enn.), who had
succeeded Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt as chairman of the Committee on
Petition to Congress, took up the report where it had ended at the
last convention. She said that, in addition to the 100,000 petitions
and 5,000 individual letters sent from New York under Mrs. Catt's
supervision, there had gone out from the headquarters after they had
been removed to Washington and placed in charge of Mrs. Rachel Brill
Ezekiel, 60,000 more petitions, 11,000 more letters and 1,185 postals
with appeals. "The petition," she said, "has been a means of
introducing suffrage into thousands of households and hundreds of
meetings of all kinds in which the subject had not before been
mentioned. Even women's clubs have had to listen to suffrage when
brought to them by eager seekers after signatures. It has given to
many people who have never before done anything for suffrage an
opportunity. In some cases whole neighborhoods have been reached
through the work of a single energetic woman willing to go from house
to house circulating the petition and leaving literature with families
where she found little or no sympathy for our movement. All letters
sent out from petition headquarters enclosed suffrage leaflets and
carried to thousands of men and women the first suffrage literature
they had seen." All this vast work had cost only $4,555, of which Mrs.
Catt had contributed $1,000. The most strenuous effort had not
succeeded in getting the return of all the petitions in time for the
convention but those at hand contained 404,825 names.[66]

The arrangements for the parade which was to carry the petitions to
Congress were in the hands of Miss Mary Garrett Hay. Mrs. Helen H.
Gardener obtained the use of fifty cars from interested residents of
Washington and these were handsomely adorned with the flag of the
United States and suffrage banners. The official report said: "The
most picturesque incident of the convention was the long line of fifty
decorated automobiles which bore the petitions and delegates of each
State from the Hotel Arlington to the Capitol, where the petitions
were personally delivered to the various Senators and Representatives
who were to present them to Congress. The large piles of rolled
petitions, the respect of the people who lined the streets, the
courtesy of the Congressmen and the crowds which watched the
presentation in Senate and House were all impressive. Senator
LaFollette brought instant silence when, presen