Woman of the Century/Annie Le Porte Diggs

DIGGS, Mrs. Annie Le Porte, politician and journalist, born in London, Ontario, Can., 22nd Fcbuary, 1853. ANNIE LE PORTE DIGGS. She became the wife of A. S. Diggs, of Lawrence, RMS., in 1873 Their family consists of two daughters and one son. Mrs. Diggs traces her ancestry in a direct line to General John Stark, of Revolutionary fame. She has certainly inherited his fighting qualities. After her marriage she began her career in public as a journalist. She entered the tield to fight for political and personal independence and equality. She lectured before literary, reformatory and religious assemblages very successfully. In religion she is a radical Unitarian. When the Alliance movement among the western farmers began, she entered the tield and soon found herself at the front among those who were engineering that great industrial movement. During the political campaigns in Kansas and neighboring States she made many speeches. She was chosen by the People's Party to reply to the platform utterances of John J. Ingalls, to whose overthrow she contributed largely. She was elected national secretary of the National Citizens' Industrial Alliance, at the annual meeting of that organization in St. Louis, Mo., 22nd February, 1892. Mrs. Diggs is a clear, forcible writer, a strong, attractive orator, and a thinker and reasoner of unusual power. She has done considerable lecturing and preaching. In 1881 she addressed the annual convention of the Free Religious Association, in Boston, Mass., on " Liberalism in the West." She has for years been a member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Much of her journalistic work was done on the "Advocate," the organ of the Alliance, on which journal she served as the leading editorial writer. She has spent much time in Washington, D. C, since the upheaval caused by the Alliance, and has done notable work in correspondence for the Western newspapers. She is president of the Woman's Alliance of the District of Columbia.