Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/32

 The assertion is frequently made that the enfranchisement of women was due to a natural evolution of public sentiment. A reading of the following chapters, which give the history of the work of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, will show how largely the creation of this sentiment was due to this organization to which all the State associations were auxiliary. It represented the organized movement during half a century to secure the vote for women — a struggle such as was never made by men for this right in any country in the world. It was the only large organization for this purpose that ever existed in the United States and its efforts never ceased in the more than fifty years. At each annual convention some advance was recorded. These chapters show that, while the principal object of the association was a Federal Amendment, it gave valuable assistance to every campaign for the amendment of State constitutions and that it was responsible for the granting of the Presidential franchise, which was so important a factor in gaining the final victory. The reports of its officers each year show the large amount of money raised and expended, the hundreds of thousands of letters written, the millions of pieces of literature circulated, the thousands of meetings held, the many workers in the field. The committee reports and the resolutions adopted show that all reforms vital to the welfare of women and children and many of a wider scope were included in the work of the association. The names of the speakers at the national conventions and at the hearings before the committees of Congress during all these years prove that this cause was championed by the leaders among the men and women of their generation. Such quotations from their speeches as space has permitted show that in eloquence, logic and strength they were unsurpassed and that their arguments were unanswerable.

If this volume contained only the first nineteen chapters tinreader could not fail to be convinced that principally to the efforts of the National American Woman Suffrage Association the women of the United States owe their enfranchisement, but it shows too that in the forty-eight auxiliary States they also fought their own hard battles.