Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/541

NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF IQl6 507 A summary of the correspondence, etc., was given and the re- port said of the lobby work : All the direct work with Senators and Congressmen is a time as well as brain consuming process. Usually it means tramping up and down the long stone corridors, hour after hour, in order to find one man in his office. Then he may be having a committee meeting or a previous engagement or emergency business and you are invited to come some other day. Perhaps you have waited an hour before you are sure that he ca'n not see you. It is not uncom- mon for the members of our lobby to state that they have made as many as six. eight or ten calls before they succeeded in reaching a man. Speaking from my own knowledge, I have wasted hours at the Capitol trying to see men who would not make appointments. I have called eighteen times to see one man and have not seen him He is the Representative from my own district. We carried the district for suffrage in Pennsylvania last year but I am told that he does not want to vote for the Federal Amendment. It is, of course, possible to interview members by calling them out of the session but this method is uncertain and not very successful, since they feel hurried and interviews in a public reception room are seldom satisfactory. The latest piece of work done by the committee is the interviewing tter of all congressional candidates who will stand for elec- tion in November. This has been done in cooperation with the State associations which have been urged to institute vigorous inter- ng in the congressional districts. Presidential Interviewing: The presidential candidates of the two hose platforms do not endorse the Federal Amendment have interviewed in person. On July 17 Mrs. Catt, Dr. Shaw and Mrs. Norman deR. Whitehouse, president of the New York suf- e association, called on Judge Hughes in New York and had a long and satisfactory conversation. He told them that in his acceptance he could not endorse the Federal Amendment ise this was the accepting of the party's nomination and of its ich had not mentioned it. He said, however, that i it and that soon after his speech of acceptance he Bounce his personal advocacy of the amendment. He asked information in vhich of course they tatcment of ref ore no surprise to 'rtheless most gratif ' and your chairman called on President ngton. He reiterated his belief that woman suf- v State action. We presented the argmr the Federal Amendment but he r need, and openmii; have by up hope of i MI the jr 1 ad visa- Conferences: At the last n.v n vent inn al committe