The latest movement has been the promotion of the movement which led to the formation of the Montreal Suffrage Exhibition early in the same year.

The first concrete formation of the movement for women suffrage through the peaceful means of an educational campaign, took place on April 24, 1913, when at a meeting in the Stevenson Hall the officers for the Montreal Suffrage Association were elected as follows: President, Prof. Carrie M. Derick; vice presidents, Dean Walton, Mrs. C.B. Gordon, Reverend Dr. Symonds; corresponding secretary, Mrs. Oliver Smith; recording secretary, Mrs. John Scott; treasurer, Mrs. George Lyman; convenors of committees—legislative, Mr. C.M. Holt, K.C.; press, Mrs. F. Minden Cole; literature, Mrs. H.W. Weller; with an executive of Mrs. Walter Lyman, Miss Cartwright, Mrs. Alister Mitchell, Doctor Guthrie, Mrs. Macnaughton, Reverend Mr. Dickie, Mrs. Fenwick Williams, Mrs. Hayter Reed and Mrs. Rufus Smith.

Among the first to respond to the war call in the last days of August, 1914, was the Local Council of Women, which summoned its workers of the affiliated societies from their vacation homes to form together for the organization of the relief committees taken up in connection with the general patriotic fund of the Dominion.

LA FEDERATION NATIONALE

A second council of French-speaking women has since adopted similar methods for combined action in social work.

La Fédération Nationale St. Jean Baptiste is the name which a section of the ladies already connected with the St. Jean Baptiste Association took in 1907 with the idea of federating a number of existent women associations among the French-Canadians which arose in the winter of 1906-7 to meet various social problems peculiarly affecting women. While leaving to each association its own autonomy, a central board of delegates from each organization was formed with its central office in the Monument National. The association obtained a special charter in 1912 (3 George V) with a special seal “Vers La Justice par la Charité.” It still works, however, in union with the Men’s Association of St. Jean Baptiste. This union has been productive of great value for the life of the French-Canadian women in Montreal. It has made them study the principal obstacles to social, moral and intellectual progress in the various classes and callings in woman’s sphere.

The works undertaken by committees from the associations federated, such as those of the office employèes, shop workers, telephone operators, factory workers, the teachers and others, are divided into three classes, charitable, economical and educational. The charitable works are those which had the relief and aid of the neighbor as their goal, and thus their committees are engaged on church, hospital and social betterment bodies. The economical are those which develop the women’s interest in bettering their material conditions, while the educational are those which aim at the uplift and development of the individual. The movement is sanely progressive. It has effected many reforms in social conditions; it has attacked the evil of alcoholism and it has opposed movements destructive of the home life; while it has fostered all it builds up its well-being. In the great Child Welfare Exhibition of Montreal in 1912 it played a conspicuous part. Imitating other modern women’s movements it has held its congresses at regular intervals and it has gathered around the movement a body of writers and social experts well able to be of great value to the development of French-Canadian womanhood. The transactions of its congresses are printed, as well as those of its various committees in the annual reports of the works of the federated association.

It has an official organ called “La Bonne Parole,” issued monthly, which began in February, 1913. Among its chief writers is Madame Gérin Lajoie, its editor, and one of the most vigorous organizers of the fédération acting as its first secretary, with Madame Beïque as its first president. Madame Gérin Lajoie is now its president. The administration of the association is conducted by an executive committee with an inner “bureau de direction.” The executive includes the delegates of the various associations who elect the board of directors who control the organization. The following list of officers published in the report of 1911 may be reproduced as showing the constitution and personnel of this modern woman’s movement:

Déléguées des œuvres fédérées: