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 Strangely enough the National American Association at that time discontinued activity in the federal suffrage department, and has never favored it since, although Miss Anthony a short time before she died, wrote Mrs. Colby asking if she would be willing to take the chairmanship of such a committee should the plan be adopted at the Baltimore convention in 1906 as she hoped it might be.

It would seem that with Judge Minor's strong presentation before the public, with the grand beginning which had been made by Mrs. Colby's wonderful work (described in a previous chapter) and with the help of an organized society composed of prominent people which had already received the most cordial recognition, the National American Association had an opportunity to secure an early passage of a law enabling women to vote for members of Congress, and from that an amendment to the United States Constitution enfranchising all the women of the country. Had they chosen to maintain their own department of federal suffrage or to co-operate with the Federal Suffrage Association, the measure might have been carried through Congress and women might have been voters these many years. Thus the labors, money and lives of many women, which have been spent