e Washington was a Territory.[62] Mrs. John Moore
of Tacoma read a powerful scene from The Spanish Gypsy by George
Eliot. After a lively collection speech by Mrs. Upton, Dr. Shaw closed
the evening with a mirth-provoking "question box."

At an afternoon session Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery read the report of
the National Committee on the Petition to Congress. It had been the
plan of Mrs. Catt, as presented and adopted at the convention of 1908,
to have one final petition to Congress for the submission of the
Federal Amendment and she had consented to take the chairmanship
temporarily. Headquarters had been opened in the Martha Washington,
the woman's hotel in New York City, where the headquarters of the
Interurban Woman Suffrage Council, of which Mrs. Catt was chairman,
were located. Here she and Miss Mary Garrett Hay spent many months
from 9 a. m. to 5 p. m., assisted by Miss Minnie J. Reynolds, who did
press work and correspondence with the States. Mrs. Priscilla D.
Hackstaff of Brooklyn, a former Missourian, took charge of the work in
that State from these headquarters and there was an energetic
volunteer sub-committee of New York suffragists. The report continued:

"The Governors of the four enfranchised States served on an
honorary Advisory Committee, as did the following men and women:
Anna Howard Shaw, Clara Barton, Julia Ward Howe, William Lloyd
Garrison, William Dudley Foulke, Jane Addams, Mary E. Garrett,
Sarah Platt Decker, the Hon. John D. Long, Samuel Gompers,
Colonel George Harvey, Rabbi Charles Fleischer (Mass.), Dr.
Josiah Strong, Edward T. Devine, John Mitchell, Judge Ben
Lindsey, Mrs. Clarence Mackay, Lillian M. Hollister, Mary Lowe
Dickinson, Mrs. Bourke Cockran and Cynthia Westover Alden.

When Mrs. Catt left for London in March, 1909, in the interests
of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, the work came to
me. At that time upwards of 10,000 letters had been written and
100,000 petitions distributed and twenty-three State
organizations were collecting, counting, pasting and classifying
the lists. Since then five other States have gone to work.
Letters were written to all the newspapers in the four equal
suffrage States asking the insertion of a coupon petition and
these coupons brought in the names of many friends who could not
otherwise be reached and who were enthusiastic workers for the
petiti