B. STEVENS,
_Secretary_.

At a meeting of the board, held in the Administration Building March 1,
1904, in response to a call by the president for a report from the
committee on awards, Mrs. Hanger, chairman of the committee, said:

This committee was named by Mrs. Manning after our last meeting,
as follows: Mrs. Hanger, Mrs. Knott, Miss Egan, Mrs. Porter, and
Mrs. Hunsicker. I happened to be here in January, and asked Miss
Egan to go with me to see Mr. Skiff. We waited two or three
hours and saw Mr. Skiff about fifteen minutes. It had been said
there were 200 jurors to be appointed, and we would only have
the appointing of 35 or 40 of them. He assured us that the lists
could not be made out as the exhibits were not installed. He
gave us some instructions in regard to the selection of jurors,
saying that they must stand for intellectual ability; it did not
matter how many people applied for appointment, we must be
governed by that.

I had a letter from Mrs. Manning suggesting that I try again. I
wrote to Mr. Stevens and he communicated with Mr. Skiff, and
later repeated to me the same thing. We have had quite a number
of names suggested, and I have written to the other members of
the committee asking them to come here as soon as the exhibits
are in place. I hope we can hold that meeting very early, but
until after that meeting I do not feel that we have anything to
report.

In response to questions from members of the board as to whether Mr.
Skiff was to be understood to mean that there were but 35 or 40 things
to be exhibited at the exposition which were made in whole or in part by
women, Mrs. Hanger said that Mr. Skiff said the board "would only have
the appointing of 35 or 40 women--that it was a matter of expense and
that they must assist in keeping it down."

This decision was a source of great disappointment to the board, as it
has been shown most conclusively that scarcely anything is manufactured
that women do not at least share in the production or process of its
manufacture. The act of Congress stated that there should be appointed
by this board a member of every jury judging "any work that may have
been produced in whole or in part by female labor," and the members were
averse to an abridgment of the authority vested in them by the wording
of the act.

Expositions are a natural and useful factor to women in that by the