h her
Miss Christabel Pankhurst of Great Britain and both made addresses.
About $1,500 were pledged.

Miss Gordon said in her president's address: "The Southern States
Woman Suffrage Conference has for its immediate object to make the
Democratic party declare itself in favor of votes for women in its
next national platform. This, we southern suffragists believe, is the
first step in what will prove a veritable landslide in the South. The
conference therefore recommends to the suffragists of the South the
adoption of a policy of concentration upon the Democratic party to
declare itself."

In December, 1915, a national conference was held in Richmond, Va.
Smaller conferences were held in Atlanta, Greenville, S. C., and
Little Rock. Miss Gordon visited most of the cities of the South to
organize the women. In July, 1916, an executive meeting was held in
St. Louis at the time of the national Democratic convention. Its
Resolutions Committee gave a hearing to the representatives of the
conference, Miss Clay, Mrs. O. F. Ellington of Little Rock, Mrs.
Boyer, Mrs. Wesley Martin Stoner of Washington. Miss Gordon made an
extended appeal for an endorsement of woman suffrage in the party
platform and presented a resolution to "secure for women
self-government while preserving to the State a like self-government."
This was not adopted, but the platform did recommend "the extension of
suffrage to the women of the country by the States."

Although the principal object of the conference had been attained, its
leaders hesitated to dissolve it because of its excellent magazine and
work yet to be done. It was maintained until May, 1917, when the
entrance of this country into the World War made its discontinuance
seem advisable.[61]

LEGISLATIVE ACTION. Prior to 1904 it was an unheard of thing for women
in Louisiana to take an active part in legislative procedure. A
woman's club, the Arena, had been instrumental in obtaining the first
"age of consent" legislation, but a Unitarian minister had entirely
managed the Legislature. Therefore the tyros who formed the first
Legislative Committee of the Era Club showed their ignorance and
enthusiasm when their program included at least twelve bills which
they proposed to have enacted into law in one session.[62] Without any
friends at court it was with considerable relief that they followed
advice to put them all in the hands of an influential lobbyist. Reform
bills were not in his line and