Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/652

636 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE $66.38 in the treasury! Other offices were filled and then the women hurried home to engage in Red Cross work, Liberty Loan work, anti-vice work ; to knit, to sew, to tramp the highways and byways for the various "drives" ; to make speeches before all sorts of audiences women who a year before were too timid to second a motion. Following the instructions of the convention Mrs. Cunningham in June called together in San Antonio the heads of all organizations of women and out of the conference was formed the Woman's Anti-Vice Committee. Living in such close proximity to the training camps, Texas women early learned with sinking hearts of the unspeakable conditions obtaining there and their efforts to remedy matters and to arouse the proper authorities were strenuous and unceasing. Thousands of mothers whose sons were in training in far away Texas will never know how earnestly the mothers of this State labored to do by their sons as they would have wished their own done by. The Federal Amendment work was not neglected during this time, neither was State work and organizations rapidly multiplied. The year 1918 is one never to be forgotten by Texas suffragists. January was given over to intensive work for the Federal Amend- ment. Day letters, night letters and telegrams poured into Congress at such a rate that the national president, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, referred to them as the "heavy artillery down in Texas." The Executive Committee of the State Association in session at Austin, on the 23rd authorized Mrs. Cunningham and Mrs. Hortense Ward to call upon the new Governor, William P. Hobby, and ask that he submit a bill for Primary suffrage for women at the special session of the Legislature soon to convene. A few weeks later the special session was called to consider a number of important measures asked for by the Secretary of Yar. On February 24 the suffrage leaders came to Austin and estab- lished headquarters at the Driskill Hotel, determined to secure the Primary law in time for women to vote in the July elections. While the women were interviewing the legislators Mrs. Nome B. Mahoney, prominent in Dallas suffrage work, called on Judge Barry of that city, who seemed unfavorable and finally said it would take 5,000 names of Dallas women on a petition to change him. He dismissed the subject from his mind and returned to