Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/202

1 88 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE eleven Congressional districts had an organizer in charge from January until election day. In every one of the ninety counties there was organization. Nine-tenths of them opened headquar- ters from one to three months before the end of the campaign and 2,000 precinct workers were enrolled. The whole State was cov- ered by auto-trips in the last month. Approximately 5,000,000 pieces of literature were distributed, much of it especially printed to meet local needs and the false statements circulated by the opposition. One cent postage for one circularization of the voters of Iowa cost $5,000. As suffragists throughout the nation gave their help, so the opponents outside the State tried to defeat the amendment. The women's National Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage sent a number of its paid workers and a consider- able sum of money into the State. There was a small anti- suffrage organization in Iowa during the campaign affiliated with this national association, with branches in Des Moines, Daven- port, Clinton, Sioux City and a few other places. Mrs. Simon Casady of Des Moines was State president. John P. Irish, a former resident, came from California under its auspices to work against the amendment but the press department widely circu- lated his favorable declarations for woman suffrage in early years and reprinted his editorials written during the Civil War, in which his disloyalty to Lincoln and to the Union was shown. He was much disturbed by this publicity concerning his past and soon left the State. The women's anti-suffrage association did no particular harm but the forces of evil with which it was allied did great damage and in the end defeated the amendment. Iowa women had believed that their men were free from entanglements with these forces but they learned that no State line bars out the elements which work against democracy and the influence of women in government. In spite of these opposing forces the amendment would have won but for political complications which arose during the last few weeks of the campaign. It became necessary for the Repub- lican party to sacrifice woman suffrage to its "wet" candidate for Governor, as it felt sure that he could not be elected in Novem-