Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/414

 Woman Suffrage Committee of Senate voted on May 14 to report the resolution favorably and did so unanimously, one not voting. On July 31 twenty-two Senators spoke in favor of the resolution and three against it. On September 18 Senator Andrieus Jones (N. M.) spoke in favor and asked for immediate action. On the same day Senator Henry F. Ashurst (Ariz.) announced on the floor of the Senate that he would press the measure to a vote at the earliest possible moment.

Three resolutions were introduced in the House for the creation of a Woman Suffrage Committee and referred to the Rules Committee and are still before it.

The amendment resolution is awaiting third reading in the Senate and is before the Judiciary Committee of the House.

The action of the Senate was due to the fact that under the new administration a committee had been appointed which was favorable to woman suffrage instead of one opposed as heretofore, with a chairman, Senator Charles S. Thomas of Colorado, who had helped the women of his own State to secure the suffrage twenty years before. The resolutions in the Lower House were introduced by old and tried friends and the association's new Congressional Committee had arranged hearings, brought pressure to bear on members and not permitted them to forget or ignore the question. Miss Agnes E. Ryan, business manager of the Woman's Journal, said in her account: "The convention received the report with enthusiastic applause, giving three cheers and rising to its feet to show its appreciation."

This report was signed by Miss Paul as "chairman of the Congressional Committee and president of the Congressional Union" and she said at the beginning that it was impossible to separate the work of the two. At its conclusion Mrs. Catt moved that the part of the report as from the Congressional Committee be accepted, which was done by the convention. She then asked what was the relation between the two and why, if this was a regular committee of the National American Association, no appropriation had been made for its work during the coming year and why there was no statement in the treasurer's report of its expenditures during the past year. It developed that the committee had raised and expended its own funds, which had not passed through the national treasury, and that the Congressional Union was a society formed the preceding April to assist the work