Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/232

2l8 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE the Democratic party on record for woman suffrage in this Democratic stronghold of the "solid South." In public opinion woman suffrage was largely associated with the Abolition movement. In 1900 Miss Gordon had accepted an invitation to address the convention of the National Association in Washington on the famous Sewerage and Drainage Campaign of women in New Orleans. Then and there she decided that the most important work before Louisiana suffragists was to bring this conservative State under the influence of a national conven- tion. In 1901 she attended another convention and was elected corresponding secretary of the National Association. In 1903 she brought its convention to New Orleans and it proved to be one of the most remarkable in the history of the association. 1 So impressed was Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, vice-president at large, with the possibilities in the South that she volunteered a month's series of lectures in the next autumn and many places in Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas came under the spell of her eloquence. The influence of this convention was immediately seen in the increasing membership of the Era Club. Its leaders recognized that the best policy to rouse both men and women to the value of suffrage to the individual and the community was by applied politics in social service. It had already secured a partial fran- chise for taxpaying women and its achievements in the following years made it an acknowledged power. 2 In 1910 a great charity and educational benefit was launched for the Anti-Tuberculosis League and the Woman's Dispensary. A complete plan of organ- izing with Era Club members as ward and precinct leaders taught them political organization. By 1913 the movement for a Federal Suffrage Amendment was growing so insistent that southern women who were opposed to this method felt the necessity of organizing to combat it and to uphold the State's rights principle of the Democratic party. Through the initiative of Miss Gordon a Call for a conference 1 For full report see Chapter III of Volume V. 'Among the accomplishments of the Era Club were the following: Publication of the assessment rolls of New Orleans; admission of women to the School of Medicine in Tulane University; first legislation in the State against white slavery; the Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference; equalized division of Tulane scholarships between boy and girl students.