it was disappointment produced by the defeat of the woman suffrage amendment, but when I had recovered and could think calmly, I knew it was not that.  I was still patient and still willing to go on working, struggling, sacrificing, for my right to vote; but I could not forget that I lived in a land which tolerated the things I saw that day.”  The women who know cannot rise to “The Star-Spangled Banner” without a “lump in their throats,” for they recognize the terrible fact that hidden under the beautiful pretense of democracy is a hideous menace to our national liberties, which no political party, no legislature, no congress, has dared to drag out into the daylight of public knowledge.

[Footnote A:  The number of states which permitted men to vote on “first papers” was formerly fifteen.  The following eight states still perpetuate this provision:  Arkansas, Delaware, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, Texas.]

Bear these items in mind and remember that Congress enfranchised the Indians, assuming its authority upon the ground that they are wards of the nation; that the Negroes were enfranchised by Federal amendment; that the constitutions of all states not in the list of the original thirteen, automatically extended the vote to men; that in the original colonial territory, the chief struggle occurred over the elimination of the land-owning qualifications and that a total vote necessary to give the franchise to non-landowners did not exceed fifty to seventy-five thousand in any state.

Let it also not be forgotten that the vote is the free-will offering of our forty-eight states to any man who chooses to make this land his home.  Let it not be overlooked that millions of immigrant voters have been added to our electorate within a generation, men mainly uneducated and all moulded by European traditions, and let no man lose sight of the fact that women of American birth, education and ideals must appeal to these men for their enfranchisement.  No humiliation could be more complete, unless we add the amazing fact that political leaders in Congress and legislatures are willing to drive their wives and daughters to beg the consent of these men to their political liberty.

The makers of the Federal Constitution foresaw the necessity of referring important and intricate questions to a more intelligent body than the masses of the people and so provided for the amendment of the Constitution by referendum to the legislatures of the several states.  Why should women be denied the privilege thus established?  The United States is one land and one people.  All the states have the same institutions, customs and ideals.

Woman suffrage has been caught in a snarl of state constitutional obstructions, inefficient election laws and the misapplied theory of States Rights.  It is a combination which has so far retarded the normal progress of the movement in this democratic land that other countries have already outstripped it.  Under these circumstances Congress should extricate the woman suffrage question from this tangle by way of honorable reparation for the injustices unintentionally put upon the only unenfranchised citizens left in our Republic, and women should insist upon their enfranchisement by amendment to the Federal Constitution as their self-respecting duty.