and properly classified. Of the $100,000 appropriated to the use of the State Commission, the men assigned $10,000 to the women for their department, exercising no supervision over them. At the close of the exposition they brought back $2,800, which they turned into the State treasury, and $3,000 worth of furniture, which they presented to various State institutions.
In 1894 there was an exciting contest over removing the location of the permanent capital and some fear that Helena would lose it. A number of her leading women, in a special car provided by the Northern Pacific R. R., visited the prominent towns in Eastern Montana, speaking and working in the interest of their city and undoubtedly gaining many-votes for Helena, which was selected instead of the rival, Anaconda.
In 1896 Mrs. Haskell was made a delegate to the Populist convention of Lewis and Clarke County, which met in Helena, and also to the Populist State and National Conventions. She took a prominent part in their proceedings, and was instrumental in securing a woman suffrage plank in the Populist State platform after a hard fight on the floor of the convention. At the Populist convention in St. Louis that year she was chosen a member of the National Committee.
In the autumn of 1900 a number of prominent women of Helena appeared as representatives of the suffragists before the Lewis and Clarke County Conventions, and before the State conventions — Republican, Democrat and Populist — asking that they insert a plank in their platforms recommending the submission of the question of woman suffrage to the voters. Only the Populists adopted it. The ladies also attended the State conventions of the three parties with the same resolution; but the Populists alone indorsed it, "demanding" suffrage for women.
One of the important factors in this movement is the Woman's Relief Corps, an organization which has grown in strength during the last decade and is making its members staunch patriots and woman suffragists. It has had an educative influence equal to that of the W. C. T. U. but on different lines. Women are actively identified with lodges and clubs, many of the latter being members of the General Federation of Women's Clubs.
