l of
102,641; yet the whole number of votes cast in that election of 1898
was 251,250. The amendment itself could not have been adopted if its
own provisions had been required!

[346] The woman farmer turns up the soil with a gang-plow and rakes
the hay, but not in the primitive fashion of Maud Muller. She is
frequently seen "comin' through the rye," the wheat, the barley or the
oats, enthroned on a twine-binder. The writer has this day seen a
woman seated on a four-horse plow as contentedly as her city cousin
might be in an automobile. Among the many plow-girls of Nobles County
is Coris Young, a genuine American of Vermont ancestry, who has plowed
120 acres this season, making a record of eighty acres in thirteen
days with five horses abreast.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

MISSISSIPPI.[347]

In 1884 the idea of an organization devoted exclusively to the
advancement of the "woman's cause" in Mississippi had not assumed
tangible form, granting that even the audacious conception had found
lodgment in the brain of any person. The nearest approach seems to
have been a Woman's Press Club, which sprung into being about this
time, but was short-lived, due to the fact, it is charged, that a
little leaven of "woman's rights" having crept in, "the whole lump"
was threatened.

To the Women's Christian Temperance Union the State is largely
indebted for the existence of its Woman Suffrage Association, which
was organized in Meridian, May 5, 1897, immediately upon the
adjournment of a convention of the State W. C. T. U. The seed sown in
1895 by Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, chairman of the national
organization committee, and Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates of Maine, and
in 1897 by Miss Ella Harrison of Missouri and Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford
of Colorado, now produced a harvest of clubs, and resulted in a roster
of friends in twenty-four towns. Mrs. Nellie M. Somerville was elected
president of the association, and Mrs. Lily Wilkinson Thompson
corresponding secretary.

The first annual convention was held in Greenville, March 29, 30,
1898. The second and third took place at Clarksdale, the former April
5, 6, 1899, and the latter in May, 1900.[348] At this meeting the
report of the superintendent of press, Mrs. Butt, showed that
twenty-two newspapers had opened their columns to suffrage articles.
Mrs. Chapman Catt and Miss Mary G. Hay, national organizer, were
present, and the former gave an address to a large and sympathetic
assemblage. S