Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/491

NEW YORK 475 devotion and self-sacrifice of thousands of women were beyond praise but there were not enough of them. If every county and every town had raised its proportion of the funds and done its share of the work, the amendment might have been carried, but this first campaign laid the foundation for the victory that the next one would bring. This was the largest vote ever polled for suffrage at any elec- tion 553,348 out of a vote of 1,300,880, being 42^ per cent. The vote in the State outside of New York City was 427,479 noes, 315,250 ayes, opposing majority, 112,229; in this city 320,853 noes, 238,098 ayes, opposing majority 82,755; total op- posed, 194,984. The amendment received a larger favorable vote than the Republican party polled at the Presidential elec- tion of 1912, which was 455,428. In 1914 this party swept the State and it could have carried the suffrage amendment in 1915. SECOND NEW YORK CAMPAIGN. With 42 J/2 per cent, of the vote cast in November, 1915, in favor of the woman suffrage amendment the leaders were eager to start a new campaign at once and take advantage of the mo- mentum already gained. Two nights after election the campaign was started at a mass meeting in Cooper Union, New York City, where $100,000 were pledged amid boundless enthusiasm. The reorganization of the State took place immediately, at the annual convention held in this city, November 3O-December 2, and all the societies that had cooperated in the Empire State Campaign Committee became consolidated under the name of the State Woman Suffrage Party, into which the old State asso ciation was merged. The demand was so overwhelming that Mrs. Carrie Chapman Call, who had led the two years' fight so magnificently, should continue to be leader, that she was oh 1 to accept the chairmanship. The other officers elected were Mrs. Norman dcR. Yhitc- f Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw, Mrs. Henry W. Cannon, first. second and third vice chairmen : Mrs. Michael M. Van Beuren and Miss Alice Morgan Wright. M<n-laries; Mrs. Ogden Mills Reid, treasurer; Mrs. Raymond Brown, Mrs. Dexter P. Rumsey,