Page:Petition from Carrie Chapman Catt of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.djvu/1





April 10, 1917.

Hon. Champ Clark,

Speaker of the House of Representatives,

Washington, D. C.

My dear Sir:

On behalf of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, I write to ask that a Committee on Woman Suffrage be appointed in the House of Representatives as in the Senate of the Congress of the United States. We make this request because the Judiciary Committee, to which constitutional amendments are referred, is and always has been so occupied with other important questions, that it has never been able to give the consideration due to this measure, supported by so large a portion of our people.

May I remind you that the national governments of Great Britain, France and Russia have promised woman suffrage in the near future; and that the greater part of Canada has already established it within a few months. The leaders of these governments have announced that the vote has been or will be given to their women in recognition of the devotion, sacrifice, skill and endurance of women in their varied service to their country under the strain of war. Our Republic stands upon the threshold of what may prove the severest test of loyalty and endurance our country has ever had. It needs its women; and they are ready — as fearless, as willing, as able, as loyal as any women of the world.

You have had a long and successful political career and that means that you know men and women. You know that both work better when their hearts bear no sense