The resolution to submit the amendment had passed two Legislatures and was to go to the voters at a special election Oct. 19, 1915. A Cooperative Committee was formed of three from the State association and the Women's Political Union each and one each from the Equal Franchise Society and the Men's League. A Committee of One Hundred was also organized to raise money for the campaign, Mrs. Colby chairman. It obtained $9,000 which were used for the expenses of the Press Committee, that had its office at the National Suffrage headquarters in New York, for news bulletins every day, plate matter, interviews, stories, advertising cards and posters in the trolley cars and the stations of the Hudson Tunnels system; illuminated signs and street banners in New Jersey cities and a half-page advertisement in all the papers of the State at the end of the campaign. The executive secretary was Mrs. Flora Gapen Charters. The total amount of money raised and spent by the State and local organizations was approximately $80,000, obtained by dues and pledges, by collections at mass meetings, special luncheons and very largely by personal contributions from men and women.
The State association increased to 200 branches in twenty-four cities. The Political Union maintained a large headquarters in Newark. Over 3,000,000 pieces of literature and 400,000 buttons were distributed. The association circularized all the women's organizations of the State, the fraternal organizations, clergymen, grange officers, lawyers, office-holders and other special groups. Speakers were sent to grange picnics and county fairs. Street meetings took place regularly in all the principal cities and towns and automobile tours over the State. Over 4,000 outdoor and 500 indoor meetings were held. Four paid and thirty volunteer organizers were kept in the field for eight months.
The association arranged a conference of the leaders of the four campaign States, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New Jersey, which was held in East Orange in connection with the celebration on August 13 of the birthday of its founder, Lucy Stone. There was a pilgrimage of suffragists from almost every county, and, after exercises at her old home and the unveiling by her daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell, of a tablet placed in front of the house, there was an automobile parade through the nearby towns, winding up with a mass meeting in the park in East Orange, where Dr. Shaw and ex-Governor John Franklin Fort were the principal speakers.
The Women's Political Union conducted a "handing on the torch" demonstration which was quite effective. The New York Union supplied a large torch of bronze, which Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, representing New York, took with her on a tugboat half way across the Hudson River, where she was met by a New Jersey tug bearing Mrs. Van Winkle, to whom the torch was delivered. It was sent about the State to twenty or more towns where the Union had branches and its arrival was made the occasion for an outdoor reception and mass meeting.
The Women's Anti-Suffrage Association was also busy. It paid the salaries and expenses of two New Jersey speakers, Mrs. O. D. Oliphant of Trenton and John A. Matthews of Newark, an ex-Assemblyman, and brought in a number of outside speakers. It never claimed to have more than fifteen local branches and 18,000 members. Among the more prominent were the president, Mrs. E. Yarde Breese of Plainfield; Mrs. Thomas J. Preston, Mrs. Garrett A. Hobart, Mrs. Carroll P. Bassett, Miss Anna Dayton, Robert C. Maxwell, Miss Clara A. Vezin, Mrs. Hamilton F. Kean, Mrs. Alexander F. Jamieson, Mrs. Charles W. MacQuoid, Mrs. Thomas B. Adams, Miss Anne McIlvaine and Mrs. Sherman B. Joost.
James R. Nugent of Newark, prominent as the champion of the "wets" and the "antis," paid the salary of Edward J. Handley, an ex-newspaperman of Newark, and gave him a suite of offices in the Wise building with several clerks. His "publicity" kept the amendment on the front pages of the papers and the suffragists were always able to refute and disprove his statements. The intensive campaign carried on among the editors for the past two or three years bore fruit and 80 per cent. of the newspapers by actual canvass favored the amendment, and frequently when the front page carried a story against suffrage it was contradicted on the editorial page. Among editors who were particularly strong friends were James Kerney and John E. Sines of the Trenton Evening Times; Joseph A. Dear and Julius Grunow of the Jersey City Journal; John L. Matthews of the Paterson Press Guardian; George M. Hart of the Passaic Daily News; the Boyds of the New Brunswick Home News; J. L. Clevenger of the Perth Amboy Evening News; William H. Fischer of the New Jersey Courier; George W. Swift of the Elizabeth Daily Journal and E. A. Bristor of the Passaic Herald.
Three weeks before the election President Wilson announced himself in favor of the amendment, and he and his private secretary, Joseph P. Tumulty, made a special trip to New Jersey to vote for it. This had a marked effect over the country.
The Legislative Committee having secured a bill allowing women to watch at the polls, watchers' schools were held in every important city under the direction of Mrs. Colvin, with the result that at the election 1,657 of the 1,891 polling places in the State were supplied with trained women watchers.
On election day Nugent and his lieutenants worked all day at the Newark polling places and the suffragists were positive that hundreds of voters were imported from New York and other places, which was possible because men could vote on the amendment without having previously registered. Nugent is reported to have said: "We knew we had the amendment beaten when the election was put on registration day." This was done against the protests of the suffragists. Men voted on it at the same time they registered and in the police canvass made before the general election, the names of several thousand illegally registered were taken off the books in Essex and Hudson counties, all of whom had a chance to vote on the amendment. All day in all the cities the women watchers saw little groups of men taken into saloons opposite the polling places by persons avowedly working to defeat it, instructed how to vote on it, marshalled to the polling place and after voting taken back to the saloon to be paid.
Finding at the last moment that no provision was made by the State to pay for sending in returns from special elections, the State association arranged with the Associated Press to obtain its own returns and a wire was run into the suffrage headquarters in Jersey City. By midnight complete returns were in from 70 per cent. of the State, due to the splendid cooperation of the county and local suffrage chairmen, who knew only one day in advance that this work would be required of them. A manager of the Associated Press said that they had never handled an election where the returns came in faster or more accurately and few where they came in as well.