During the final six weeks of the campaign Alice Stone Blackwell, of Boston, was also with us, while Kate Gordon took under her special charge the or- g anization of the city of Portland and the parlor- m eeting work. Miss Clay went into the state, where Emma Smith DeVoe and other speakers were also working, and I spent my time between the office headquarters and ``the road,'' often working at my desk until it was time to rush off and take a train for some town where I was to hold a night meeting.
Miss Mary and Miss Lucy Anthony confined them- s elves to office-work in the Portland headquarters, where they gave us very valuable assistance. I h ave always believed that we would have carried Oregon that year if the disaster of the California earthquake had not occurred to divert the minds of Western men from interest in anything save that great catastrophe.
On election day it seemed as if the heavens had opened to pour floods upon us. Never before or since have I seen such incessant, relentless rain.
Nevertheless, the women of Portland turned out in force, led by Mrs. Sarah Evans, president of the Oregon State Federation of Women's Clubs, while all day long Dr. Pohl took me in her automobile from one polling-place to another. At each we found representative women patiently enduring the drench- i ng rain while they tried to persuade men to vote for us. We distributed sandwiches, courage, and in- s piration among them, and tried to cheer in the same way the women watchers, whose appointment we had secured that year for the first time. Two women had been admitted to every polling-place--but the way in which we had been able to secure their pres- e nce throws a high-light on the difficulties we were meeting. We had to persuade men candidates to select these women as watchers; and the only men who allowed themselves to be persuaded were those running on minority tickets and hopeless of election --the prohibitionists, the socialists, and the candi- d ates of the labor party.
The result of the election taught us several things.
We had been told that all the prohibitionists and socialists would vote for us. Instead, we discovered that the percentage of votes for woman suffrage was about the same in every party, and that whenever the voter had cast a straight vote, without inde- p endence enough to ``scratch'' his ticket, that vote was usually against us. On the other hand, when the ticket was ``scratched'' the vote was usually in our favor, whatever political party the man be- l onged to.
Another interesting discovery was that the early morning vote was favorable to our Cause the vote cast by working-men on their way to their employ- m ent. During the middle of the forenoon and after- n oon, when the idle class was at the polls, the vote ran against us. The late vote, cast as men were returning from their work, was again largely in our favor--and we drew some conclusions from this.
Also, for the first time in the history of any cam- p aign, the anti-suffragists had organized against us.
Portland held a small body of women with anti- s uffrage sentiments, and there were others in the state who formed themselves into an anti-suffrage society and carried on a more or less active warfare.
In this campaign, for the first time, obscene cards directed against the suffragists were circulated at the polls; and while I certainly do not accuse the Oregon anti-suffragists of circulating them, it is a fact that the cards were distributed as coming from the anti-suffragists--undoubtedly by some vicious element among the men which had its own good rea- s on for opposing us. The ``antis'' also suffered in this campaign from the ``pernicious activity'' of their spokesman--a lawyer with an unenviable reputation. After the campaign was over this man declared that it had cost the opponents of our measure $300,000.
In 1907 Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont began to show an interest in suffrage work, and through the influence of several leaders in the movement, notably that of Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, she decided to assist in the establishment of national headquarters in the State of New York. For a long time the associa- t ion's headquarters had been in Warren, Ohio, the home of Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, then national treasurer, and it was felt that their removal to a larger city would have a great influence in develop- i ng the work. In 1909 Mrs. Belmont attended as a delegate the meeting of the International Suffrage Alliance in London, and her interest in the Cause deepened. She became convinced that the head- q uarters of the association should be in New York City, and at our Seattle convention that same year I presented to the delegates her generous offer to pay the rent and maintain a press department for two years, on condition that our national head- q uarters were established in New York.
