he members to feel that the association
should give all possible help in money and workers.[43]

The public was much impressed at the last session by the appearance on
the platform of four prominent politicians of the State representing
the different parties and this was generally regarded as the opening
of the campaign for woman suffrage. They were introduced by State
Senator Henry Waldo Coe, M. D., who spoke in highest praise of homes
and housekeepers as he had seen them in his practice and said: "The
woman who takes an interest in the affairs of her country has the
highest interest in her home, and the suffrage will not lessen her
fitness as wife and mother." He introduced Mayor Harry Lane as the
Democrat who carried a Republican city and who was the best mayor
Portland ever had. Mr. Lane declared that women were as much entitled
to the suffrage as men and that the enfranchisement of women would
tend to purify politics. Dr. Andrew C. Smith, a Republican, was
introduced as "the man who presented the names of thirteen women
physicians to the State Medical Association and got them admitted."
The press report said: "The prospective women voters were informed
that they saw before them the next Governor of Oregon." Dr. Smith
declared that he had been for woman suffrage twenty-five years and
that "the United States was guilty of a national sin in not giving
women equal rights." Thomas Burns, State Secretary of the Socialist
party, asserted that it was the only one which had a plank for woman
suffrage in its platform and the Socialists had fought for it all over
the world. "Men have made a failure of government," he said, "now let
the women try it." O. M. Jamison, of the Citizens' movement, said: "We
have found women the strongest factor in our work for reform and I
think 99 per cent. of us are for woman suffrage." B. Lee Paget, who
spoke for the Prohibitionists, declared himself an old convert to
woman suffrage and said: "I think intelligent women far better fitted
to vote on public measures than the majority of men who take part in
campaigns and are wholly ignorant of the issues."

L. F. Wilbur of Vermont told of its improved laws for women and
advancing public sentiment for woman suffrage and paid a glowing
tribute to the early work in that State of Lucy Stone, Mr. Blackwell
and Julia Ward Howe. Mrs. Maud Wood Park, president of the
Massachusetts College Women's Suffrage League, gave a scholarly
address on The Civic Res