Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/177

ILLINOIS 163 majority had voted to submit the question to the voters the State association organized an Emergency League to establish centers in each of the 101 counties and an immense educational campaign carried on. Over a thousand meetings were held in the summer and fall preceding the election Nov. 5, 1918, when the proposal for a convention received a majority of 74,239. The next year delegates to the convention were elected and it met in Springfield Jan. 6, 1920. One of its first acts was to adopt an article giving the complete suffrage to women. Before the constitution was ready to submit to the voters the women were fully enfranchised by the Federal Amendment.] After the victory was gained in the Legislature and just as all plans were laid for the campaign in the spring of 1917 the l/nited States entered the war against Germany. Mrs. Trout was appointed a member of the executive committee of the Woman's Council of National Defense and all the members of the board immediately engaged in Liberty Loan, Red Cross and other war work. During this period of strenuous activity another attack was made on the constitutionality of the suffrage law by the liquor interests and the case was again brought before the Supreme Court. The State Board engaged James G. Skinner, an able lawyer, formerly Assistant Corporation Counsel, and in December the law was again pronounced constitutional. The State convention was held in the autumn of 1917 in Dan- ville and Mrs. Trout was re-elected. The association now had ated societies in every senatorial and congressional district with a membership of over 200,000 women. Mrs. Trout was soon called to Washington by Mrs. Catt to work for the Federal rage Amendment and spent many months there while Mrs. raw directed the organization work of the State association. She secured the co-operation of Mrs. R. M. Reed, legislative chairman of the Illinois Federation of Women's Clubs; they appointed two workers in each congressional district and nearly y woman's society in the State had constitutional convention programs. In the spring of 1918 Governor Lowden appointed Judge Orrin N. Carter, of the Supreme Court, chairman of a Ic committee that worked in co-operation with the state- nmittee of women. 'Pu- annual suffrage convention was