wer Evans, member of the
Minimum Wage Commission of Massachusetts; Mrs. R. H. Ashbaugh,
president of the Michigan Federation of Women's Clubs; Mrs. James
Rector, vice-chairman of the C. U. of Ohio; Mrs. Cyrus Mead of the
Ohio C. U.

[102] The automobile started from the Exposition and there were
possibly more than that many people on the grounds. As its departure
had been widely advertised and was made a spectacular event a large
crowd was at the gate.

[103] For the last twenty years the members of the Anti-Suffrage
Association had appeared regularly before committees of Legislatures
in various States to oppose the submission of the question to the
voters, picturing the injury it would be to the community and to the
women. They had never in any State made the slightest effort to have
it submitted to women themselves. The School suffrage was granted in
most of the States before they had any organization but they went
before a committee in the New York Legislature to oppose women on
school boards.

CHAPTER XVI.

NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1916.

The year 1916 marked a turning point in the sixty-year-old struggle
for woman suffrage. Large delegations of women had attended the
Republican and Democratic National Conventions during the summer and
for the first time each of them had put into its platform an
unequivocal declaration in favor of suffrage for women; the
Progressive, Socialist and Prohibition platforms contained similar
planks, the last three declaring for a Federal Amendment. It had
become one of the leading political issues of the day and a subject of
nation-wide interest. The president of the National American Woman
Suffrage Association, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, quickly recognized the
situation and saw that its official action must not be deferred until
the usual time for its annual convention which would be after the
presidential elections, therefore the Board of Officers issued a call
for an Emergency Convention to meet in Atlantic City, N. J., Sept.
4-10, 1916.[104] The members throughout the country were much
surprised but welcomed the opportunity to visit this beautiful ocean
resort. The headquarters were in the famous Hotel Marlborough-Blenheim
and after the first day the sessions were held in the large New Nixon
Theater on the Board Walk.

After two days of executive meetings the Forty-eighth annual
convention opened the morning of September 6 in the handsome St.
Paul's Methodist