Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/126

112 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE tion, probate attorney for the Cherokee Indians. Miss Marie K. Saunders was the first woman appointed patent examiner, as the result of a competitive examination, and she has been advanced until the next step is that of principal examiner. Women hold important positions as secretaries of committees at the Capitol. The Board of Commissioners appoint the Superintendent of Police and under Major Raymond J. Pullman a Woman's Bureau was established in 1918, after several women had been serving on the force. Mrs. Marian C. Spingarn was made director. When she left Washington the following year Mrs. Mina C. Van Winkle was appointed and continues to hold the position. To give her power she was made Detective Sergeant and in 1920 was promoted to a Lieutenancy, so that she might legally be in command of a precinct where the Woman's Bureau is on the first floor of the house of detention and the preventive and protective work for women and children is directed. The functions of this bureau are very wide and very important and the work of the women police covers the entire city. The national appointments of women have attracted the atten- tion not only of this but of other countries. They began in 1912 with the selection of Miss Julia C. Lathrop of Hull House, Chicago, by President Taft as Chief of the newly created Federal Children's Bureau, which position she still holds (1920). Presi- dent Wilson appointed Mrs. Frances C. Axtell in 1916 a member of the Federal Employees' Compensation Commission; in 1920 Mrs. Helen H. Gardener a member of the Civil Service Com- mission; Mrs. Annette A. Adams, U. S. Attorney in San Fran- cisco, Assistant Attorney General; Miss Mary Anderson, chief of the Women's Division of the Department of Labor.