Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/489

This page needs to be proofread.
HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

NEW YORK 473 home for only one day. The suggestion was never intended to be carried out and did not go further than a letter sent by Mrs. Yhitehouse to the presidents of women's clubs and some other organizations, asking them to come to a meeting to consider the plan, copies of which were sent to the newspapers. The effect extraordinary. Department stores, telephone company man- agers, employers of all kinds of women's labor, hospitals and schools, protested loudly against the crippling of public service, the loss of profits and the disruption of business which would result from even one day's absence of women from their public places. Editorial writers devoted columns to denouncing the proposal. Suffrage leaders were bitterly criticized for even suggesting such a public calamity. The favorite argument of the "antis" was answered for all time. At the very end of the campaign the anti-suffragists began to advertise extensively in the subway and on the elevated roads in New York City but the firm that controlled this space refused to accept any advertising from the suffragists. Woman's wit, how- ever, was equal to the emergency. For the three days preceding the election one hundred women gave their time to riding on elevated and subway trains holding up large placards on which were printed answers to the "anti" advertisements. The public understood and treated the women with much courtesy. It is difficult to give even the barest outline of the work of the 58 Bureau, at first under the management of Mrs. Haryot Holt I)ey and later of Miss Rose Young, with a volunteer force 14 press chairmen over the State. There were 2,136 publi- in the State, 211 dailies, 1,117 weeklies, 628 monthlies, and i So foreign publications printed in twenty-five languages. he weeklies a bulletin from the central bureau went regu-

3,036 shipments were made of pages of plate matter. The

American Press Association and the Western Newspaper Union for many weeks sent out columns of suffrage news with their

! ar M-I vice for the patent inside page used by country papers.

The bureau furnished material f<r debates and answered attacks nst suffrage. The support invcn by the newspapers was of ilue. Of the fifteen dailies of New York City ten were . while the rural press was overwhelmingly in favor.