on. Others to the _Age of Reason_ and _Wilshire's Magazine_
brought hundreds of willing workers. Letters were sent in every
direction, friends stirred up, reminded of their task and
requested to send names of others who would work. Every sheet
that came in was searched for names of possible friends who might
circulate the petitions. Between March 1 and July 1, 1909, nearly
2,000 letters were written and 45,000 blanks distributed....

Later the work was removed to Washington and headquarters established
there to finish the petition by 1910.

The report of Mrs. Lucretia L. Blankenburg (Penn.), chairman of the
Committee on Civil Rights, showed the usual painstaking year's work.
Her letters to all the State presidents for information had brought
answers from twenty-two and eleven of these showed advanced
legislation for women and children. In some of them it was amended
labor laws or new ones; in others for a Juvenile Court, for improving
the position of teachers, for the advantage of children in the public
schools, for property rights of wives. Maine reported nearly a dozen
such new laws. Minnesota was in the lead with thirty Acts of the
Legislature.

Mrs. Mary E. Craigie (N. Y.), chairman of the Committee on Church
Work, introduced her excellent report by saying: "President Taft
recently said in a public address: 'Christianity and the spirit of
Christianity are the only basis for the hope of modern civilization
and the growth of popular self-government.' ... Women are to-day and
always have been the mainstay and chief support of the churches and
the leaders in all great moral reforms; yet as a disfranchised class
they are powerless to aid in bringing about any reforms that depend
upon legislative or governmental action and the church is thereby
deprived of more than two-thirds of its power to help extend civic
righteousness throughout the land. Now that there is a world-wide
movement among women to demand the political power to do their part in
the world's work, they have a right to ask and to receive from
ministers and from all Christian people support and help in working
for this greatest of all reforms." ... Mrs. Craigie told of addressing
the ministerial association of Canada at Toronto, where fifteen
minutes had been allotted to her but by unanimous insistence she was
obliged to keep on for an hour. An interesting discussion followed,
after which an endorsement of the principle of wom