Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/448

than half of the absentees were known to be in favor but these facts did not give her any faith in the amendment. 'During the canvassing of the Senate," she said, "we were more and more impressed with the necessity of meeting the State's rights argument and felt more and more keenly the barrier of the State constitutions in advancing our cause. An analysis of these constitutions proved most illuminating and in arguing with the Senators upon this point they constantly reiterated the general idea of submitting this question, as well as other big national questions, to the decision of the people. We also discovered at this time that there were seven or eight different amendments before Congress on the woman suffrage question. For example, there is a bill giving us the right to vote for Presidential electors. There is another bill giving us the right to vote for Senators and Congressmen, etc....^[1] A general canvass of the Lower House and also the action of the Democratic caucus convinced us in an even more pronounced way that we are blocked by the State's rights doctrine." The report continued:

It was at this time that Mrs. Funk, Mrs. Booth and myself interpreted our duty as a committee to mean that we were appointed not only for the purpose of national propaganda and for the promotion of the Bristow amendment but that our duty was a more extensive one and required us to meet whatever political emergency might arise during our term of office. We, therefore, set about to originate a new form of amendment to the U. S. Constitution which would meet the State's rights argument, if such a thing were possible. As Mrs. Funk is a lawyer, Mrs. Booth and I agreed that it was most important for her to draw up such an amendment. This was done; it was submitted to several lawyers, to our Advisory Committees of Senate and House; to an able constitutional lawyer in Washington, to Judge William J. Calhoun, of Chicago, a lawyer of international reputation, and to Judge Hiram Gilbert, one of the best constitutional lawyers in Illinois. We accepted Judge Gilbert's rewording and then sent it on to the Progressive party's legislative

1. Instead of seven or eight amendments there was only one and never had been but one—the old, original amendment introduced by Senator A. A. Sargent (Calif.) in 1878. There was and long had been one "Dill" advocated, the one to give women so-called "federal" suffrage, the right to vote for Senators and Representatives, but it had never been reported out of committee. There was no bill before Congress to give women the right to vote for Presidential electors and there was no other bill proposed. It was of course the "State's rights argument" that had been the continuous barrier to the Federal Suffrage Amendment ever since it was first introduced but the favorable attitude of a majority of the Senators showed how much progress had been made in meeting that argument.