cialized and the children are by
the thousands in the schools.

Mrs. Bass then strikingly illustrated how the business of being a
woman now took women to legislative bodies in the interest of the
State's dependent children, of the women in the industries, of the
so-called fallen women, and showed how fatally handicapped all were
without the power of the ballot.

Mrs. Medill McCormick, chairman of the Congressional Committee of the
association, sent a comprehensive report of the vast work it had done
in district organization throughout the States and the evident
influence this had exerted on Congress. Dr. Shaw introduced Mrs.
Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the International Woman Suffrage
Alliance, who made the principal address, a searching and
comprehensive review of the methods by which men had obtained the
ballot compared to those which had been used by women and showed the
many requirements made of the latter which were entirely omitted in
the case of men. She took the four recent campaigns in Massachusetts,
New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania as the basis of her masterly
address, which will be found in the Appendix of this chapter. At the
end of it she said: "It was twenty-two years ago that I had the
privilege and pleasure of standing upon the same platform with the
chairman of this committee when he made an eloquent appeal to the
citizens of Colorado for the women there and many said that his speech
turned the tide and gave women the vote. I hope that he and every
member will not only make a favorable report but will do more--will
follow that report on the floor of the Senate and work for it and
immortalize themselves while freeing us from the humiliation and the
burden of this struggle."

The hearing was closed by Dr. Shaw with a strong and convincing
argument to show that "if nothing entered into the life of the homes
of this nation except what came through State action it might be said
that only the State should decide who should vote but since the women
are as much affected by the acts of Congress as are the men, this
becomes a national question." She drew a striking picture of
conditions among the nations of Europe where the war was raging; of
how "women in our own country every morning scanned the papers to see
whether we were nearer with the rising sun than we were with the
setting sun of the day before to connections with the Old World which
will plunge us into the war." She took up the ques