The second auditor, Mrs. Pattie Ruffner Jacobs (Ala.), in the report of her field work showed an equally full schedule. She had been present at every board meeting but one, of which she was notified too late; as a member of the Congressional Committee had assisted with the lobby work in Washington; had attended a three-days' State conference in Nashville and spoken three times; the Mississippi State convention and spoken twice; spoken in Savannah and Asheville and at the May-day celebration of the Nashville League; attended the Chicago and St. Louis demonstrations and spent the intervening times in raising the money to meet her pledge of $2,000 for her State to the National Association.

Mrs. Katharine Dexter McCormick, chairman of the Press Department, stated that this was largely a nominal position, as the practical work was done by professionals and would be related in the report from the Publicity department. The reports of the national officers were concluded by that of Mrs. Catt, chairman of the Campaign and Survey Committee, a new feature of the association. It began: "For the purpose of making a survey of suffrage conditions throughout the nation, either an officer of the National Board or some person or persons representing the Board have visited nearly every State in the Union. I have myself visited twenty-three States; Miss Hauser and Miss Walker visited nine enfranchised States; Mrs. Miller, Mrs. Jacobs, Mrs. Morrisson and Mrs. Rogers have each visited several; Mrs. Roessing and Miss Patterson have made a number of trips to West Virginia. Our chief motive was to learn conditions. To corroborate our impressions questionnaires were sent to all the State associations in January and again in July. As a result of the information obtained the National Board is convinced that our movement has reached a crisis which if recognized will open the way to a speedy and final victory."

Mrs. Catt expressed the belief that in the future a better understanding between national and State boards would be possible and spoke of the visits of herself and other national officers to West Virginia and South Dakota, where woman suffrage amendments would be voted on in November. She then took up the case of Iowa, where one had been defeated the past June, and made an analysis of a situation which had existed here and in nearly all States where defeats had taken place as follows:

When the present Board came into office, Iowa was in campaign and but a few months remained for work. In January I met with the State Board and we counselled together concerning the needs of the campaign; later I met with it on three different occasions and gave one month to speaking in the State. The National Board contributed $5,000 to the campaign from the legacy of Mary J. Coggeshall of Iowa and gave one organizer from January 1 until the vote was taken. It also sent speakers and workers toward the end of the campaign. The various States contributed generously through the national treasury.

The campaign came up splendidly at the last. Men, I believe, supported it more earnestly than they have done in other States. One of the best press bureaus any State has had, under the direction of Mrs. Rose Lawless Geyer, was at work for some months. The able president, Miss Flora Dunlap, gave all her time and ability. There were many brilliant forays which were truly effective, but nothing could overcome a weakness which has appeared in every campaign and that is the inability of newly-formed, untrained committees to put speakers and workers to the best use. It will be the case in every campaign that, near the end, weak spots must be reinforced by outside experienced workers. Another difficulty was that money-raising was left to the close of the campaign when all the efforts of workers were demanded by other duties. This has been the trouble in most States. The lesson we must learn is that at the beginning a money-raising plan must be formed and carried out and pledges must be made to cover the major portion of the cost before the real campaign is begun. Toward the close there are many things which ought to be done but are left undone for want of money. State committees grow timid because they do not see the money in sight and naturally trim their budgets to the point which renders defeat inevitable.

Iowa, like every other State, showed opposition from the "wets," tricks of politicians and the rounding up of every drunkard and outcast to vote against the amendment. The unprecedented result was that 35,000 more votes were cast on the suffrage proposition than on the Governor. This could only have been brought about by inducements of some sort which were made to the lowest elements of the population. This story differs in coloring and detail with each campaign but varies little as to general fact. It must be borne in mind and our campaigns must be so good that these purchasable and controllable elements will be outvoted.

A number of men worked against the amendment in Iowa and men are working at this time in South Dakota and West Virginia. Who employs or pays these men we have never been able to discover. Their ordinary method is to secure strictly private meetings of men only, where they spread the basest of untruths. All past campaigns point to the necessity of waging those of the future with a distinct understanding that the worst elements of the population will be lined up by this unscrupulous, well-supported, combined opposition of men and of women. The women appeal to the respectable elements of the community; the men make little pretense in this direction. There is a sure alliance between the two.

The first public session was held Thursday afternoon and the delegates looked forward with keen enjoyment to the "three-cornered debate" on what had become a paramount question. Mrs. Catt was in the chair. Each leader was to have ten minutes and her second five minutes to speak in the affirmative only; when the six had presented their arguments there was to be free discussion from the floor, and, after all who had wished had spoken, each leader would have ten minutes to answer the opposition to her point of view. The program was as follows:

Shall the National American Woman Suffrage Association drop work on the Federal Amendment and confine its activities to State legislation? Leader, Miss Laura Clay, Kentucky; second, Miss Kate Gordon, Louisiana.

Shall the National American Woman Suffrage Association drop work for State Referenda and concentrate on the Federal Amendment? Leader, Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, New York; second, Mrs. Glendower Evans, Massachusetts.

Shall the present policy of the National American Woman Suffrage Association to work for woman suffrage "by appropriate National and State legislation" be continued? Leader, Mrs. Raymond Brown, New York; second, Miss Florence Allen, Ohio.

The alternative amendments to the constitution will then be put: I. To strike out the words "National and." II. To strike out the words "and State." If both are lost, the constitution will remain as it is and the National American Woman Suffrage Association will stand pledged to both Federal and State campaigns.

The speakers presented their arguments with great earnestness; the discussion was vigorously carried on and the rebuttals were made with much spirit. By request the honorary president, Dr. Shaw, who was sitting on the platform, closed the debate and she strongly urged that there should be no change in the policy of the association. The convention voted overwhelmingly in favor of continuing to work for both National and State constitutional amendments, nearly all of the southern delegates joining in this vote. Mrs. Harper then rose to a question of personal privilege and said that she should consider it a great calamity for the association to discontinue its work for State amendments and that she only took the opposite side at the urgent request of Mrs. Catt, with the promise that she should be permitted to make this explanation. Mrs. Evans made a similar statement and the audience, which had been mystified by their position, had a hearty laugh. This debate and the vote of the convention restored the association to its position of standing for the original Federal Suffrage Amendment and working for amendments of State constitutions as a means to this end.

In the evening a brilliant reception for the officers and delegates was given in the large drawing-room of the Marlborough-Blenheim by the Atlantic City Woman Suffrage Club and the New Jersey State Association.

The convention was opened in the New Nixon Theater Thursday morning with prayer by the Rev. Thomas J. Cross, pastor of the Chelsea Baptist Church, and much routine business was disposed of. The constitution was changed so as to exclude from membership all organizations not in harmony with the policy of the association and the term of the officers was extended from one to two years. A unique program was carried out in the afternoon under the direction of the second vice-president, Mrs. Katharine Dexter McCormick—The Handicapped States, a Concrete Lesson in Constitutions. The States whose constitutions practically could not be amended were grouped under these heads: The Impossibles; The Insuperables; The Inexecutables; The Improbables; The Indubitables; The Inexcusables; The Irreproachables. Each group was represented by one or more women who quoted from the constitutions. It was intended as an object lesson to show the necessity for a Federal Amendment.

At 3:30 Mrs. Catt began her president's address before an audience that filled the large theater and listened with intense interest until the last word was spoken at five o'clock. It was a masterly review of the movement for woman suffrage and a program for the work now necessary to bring it to a successful end. The opening sentences were as follows:

I have taken for my subject, "The Crisis," because I believe that a crisis has come in our movement which, if recognized and the opportunity seized with vigor, enthusiasm and will, means the final victory of our great cause in the very near future. I am aware that some suffragists do not share in this belief; they see no signs nor symptoms today which were not present yesterday; no manifestations in the year 1916 which differ significantly from those in the year 1910. To them, the movement has been a steady, normal growth from the beginning and must so continue until the end. I can only defend my claim with the plea that it is better to imagine a crisis where none exists than to fail to recognize one when it comes, for a crisis is a culmination of events which calls for new considerations and new decisions. A failure to answer the call may mean an opportunity lost, a possible victory postponed....

This address, coming at the moment when woman suffrage was accepted as inevitable by the President of the United States and all the political parties, was regarded as the key-note of the beginning of a campaign which would end in victory. In pamphlet form it was used as a highly valued campaign document.

Mrs. Catt showed the impossibility of securing suffrage for all the women of the country by the State method and pointed out that the Federal Amendment was the one and only way. "Our cause has been caught in a snarl of constitutional obstructions and inadequate election laws," she said, after drawing upon her own experience to show the hazards of State referenda, and we have a right to appeal to our Congress to extricate it from this tangle. If there is any chivalry left this is the time for it to come forward and do an act of simple justice. In my judgment the women of this land not only have the right to sit on the steps of Congress until it acts but it is their self-respecting duty to insist upon their enfranchisement by that route.... Were there never another convert made there are suffragists enough in this country, if combined, to make so irresistible a driving force that victory might be seized at once. How can it be done? By a simple change of mental attitude. If you are to seize the victory, that change must take place in this hall, here and now. The crisis is here, but if the call goes unheeded, if our women think it means the vote without a struggle, if they think other women can and will pay the price of their emancipation, the hour may pass and our political liberty may not be won.... The character of a man is measured by his will. The same is true of a movement. Then will to be free." The address made a deep impression and was accepted as a call to arms.

Throughout the convention open-air meetings were held on the Boardwalk addressed by popular suffrage speakers and thousands in the great crowds that throng this noted thoroughfare were interested listeners. The Friday morning session was enlivened by a resolution offered by Mrs. Raymond Robins, which said that this Emergency Convention had been called to plan for the final steps which would lead to nation-wide enfranchisement of women; that the method of amending State constitutions meant long delay; that many national candidates in all parties had declared in favor of a Federal Amendment, and therefore the delegates in this convention urged that in the present campaign suffragists should support for national office only those candidates who pledged their support to this amendment. The delegates quickly recognized that this meant to endorse Judge Charles Evans Hughes for president, although President Wilson was to address the convention that evening. Party feeling ran high but still stronger was the determination of the convention that the association should not depart from its policy of absolute non-partisanship. Motions were made and amendments offered and the discussion raged for two hours. Dr. Shaw spoke strongly against the resolution and finally it was defeated by a large majority. Later Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch of Chicago offered a resolution which after several amendments read: "We re-affirm our non-partisan attitude concerning national political parties but this policy does not preclude the right of any member to work against any candidate who opposes woman suffrage, nor shall it refer to the personal attitude of enfranchised women." This was carried enthusiastically. A resolution by Mrs. J. Claude Bedford (Penn.) for a vigorous publicity campaign to make clear the association's non-partisan policy was passed.

There had been such marked increase of public opinion in favor of woman suffrage in the southern States and so many of their able women had come into the association that a "Dixie evening" had been arranged. Mrs. Catt presided and the following program was presented: Master Words—Mrs. Minnie Fisher Cunningham, president Texas Woman Suffrage Association; Kentucky and Her Constitution—Mrs. Thomas Jefferson Smith, president Kentucky Equal Rights Association; The Evolution of Woman—Mrs. Eugene Reilley, vice-president General Federation of Women's Clubs and vice-president North Carolina Woman Suffrage Association; Progress of Today and Traditions of Yesterday—Mrs. Edward McGehee, president Mississippi Federation of Women's Clubs; For Woman Herself—Mrs. Lila Mead Valentine, president Virginia Equal Suffrage League; The Southern Temperament as Related to Woman Suffrage—Mrs. Guilford Dudley, president Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association, Inc.; Real Americanism—Mrs. T. T. Cotnam, vice-president Arkansas Woman Suffrage Association. Southern women have a natural gift of oratory and the audience was delightfully entertained. But three of these addresses were published and space can be given only to brief extracts.

"There is in America today," Mrs. Cotnam said, "a large class of people who are restless and dissatisfied and are smarting under the injustice of being governed without their consent. This is a class with the blood of the Pilgrim mothers in their veins—of those who cheerfully endured untold hardships as the price of liberty; a class with the blood of the Revolutionary fathers in their veins—of those who gave their lives that their children might be free; a class who are the rightful joint heirs with all the people of the United States of the heritage of freedom but whose inheritance after 140 years is still kept 'in trust.'" She referred to the anxiety of Congress "to make the Filipinos a self-governing people after only a few years of American tutelage while 140 years have not been enough to equip American women for self-government," and said: "Political leaders say America is 'the waymark of all people seeking liberty' and yet one-half of the American people have never known liberty. They promise justice to the oppressed of every land who are seeking refuge and practice injustice against one-half of those whose homes have always been here. Every citizen of the United States is jealous of her standing among the nations and just now each political party is claiming to be the only worthy custodian of national honor. It is with amazement we read the arraignment of one party by another and note that in no instance have they taken each other to task for injustice to American women which violates the fundamental principle of democracy, 'Equal rights for all, special privileges to none.' ... Americanism—it stands for the recognition of the equality of men and women before the law of man as they are equal before the law of God. Americanism—it stands for truth triumphant. Americanism—it will find its full realization when men and women meet upon a plane of equal rights with a united desire to maintain peace, to guard the nation's honor, to advance prosperity and to secure the happiness of the people."

"We are a race of dreamers in the South by choice and because of climatic conditions," said Mrs. Guilford Dudley in an eloquent address. After a keenly sarcastic comparison between southern chivalry and the unjust laws for women, and the observation that "the only business a southern girl is taught is the business of hearts," she said:

As long as it was a question of woman's rights; as long as the fight had any appearance of being against man; as long as there seemed to be a vestige of sex antagonism, the southern woman stood with her back turned squarely toward the cause. She wouldn't even turn around to look at it, she would have none of it, but when she awoke slowly to a social consciousness, when eyes and brain were at last free, after a terrible reconstruction period, to look out upon the world as a whole; when she found particularly among the more fortunate classes that her leisure had come to mean laziness; when she realized that through the changed conditions of modern life so much of her work had been taken out of the home, leaving her to choose between following it into the world or remaining idle; when with a clearer vision she saw that her help in governmental affairs, especially where they touched her own interests, was much needed—right about face she turned and said to the southern man: "I don't wish to usurp your place in government but it is time I had my own. I don't complain of the way you have conducted your part of the business but my part has been either badly managed or not managed at all. In the past you have not shown yourself averse to accepting my help in very serious matters; my courage and fortitude and wisdom you have continually praised. Now that there is a closer connection between the government and the home than ever before in the history of the world, I ask that you will let me help you."

Mrs. Dudley described the effect of the demand for woman suffrage on the politicians, on the men who feared they would be "reformed," on the sentimentalists, and then she paid tribute to the broad-minded, justice-loving men who encouraged the women in their new aspirations and concluded: "So you see not only the southern woman but the southern man is now awake and present conditions strongly indicate that before another year has passed we will have some form of suffrage for the woman of Tennessee.... We have had a vision—a vision of a time when a woman's home will be the whole wide world, her children all those whose feet are bare and her sisters all who need a helping hand; a vision of a new knighthood, a new chivalry, when men will not only fight for women but for the rights of women."

The plea of Mrs. Valentine for a higher womanhood should be given in full but an idea at least can be gained by a quotation:

If I were asked to give one reason above all others for advocating the enfranchisement of women I should unhesitatingly reply, "The necessity for the complete development of woman as a prerequisite for the highest development of the race." Just so long as woman remains under guardianship, as if she were a minor or an incompetent—just so long as she passively accepts at the hands of men conditions, usages, laws, as if they were decrees of Providence—just so long as she is deprived of the educative responsibilities of self-government—by just so much does she fall short of complete development as a human being and retard the progress of the race. We are the children of our mothers as well as of our fathers and we inherit the defects as well as the perfections of both. Many a man goes down in his business—is a "failure in life," as the phrase goes—because he is the son of an undeveloped mother and, like her, is lacking in independence, in initiative, in ability to seize upon golden opportunities. Yet she was trained to passivity, to submission, to the obliteration of whatever personality she may have possessed. What more could we expect of her son? Imagine for a moment the effect upon men had they from infancy been subjected to the narrowing, ossifying processes applied to women for centuries!

Happily for the race, however, the great majority of women are waking from the sleep of centuries, are eagerly stretching out their hands for the key that is to open wide the door of larger opportunity. Happily, too, the forward-looking men of today are seeing the vision of womanhood released from the old-world thraldom. In rapidly increasing numbers they are welcoming the new woman, in whom they find not only the wife and mother more fully equipped for her task but a comrade of congenial tastes, keenly interested in the outside world and capable of taking her place beside the husband, whether in peace or war, wherever her country calls.... The suffrage movement is a world-wide protest against the mental subjection of woman. Therein lies its vital importance. It strikes deep into the core of life. It is a basic, fundamental reform, for it is releasing for the service of the State the unused natural resources dormant in womanhood; it is transforming the dependent woman into woman enfranchised that she may the more perfectly fulfill her destiny as the mother of the race.

The morning and afternoon sessions were crowded with reports, conferences and business of various kinds in which the delegates were keenly interested. Mrs. Grace Thompson Seton, chairman of the Art Publicity Committee, gave an interesting account of its work, told of the prizes that had been offered for posters and slogans and the cooperation of men and women prominent in the literary, artistic and social world; of the "teas" given at the national headquarters, bringing many who had never visited them before: of the beautiful banners and costumes designed for the suffrage parades and other features of this somewhat neglected side of the work for woman suffrage. The chairman of the Literature Committee, Mrs. Arthur L. Livermore, submitted a comprehensive report of the systematizing of that department, the classifying and cataloguing and the endeavor to ascertain and meet the varied demands. A Suffrage Study Outline, a Blue Book Suffrage School and Mrs. Annie G. Porritt's Laws Relating to Women and Children had been published; literature for the rural districts, for the home, for campaigns, placards, fliers and an endless number of novelties.

It would be impossible to give in a few paragraphs even an idea of the carefully prepared report of Mrs. Mary Sumner Boyd, the skilled head of the Data Department, which filled eight printed pages. It told of the progress that had been made in organizing the department, the wide scope of the collections and the increasing demand for information from many sources. It would be equally difficult to do justice to the sixteen printed pages of the report of Charles T. Heaslip, national publicity director. He had organized a publicity council, which thus far had members in twenty-six States. His full knowledge of the large syndicates had enabled him to keep the subject before the public throughout the country; he had made wide use of photographs, cartoons, posters and moving pictures. Hundreds of papers on the route of the "golden flier" had been supplied with pictures and stories. He had gone to Iowa to assist in the campaign there and he described also the large amount of publicity work done at the time the suffragists were making their national demonstrations during the presidential conventions in Chicago and St. Louis. He showed how victory could be hastened by thorough publicity work in every State from Maine to California. Later the Chair announced the receipt of a letter from the press, signed by representatives of nineteen newspapers at the convention, expressing their thanks to Mr. Heaslip and their hearty appreciation of his services, without which they could not have handled its press work in a satisfactory manner.

Under the topic How and Where to Drive the Entering Wedge, Miss Florence Allen of Ohio told of the openings offered by amending city charters for woman suffrage and Mrs. Roger G. Perkins described the successful campaign in East Cleveland for this purpose. The recent campaigns in West Virginia and South Dakota were discussed by the State presidents, Mrs. Ellis A. Yost and Mrs. John L. Pyle; that of Iowa by Mrs. Geyer, publicity director, and the work in Tennessee for a constitutional convention by Mrs. James M. McCormack, State president. The chairman of the Presidential Suffrage Committee, Mrs. Robert S. Huse (N. J.), reported that bills had been introduced in the Legislatures of New York, New Jersey, Kentucky and Rhode Island, public hearings being granted by the first three, but no vote was taken.

Is Limited Suffrage Worth While? was answered by Mrs. George Bass (Ills.) who declared it to be "a positive influence for good"; it was called by Mrs. Grace Wilbur Trout (Ills.) "a step toward full suffrage"; by Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton (Ohio) "a help to other States." Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch described "the chances opened by the Illinois law." It was the consensus of opinion that partial suffrage was quite worth striving for. This was directly opposed to that heretofore held by the association but in the past only a Municipal vote had been asked for and Kansas alone had granted it. Miss Laura Clay (Ky.) made a strong presentation of the Elections Bill, which would permit women to vote for members of Congress. What Kansas Thinks about Woman Suffrage was graphically told by Mrs. W. Y. Morgan, president of the State association. Help from the West was promised by Mrs. Emma Smith DeVoe (Wash.), president of the National Council of Women Voters.

The climax of the convention came on the evening of September 8 with the address of Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States. Only once before had a President appeared before a national suffrage convention—when William Howard Taft made a ten-minute speech of welcome to Washington in 1910 but without committing himself to the movement. When the present convention was called, after the endorsement of woman suffrage by the national conventions of all parties, the two leading candidates for President were invited to address it. Judge Hughes, who had declared in favor of the Federal Suffrage Amendment, answered that he would be too far away on a speaking tour to reach Atlantic City. President Wilson wrote that he would endeavor to arrange his itinerary so as to be present. Later he announced that he would come and would remain throughout the evening. Undoubtedly he never before faced such an audience. The greatest care had been taken to exclude all but delegates and invited guests and from the stage of the theater to the back stretched tier after tier of white-robed women, while the boxes were filled with prominent people, mostly women. As he came from the street to the stage with Mrs. Wilson, also gowned in white, he passed through a lane of suffragists, one from each State, designated by banners, with broad sashes of blue and gold across their breasts. He was accompanied by Private Secretary Tumulty and several distinguished men and the entire stage behind the decorations of palms and other plants was surrounded by a cordon of the secret service. Forty-three large newspapers throughout the country were represented at the reporters' table.

The President had asked to speak last and he listened with much interest to a program of noted public workers as follows: Why Women Need the Vote. The Call of the Working Woman for the Protection of the Woman's Vote—Mrs. Raymond Robins, president of National Women's Trades Union League. Mothers in Politics—Miss Julia Lathrop, chief of National Children's Bureau. A Necessary Safeguard to Public Morals—Dr. Katharine Bement Davis, Chief of Parole Commission, New York City. Working Children—Dr. Owen R. Lovejoy, general secretary of National Child Labor Committee. Each speaker emphasized the necessity for the enfranchisement of women as a means for the nation's highest welfare. Mrs. Catt was in the chair and introduced the President, who said with much earnestness and sincerity:

Madam President, Ladies of the Association: I have found it a real privilege to be here tonight and to listen to the addresses which you have heard. Though you may not all of you believe it, I would a great deal rather hear somebody else speak than speak myself, but I would feel that I was omitting a duty if I did not address you tonight and say some of the things that have been in my thoughts as I realized the approach of this evening and the duty that would fall upon me.

The astonishing thing about the movement which you represent is not that it has grown so slowly but that it has grown so rapidly. No doubt for those who have been a long time in the struggle, like your honored president, it seems a long and arduous path that has been trodden, but when you think of the cumulating force of the movement in recent decades you must agree with me that it is one of the most astonishing tides in modern history. Two generations ago—no doubt Madam President will agree with me in saying this—it was a handful of women who were fighting for this cause; now it is a great multitude of women who are fighting for it. There are some interesting historical connections which I should like to attempt to point out to you.

One of the most striking facts about the history of the United States is that at the outset it was a lawyers' history. Almost all of the questions to which America addressed itself, say a hundred years ago, were legal questions; were questions of methods, not questions of what you were going to do with your government but questions of how you were going to constitute your government; how you were going to balance the powers of the State and the Federal government; how you were going to balance the claims of property against the processes of liberty; how you were going to make up your government so as to balance the parts against each other, so that the Legislature would check the Executive and the Executive the Legislature. The idea of government when the United States became a nation was a mechanical conception and the mechanical conception which underlay it was the Newtonian theory of the universe. If you take up the Federalist you see that some parts of it read like a treatise on government. They speak of the centrifugal and centripetal forces and locate the President somewhere in a rotating system. The whole thing is a calculation of power and adjustment of parts. There was a time when nobody but a lawyer could know enough to run the government of the United States....

And then something happened. A great question arose in this country which, though complicated with legal elements, was at bottom a human question and nothing but a question of humanity. That was the slavery question, and is it not significant that it was then, and then for the first time, that women became prominent in politics in America? Not many women—those prominent in that day are so few that you can almost name them over in a brief catalogue—but, nevertheless, they then began to play a part not only in writing but in public speech, which was a very novel part for women to play in America; and after the Civil War had settled some of what seemed to be the most difficult legal questions of our system the life of the nation began not only to unfold but to accumulate.

Life in the United States was a comparatively simple matter at the time of the Civil War. There was none of that underground struggle which is now so manifest to those who look only a little way beneath the surface. Stories such as Dr. Davis has told tonight were uncommon in those simpler days. The pressure of low wages, the agony of obscure and unremunerated toil did not exist in America in anything like the same proportions as they exist now. And as our life has unfolded and accumulated, as the contacts of it have become hot, as the populations have assembled in the cities and the cool spaces of the country have been supplemented by feverish urban areas, the whole nature of our political questions has been altered. They have ceased to be legal questions. They have more and more become social questions, questions with regard to the relations of human beings to one another, not merely their legal relations but their moral and spiritual relations to one another.

This has been most characteristic of American life in the last few decades, and as these questions have assumed greater and greater prominence the movement which this association represents has gathered cumulative force, so that when anybody asks himself, What does this gathering force mean? if he knows anything about the history of the country he knows that it means something which has not only come to stay but has come with conquering power.

I get a little impatient sometimes about the discussion of the channels and methods by which it is to prevail. It is going to prevail and that is a very superficial and ignorant view of it which attributes it to mere social unrest. It is not merely because women are discontented, it is because they have seen visions of duty, and that is something that we not only can not resist but if we be true Americans we do not wish to resist. Because America took its origin in visions of the human spirit, in aspirations for the deepest sort of liberty of the mind and heart, and, as visions of that sort come to the sight of those who are spiritually minded America comes more and more into its birthright and into the perfection of its development; so that what we have to realize is that in dealing with forces of this sort we are dealing with the substance of life itself.

I have felt as I sat here tonight the wholesome contagion of the occasion. Almost every other time that I ever visited Atlantic City I came to fight somebody. I hardly know how to conduct myself when I have not come to fight anybody but with somebody.

I have come to suggest among other things that when the forces of nature are working steadily and the tide is rising to meet the moon, you need not be afraid that it will not come to its flood. We feel the tide; we rejoice in the strength of it, and we shall not quarrel in the long run as to the method of it, because, when you are working with masses of men and organized bodies of opinion, you have got to carry the organized body along. The whole art and practice of government consist not in moving individuals but in moving masses. It is all very well to run ahead and beckon, but, after all, you have got to wait for them to follow. I have not come to ask you to be patient, because you have been, but I have come to congratulate you that there has been a force behind you that will beyond any peradventure be triumphant and for which you can afford a little while to wait.

When President Wilson had finished amid enthusiastic applause Mrs. Catt asked Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, honorary president, to respond. She was much moved by the occasion and taking the last sentence of the address for a text she eloquently told how women had already worked and waited for more than three score years. "We have waited long enough for the vote, we want it now," she exclaimed, and then turning to the President with her irresistible smile she finished, "and we want it to come in your administration!" He smiled and bowed and the whole audience rose in a sea of waving handkerchiefs as he took his departure. The President of the United States had said: "Your cause is going to prevail; I have come to fight with you; we shall not quarrel as to the method!"

The other speeches of the evening were all of a high order. Mrs. Robins, as always, made an unanswerable argument for giving women wage earners the protection of the ballot. "In the Children's Bureau," Miss Lathrop said, "we have come to see the close connection between the welfare of mother and child. Because we are so concerned for the children we asked a physician to take those vast, mysterious volumes of the census and look up the facts about the mortality of mothers. Last year in the United States more than 15,000 women lost their lives carrying on the life of the race. The death rate from other things, such as typhoid and diphtheria, has been cut in half but between 1900 and 1913 maternal mortality was not lessened but seemingly increased; yet this waste of life is just as preventable as those diseases, for medical science has shown that with proper care the dangers of childbirth can be made very small. Just as fast as women are allowed a voice in public affairs it is their duty to see that no mother and child shall perish for lack of care. Every country should have a mother and child welfare center. When a memorial was lately proposed for a woman who had died in the war, a well-known man said: 'We can enfranchise her sex in tribute to the valor which she proved that it possessed.' It is not too much to give suffrage to women in tribute to the 15,000 who are dying every year in this great duty and service; yet we do not ask the ballot for women as a reward but because, as a duty and a service, we ought to ask for it...."

"Woman suffrage is needed in the interest of good morals," was the keynote of Dr. Davis's address, who said:

You cannot legislate righteousness into the human heart but you can reduce to a minimum the temptations that are offered to youth. To a large extent you can stop commercialized vice and the manufacture of criminals. I am not one of those who think that the millenium will come soon after women get the vote, but I believe that women will take an unusual interest in the effort to clean up vicious conditions, because all down the ages women have paid the price of vice and crime.

I do not believe that at heart a man is any worse than a woman, but all through the centuries he has been taught that he may do some things which a woman may not. It is only of late that we have begun to fight these things in the open and you cannot successfully fight any evil in the dark. For sixteen years my work has brought me in contact with this peculiar phase of public morals and I know whereof I speak. Public morals are corrupted because woman's point of view has no representation. We have laws to regulate these things but they are man-made and the public sentiment behind them which should govern their enforcement has grown up through the ages and it is the sentiment of men only. The laws are not equal nor equally enforced. If you doubt it you have only to go into the night court and you will see woman after woman convicted on the word of a policeman only, while in order to convict a man you have to pile evidence on evidence. I think this inequality of treatment will not cease till women get a vote.

In a very convincing address Dr. Lovejoy said:

The past month has been memorable in the history of child labor reform in America. A three-years' campaign culminated last Friday in the signing of a bill by President Wilson which excludes from the facilities of interstate commerce the exploiters of child labor. It has been estimated that 150,000 children who now bow under the yoke of excessive toil will be able to straighten up and look heaven in the face when this law begins to operate on the first of next September. In signing the bill the President said: "I want to say that with real emotion I sign this bill, because I know how long the struggle has been to secure legislation of this sort and what it is going to mean to the health and vigor of this country and also to the happiness of those whom it affects. It is with genuine pride that I play my part in completing legislation."

I am convinced that we need the voice of the church, the school, the home, in making and enforcing laws to protect working children, and, since half the adult population of our American homes are women, since approximately 75 per cent. of the church members are women, since 90 per cent. of the school teachers are women and since every moral and educational enterprise in the country is represented in about the same proportion, cold logic forces us to the conclusion that we need women in politics. Of 10,000 members of the National Child Labor Committee, 6,400 are women. Some of the experiences we have had with men in Legislatures in response to the appeal of mothers for the protection of working children have forced me to the conclusion that in this protection the participation of women in the law-making of the State is vital.

The primary nominations and elections were held with voting machines and when the result was announced it was found that all the old board was nominated with the exception of Mrs. Roessing, Miss Patterson and Mrs. Morrisson, who declined to stand for re-election. Their places were filled with Mrs. Frank J. Shuler (N. Y.), corresponding secretary; Mrs. Thomas Jefferson Smith (Ky.), recording secretary and Miss Heloise Meyer (Mass.), first auditor. As there were no other candidates the secretary was unanimously requested by the convention to cast its vote. This was a remarkable record for 543 delegates. A national suffrage flag was adopted, the gift of Pennsylvania—a yellow field with fringed edges, in the center a circle of eleven blue stars representing the equal suffrage States enclosing an eagle on the wing holding the globe in its talons. Mrs. J. O. Miller in behalf of the president made an eloquent presentation.

Miss Clay moved a resolution on her Elections Bill that the convention endeavor to protect women citizens in their right to vote for U. S. Senators and Representatives and with this object in view endorse this bill introduced by Senator Robert L. Owen (Okla.). This motion was carried. Mrs. Catt stated that the resolution of Mrs. Sallie Clay Bennett (Ky.) was similar and this also was passed. A large number of letters and telegrams were read from eminent men and women and from societies of many kinds. Mrs. Catt stated that in not one had it been suggested that the association lessen its activities for the Federal Amendment. The convention then adopted a resolution instructing the Congressional Committee "to concentrate all its resources on a determined effort to carry this amendment through the next session of Congress."

Invitations for the next convention were received from nine States. Greetings were sent to three of the original surviving pioneers, the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell of New Jersey; Mrs. Judith W. Smith of Massachusetts and Miss Emily Howland of New York. The delegates were introduced who brought greetings from the National Equal Franchise Union of Canada, and Mrs. Campbell McIvor responded. A special vote of thanks was given to Miss Mary Garrett Hay and Miss Lulu H. Marvel, chairman of the General Committee of Arrangements, for their perfect management of President Wilson's visit to the convention. Among those submitted by the Committee on Resolutions, Mrs. Alice Duer Miller (N. Y.), chairman, and adopted were the following:

Whereas, all political parties in their national platforms have endorsed the principle of woman suffrage, be it

Resolved, That the National American Woman Suffrage Association in convention assembled calls upon Congress to submit to the States the Constitutional Amendment providing nation-wide suffrage for women.

Whereas, the Democratic and Republican parties in endorsing the principle of woman suffrage have specially recognized the right of the States to settle the question for themselves, we call upon these parties in the States where amendment campaigns are in progress to take immediate action to obtain the enfranchisement of women, and in other States to take such action as the suffrage organizations deem expedient.

Whereas, honest elections are vital to good government in this country and to the decisions in the campaigns for woman suffrage; and

Whereas, public records of all funds used in political campaigns will benefit our movement in that they will bring to light its real opponents, therefore

Resolved, That this convention urges the passage by Congress and the States of a thorough and comprehensive Corrupt Practices Act providing effectual punishment for offenders.

That in recognition of Miss Clara Barton's lifelong support of woman suffrage, as well as her service to the country in founding the American Red Cross and standing at its head for more than a quarter of a century, this association endorses the bill recently introduced in Congress providing for an appropriation of $1,000 to place a suitable memorial to Miss Barton in the Red Cross Building now being constructed in the city of Washington.

That we express our profound sympathy with the women in the countries now at war and our sense of the advance that has been made in the cause of all women by the devotion, ability and courage with which those women have risen to the new demands on them.

That we express our deep appreciation of the great honor the President of the United States has done the women of the country by coming to Atlantic City especially to address this convention.

Rejoicing was expressed over the many victories during the year, the endorsement by large organizations—the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Anti-Saloon League, the Women's Relief Corps and others; a plank for woman suffrage in all national party platforms; a favorable declaration by all presidential candidates and for the first time the sanction of the President of the United States. The report of Mrs. Frank M. Roessing, chairman of the National Congressional Committee, gave so complete an account of the situation at the time the great "drive" for the Federal Amendment was begun that it is largely reproduced.

At the opening of the 64th Congress in December, 1915, several political leaders interested in the progress of social and economic legislation stated that 1916 would be a lean year in Congress for such movements. It was pointed out that particularly in the Senate some of the most reactionary men had been returned at the preceding election. It is also a presidential election year and neither of the great parties is willing to take one unnecessary step which in its judgment may tend to add to the number of its adversaries or to its vulnerable points in some particular section of the country. All of the 435 members of the House and one-third of the Senators come up for re-election in November of this year—they, too, are shy and sensitive. Some legislation, notably child labor after it had been endorsed by the National Democratic platform, successfully ran the gauntlet but not so our Federal Suffrage Amendment. It is with keen regret your committee reports that it has not had action in either the Senate or House of Representatives.

In the Senate the resolution was introduced Dec. 7, 1915, by Senators Sutherland, Thomas and Thompson of Kansas and referred to the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage. This committee reported favorably resolution No. 1, introduced by Senator Sutherland. The written report made from the committee by Senator Thomas is one of the best pieces of literature on the subject and copies were mailed to every State president and State chairman of congressional work. Since that early date our measure has been on the calendar. It has come to the top a number of times but at the request of suffrage Senators has been held until a more auspicious hour.

As the National Association was desirous of having a vote on the measure at this session, your committee began to work to that end immediately after receiving specific instructions from the Board June 17, 1916. The meaning of the suffrage planks in the Republican and Democratic platforms was disputed by some men in both parties. The leaders stated that the planks were silent as to the Federal Amendment and thus left men free to vote on the amendment as each decided. In order to ascertain the interpretation which would be given by members of Congress it was determined to push for a vote in the Senate. On June 27 Mrs. Catt, Miss Hannah J. Patterson, corresponding secretary of the National Suffrage Association, Mrs. Antoinette Funk, vice-chairman of the committee, Miss Hay and the chairman held an informal conference with the Senators of the enfranchised States in the office of Senator Shafroth to secure their assistance. As unanimous consent is required for the consideration of such a measure, the Senators agreed that if we would have the vote taken without debate it would probably be possible, since this would not consume the time of the Senate. We believed that this was best in order to make sure of the vote. On July 22 Senator Thomas wrote to every Senator asking whether he would consent to a vote being taken without debate. He informed us that on both the Republican and Democratic sides there were men who would not give such consent, some stating that they had been asked by certain suffragists of the other organization not to consent. After the endorsement of the Federal Amendment by Judge Hughes, the candidate for President, frequent remarks were made in the Senate on it by members of both parties. Senator Clark (Republican) of Wyoming and Senator Pittman (Democrat) of Nevada were among those who urged action at this session but finally in August Senator Thomas gave up the effort.

The unfair treatment of the amendment resolution in the House Judiciary Committee and its final suppression by Chairman Edwin Y. Webb (N. C.) were described in full and the unsuccessful efforts, led by Mrs. Catt, to obtain action on it. [See Chapter on Federal Amendment.] The report continued:

Federal Elections Bill: On December 6 Representative Raker introduced at the request of the Federal Suffrage Association a bill to protect the rights of women citizens of the United States to register and vote for Senators and members of the House. The bill was referred to the Committee on the Election of the President, Vice-President and Representatives in Congress and has not yet been reported out. On December 10 this same bill was introduced by Senator Lane of Oregon, referred to the Committee on Woman Suffrage and is still there.

United States Elections Bill: The United States Elections Bill, introduced by Senator Owen at the request of Miss Laura Clay on February 3, aims also to secure to women the right to vote for Senators and Representatives in Congress. Miss Clay says it is simply a declaratory act; that it does not permit Congress to specify qualifications of voters and therefore does not involve the issue of State's rights. This bill was referred to the Committee on Privileges and Elections, where it remains. Your committee assisted the suffragists in the District of Columbia in the effort for a bill enabling it to elect a delegate to the Lower House....

* * * * *

Planks:[105] For some time prior to June your committee used every opportunity with Senators and Representatives to further the work of securing suffrage planks in the Republican and Democratic national platforms. Its chairman was put in charge of drafting for submission to Mrs. Catt the planks which were to be offered to the two conventions on behalf of the National Association. Its members who went to Chicago and St. Louis concentrated their efforts on the planks. The two demonstrations of women planned and supervised by the National Board were the culmination of the campaign on behalf of these planks. In cooperation with your Congressional Committee, many State delegations of women who came for the demonstrations did special eleventh-hour work with the delegates to the conventions.

Your committee regrets that the planks in the two dominant national party platforms, since they mention method at all, do not specifically endorse Federal action, but they will be of great value in the States and progress there will help the Federal work. Every man in Congress is keenly alive to the strength of our movement in his district and State. For that reason we urged the women of each State to secure planks in the State platforms endorsing the principle of woman suffrage. As a last resort, if they could not secure a separate plank in their State platforms, we asked them to make sure that each State convention endorsed its party's national platform, that the plank might in this way have the equivalent of a State endorsement.

With the final yielding of the two dominant parties to the justice of woman suffrage all are now on record in favor of the principle; all except the Republican and Democratic endorse the Federal Amendment. Republicans have been strengthened in their advocacy of Federal action by Judge Hughes' personal endorsement of the amendment. Your committee must sound a note of warning here against over-confidence. Some too zealous suffragists, including one suffrage organ, state quite seriously, notwithstanding the fact that their attention has been called to their error, that "the Republican party has specifically declared for the Federal Suffrage Amendment." Alas! it has done no such thing. It has not done one bit more than the Democratic party. The personal endorsement of the Republican candidate for President can not properly be construed as party endorsement. Those of us who have had some years of experience have witnessed the worming and screwing, fallacy and treachery exhibited by members of a party after their leading candidate has endorsed a particular measure. We know that we can not hold the party responsible for one man's utterances made after the platform had been adopted by the party convention and accepted by the party candidate.

Committee: Mrs. Medill McCormick was unable to continue as chairman of the Congressional Committee and the present chairman was appointed by the National Board in January, 1916, immediately went to Washington and lived there eight months, until the opening of this convention. During the entire term of this session of Congress this committee has had some representatives on duty at the Washington headquarters every moment. The service of each member has not been continuous but has varied from a week to three months in length. In addition to the chairman, the committee consisted of Mrs. Funk of Illinois; Miss Hay of New York; Mrs. Jacobs of Alabama; Mrs. Cotnam of Arkansas; Mrs. C. S. McClure of Michigan; Mrs. Valentine of Virginia; Miss Martha Norris of Ohio; Mrs. Elizabeth Higgins Sullivan of Nebraska and Miss Ruth White of Missouri.

Mrs. Funk resigned March 14 to take up other work and in July Miss White was appointed secretary and has done much special work. Because of the amount of travel involved only two meetings of the full committee have been held, on March 2 and September 4. Every plan for congressional work has been submitted to the National Board or to the national president for approval.

Revision of Work: At the beginning of the present year the work of the National Association was revised and departmentalized, the organization branch was separated from the congressional work, made a distinct department, placed under another head and operated from the New York office. This division was advisable, since each task is big enough by itself. The only disadvantage resulted from the distance between the bases of operation of the two departments—one of the paramount reasons for the removal of all the headquarters to Washington.... The work of the committee in 1916 consisted of the supervision and direction of all activity connected with the Federal Amendment, including lobby work at the Capitol; the stimulating of congressional activity in the States; the cataloguing of information concerning Senators and Representatives; the assembling and filing of all information specifically relating to the Federal Amendment in Congress and in the States; the issuing of newspaper articles; the handling of the large correspondence.

Headquarters: The chairman had been on duty only a short time when the necessity for removing national headquarters to Washington was deeply impressed upon her—so deeply that she made a special trip to New York to labor with the national officers there to this end but was unsuccessful. The headquarters of the Congressional Committee at the opening of this session consisted of two rooms in the Munsey Building at Washington too diminutive to hold even our furniture, to say nothing of our workers. On February 19 it moved to two larger rooms in the same building.

A summary of the correspondence, etc., was given and the report said of the lobby work:

All the direct work with Senators and Congressmen is a time as well as brain consuming process. Usually it means tramping up and down the long stone corridors, hour after hour, in order to find one man in his office. Then he may be having a committee meeting or a previous engagement or emergency business and you are invited to come some other day. Perhaps you have waited an hour before you are sure that he can not see you. It is not uncommon for the members of our lobby to state that they have made as many as six, eight or ten calls before they succeeded in reaching a man. Speaking from my own knowledge, I have wasted hours at the Capitol trying to see men who would not make appointments. I have called eighteen times to see one man and have not seen him yet! He is the Representative from my own district. We carried the district for suffrage in Pennsylvania last year but I am told that he does not want to vote for the Federal Amendment. It is, of course, possible to interview members by calling them out of the session but this method is uncertain and not very successful, since they feel hurried and interviews in a public reception room are seldom satisfactory.

The latest piece of work done by the committee is the interviewing by letter of all congressional candidates who will stand for election in November. This has been done in cooperation with the State associations which have been urged to institute vigorous interviewing in the congressional districts.

Presidential Interviewing: The presidential candidates of the two parties whose platforms do not endorse the Federal Amendment have been interviewed in person. On July 17 Mrs. Catt, Dr. Shaw and Mrs. Norman deR. Whitehouse, president of the New York suffrage association, called on Judge Hughes in New York and had a long and satisfactory conversation. He told them that in his speech of acceptance he could not endorse the Federal Amendment because this was the accepting of the party's nomination and of its platform, which had not mentioned it. He said, however, that he believed in it and that soon after his speech of acceptance he would announce his personal advocacy of the amendment. He asked them to hold this information in confidence, which of course they did. His public statement of August 1 was therefore no surprise to them but was nevertheless most gratifying.

On August 1 Mrs. Catt and your chairman called on President Wilson in Washington. He reiterated his belief that woman suffrage should come by State action. We presented the arguments in behalf of the Federal Amendment but he remained unconvinced. He is a fair and openminded man and your representatives have by no means given up hope of proving to him the justice and advisability of the amendment.

Conferences: At the last national convention a special committee recommended that the Board of Officers should consider the suggestion of conferences between the Congressional Committee of the National Association and the Legislative Committee of the Congressional Union, with a view to securing more united action in the lobby work in Washington. Nine such conferences were held—one in January, three in February, three in March, one in June, one in July. Your chairman was present at each and Miss Anne Martin, representing the Union, was present at each. At some of them each organization had additional representatives. Mrs. Catt attended two and our corresponding secretary, Miss Patterson, attended one. The subject was the time at which action on the Federal Amendment should be secured in both branches of Congress. When on July 20 it was found that the National Committee wished to obtain a vote in the Senate before adjournment and the Congressional Union wished to postpone it the conferences came to an end. It is the unanimous judgment of your committee that they were of no value to the work on the amendment.

General: The congressional work done in Washington this year by the National Association has not been spectacular. Your committee had not been on duty long before they realized that many members had been irritated by the too-frequent calls of suffragists and by the inconsiderate demands on their time. As our last national convention was held at the opening session of this Congress, delegations of suffragists used the opportunity to call on their Senators and Representatives. Considering the strain of work of Congress during the past months and the fact that the men had already been interviewed by State delegations or representatives, we did not encourage further visits to the Capitol. In Washington such visits, like pageants and other spectacular forms of activity, have been overdone. There was nothing to be gained and probably something to be lost by them.

Your committee wishes to express its appreciation of the cooperation of many Senators and members of the House. Our friends have often gone out of their way to assist us and not once has any one refused a request for help. They have made speeches on the floor at our suggestion, taken polls for us, held conferences, arranged interviews, provided us with documents and extended all the official courtesies within their power. While we have not secured action we are not discouraged in the least. Even the most radical opponents acknowledge that our movement has grown tremendously this year. We have achieved recognition of the justice of our principle by the political parties and we have with us in our Federal fight the great majority of the leaders of thought and action who believe in suffrage at all. By a continuation of sane methods, sound tactics, coordination and concentration we shall soon accomplish the submission of the Federal Amendment.

Your chairman becomes more convinced each day that one of the next steps necessary to nationalize our work and to secure Federal action is the removal of the national headquarters to Washington. She feels it to be her clear duty frankly to state to the convention her conviction on this point. It is her judgment, based upon her own observation this year and a study of the past work on the Federal Amendment, that it will not pass until the national headquarters are in Washington and the National Board as well as the Congressional Committee is in a position to gives its direct attention to the work on this amendment.

A lobby in Washington for special educational purposes may be a good thing but you will have to do special educational and political work in the States if your committee is to achieve political action to the point of a two-thirds vote on the amendment. We appreciate that support has been given to it by many suffragists and a number of State chairmen and presidents but there has not been the intensive, persistent, determined congressional activity in the States which there must be before the amendment can be passed and ratified. Your committee has done its utmost, I believe, but it can no more put the Federal Amendment through Congress without your activity in the States than a State committee can achieve success without activity in the counties. Activity on the part of a small number of local Washington suffragists is not a sufficient backing for the work of the Congressional Committee. If you propose to secure the Federal Amendment you must work just as hard in the States as you expect it to work in Washington. Without a doubt we can secure the Federal Amendment if the women of this country enthusiastically want their enfranchisement that way....

The friendliness of members of Congress toward the National Association and their continued respect for the suffrage movement in this country have been maintained by the dignity, poise and ability of the national lobby. In the many years of my connection with various kinds of organizations I have never served any in which there was more frankness, unity and good fellowship than in the National Board and the National Congressional Committee. That such harmony exists is due to our great president, to whom each is more indebted than all of us together can express. Her visits to Washington did for us what nothing and no one else could do. It was my duty and pleasure always to accompany her to the Capitol, and the unfailing impression of nobility, directness and power which she left upon the men was a joy to witness.

I can not close this report without acknowledging my personal debt to that co-officer who is not on our committee, Miss Hannah J. Patterson. It is but fair to say that had we not had her assistance at hazardous moments the suffrage planks would not be in the two national platforms today. Food, sleep, rest, pleasure, all were day after day given up by this most self-sacrificing officer. She it was who kept with one other [Mrs. Roessing] the lonely vigil the night of June 6 at the door of the Republican Resolutions Committee while it debated for hours its sub-committee's adverse report on the suffrage plank. The crisis in our work for both the planks came in this sub-committee of seven, for we knew that if we lost in Chicago there would be no hope in St. Louis. At midnight that all-powerful sub-committee by a vote of 5 to 4 turned down our plank and refused to permit suffrage to be mentioned in the platform in any way. That committee has seldom been reversed in all the history of the party. When later Senator Borah, also sleepless and hungry, came to us in one of those agonizing moments when decision must be made at once, when we could not reach our president or our board, it was Miss Patterson who made the decision that won the plank.[106]

A comprehensive plan of work was adopted with the following principal features:

Federal Work: The National Board shall continue a lobby in Washington until the Federal Amendment shall be submitted; the matter of removing headquarters to Washington shall be left to the judgment of the Board; it shall conduct a nation-wide campaign of agitation, education, organization and publicity in support of the amendment, which shall include the following: a million-dollar fund for the campaign from Oct. 1, 1916, to Oct. 1, 1917; a monthly propaganda demonstration simultaneously conducted throughout the nation; at least four campaign directors and 200 organizers in the field and a vigorous, thorough organization in every State; a nationalized scheme for education through literature; national suffrage schools; a speakers' bureau; innumerable activities for agitation and publicity; a national press bureau and a national publicity council with departments in each State; a national committee to extend suffrage propaganda among non-English-speaking races.

State Work: A Council of the representatives of States shall meet in executive session in connection with each annual national convention to hear reports as to the status of each campaign State and to fix upon States which shall be recommended to go forward with campaigns.

No State association shall ask the Legislature for the submission of a State constitutional amendment or for the submission of the question by initiative or by a referred law until such Council or the National Board has had the opportunity to investigate conditions and to give consent.

Any State which proceeds to a referendum campaign without securing this consent shall be prepared to finance its own campaign without help from the National Board.

Any State which has secured the consent of the National Board to proceed with a campaign shall have its cooperation to the fullest extent of its powers.

As soon as possible experienced campaign managers shall be trained for the work and shall be supplied to a campaign State to work under the direction of the National Board in cooperation with the State board.

States willing to contribute to campaigns in other States should do so by the advice of the National Board, who should be informed as to conditions, and the money so contributed should be passed through the national treasury.

The rule that the National Board shall do nothing in States without the consent of the State shall be repealed.

The organization, press work, literature distributed and general activity of the States shall be standardized and regular reports on all of these departments shall be made to the National Board in order that advice and help may be rendered when most needed.

This Board shall have the authority to nationalize the suffrage movement by unifying the work as far as is possible.

Any States not desiring to work for the Federal Amendment may remain members of the National Association provided they do not work actively against it.

Dr. Shaw presided over the last evening session of the convention and three of the strongest speeches during the convention were made by the Hon. Herbert Parsons, New York member of the Republican National Committee; Mrs. Deborah Knox Livingston (Me.), Superintendent of Franchise of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and Raymond Robins, a national leader of progressive thought. The convention ended with a mass meeting Sunday afternoon in the New Nixon Theater with Mrs. Catt presiding. Rabbi Henry M. Fisher of Atlantic City gave the invocation and inspiring addresses were made by Mrs. David F. Simpson (Minn.) and the Rev. Effie McCollum Jones (Ia.). Dr. Shaw closed her address with a beautiful delineation of Americanism, saying at its close:

What is Americanism? Every one has a different answer. Some people say it is never to submit to the dictation of a King. Others say Americanism is the pride of liberty and the defence of an insult to the flag with their gore. When some half-developed person tramples on that flag, we should be ready to pour out the blood of the nation, they say. But do we not sit in silence when that flag waves over living conditions which should be an insult to all patriotism? Why do we care more about our flag than any other flag? Why, when we have been travelling and seeing others, does the sight of the American flag bring tears to our eyes and warmth to our hearts? Is it not because it is a symbol of the hopes and aspirations of the men and women of the whole world? They say Americanism is the love of liberty, but men died for that and women gave their lives for it thousands of years before America was known. Others say it is the love of justice but the whole world is filled with that, no one country loves it more than another. Human love, sacrifice and sympathy have been manifested in the history of the world since the beginning of time. The American sees in Americanism just what he wants to see. He looks over the world and finds every good thing and calls it his own—justice, liberty, humanity, patriotism. It is not Americanism but humanism. There is only one thing we can claim in higher degree than the other nations—opportunity is the word which means true Americanism.

The anti-suffragists have said that when women have the vote they will have less time for charity and philanthropy. They are right—when we have the vote there will be less need for charity and philanthropy. The highest ideal of a republic is not a long bread line nor a soup kitchen but such opportunity that the people can buy their own bread and make their own soup. Opportunity must be for all, men and women alike, and the peoples of every nationality. Americanism does not mean militarism. The greatest need of Americans is not military preparedness nor changed economic conditions but a baptism of the spirit, higher religious ideals, deeper tolerance and sympathy. The human heart must be in accord with the Divine heart if America is to mean more than other countries, and, if we are to be what our mothers and fathers aspired to be, we must all be a part of the Government.

At 5 o'clock Mrs. Catt spoke the closing words and declared the convention adjourned.

FOOTNOTES:

[104] Call: Our cause has been endorsed in the platforms of every political party. In order to determine how most expeditiously to press these newly won advantages to final victory this convention is called. Women workers in every rank of life and in every branch of service in increasing numbers are appealing for relief from the political handicap of disfranchisement.... Unmistakably the crisis of our movement has been reached. A significant and startling fact is urging American women to increased activity in their campaign for the vote. Across our borders three large Canadian provinces have granted universal suffrage to their women within the year. In every thinking American woman's mind the question is revolving: Had our forefathers tolerated the oppressions of autocratic George the Third and remained under the British flag would the women of the United States today, like their Canadian sisters, have found their political emancipation under the more democratic George the Fifth? American men are neither lacking in national pride nor approval of democracy and must in support of their convictions hasten the enfranchisement of women. To plan for the final steps which will lead to the inevitable establishment of nation-wide suffrage for the women of our land is the specific purpose of the Atlantic City Convention.

ANNA HOWARD SHAW, Honorary President. CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT, President. JENNIE BRADLEY ROESSING, First Vice-President. KATHARINE DEXTER MCCORMICK, Second Vice-President. ESTHER G. OGDEN, Third Vice-President. HANNAH J. PATTERSON, Corresponding Secretary. MARY FOULKE MORRISON, Recording Secretary. EMMA WINNER ROGERS, Treasurer. HELEN GUTHRIE MILLER, } PATTIE RUFFNER JACOBS, } Auditors.

[105] On June 1, a short time before the meeting of Republican and Democratic National Conventions, twenty-nine members of the Lower House of Congress from States where women vote, who wished the conventions to put woman suffrage in their platforms, had a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. The Representatives, both Democratic and Republican, who made brief arguments for the Federal Amendment were: Ariz., Carl Hayden; Cal., Denver S. Church, Charles H. Randall, William Kettner, John E. Raker; Colo., Benjamin C. Hilliard, Edward Keating, Edward T. Taylor; Ills., James T. McDermott, Adolph J. Sabath, James McAndrews, Frank H. Buchanan, Thomas Gallagher, Clyde H. Tavenner, Claudius U. Stone, Henry T. Rainey, Martin D. Foster, William Elza Williams (a member of the Judiciary Committee); Kans., Joseph Taggart (also a member), Dudley Doolittle, Guy T. Helvering, John R. Connelly, Jouett Shouse, William A. Ayres; Mont., John M. Evans, Tom Stout; Utah, James H. Mays; Wash., C. C. Dill.

Judge Raker acted as chairman and the remarkably strong presentation called out many questions from the anti-suffrage members of the Judiciary Committee.

[106] Senator Borah told them that the plank the National Suffrage Board had submitted, endorsing a Federal Amendment, was absolutely impossible but one could be obtained declaring for woman suffrage by State action. They accepted it, which was a wise thing to do, as had the Republican platform not favored woman suffrage per se the Democratic platform, adopted the following week, would not have done so.



CHAPTER XVII.

NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1917.

The Forty-ninth National Suffrage Convention, which met in Poli's Theater at Washington Dec. 12-15, 1917, was held under the most difficult conditions that ever had been faced in the long history of these annual gatherings. Always heretofore they had been comfortable, happy times, when the delegates came from far and wide to exchange greetings, report progress and plan the future work for a cause to which many of them were giving their entire time and effort. Now great changes had taken place, as the Call for the convention indicated.

Since last we met the all-engulfing World War has drawn our own country into its maelstrom and ominous clouds rest over the earth, obscuring the vision and oppressing the souls of mankind, yet out of the confusion and chaos of strife there has developed a stronger promise of the triumph of democracy than the world has ever known. Every allied nation has announced that it is fighting for this and our own President has declared that "we are fighting for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own government." New Russia has answered the call; Great Britain has pledged full suffrage for women and the measure has already passed the House of Commons by the enormous majority of seven to one. Canada, too, has responded with five newly enfranchised provinces; France is waiting only to drive the foe from her soil to give her women political liberty.

Such an array of victories gives us faith to believe that our own Government will soon follow the example of other allied nations and will also pledge votes to its women citizens as an earnest of its sincerity that in truth we do fight for democracy. This is our first national convention since our country entered the war. We are faced with new problems and new issues and the nation is realizing its dependence upon women as never before. It must be made to realize also that, willingly as women are now serving, they can serve still more efficiently when they shall have received the full measure of citizenship. These facts must be urged upon Congress and our Government must be convinced that the time has come for the enfranchisement of women by means of an amendment to the Federal Constitution.

Men and women who believe that the great question of world democracy includes government of the people, by the people and for the people in our country, are invited to attend our convention and counsel with us on ways and means to attain this object at the earliest possible moment.[107]

On account of the large rush of soldiers to the eastern coast and the many other problems of transportation travelling had become very hard and expensive but so greatly had the interest in suffrage increased among women that nearly 600 delegates were present, the highest number that had ever attended one of the conventions. They came through weather below zero, snowstorms and washouts; trains from the far West were thirty-six hours late; delegates from the South were in two railroad wrecks. It was one of the coldest Decembers ever known and the eastern part of the country had never before faced such a coal famine, from various reasons. Washington was inundated with people, the vast number who had suddenly been called into the service of the Government, the soldiers and the members of their families who had come to be with them to the last, and this city of only a few hundred thousand inhabitants had neither sleeping nor eating accommodations for all of them. The suffrage convention had been called before these conditions were fully known and because of the necessity of bringing pressure at once on Congress. The national suffrage headquarters were now occupying a large private house and the officers were cared for there but the delegates were obliged to scatter over the city wherever they could find shelter, were always cold and some of the time not far from hungry and prices were double what was expected. Notwithstanding all these drawbacks the convention program was carried out and a large amount of valuable work accomplished, tried and loyal suffragists being accustomed to hardships and self-sacrifice.

The victory in New York State the preceding month had marked the beginning of the end and the universal enfranchisement of women seemed almost in sight. Even the intense excitement of the war had not entirely overshadowed what had now became a national issue. Under the auspices of Mrs. Helen H. Gardener, resident in Washington, an Advisory Council was formed to act in an honorary capacity and extend official recognition to the convention, Senators, Representatives, Cabinet officers, Judges, clergymen and others prominent in the life of the capital, with their wives and other women of their family, cheerfully giving their names for this purpose.[108]

The evening before the convention opened a reception by invitation was given in the ball room of the New Willard Hotel to Dr. Shaw, Mrs. Catt and the other officers and the delegates, the following acting as hostesses: Mrs. William Gibbs McAdoo, Mrs. Newton D. Baker, Mrs. Thomas W. Gregory, Mrs. Albert Sidney Burleson, Mrs. Josephus Daniels, Mrs. Franklin K. Lane, Mrs. David F. Houston, Miss Agnes Hart Wilson, Mrs. James R. Mann, Mrs. Philip Pitt Campbell. The first seven were the wives and the eighth the daughter of the members of President Wilson's Cabinet, only Mrs. Robert Lansing being absent, who, like her husband, was an anti-suffragist. The last two were the wives of prominent Representatives from Illinois and Kansas. Because of the war the other social festivities that were usually so delightful a feature of these annual meetings were omitted. Before the convention opened Mrs. Gifford Pinchot, whose home was directly across from "suffrage house," the national headquarters, entertained the officers at luncheon.