t at all profitable. Some traveling lecturer would often come
along and after speaking before the little local band of a dozen
members would receive the contents of the treasury, leaving the
society to ravel out for lack of funds. These experiences led me to
give up organizing suffrage societies, as I had learned that
lecturing, writing serial stories and editorials and correspondence
afforded a more rational means of spreading the light.... The only
time for general, active organization is after a few devoted workers
have succeeded in using the press for getting the movement squarely
before the voters in the shape of a proposed State suffrage
amendment."

This will answer very largely the many criticisms that came from the
National Association and from equal suffrage States over the apathy of
Oregon women from 1900 to 1904. What the result might have been, with
the State and national growth of suffrage sentiment, had there been a
strong, active organization is problematic, but Oregon might have had
the proud distinction of being first instead of last of the Pacific
Coast States to liberate her women politically. In 1905 the following
officers were elected: Honorary president, Mrs. Duniway; president,
Mrs. Coe; vice-president, Dr. Jeffreys Myers; secretary, Dr. Luema G.
Johnson; treasurer, Mrs. Abbie C. French; auditors, Dr. Mary Thompson,
Mrs. Martha Dalton and Mrs. Frederick Aggert.

The Legislature had many times submitted the amendment but its
repeated failures had discouraged the most ardent supporters in that
body. The gains in the various campaigns were not sufficient, they
argued, to warrant the expense of resubmission in the near future.
This reason was freely and courageously given from the Chair of the
Senate by one of the staunchest friends suffrage ever had in the
State, the Hon. C. W. Fulton, when he voted "no" on re-submission in
the Legislature of 1899, and the defeat of 1900 intensified this
feeling.

Hope revived when the Initiative and Referendum Act was adopted by the
voters in 1902. The District Judges decided against its
constitutionality and an appeal was carried to the State Supreme Court
by Attorney Ralph Duniway, whose able argument resulted in a reversal
and the establishment of the legality of the new law. This decision
was rendered Dec. 22, 1903, and on Jan. 2, 1904, a suffrage petition
was issued. This required the signatures of 8 per cent. of the legal
voters of the State based on the