NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1905
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suffrage planks in the platforms of the political parties, delegates from the association being sent to all. [See Chapter XXIII. ]
An outstanding feature of the year's achievements was what was known as the Statehood Protest. At the beginning of the 58th Congress a bill passed the Lower House providing for the admission to Statehood of Oklahoma, Indian, Arizona and New Mexico Territories under the names of Oklahoma and Arizona. It contained a clause saying that "the right of suffrage should never be abridged except on account of illiteracy, minority, sex, conviction of felony or mental condition." The association's legal adviser, Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch of Chicago, was consulted by Mrs. Upton and Miss Hauser the preceding June as to how the word "sex" could be eliminated. She took the matter under consideration and laid her plan before the Business Committee in September. It called for a nationwide protest from women's organizations and individuals. The committee approved but did not feel able to make a sufficient appropriation. The report continued:
When the result was communicated to Mrs. McCulloch by letter she answered post-haste: "We dare not let this work go undone. I will raise the money for it myself." The headquarters undertook to do the work. We appealed to the president or the corresponding secretary for directories of associations and as fast as names were secured copies of the circular letter of the Woman's Protest Committee, written by Miss Blackwell, were sent out. This letter was signed by twenty-six women, among them presidents of the following national organizations: Council of Women, Council of Jewish Women, Woman Suffrage Association, Teachers' Federation, Catholic Women's League, Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic, Lutheran Women's League, Congress of Mothers, etc., and 34,000 were sent out with 28,000 leaflets, "Why Women Should Protest." Perhaps no more spontaneous response was ever given to anything than to this letter. All sorts of societies, not of women only but of men and of men and women, protested. More than 400 reported their action to headquarters. The number of individuals who reported that they had written to Senator Albert J. Beveridge (Ind.), chairman of the Committee on Territories, and to their own Senators was so great that we could not keep a record. Newspapers the country over commented on the matter, hundreds of clippings on the subject sometimes being received in one mail.
What was the result? Under date of Dec. 16, 1904, Senator Beveridge notified headquarters that the Senate Committee had
