two weeks. She was deluged with invitations for addresses, and spoke in Agricultural Hall of the exposition at the request of the Press Club, in Tulane Hall under the auspices of the city teachers, at the Girls' High School and in half-a-dozen other places. Everywhere she was most warmly welcomed and was favorably reported in the papers, although her doctrines were new and unpopular. Mrs. Eliza J. Nicholson, owner and manager of the Picayune, and Mrs. M. A. Field (Catharine Cole), of its editorial staff, gave pleasant manifestations of friendship. One of the addresses delivered by Miss Anthony was before the Woman's Club, which had been an outgrowth of the exposition committees. Mrs. May Wright Sewall of Indiana gave an address on this same occasion. While this club had by no means been formed in the interests of suffrage, it was a decided innovation and the first step out of tradition and conservatism.
The work of the women of Louisiana in the Anti-Lottery campaign of 1891 is entitled to special mention. The lottery, as the great money power, controlled absolutely the politics of the State, and the leading newspapers were a unit in its support. The reform movement to prevent the renewal of its charter was without money, prestige or the influence of the press. The women came nobly to the rescue of this apparently hopeless cause. They formed leagues for the collection of money, they called meetings, they assisted in every possible way to educate the public mind and awaken the public conscience. To them belongs a large share of the credit for the final overthrow at the polls of this octopus corporation, which was so long a reproach to the State.
In 1892 the Portia Club was formed, a strictly suffrage organization, with Mrs. Merrick as president.[1] Under its auspices the Association for the Advancement of Women held its annual congress in New Orleans in 1895, during which Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby of Washington, D. C., gave an address on The Philosophy of Woman Suffrage. At another time Mrs. Clara C. Hoffman of Missouri lectured for the club.
In January, 1895, Miss Anthony, president of the National Suffrage Association, accompanied by Mrs. Carrie Chapman
- ↑ Other presidents: Mrs. Elizabeth Lyle Saxon, Mrs. Evelyn W. Ordway, Miss Florence Huberwald, Mrs. Helen Behrens.
