The influence of this convention was immediately seen in the increasing membership of the Era Club. Its leaders recognized that the best policy to rouse both men and women to the value of suffrage to the individual and the community was by applied politics in social service. It had already secured a partial franchise for taxpaying women and its achievements in the following years made it an acknowledged power.[60] In 1910 a great charity and educational benefit was launched for the Anti-Tuberculosis League and the Woman's Dispensary. A complete plan of organizing with Era Club members as ward and precinct leaders taught them political organization.
By 1913 the movement for a Federal Suffrage Amendment was growing so insistent that southern women who were opposed to this method felt the necessity of organizing to combat it and to uphold the State's rights principle of the Democratic party. Through the initiative of Miss Gordon a Call for a conference was sent in August to leading women in every southern State and signed by twenty-two from almost as many States asking the Governors to meet in New Orleans for a conference. It said:
We are united in the belief that suffrage is a State right and that the power to define a State's electorate should remain the exclusive right of the State. We recognize that Woman Suffrage is no longer a theory to be debated but a condition to be met. The inevitable "votes for women" is a world movement and unless the South squarely faces the issue and takes steps to preserve the State's right the force of public opinion will make it mandatory through a National Constitutional Amendment....
While as Southerners we wish to see the power of the State retained, yet as women we are equally determined to secure, as of paramount importance, the right which is the birthright of an American citizen. We, therefore, appeal to you gentlemen vested with the power largely to shape conditions to confer with us and influence public opinion to adopt woman suffrage through State action. Failing to accomplish this, the onus of responsibility will rest upon the men of the South if southern women are forced to support a National Amendment, weighted with the same objections as the Fifteenth.
It was not expected that the Governors would come, but the desired publicity was secured and several of them sent representative women. At the invitation of the Era Club the conference was held in New Orleans Nov. 10-11, with an excellent attendance. The Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference was organized with Miss Gordon president. On May 1, 1914, headquarters were opened in New Orleans in charge of Mrs. Ida Porter Boyer of Pennsylvania, as executive secretary, who had had long experience in suffrage organization and press work. For the next three years Miss Gordon went regularly to these headquarters and gave her entire time to the promotion of the Southern Conference without financial remuneration. In October a 20-page magazine, the New Southern Citizen, made its appearance, which became self-supporting and proved to be a most valuable factor in the work of the conference. The first convention was held in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Nov. 10, 1914, just before that of the National American Association in Nashville, which its delegates attended. It was welcomed by the Mayor, the president of the Chamber of Commerce and many club presidents. Delegates were present from twelve States and in addition a number of distinguished visitors. Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont brought with her Miss Christabel Pankhurst of Great Britain and both made addresses. About $1,500 were pledged.
Miss Gordon said in her president's address: "The Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference has for its immediate object to make the Democratic party declare itself in favor of votes for women in its next national platform. This, we southern suffragists believe, is the first step in what will prove a veritable landslide in the South. The conference therefore recommends to the suffragists of the South the adoption of a policy of concentration upon the Democratic party to declare itself."
In December, 1915, a national conference was held in Richmond, Va. Smaller conferences were held in Atlanta, Greenville, S. C., and Little Rock. Miss Gordon visited most of the cities of the South to organize the women. In July, 1916, an executive meeting was held in St. Louis at the time of the national Democratic convention. Its Resolutions Committee gave a hearing to the representatives of the conference, Miss Clay, Mrs. O. F. Ellington of Little Rock, Mrs. Boyer, Mrs. Wesley Martin Stoner of Washington. Miss Gordon made an extended appeal for an endorsement of woman suffrage in the party platform and presented a resolution to "secure for women self-government while preserving to the State a like self-government." This was not adopted, but the platform did recommend "the extension of suffrage to the women of the country by the States."
Although the principal object of the conference had been attained, its leaders hesitated to dissolve it because of its excellent magazine and work yet to be done. It was maintained until May, 1917, when the entrance of this country into the World War made its discontinuance seem advisable.[61]
Legislative Action. Prior to 1904 it was an unheard of thing for women in Louisiana to take an active part in legislative procedure. A woman's club, the Arena, had been instrumental in obtaining the first "age of consent" legislation, but a Unitarian minister had entirely managed the Legislature. Therefore the tyros who formed the first Legislative Committee of the Era Club showed their ignorance and enthusiasm when their program included at least twelve bills which they proposed to have enacted into law in one session.[62] Without any friends at court it was with considerable relief that they followed advice to put them all in the hands of an influential lobbyist. Reform bills were not in his line and the session was drawing to a close with nothing done when the Gordon sisters cast precedent and propriety to the winds, telegraphed to the Senator from their district for an audience, boarded a morning train for Baton Rouge and descended upon the Capitol. Article 210 of the State constitution adopted in 1898 made women ineligible to serve in any official capacity. One of the first acts of the Era Club had been to try to have it amended so as to allow the appointment of a woman to fill a vacancy on the School Board. The surprised Senator met them on their arrival, learned the object of their visit and they will never know whether sympathy, amusement or curiosity actuated the Committee on Judiciary to whom he appealed for a hearing, but a few minutes after their arrival they were pleading their cause before its members. They then called on Governor Newton Blanchard, who offered to have Article 210 amended to enable the appointment of a factory inspector, but in their zeal for the larger object they declined.
1906. Wiser by two years' experience, the Legislative Committee was glad to accept Lieutenant Governor Jared Y. Sanders's offer of an amendment for the above purpose, and Miss Jean Gordon was appointed factory inspector for the city of New Orleans. It was not long before she realized that the Child Labor law, under which she must operate, was not worth the paper on which it was written. She then studied the child labor laws of every State and selected what was best suited to southern conditions, and put it into form for submission.
1908. The legislative program was limited to the attempt to amend Article 210, pass a School suffrage bill and the Child Labor bill. The School suffrage bill, under the skillful management of Senator R. E. Gueydan, assisted by Senators Albert Estinopal and James Brady and Lieutenant Governor Thos. C. Barrett, passed the Senate but failed in the House. The Child Labor bill passed the House but not the Senate.