Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/500

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HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

484 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE impossible to give the names of the thousands of women who rendered devoted service during these campaigns and it would be equally impossible to mention the names of the men who helped. Behind many a woman who worked there was a man aiding and sustaining her with money and personal sacrifice. "Suffrage husbands" became a title of distinction. Mrs. Whitehouse said in reviewing the causes of the failure of the first campaign, "We worked like amateurs." Such a charge could not be brought in the second, for the suffragists became an army of seasoned veterans, quick to understand and to obey orders, giving suffrage precedence over everything else except patriotic work. The amendment as adopted gave com- plete suffrage to women on the same terms as exercised by men and provided that "a citizen by marriage shall have been an in- habitant of the United States for five years." This simply re- quired the same term of residence for wives as for unmarried women and all men. From 1910 to 1917 the Men's League for Woman Suffrage was an influential factor in the movement in New York. It was believed to be the first of the kind and the idea was said to have originated with Max Eastman, a young professor in Columbia t niversity, but in a sketch of the league by him in The Trend in 1913 he said that in 1909, when he went to consult Oswald Garrison Villard, editor of the New York Evening Post, he found that Mr. Villard had received a letter from Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National American Woman Suf- frage Association, asking him to organize such a league ; that he had conferred with Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and they had "agreed to share the ignominy" if some one would undertake the organ- izing. This was done by Mr. Eastman, who, armed with letters of introduction by Mr. Villard, succeeded in getting the names of twelve men of civic influence. Using these names he sent out several thousand letters to such men over the State and finally obtained twenty-five members. In November, 1910, the first meeting was held at the New York City Club and officers were elected. By good fortune George Foster Peabody was one of the earliest members, a Georgian by birth and one of New York's