into the Congress by members who have been
favorable to our movement, or who have believed in the justice
and right of citizens to petition Congress and have that petition
heard. Last year we were permitted to address your body and we
rejoiced in the fact that a committee, which from the time of its
creation usually had been indifferent toward our subject, had now
been appointed with Senator Thomas, who from the very beginning
had seen the justice of the demand for woman suffrage, at the
head. This committee gave us great courage and hope, which were
fully justified in the fact that for the first time in twenty
years our resolution was reported out of committee and acted upon
in the Senate, receiving a majority vote but not the necessary
two-thirds. We come again with the same measure and again we
appeal to this committee, in the same terms as for all the past
years, for the women citizens of the United States who at every
call have responded as readily as the men in doing their duty and
serving their country. More and more the demand is being made by
ever-increasing groups of women that they shall directly share in
the Government of which they form a part. So we come to you today
with the same old measure but we come with greater hope than
ever before because we realize that back of you there are now in
many of the States constituencies of women.

Dr. Shaw introduced Mrs. Pattie Ruffner Jacobs of Alabama, who quoted
from distinguished southern members of Congress on State's rights and
asked that these sentiments be applied to the National Amendment for
Woman Suffrage, saying in part:

If this amendment is adopted it in no wise regulates or
interferes with any existing qualification for voting (except
sex) which the various State constitutions now exact. It leaves
all others to be determined by the various States through their
constitutional agencies. It is a fallacy to contend that to
prohibit discrimination on account of sex would involve the race
problem. The actual application of the principle in the South
would be to enfranchise a very large number of white women and
the same sort of negro women as of negro men now permitted to
exercise the privilege....

However much these chivalrous gentlemen may wish it were so, that
southern women might truly be