Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/704

666 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. The subject was kept constantly under consideration by the Society of Friends at large and in local gatherings, such as monthly and quarterly meetings, where it was brought up in regular order as one of the departments of philanthropic labor or social service to be reported upon. Each branch held a meeting at the time of its Yearly Meeting. A business meeting of the whole associa- tion (branches and general membership) was always held at the Biennial Conference of the seven Yearly Meetings. Usually a fine speaker was engaged to address the conference at a public meeting numbering from 800 to 1,500. The Superintendent of the Department for Equal Rights in the General Conference was always the president of the Friends' Equal Rights Association as a whole and made the contact between the Society of Friends and the National American Woman Suffrage Association. In 1911 Mrs. Effie L. D. McAfee, a member of the New York branch, was sent by the Friends' Equal Rights Association to the congress of the International Alliance held at Stockholm, Sweden, where, in honor of a sect so long identified with the cause of woman suffrage, she was given a place on the program and filled it most acceptably. In 1916 the Philadelphia branch returned to the regular dues-paying basis, with Rebecca Webb Holmes of Swarthmore as president. The New York branch, notwithstand- ing the enfranchisement of the women of that State in 1917, continued its organization in order to help the less fortunate sisters, with P. Francena Maine as president. The Illinois Yearly Meeting in 1919 added to the membership of the Friends' Equal Rights Association. The association usually has been represented at the annual conventions of the N. A. W. S. A. Its presidents have been: Mrs. Chapman, New York ; Lucy Sutton, Baltimore ; Mary Bent- ley Thomas, Ednor, Md. ; Ellen H. E. Price, Philadelphia ; Anne Webb Janney, Baltimore. The specific task of the association has been to get a clear utterance on woman suffrage from the dif- ferent Yearly Meetings, representing in total membership about 20,000. Invariably they have endorsed the principle and any pending legislation in favor. Affiliation with the National Asso- ciation has been deeply appreciated by its members, as to be an