of the Woman's
Building which had been erected by the Legislature on the State Fair
grounds near that city and Mrs. Walter McNab Miller of Columbia also
made an address. The board paid a lawyer to compile the State laws for
women under the direction of E. M. Grossman. Mrs. Atkinson, Mrs. Boyd
and Mrs. John L. Lowes of St. Louis and Mrs. Virginia Hedges of
Warrensburg went as delegates to the convention of the National
Association in 1911 at Louisville, where much satisfaction was
expressed that Missouri had at last come into the fold. The Kansas
City League was organized this year with Mrs. Henry N. Ess, president;
Miss Helen Osborn, secretary; and Mrs. Helena Cramer Leavens,
treasurer. The women of Warrensburg, under the leadership of Miss
Laura Runyon, organized a club of fifty members. There was the State
Normal School, to whose faculty Miss Runyon belonged, and through her
the support of the students was obtained and suffrage propaganda
extended gradually to every section of the State. Mrs. Knefler,
president of the St. Louis Women's Trades Union, organized a league
among its members, which, under the leadership of Mrs. Sarah Spraggon
and Miss Sallie Quick, did excellent work in the campaigns that
followed.

In 1912 a Business Woman's Suffrage League was formed in St. Louis
under the leadership of Miss Mary McGuire, a graduate of the St. Louis
University Law School, and Miss Jessie Lansing Moller, which starting
with 50 members, eventually numbered 250. The same year the Junior
Branch of the St. Louis League was organized, which included many of
the younger society girls and matrons. Miss Ann Drew (later Mrs. James
Platt) was president. In Kansas City in the autumn the Southside Equal
Suffrage League was formed with Mrs. Cora Kramer Leavens, president,
and Miss Cora Best Jewell, secretary. A Men's Equal Suffrage League
was also organized with D. H. Hoff president; J. H. Austin,
vice-president; David Proctor, secretary, which did a large work in
securing the big vote given to the suffrage amendment in Kansas City
and Jackson county in 1914.

In 1912 the first State convention was held in September at Sedalia,
where Mrs. George Gellhorn was elected president and Mrs. John W.
Barringer vice-president, both of St. Louis. They went to Jefferson
City in September and tried to get a suffrage plank into the platform
of the Democratic State convention. Though unsuccessful it was the
initial step in bringing the subject o