Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/499

 Mrs. Bass then strikingly illustrated how the business of being a woman now took women to legislative bodies in the interest of the State's dependent children, of the women in the industries, of the so-called fallen women, and showed how fatally handicapped all were without the power of the ballot.

Mrs. Medill McCormick, chairman of the Congressional Committee of the association, sent a comprehensive report of the vast work it had done in district organization throughout the States and the evident influence this had exerted on Congress. Dr. Shaw introduced Mrs, Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, who made the principal address, a searching and comprehensive review of the methods by which men had obtained the ballot compared to those which had been used by women and showed the many requirements made of the latter which were entirely omitted in the case of men. She took the four recent campaigns in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania as the basis of her masterly address, which will be found in the Appendix of this chapter. At the end of it she said: "It was twenty-two years ago that I had the privilege and pleasure of standing upon the same platform with the chairman of this committee when he made an eloquent appeal to the citizens of Colorado for the women there and many said that his speech turned the tide and gave women the vote. I hope that he and every member will not only make a favorable report but will do more—will follow that report on the floor of the Senate and work for it and immortalize themselves while freeing us from the humiliation and the burden of this struggle."

The hearing was closed by Dr. Shaw with a strong and convincing argument to show that "if nothing entered into the life of the homes of this nation except what came through State action it might be said that only the State should decide who should vote but since the women are as much affected by the acts of Congress as are the men, this becomes a national question." She drew a striking picture of conditions among the nations of Europe where the war was raging; of how "women in our own country every morning scanned the papers to see whether we were nearer with the rising sun than we were with the setting sun of the day before to connections with the Old World which will plunge us