  1. "Captains" had been appointed among the members and each furnished with a list and it was his duty to see that the men on it were in their seats whenever the bill Was up for discussion. The following Representatives served as "captains" and rendered important service: William F. Burres, Norman G. Flagg, Edward D. Shurtleff, Homer J. Tice and George H. Wilson, Republicans; John P. Devine, Frank Gillespie, William A. Hubbard, W. C. Kane. Charles L. Scott and Francis E. Williamson, Democrats; Roy D, Hunt, J. H. Jayne, Medill McCormick and Emil N. Zolla, Progressives; Seymour Stedman, Socialist.