evident from first to last. The State association held a
business session May 4, and was addressed by Mr. Blackwell and Mrs.
Colby. Mrs. Lenore Starker Bliss was elected president.

An immediate result of the national meeting was the organization of
the Anna Shaw Junior Equal Suffrage Club of Grand Rapids, with
seventeen youthful members.

In December the American Federation of Labor held its annual
convention in Detroit. Miss Anthony addressed it by invitation and
urged the members to adopt a resolution asking Congress for a
Sixteenth Amendment forbidding the disfranchisement of United States
citizens on account of sex. Her speech was most enthusiastically
received and the resolution she offered was immediately adopted, and,
in the form of a petition which represented nearly 1,000,000 members,
duly forwarded to Congress.

Prior to the State convention of 1900 Mrs. Chapman Catt, assisted by
Miss Shaw, Miss Harriet May Mills of New York and Mrs. Root, held two
days' conventions at Hillsdale, Battle Creek, Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor,
organizing suffrage clubs at the first three places. The annual
meeting convened in Detroit, May 15-17, Miss Shaw and Mrs. Chapman
Catt giving addresses on consecutive evenings. Mrs. Bliss declining
renomination, Mrs. Ketcham was unanimously replaced at the head of the
State association.[334]

In July, at the request of Miss Anthony, the Columbia Catholic Summer
School held in Detroit extended an invitation for a speech on
suffrage. Mrs. Chapman Catt was selected, all arrangements being made
by Mrs. Jenkins and others. Father W. J. Dalton, who introduced her,
said he hoped to see women voting and filling all offices, even that
of police commissioner.

The Greenback and the People's parties have welcomed women as
assistants. Prominent among these have been Marian Todd, Martha E.
Strickland and Elizabeth Eaglesfield. In 1896 Mrs. Emery and Mrs. Root
were placed upon the State Central Committee of the People's Party.
The Prohibitionists also have received women as party workers.

Besides those already named, others who have been foremost in every
plan to forward equality for women are Giles B. and Catharine A. F.
Stebbins, Sara Philleo Skinner, Lila E. Bliss, H. Margaret Downs,
Delisle P. Holmes, Wesley Emery, Brent Harding, Smith G. Ketcham and
John Wesley Knaggs; among the younger women, Florence Jenkins Spalding
and Edith Frances Hall.

LEGISLATIVE ACTION: Prior to 1885 the charters of