H. Choate, Mrs. Mary Putnam Jacobi, Mrs. J. Warren Goddard, Mrs.
Robert Abbe, Mrs. Henry M. Sanders, Miss Adele M. Fielde.

Sherry, the famous restaurateur, placed one of his handsomest rooms at
the disposal of the ladies and, for many weeks, one or more of them
might always be found there ready to receive signatures to the
petitions. The New York World expressed the situation in a strong
article, saying in part:

Within the month there has been a sudden and altogether unexpected
outbreak of the woman suffrage movement in New York.... Some one
gave a signal and from all parts of the State rose the cry for the
enfranchisement of women. It is not hard to discover the original
cause which set on foot the insurrection--for in a certain sense it
is an insurrection. It was an appeal which appeared in the latter
part of February and was signed by many eminent men and women. Here
were nearly twoscore of names, as widely known and honorable as any
in this State--names of people of the highest social standing, not
because of extravagant display or fashionable raiment, but because
of distinction in intellect, in philanthropy and in the history of
the State. The reason of the coming of the petition just at this
time was, of course, plain. The meeting of the Constitutional
Convention would be the one chance of the woman suffragists in
twenty years....

It will be noticed that these women are in Mr. McAllister's Four
Hundred, but not of it. They do not go in for frivolity. They go in
for charity, for working among the masses, for elevating standards
of living and morals in the slums of the city. They have awakened
to the fact of the other half, and of how that other half lives,
and they have expressed their indignation over the small salaries
paid women for doing men's work; over the dishonest men in
political places, put there because they could vote and control the
votes of a number of saloon loungers; over the wretched lot of the
woman school teacher, ill-paid and neglected because useless on
election day.

And to go back a little further, the most of these society women
are the products of that higher education which the pioneer
suffragists made possible. They are women of wide reading, of
independent thought, of much self-reliance. They began to wonder
why they could