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honest women in the State who are voters and there are not 100 who will subscribe to the sentiments she gave voice to."^[1]

Mrs. Catt closed the hearing with an earnest appeal for action, saying in part:

When the constitution of Colorado was first made in 1876 a provision was placed in it that at any time the Legislature might enfranchise the women by a referendum of a law to the voters. That was done in 1893 and it was passed by 6,000 majority. Last year an amendment to the constitution was submitted to the electors, now both men and women, concerning the qualifications for the vote and in it there was included, of course, the recognition of the enfranchisement of women quite as much as that of men, so that it was virtually a woman suffrage amendment. It received a majority of 35,000, showing certainly that after ten years of experience the people were willing to put woman suffrage in the constitution, where it became an integral part of it and permanent.

 

When the American constitution was formulated it was the first of its kind and this was the first republic of its kind. Man suffrage was an experiment and it was considered universally a very doubtful one. We find overwhelming evidence that the thinkers of the world feared that if this republic should fail to live it would come to its end through the instability of the minds of men and that revolutionary thought would arise to overturn the Government. We find it in George Washington and Benjamin Franklin and all of our statesmen as well as those who were watching the experiment here so anxiously from across the sea. What was the result? The result was they made a constitution just as ironclad as they could, so as to prevent its amendment. They made it as difficult for the fundamental law of the nation to be changed as they knew how to do.... Those of us who wish to enter the political life, who believe that we have quite as good a right to express ourselves there as any man—what is our position? Within the last century there has been extension after extension of the suffrage, and every one has put suffrage for women further off....

Do you not see that while in this country there are millions of people who believe in the enfranchisement of women, while there is more sentiment for it than in any other, yet we are restricted by this stone wall of constitutional limitations which was set at a time when a republican form of government was totally untried? Because of this we find ourselves distanced by monarchies and the women enfranchised in other lands are coming to us to express their pity and sympathy.... So I ask that you will this time make a report to the

1. A Miss Elizabeth McCracken had been sent to Colorado by the Outlook to prepare an article on woman suffrage, which it published. The statements in it were universally repudiated by the press and the people of that State. Mrs. Grenfell said of it at this convention: "It is as absurd to refute her assertions as to reply to Baron Munchausen or to insist that Alice's Adventures in Wonderland never happened. Such conditions as she describes do not exist in Colorado."