RD09168

June 8th, 1918.

Mrs. E. M. Barkely,
1919 D. Street,
Lincoln, Nebraska.

My dear Mrs. Barkley:--

Your good letter of June 6th was re-
ceived this morning.

I am very sorry, indeed, to learn
of the sickness and sadness in your family. You impress-
ed me yourself as not being very well when I saw you the
last time and I had a feeling that you had been over-doing
and these shocks to us in our family life only take out
that much more of our strength, even though we accept
them in the best possible spirit, so I hope you have come
through all of this with reserve strength enough to keep
you on the upward gain.

I read that part of your letter care-
fully, in regard to the Mississippi Valley Conference and
do hope that your situation in Nebraska will be such that
you can have a good state representation at the conference
in September.

Our work is progressing very well here
and we hope much from our amended amendment. There is no
doubt but that the suffrage cause in South Dakota is in
very much safer condition that it has ever been previously.
We feel that in combining the two subjects, as they are
combined, that the men have been awakened so decidedly to
the fact that it should not be sex that decides the quali-
fications of a voter. It gives us splendid ground for
argument and we find in the campaign for finances, which
has been going on here recently, that our present campaign
appeals to men who have never been in favor of suffrage.
In fact, one of our bankers, whose wife previous to this
year, had always been opposed, was the first man to give
us any thing after we began our campaign. We appealed to
him on the basis of our amendment, which not only grants
the vote to women, but eliminates the alien voter. He
gave us $50.00, for that work. He never would have given