-guardianship of children; that the working forces of the
association be concentrated where there are State campaigns for
suffrage; that each club organize one new one and each individual
member secure one more; that all present lines of work be continued
and extended; that there be a more systematic and liberal distribution
of literature; that hearings be obtained before all kinds of
organizations. It was voted that "the Board of Officers consider the
propriety of recommending all the States to make a concerted effort to
secure Presidential suffrage for women in the election of 1908." But
one work conference was held, that on Press, Miss Hauser presiding.
One of the most important conferences of the week was that of State
presidents, at which each told of the most effective work within the
year, and the discussion which followed gave much practical and
helpful information.

At the second afternoon session Dr. Shaw read a number of letters from
Governors of the equal suffrage and other States answering favorably
an appeal from the California Suffrage Association that they would
appoint one or more women to the national commission soon to meet to
consider uniform marriage and divorce laws. She had emphasized this
necessity in her president's address. The report of Mrs. Florence
Kelley, chairman of the Committee on Industrial Problems Affecting
Women and Children, was heard with deep interest and feeling. As
executive secretary of the National Consumers' League for many years
and a close student of labor conditions, she spoke with accurate
knowledge when she told of the employment of children. A Baltimore
woman in her welcome to the convention had said that Maryland women
were satisfied with what they could secure by petition without the
ballot, and Mrs. Kelley, referring with fine sarcasm to the "sadly
modest results of their petitions," said:

Last night while we slept after our evening meeting there were in
Maryland many hundred boys, only nominally fourteen years old,
working all night in the glass-works; and here in Baltimore the
smallest messenger boys I have ever seen in any city were
perfectly free to work all night. No law was broken in either
case, for the women of Maryland have not yet by their right of
petition brought to the children of the State protection from
working all night. Here in this city children must go to school
until they are nominally twelve years