Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/488

47 2 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE picture play was produced. Flying squadrons of trained workers would go into a city, make a canvass, hold street meetings, at- tract public attention and stimulate newspaper activity. A remarkable piece of work was done by a Press and Publicity Council of one hundred women in New York City organized by Mrs. Whitehouse. They established personal acquaintance with the editors and owners of the fifteen daily papers; answered the anti-suffrage letters published; communicated with the editors of 683 trade journals, 21 religious papers, 126 foreign language papers and many others 893 in all and offered them exclusive articles; they suggested special features for magazines ami planned suffrage covers ; they secured space for a suffrage calen- dar in every daily paper. This council placed suffrage slides in moving picture houses and suffrage posters in the lobbies of theaters; and had a page advertisement of suffrage in every theater program. Comedians were asked to make references to suffrage in their plays and jokes were collected for them and appropriate lines suggested. A sub-committee of writers was organized which assembled material for special suffrage editions of papers, wrote suffrage articles and made suggestions for stories. The Art Committee illustrated the special editions and made cartoons. They held an exhibit of suffrage posters with prizes and raised money through an exhibition and sale of the work of women painters and sculp- tors. A new suffrage game was invented and installed at Coney Island. They supplied the posters for $70,000 worth of adver- tising space on billboards and street cars which was contributed by the owners during the final weeks of the campaign. They or- ganized and managed the suffrage banner parade, the largest which had yet taken place. Among the other publicity "stunts" of the council were suf- frage baseball games, a Fourth of July celebration at the Statue of Liberty and Telephone and Telegraph Day, when the wires carried suffrage messages to politicians, judges, editors, clergy- men, governors, mayors, etc., all of these "stunts" receiving a large amount of newspaper publicity. The most effective was the One Day Strike, to answer the argument used by the "antis" that "woman's place was in the home" by asking all women to stay at