Mrs. Boyd's painstaking, scholarly and efficient report on the service rendered by the Data department showed the vast amount of time and labor necessary to collect accurate data and how unreliable is much that exists. This was especially the case in regard to woman suffrage, which, when compiled from current sources and returned to the various States for verification, always required much correction. The report told of 350 letters sent to county clerks in the equal suffrage States for trustworthy information as to the proportion of women who voted, with most gratifying response. Many such investigations were made of women in office, laws relating to women, suffrage and labor legislation, women's war record, an infinite variety of subjects. Thousands of newspaper clippings were tabulated and a roomful of carefully labelled files testified to the unremitting work of the bureau. Twenty State libraries and some others were supplied during the year with the books issued by the National Suffrage Publishing Company and its pamphlets were widely distributed.
Miss Esther G. Ogden, president of the National Woman Suffrage Publishing Company, made an interesting report and showed how suffrage victories, the thing the company was working for, meant its financial loss, for as soon as a State had won the vote it ceased to order literature. The tremendous demands of the campaigns of 1915 and 1916 had enabled the company to pay a three per cent. dividend but the entrance of the United States into the war, causing a general lessening of suffrage work, would create a deficit for the present year. For the New York campaign of 1917 the company furnished 10,081,267 pieces of literature, all promptly paid for. Miss Ogden gave an amusing account of how the company was "bankrupted" trying to supply "suffrage maps" up to date, for as soon as a lot was published another State would give Presidential or Municipal suffrage and then the demand would come for maps with the new State "white," and thousands of the others would have to be "scrapped."
The chairman of the Literature Committee, Mrs. Arthur L. Livermore, said that for the first time finances had been available for publishing a well-indexed catalogue with the publications grouped under more than twenty headings. These included efficiency booklets, suffrage arguments, answers to opponents, Federal Amendment literature, State reports, etc. Some of these publications were in book form, including Mrs. Catt's volume on the Federal Amendment, Mrs. Annie G. Porritt's Laws Affecting Women and Children and Miss Martha Stapler's Woman Suffrage Year Book. A number of pamphlets were printed in lots of 100,000, and 700,000 copies of the amendment speech of Senator John F. Shafroth of Colorado before the Senate.
The report of the Art Publicity Committee was made by its chairman, Mrs. Ernest Thompson Seton, and related principally to the poster competition, which closed with the exhibition at the national suffrage headquarters in January. About 100 posters were submitted and $500 in prizes awarded. Afterwards the prize winners and a selection from the others, about thirty in all, were sent to the Washington suffrage headquarters for display and then around to various cities which had asked for them.
One of the largest evening meetings was that devoted to American Women's War Service, with Mrs. Catt presiding. The first speaker was Secretary of War Newton G. Baker and a few detached paragraphs can give little idea of his eloquent address:
I sometimes ask myself what does this war mean to women? War always means to women sorrow and sacrifice and a mission of mercy but one of the large, redeeming hopes of this particular struggle is that it will bring a broadening of liberty to women. This war is waged for democracy. Democracy is never an accomplished thing, it is always a process of growth, an endless series of advances. President Wilson has called it a rule of action. It is a rule that adapts conduct to environment. What was called a democracy in Greece was a small privileged class ruling over slaves. The members of the ruling class had certain democratic relations with one another. There was no more of real democracy in Rome. The first constitutional convention of the French Revolution had a very restricted electoral system with a property qualification. It was so with our own government in 1776 and 1789. It was a rule of conduct adapted to the environment of that time....
The whole environment has changed. In 1789 we might quite possibly have defined ourselves as a democracy, although women did not vote, but not now. We speak of this as a war for democracy. Women are making sacrifices just like men. The activities of women in aid of the war are a necessary part of it. If all the women were to stop their work tonight we should have to withdraw from the war, at least temporarily, until we could entirely readjust ourselves. One of the things this war is bringing home to us is that men and women are essentially partners in an industrial civilization, and by the end of the war the women will be recognized as partners.
When the Secretary finished Dr. Shaw said: "May we not send a message to President Wilson and say: 'Mr. President, as you came to our convention a year ago to fight with us, so we come now to fight with you. As you have kept your pledge of loyalty to us, so we shall keep our pledge to you. We are with you in this world struggle.'" The convention enthusiastically endorsed the message. Other speakers were Mrs. McAdoo and Mrs. Bass—Financing the War; Miss Martha Van Rensselaer, department of Home Economics, Cornell University—Food and the War; Miss Jane Delano—The Red Cross and the War; Mrs. Laidlaw, Mrs. Louis F. Slade—Women's War Service in New York; Dr. Shaw, chairman Woman's Committee of the National Council of Defense. Mrs. McAdoo, daughter of President Wilson and wife of the Secretary of the Treasury, said that she was a resident of New York State and a voter and that women were making a great fight for democracy but the thought which should now be first in the minds of all of them was how to win the war. She described briefly her work as chairman of the Women's Committee of the Liberty Loan and told of its wonderful success in raising millions of dollars. Mrs. Bass, the only woman member of the War Savings Committee, added an earnest appeal to women to help finance the war, and the other speakers on their several topics raised the meeting to a high level of patriotic enthusiasm. In a stirring address Dr. Shaw showed what the country expected of women at this critical time, saying:
We talk of the army in the field as one and the army at home as another. We are not two armies; we are one—absolutely one army—and we must work together. Unless the army at home does its duty faithfully, the army in the field will be unable to carry to a victorious end this war which you and I believe is the great war that shall bring to the world the thing that is nearest our hearts—democracy, that "those who submit to authority shall have a voice in the government" and that when they have that voice peace shall reign among the nations of men.
The United States Government, learning from the weaknesses and the mistakes of the governments across the sea, immediately after declaring war on Germany knew that it was wise to mobilize not only the man power of the nation but the woman power. It took Great Britain a long time to learn that—more than a year—and it was not until 50,000 women paraded the streets of London with banners saying, "Put us to work," that it dawned upon the British government that women could be mobilized and made serviceable in the war. And what is the result? It has been discovered that men and women alike have within them great reserve power, great forces which are called out by emergencies and the demands of a time like this.