Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/290

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HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

276 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE Arnold of England, and there were lectures by her and Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Oilman; a series of "petition teas" and meet- ings addressed by Dr. Shaw, Miss Leonora O'Reilly, a labor leader of New York; Judge Ben Lindsey of Denver; Charles Edward Russell, the Rev. Thomas Cuthbert Hall; and by Mrs. Snowden, Dr. Stanton Coit and the Misses Rendell and Costello, all of England. In June the first of the open-air meetings that later became so important a feature of the campaign was held on the Common at Bedford. The speakers were Mrs. FitzGerald, Mrs. Leonora S. Little, Mrs. Mary Ware Dennett, Mrs. Katharine Dexter Mc- Cormick and Mrs. Crowley. The attendance was small; people were shy at first of seeming to countenance such an innovation but the crowds grew as the meetings continued and it was found to be the best if not the only way to reach the mass of voters. A summer campaign of 97 open-air meetings was held, the speakers traveling mainly by trolley, covering a large part of the State and reaching about 25,000 persons. 1 Suffrage buttons and lit- erature were distributed, posters put up, and sometimes mam- moth kites flown to advertise the meetings. Mrs. H. S. Luscomb had presented a kite big enough to hold up a banner six feet wide by forty deep. The campaigners were resourceful. At Nan- tasket, when forbidden to speak on the beach, they went into the water with their Votes for Women banner and spoke from the sea to the audience on the shore. 1910. Among the speakers at the Festival in May were Mrs. Frances Squire Potter, former Professor of English at the Uni- versity of Minnesota; Professor Max Eastman of Columbia Uni- versity, secretary of the New York Men's League for Woman Suffrage, and Professor Henry S. Nash of the Episcopal Theo- logical School. At the State annual meeting in Lowell, October 27, 28, Philip Snowden, M. P., of England was a speaker. In connection with the convention Mrs. Park spoke before the Woman's Club; Rabbi Fleischer before the Board of Trade; Miss Alice Carpenter at the Congregational Church in Tewksbury; 1 Additional speakers through the summer were Miss Margaret Foley, Miss Gertrude Y. Cliff, Miss Edith M. Haynes, Mrs. Marion Craig Wentworth, Miss Florence Lus- comb, Miss Katherine Tyng, Miss Alfretta McClure and Miss Rosa Heinzen, the last four college girls.