In 1919, however, the women came into the picture, and the efforts of the Americanization Society[171] were redoubled to bring the women out, first to register and then to vote. The report of the secretary of the society (made at the annual meeting in January, 1920) states that on February 15th, the last registration day before the March primary, 22,700 women had registered. And on March 20th, the last registration day before the election of April 7th, women had registered to a total of 26,500—an astounding proportion of the possible total of women citizens of voting age in a population of 132,000. It looks very much like 100 per cent!
The last two columns in the table above show the totals including the women voters, and the striking increase between the March primary and the April election in 1919. With a possible total vote of upward of 50,000 we have the results of the Americanization Society’s work as showing in the actual personal presence at the polls of at least 75 per cent of the voters of all racial groups. The vote cast on March 5, 1919, was 28,705, composed, it is said, of about half men and half women. At the election on April 7th, nearly 38,000 votes were cast, and it is estimated that from 7,000 to 10,000 voters were turned away from the polling places because of inadequate election facilities. A fairly impressive exhibit of the response of American citizenship to an appeal to American, nonpartisan, civic interest, in a large cosmopolitan city, regardless of racial complexion. Indeed, without meaning to stress the point unduly, it may be remarked in passing that the very few precincts which in any election failed to show a substantial increase over the vote at the previous election, are in every instance those in which the population is described as predominantly of the native born.
That it was the appeal to civic interest and duty, and nothing else, which in largest measure produced this result may be seen, for instance, in a comparison of the registration of women in Grand Rapids with that at the same time (February, 1919) in other Michigan cities in which there was no such intensive campaign to get the women out to the registration places:
TABLE XLVII
Per Cent of Women Registered in Thirteen Michigan Cities
| Cities | Population | Women Registered | Per Cent of Population |
| Grand Rapids | 132,000 | 22,700 | 17.0 |
| Saginaw | 65,000 | 8,509 | 13.0 |
| Benton Harbor | 12,000 | 1,506 | 12.5 |
| Traverse City | 12,000 | 1,388 | 11.6 |
| Jackson | 50,000 | 5,388 | 10.8 |
| Muskegon | 42,000 | 4,500 | 10.7 |
| Bay City | 50,000 | 6,290 | 10.6 |
| Port Huron | 25,000 | 2,706 | 10.1 |
| Flint | 70,000 | 6,906 | 9.9 |
| Kalamazoo | 50,166 | 4,308 | 8.6 |
| Detroit | 986,699 | 65,040 | 6.5 |
| Lansing | 55,000 | 3,000 | 6.3 |
| Cadillac | 10,000 | 513 | 5.1 |
| Totals and average | 1,591,865 | 135,344 | 8.5 |
Even then, however, the Grand Rapids movement was spreading to other Michigan cities; some of the results of that influence may well be visible in the larger percentages shown by some of these cities. Since then, indeed, the movement has become state-wide; and the results already visible show notably the same facts and tendencies so strikingly exhibited in the case of Grand Rapids, where it began.