king, scholarly and efficient report on the service
rendered by the Data department showed the vast amount of time and
labor necessary to collect accurate data and how unreliable is much
that exists. This was especially the case in regard to woman suffrage,
which, when compiled from current sources and returned to the various
States for verification, always required much correction. The report
told of 350 letters sent to county clerks in the equal suffrage States
for trustworthy information as to the proportion of women who voted,
with most gratifying response. Many such investigations were made of
women in office, laws relating to women, suffrage and labor
legislation, women's war record, an infinite variety of subjects.
Thousands of newspaper clippings were tabulated and a roomful of
carefully labelled files testified to the unremitting work of the
bureau. Twenty State libraries and some others were supplied during
the year with the books issued by the National Suffrage Publishing
Company and its pamphlets were widely distributed.

Miss Esther G. Ogden, president of the National Woman Suffrage
Publishing Company, made an interesting report and showed how suffrage
victories, the thing the company was working for, meant its financial
loss, for as soon as a State had won the vote it ceased to order
literature. The tremendous demands of the campaigns of 1915 and 1916
had enabled the company to pay a three per cent. dividend but the
entrance of the United States into the war, causing a general
lessening of suffrage work, would create a deficit for the present
year. For the New York campaign of 1917 the company furnished
10,081,267 pieces of literature, all promptly paid for. Miss Ogden
gave an amusing account of how the company was "bankrupted" trying to
supply "suffrage maps" up to date, for as soon as a lot was published
another State would give Presidential or Municipal suffrage and then
the demand would come for maps with the new State "white," and
thousands of the others would have to be "scrapped."

The chairman of the Literature Committee, Mrs. Arthur L. Livermore,
said that for the first time finances had been available for
publishing a well-indexed catalogue with the publications grouped
under more than twenty headings. These included efficiency booklets,
suffrage arguments, answers to opponents, Federal Amendment
literature, State reports, etc. Some of these publications were in
book form, including Mrs. Catt's