Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/368

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
336
HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

McCormick made a gift of a sample copy of every one of our new publications to the presidents of State associations in eighteen of the western States, as a means of bringing them in closer touch with the national office. . . . Aside from our own literature we have been grateful for a very serviceable congressional document, thousands of which have been distributed in the last few months, the speech of Congressman Edward T. Taylor of Colorado. It proved a successful and timely campaign document and we are indebted not only to Mr. Taylor but to a most efficient volunteer worker in Washington—Mrs. Helen H. Gardener—who gave unstinted personal service in seeing that the documents were obtained and franked when needed....

The convention accepted the recommendation of the board that it should issue a monthly bulletin of facts and figures to be sent to every paying member, thus establishing a real bond between the association and its thousands of members. The report of the Press Bureau by its chairman, Miss Caroline I. Reilly, showed remarkable progress in public sentiment as expressed by the newspapers. It said in part::

The winning of California last year wrought so complete a change in the work of the national press bureau that it was like taking up an entirely new branch. Before that victory our time was employed in furnishing suffrage arguments, replying to adverse editorials and letters published in the newspapers and writing syndicate articles. Now this department has resolved itself into a bureau of information, news being the one thing required. Each week we send to our mailing list 2,000 copies of the press bulletin, giving brief items relative to suffrage activities the world over. These go into every non-suffrage State in the Union, to Canada, Cuba and England, and the demand for them increases daily. Almost every mail brings letters from newspapers asking to be placed on the regular mailing list.... Since the winning of the four States on November 5, newspapers and press associations from all over the United States have written us asking for help to establish woman suffrage departments. The time has come when our question is a paying one from a publicity point of view now have twenty syndicates on our list and are no longer obliged to write the articles ourselves but simply furnish the information which their own writers work up. These syndicates are both national and international and cover all of this country as well as some foreign countries. An interesting thing happened last week, when the representative of a European press syndicate came and said that he had been sent to America for the sole purpose of reporting the woman movement in the United States, the subject being regarded a vital one by the press of Europe. Special suffrage editions seem to be more popular than almost anything else and appeals come