d in local option
but not 25,000 women will register in Chicago." It was, therefore, of
paramount importance to arouse the Chicago women. This work was in
charge of Mrs. Edward L. Stewart, assisted by Mrs. Judith Weil
Loewenthal, members of the State Board. Mrs. Stewart called upon every
organization of women in the city to assist. Valuable help was given
by Mrs. Ida Darling Engelke, city chairman of ward organization for
the Chicago Political Equality League; Mrs. Joseph T. Bowen, president
of the Woman's City Club, and Mrs. James Morrisson, president of the
Chicago Equal Suffrage Association. There were public meetings in
every ward, and a mass meeting the Sunday before the election in the
Auditorium Theater, which seated over 4,000 people, but overflow
meetings were necessary. As a result of this united effort over
200,000 women registered in Chicago alone and thousands more
throughout the State.

On May 2, 1914, was held the first large suffrage parade in Illinois.
It was managed by the State association and its affiliated Chicago
clubs. Mrs. Trout, with the members of the Board and distinguished
pioneer suffragists, led the procession, and Governor Dunne and Mayor
Carter H. Harrison reviewed it. The city government sent to head the
parade the mounted police, led by Chief Gleason, called "the beauty
squad," only brought out on very special occasions. Nearly 15,000
women, representing all parties, creeds and classes, marched down
Michigan Boulevard and hundreds of thousands of people lined both
sides for over two miles. Captain Charles W. Kayser of Wheaton planned
the procession with military skill. The Parade Committee, including
the heads of divisions and numbering over a thousand women, was
invited immediately after the procession to the Hotel La Salle by
Ernest Stevens, manager and one of the owners, where they were guests
of the management at supper, which was followed by music and speaking.

In June the General Federation of Women's Clubs held its biennial
convention in Chicago and the question uppermost in the minds of all
club women was, would the president, Mrs. Percy Pennybacker, refuse to
allow a woman suffrage resolution to be presented, as her predecessor,
Mrs. Philip Moore, had done in San Francisco at the preceding
biennial, and also would it receive a favorable vote if presented? The
State Board, realizing that with the suffrage law still hanging in the
balance in the Supreme Court, it was vitally i