careful and intelligent consideration to this measure, and, I hope, make a report on it."
Notwithstanding this promise no further attention was paid to these logical and eloquent appeals or to the immense petition, and no report whatever was made by the committee.
All but four of the members of the House Judiciary Committee were present, including the chairman, Richard Wayne Parker (N. J.), a remarkable attendance, and they showed much interest.[1] Mrs. Florence Kelley, second vice-president of the National Suffrage Association, was in charge of the speakers and the hearing was opened by Representative A. W. Rucker (Col.), who had introduced the resolution for the Federal Amendment, as also had Representative F. W. Mondell (Wyo.). Mrs. Kelley called attention to the petition of 404,823 names, saying: "Among those who have signed the petition are sixteen Governors, a large number of Mayors and many State, county and city officials; many of the best-known instructors and writers on political economy and many presidents of colleges and universities. It includes the names of many Judges of Supreme Courts and among them the Chief Justice and Associate Justice of Hawaii. It contains a long list of the names of persons engaged in various trades and from those in the thirty-three States which are classified are 7,515 professional people, lawyers, doctors, clergymen and others; also 52,603 listed as home keepers."
Mrs. Susan W. Fitzgerald (Mass.) said in part: "I come here to speak for those 52,000 home makers who signed the petition to Congress asking for equal political rights in this democracy.... To ask woman under our modern industrial conditions to care adequately for her home and family without a right to share in the making of the laws and the electing of all those officers who are to enforce the laws is like asking people to make bricks without straw. It cannot be done. We must remember that in the early days of this country a family was practically self-supporting and independent of the rest of the community;
- ↑ Names of committee: Present—Representatives Sterling, Moon, Diekema, Goebel, Denby, Howland, Nye, Clayton, Henry, Brantley, Webb and Carlin; absent—Terrell, Reid, Malby, Higgins.
