For convenience of work the State was divided into twelve campaign districts, whose chairmen were, 1st, Miss Hay, New York City; 2nd, Mrs. Brown, Bellport, Long Island; 3rd, Miss Leila Stott, Albany; 4th, Mrs. Frank Paddock, Malone; 5th, Mrs. L. O. McDaniel, succeeded by Miss Mills, Syracuse; 6th, Mrs. Helen B. Owens, Ithaca; 7th, Mrs. Alice C. Clement, Rochester; 8th, Mrs. Nettie Rogers Shuler, Buffalo; 9th, Mrs. Carl Osterheld, Yonkers; 10th, Mrs. Gordon Norrie, Staatsburg; 11th, Miss Evanetta Hare, succeeded by Mrs. George Notman, Keene Valley; 12th, Miss Lucy C. Watson, Utica. Under all of these chairmen came the 150 assembly district leaders and under these the 5,524 election district captains. From the first it was realized that organization was the keynote to success and that to be effective it must extend into every polling precinct of the State. Mrs. Catt had no superior in organizing ability. The plan followed the lines of the political parties and was already in use by the Woman Suffrage Party of New York City, which she had founded.
In January, 1914, Campaign District Conferences and Schools of Method were held, followed by a convention and mass meetings in every county. During the year twenty-eight paid organizers were constantly at work. Mrs. Catt herself visited fifty of the up-state counties. The annual State convention October 12-16, was preceded by a state-wide motor car pilgrimage. On every highway was a procession of cars stopping along the route for street meetings and converging in Rochester for the convention. There was little change in officers. Three vice-presidents were added, Mrs. Alfred E. Lewis of Geneva, Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Notman. Mrs. Cannon was succeeded as corresponding secretary by Miss Marion May of New York. Mrs. Abbott and Mrs. Shuler were added to the board of directors. A comprehensive program of work for 1914-15, laid out by Mrs. Catt, gave a definite task for each month and included raising a $150,000 campaign fund, each district being assigned a proportion; school for suffrage workers, special suffrage edition of a newspaper in every county, automobile campaign, work at county fairs and a house to house canvass to enroll the names of women who wanted the suffrage. Mrs. Catt's plan also included parades in all the large cities and schools in every county to train watchers for the polls.
As was expected the resolution for the suffrage amendment was passed by the Legislature of 1915, the vote to be taken on the day of the regular election, November 2. Forty paid organizers were kept in the field and a convention was held again in each county. By autumn each of the 150 assembly districts was organized and in addition there were 565 clubs and 183 campaign committees. About 2,500 women held official positions, serving without pay. It was estimated that about 200,000 women worked in some capacity in this campaign. Twelve thousand New York City public school teachers formed a branch under Katharine Devereux Blake as chairman. Each paid fifty cents dues and many gave their summer vacation to work for the amendment.
The Equal Franchise Society, in charge of the literature, printed 7,230,000 leaflets, requiring twenty tons of paper; 657,200 booklets, one full set sent to every political leader in the State; 592,000 Congressional hearings and individual speeches were mailed to voters; 149,533 posters were put up and 1,000,000 suffrage buttons were used; 200,000 cards of matches with "Vote Yes on the Suffrage Amendment" on the back were distributed and 35,000 fans carrying the suffrage map.
The value of street speaking had long since been learned. A woman speaking from an automobile or a soap box or steps, while she might begin by addressing a few children would usually draw a crowd of men of the kind who could never be gotten inside a hall, and these men were voters. The effect of these outdoor meetings was soon seen all over the State in the rapidly changing sentiment of the man in the street. During the six months preceding the election 10,325 meetings were recorded besides the countless ones not reported. Mass meetings were held in 124 different cities, sixteen in New York, with U. S. Senators and Representatives and other prominent speakers. The week before election in New York, Buffalo, Rochester and other large cities Marathon speeches were made continuously throughout the twenty-four hours, with listening crowds even during the small hours of the night. Suffrage speeches were given in moving picture shows and vaudeville theaters and a suffrage motion picture play was produced. Flying squadrons of trained workers would go into a city, make a canvass, hold street meetings, attract public attention and stimulate newspaper activity.
A remarkable piece of work was done by a Press and Publicity Council of one hundred women in New York City organized by Mrs. Whitehouse. They established personal acquaintance with the editors and owners of the fifteen daily papers; answered the anti-suffrage letters published; communicated with the editors of 683 trade journals, 21 religious papers, 126 foreign language papers and many others—893 in all—and offered them exclusive articles; they suggested special features for magazines and planned suffrage covers; they secured space for a suffrage calendar in every daily paper. This council placed suffrage slides in moving picture houses and suffrage posters in the lobbies of theaters; and had a page advertisement of suffrage in every theater program. Comedians were asked to make references to suffrage in their plays and jokes were collected for them and appropriate lines suggested.
A sub-committee of writers was organized which assembled material for special suffrage editions of papers, wrote suffrage articles and made suggestions for stories. The Art Committee illustrated the special editions and made cartoons. They held an exhibit of suffrage posters with prizes and raised money through an exhibition and sale of the work of women painters and sculptors. A new suffrage game was invented and installed at Coney Island. They supplied the posters for $70,000 worth of advertising space on billboards and street cars which was contributed by the owners during the final weeks of the campaign. They organized and managed the suffrage banner parade, the largest which had yet taken place.
Among the other publicity "stunts" of the council were suffrage baseball games, a Fourth of July celebration at the Statue of Liberty and Telephone and Telegraph Day, when the wires carried suffrage messages to politicians, judges, editors, clergymen, governors, mayors, etc., all of these "stunts" receiving a large amount of newspaper publicity. The most effective was the One Day Strike, to answer the argument used by the "antis" that "woman's place was in the home" by asking all women to stay at home for only one day. The suggestion was never intended to be carried out and did not go further than a letter sent by Mrs. Whitehouse to the presidents of women's clubs and some other organizations, asking them to come to a meeting to consider the plan, copies of which were sent to the newspapers. The effect was extraordinary. Department stores, telephone company managers, employers of all kinds of women's labor, hospitals and schools, protested loudly against the crippling of public service, the loss of profits and the disruption of business which would result from even one day's absence of women from their public places. Editorial writers devoted columns to denouncing the proposal. Suffrage leaders were bitterly criticized for even suggesting such a public calamity. The favorite argument of the "antis" was answered for all time.
At the very end of the campaign the anti-suffragists began to advertise extensively in the subway and on the elevated roads in New York City but the firm that controlled this space refused to accept any advertising from the suffragists. Woman's wit, however, was equal to the emergency. For the three days preceding the election one hundred women gave their time to riding on elevated and subway trains holding up large placards on which were printed answers to the "anti" advertisements. The public understood and treated the women with much courtesy.
It is difficult to give even the barest outline of the work of the Press Bureau, at first under the management of Mrs. Haryot Holt Dey and later of Miss Rose Young, with a volunteer force of 214 press chairmen over the State. There were 2,136 publications in the State, 211 dailies, 1,117 weeklies, 628 monthlies, and 180 foreign publications printed in twenty-five languages. To the weeklies a bulletin from the central bureau went regularly; 3,036 shipments were made of pages of plate matter. The American Press Association and the Western Newspaper Union for many weeks sent out columns of suffrage news with their regular service for the patent inside page used by country papers. The bureau furnished material for debates and answered attacks against suffrage. The support given by the newspapers was of great value. Of the fifteen dailies of New York City ten were pro-suffrage, while the rural press was overwhelmingly in favor. Most of the papers of the larger cities up-state were opposed, although there were notable exceptions.