er appreciation of what it means to render public
service to a whole community and not a fraction of it. We also
recognize the fact that our men are feeling that in every good
work which they undertake a great help has been given to them.

Mrs. George Bass, whose address is quoted in the report of the Senate
hearing in this chapter, gave a valuable resume of the civic and legal
reforms which already the women of Illinois had been able to
accomplish with their votes and answered a number of questions. Miss
Ruutz-Rees spoke along the lines of her speech before the Senate
Committee, as did Mrs. Pattie Ruffner Jacobs, who made a strong appeal
in the name of southern women for the Federal Amendment. She was
subjected to a crossfire of questions from the southern members and
Chairman Webb asked the question which many times afterwards came back
to plague him: "Do you not think that as soon as you have a big enough
majority of women in Alabama who want suffrage you will get it from
the State and that you ought not come here bothering Congress about
something that it should not, under our form of government, take
jurisdiction of?" She answered: "I am very regretful that you have
been bothered." During the questions and answers that followed Mrs.
Jacobs brought forward the unjust laws of South Carolina and Alabama
for working women and for all women and said: "The southern man still
prefers to think of the southern women as the sheltered, protected
beings he would like to have them and he does not realize that now
they are the exploited class." Representatives Whaley of South
Carolina and Tribble of Georgia denied her statements and afterwards
put into the Record statistics attempting to disprove them.

In the paper presented by Mrs. Medill McCormick, chairman of the
Congressional Committee, she showed the excellent work that had been
done by its branches organized in the congressional districts; the
pressure on members of Congress by their constituents; the favorable
resolutions that had been passed by organizations and meetings
representing hundreds of thousands and closed: "I wonder whether you
gentlemen of the committee have computed the number of votes that are
now behind the woman suffrage movement in this country? I do not mean
the votes of women in the equal suffrage States alone, I mean the
popular voting strength as shown at the polls all over the country.
Nearly 1,250,000 votes were cast for woman suff