The suffrage associations of the northern and western States ask for the ballot for all women, though Maine and several other States have lately asked for it with an educational or tax qualification. To advise southern women to beware of lending "sympathy or support" to the National Association because its auxiliary societies in the northern States hold the usual views of northerners on the color question is as irrelevant as to advise them to beware of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union because in the northern and western States it draws no color line; or to beware of the General Federation of Women's Clubs because the State Federations of the North and West do not draw it; or to beware of Christianity because the churches in the North and West do not draw it.... The _Times-Democrat_ published this letter in full and endeavored by its press reports afterwards to atone for its blunder. It had been feared that trouble over this question would arise but no other paper referred to it. The _Picayune_, _Item_ and _States_ were most generous with space and complimentary in expression throughout the convention.[24] The reports at the executive sessions were possibly of more interest to the delegates than the public addresses. Miss Gordon in her secretary's report spoke of the 12,000 or 13,000 letters which had been sent out since the last convention, many of them made necessary by the International Conference of the preceding year, and of the ending of its proceedings. To the 14,000 newspapers on the list to receive the quarterly _Progress_ the names of legislators in various States had been added, and to the latter leaflets attractively prepared by Miss Blackwell also were sent. She described the new suffrage postage stamp, a college girl in cap and gown holding a tablet inscribed: "In Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho women vote on the same terms as men," to offset the prevailing ignorance of this fact. Resolutions endorsing woman suffrage had been secured from the National Grange, the American Federation of Labor and a number of large labor unions. For the first time in the history of the National Education Association, three-fourths of whose members are women, a woman had been invited to address their annual convention and the one selected was the president of the National American Suffrage Association. Mrs. Catt was cordially received by them in July at Minneapolis.