Analysis of the Wisconsin woman suffrage campaign of 1910-1920 suggests that public relations belonged not only to political or business practices, but was equally a process by which the masses achieved their own best interests in nineteenth and early twentieth century social reform movements. Woman suffragists were led by women, and the public relations field, by neglecting the contribution of unpaid advocates who worked for what they believed in, denies all practitioners an ethical past. Women reformers learned the methods of public opinion campaigns in earlier reform movements long dominated by men. Historical emphasis on the profession's origin in politics and business also denies a usable past to practitioners in the nonprofit sector still reliant on voluntary support. Suffragists, for example, inherited some of their practices and much of their popular support from the abolition and temperance campaigns. Theodora Winton Youmans, a pioneering woman journalist who wrote for the "Waukesha Freeman" from 1911 to 1920, led the suffrage campaign which in seven years achieved a turnaround in public opinion. As early as 1911 and 1912, under her leadership, Wisconsin Women engaged in activities later recognized as components of modern public relations: opinion research, publicity, lobbying, fund raising, and membership drives. It is important to remember that public relations had its "mothers" as well as its "fathers." Fifty-eight footnotes are appended. (NKA)