. GORDON.
New Orleans, La.

]

In March, 1885, Miss Susan B. Anthony visited the city for two weeks.
She was deluged with invitations for addresses, and spoke in
Agricultural Hall of the exposition at the request of the Press Club,
in Tulane Hall under the auspices of the city teachers, at the Girls'
High School and in half-a-dozen other places. Everywhere she was most
warmly welcomed and was favorably reported in the papers, although her
doctrines were new and unpopular. Mrs. Eliza J. Nicholson, owner and
manager of the _Picayune_, and Mrs. M. A. Field (Catharine Cole), of
its editorial staff, gave pleasant manifestations of friendship. One
of the addresses delivered by Miss Anthony was before the Woman's
Club, which had been an outgrowth of the exposition committees. Mrs.
May Wright Sewall of Indiana gave an address on this same occasion.
While this club had by no means been formed in the interests of
suffrage, it was a decided innovation and the first step out of
tradition and conservatism.

The work of the women of Louisiana in the Anti-Lottery campaign of
1891 is entitled to special mention. The lottery, as the great money
power, controlled absolutely the politics of the State, and the
leading newspapers were a unit in its support. The reform movement to
prevent the renewal of its charter was without money, prestige or the
influence of the press. The women came nobly to the rescue of this
apparently hopeless cause. They formed leagues for the collection of
money, they called meetings, they assisted in every possible way to
educate the public mind and awaken the public conscience. To them
belongs a large share of the credit for the final overthrow at the
polls of this octopus corporation, which was so long a reproach to the
State.

In 1892 the Portia Club was formed, a strictly suffrage organization,
with Mrs. Merrick as president.[291] Under its auspices the
Association for the Advancement of Women held its annual congress in
New Orleans in 1895, during which Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby of
Washington, D. C., gave an address on The Philosophy of Woman
Suffrage. At another time Mrs. Clara C. Hoffman of Missouri lectured
for the club.

In January, 1895, Miss Anthony, president of the National Suffrage
Association, accompanied by Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, chairman of its
organization committee, came again to New Orleans. The _Picayune_ said
of their first appearance:

If any one doubted the interes