Congress and was pending in the Senate and the first act of
this year's Legislature, convened in joint session before either House
had organized, was to adopt a resolution with but one opposing vote
calling on the U. S. Senate to submit the amendment, which was signed
by the Governor and forwarded to Washington.

There still remained from the legislation of 1917 the amendment to the
State constitution, which in order to be submitted to the voters had
to be passed also by the Assembly of 1919. The result of the election
of 1918 in the State had been an overwhelmingly Republican victory.
Since the party had the Governor and a majority of both branches of
the Assembly, it wished to put through a program of legislation that
called for amending the constitution and the leaders requested the
women to withdraw the suffrage amendment, as while one was pending
another could not be introduced. Feeling that withdrawal with a
friendly majority was better than defeat and enmity, the board of the
Franchise League consented. One of the rewards for this sacrifice,
which meant a delay of two years in presenting a State amendment to
the voters, was the Presidential suffrage bill, which passed on
February 6 with six dissenting votes out of a membership of 150. Three
of these were in the Senate, Erskine of Evansville, Haggerty of South
Bend and Kline of Huntington; three in the House, Sambor, Bidaman and
O'Neal, the last two from Terre Haute, Sambor from Indiana Harbor. The
vote to submit an amendment was unanimous in both Houses.

RATIFICATION. When the U. S. Senate finally voted on June 4 to submit
the Federal Suffrage Amendment the Legislature of 1919 had adjourned.
The question of ratification was of course uppermost in the minds of
the leaders of the Franchise League and there would be no regular
session until 1921. Governor Goodrich came to the rescue by promising
to call a special session, probably in August or September of the
present year, and sent out an invitation to other Governors of States
similarly situated to join him in securing enough special sessions to
ratify the amendment at an early date. The Governor of Indiana has
power to call a special session but can not restrict its action. Owing
to internal affairs of the State which developed the Governor
postponed indefinitely calling the session, assuring the suffragists,
however, that it should be held in time for them to vote at the
general election of 1920. Finally after