Senate, where the entire day was given over to suffrage
discussion.

Twenty-two senators spoke in favor of the amendment in presenting
their petitions. Three spoke against it. For the first time in
twenty-six years suffrage was actually debated in Congress. That
day was historic.

Speeches? Yes. Greetings? Yes. Present petitions from their
constituencies? Gladly. Report it from the Senate Committee? They
had to concede that. But passage of the amendment? That was
beyond their contemplation.

More pressure was necessary. We appealed to the women voters, of
whom there were then four million, to come into action.

"Four million women voters are watching you," we said to
Congress. We might as well have said, "There are in the South Sea
Islands four million heathens."

It was clear that these distant women voters had no relation in
the senatorial mind to the realism of politics. We decided to
bring some of these women voters to Washington: Having failed to
get the Senate to act by August, we invited the Council of Women
Voters to hold its convention in Wash-

{25}

ington that Congress might learn this simple lesson: women did
vote; there were four million of them; they had a voters'