Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/597

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Part Taken by Women in American History


Kansas City in February, 1892, and held in various other important cities of the state, and for these meetings she secured such speakers as Rev. Anna H. Shaw, Mrs. Clara H. Hoffman, etc.

Mrs. Cora Scott Pond Pope was invited by Mrs. Lucy Stone to help organize the state of Massachusetts for women suffrage, and continued the work, organizing eighty-seven women suffrage leagues, arranging lectures, speaking in the meeting, and raising the money to carry on the state work for six years. In 1887 she organized a Woman Suffrage Bazaar, which was held in the Music Hall in Boston for one week, and which cleared over six thousand dollars. In 1889 she originated the National Pageant, a dramatic arrangement of historic events, to raise more money for state work for suffrage. This pageant, given in Hollis Street Theatre, May 9, 1889, played to a crowded house, at two dollars a ticket, and over one thousand dollars was cleared at a single matinee performance. Afterwards it was produced in other large cities of the country with equal success. In the Chicago Auditorium, at the time of the Exposition, in one night six thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars was cleared.

Mrs. Lizzie B. Read dedicated her marked ability as a journalist to the suffrage cause, becoming publisher of a semi-monthly journal called the "Mayflower," and devoted to temperance and equal rights. She worked up for this paper a subscription list reaching into all the states and territories. Later, when her marriage to Dr. Read had taken her to Algeria, Iowa, she published the paper Upper Dcs Moines, into which she infused much of women's rights. She also published a series of articles on the status of women in the Methodist Church, and later became associate editor of the Women's Standard, of Des Moines. While residing in Indiana she was vice-president of the State Women's Suffrage Society and president of the Iowa State Society.