Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/698

 Representatives, as was clearly shown in Article I, Section 2, which prescribes the manner of their election and the qualifications of the electors in the different States. Later it fixed a time for these elections. This authority was conferred when, after the amendment was adopted for the election of U. S. Senators  by the voters, Congress enacted that all who were qualified to  vote for Representatives should be eligible to vote for Senators. The leaders of the National American Suffrage Association recognized the constitutionality of the bill and for many years kept a standing committee on it but they did not believe Congress  ever would accept it. Us advocates claimed that if members of Congress had women for their constituents they would soon sec  that the States enfranchised them. The national leaders held that if women could elect members of Congress it would not  take them long to compel the submission of :i federal Amendment and that the members would not put this power into their  hands. They held also that it would be just as much a violation of the State's right to determine its own voters as would the  Federal Amendment itself. The Southern Woman Suffrage Conference, or Association, however, had a committee to further  this U. S. Elections Bill. At the annual convention of the National American Association in 1914 its Congressional Committee was instructed to include this bill in the measures which it promoted. It was re-endorsed at the conventions of 1915 and 1916. Miss Clay went to Washington and lobbied for it with all the prestige of her  family back of her and with all her commanding ability, sup-  porting it by unanswerable argument. Members often presented it in both Mouses but it never was reported by a committee.

While Miss Maud Wood of Boston was a senior in Radcliffe College her attention was directed to woman suffrage by the  efforts of its women opponents in Cambridge to enlist the college  girls on their side. Later, hearing a speech in favor of it by Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, she associated herself with the  Massachusetts Suffrage Association, spoke at its next annual  convention and was drawn into its work. After hearing and