Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/521

 drop work for State Referenda and concentrate on the Federal Amendment? Leader, Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, New York; second, Mrs. Glendower Evans, Massachusetts.

Shall the present policy of the National American Woman Suffrage Association to work for woman suffrage "by appropriate National and State legislation" be continued? Leader, Mrs. Raymond Brown, New York; second, Miss Florence Allen, Ohio.

The alternative amendments to the constitution will then be put: I. To strike out the words "National and." II. To strike out the words "and State." If both are lost, the constitution will remain as it is and the National American Woman Suffrage Association will stand pledged to both Federal and State campaigns.

The speakers presented their arguments with great earnestness; the discussion was vigorously carried on and the rebuttals were made with much spirit. By request the honorary president, Dr. Shaw, who was sitting on the platform, closed the debate and she strongly urged that there should be no change in the policy of the association. The convention voted overwhelmingly in favor of continuing to work for both National and State constitutional amendments, nearly all of the southern delegates joining in this vote. Mrs. Harper then rose to a question of personal privilege and said that she should consider it a great calamity for the association to discontinue its work for State amendments and that she only took the opposite side at the urgent request of Mrs. Catt, with the promise that she should be permitted to make this explanation. Mrs. Evans made a similar statement and the audience, which had been mystified by their position, had a hearty laugh. This debate and the vote of the convention restored the association to its position of standing for the original Federal Suffrage Amendment and working for amendments of State constitutions as a means to this end.

In the evening a brilliant reception for the officers and delegates was given in the large drawing-room of the Marlborough-Blenheim by the Atlantic City Woman Suffrage Club and the New Jersey State Association.

The convention was opened in the New Nixon Theater Thursday morning with prayer by the Rev. Thomas J. Cross, pastor of the Chelsea Baptist Church, and much routine business was dis-