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PREFACE

volume, perhaps only a large pamphlet. When these three huge volumes were finished they still had enough material for a fourth, which never was used.

Miss Anthony continued her habit of preserving the records and in 1900, when at the age of 80 she resigned the presidency of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, she immediately commenced preparations for another volume of the History. She called to her assistance Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, who had recently finished her Biography, and in her home in Rochester, N. Y., they spent the next two years on the book, Mrs. Stanton, who was 85 years old, taking the keenest interest in the work.[1] When the manuscript was completed hundreds of pages had to be eliminated in order to bring it within the compass of one volume of 1,144 pages.

Miss Anthony then said: "Twenty years from now another volume will be written and it will record universal suffrage for women by a Federal Amendment.” Her prophecy was fulfilled to the letter. She put upon younger women the duty of collecting and preserving the records and this was done in some degree by officers of the association. In 1917, after the legacy of Mrs. Frank Leslie had been received by Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the association, she formed the Leslie Suffrage Commission and established a Bureau of Suffrage Education, one feature of which was a research department. Here under the direction of an expert an immense amount of material was collected from many sources and arranged for use. After the strenuous work for a Federal Suffrage Amendment had brought it very near, Mrs. Catt turned her attention to the publishing of the last volume of the History of Woman Suffrage while the resources of the large national headquarters in New York and the archives of the research bureau were available, and she requested Mrs. Harper to prepare it. The work was begun Jan 2, 1919, and it was to be entirely completed in eighteen months. No account had been taken of the enormous growth of the suffrage movement. It had entered every State in the Union and it extended around the world. It was occupying the

  1. See Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, pages 1210, 1256, 1269. Placing in libraries, 1279 to 1282. Bequeathed to National Suffrage Association, History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V, page 205.