Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/582

546 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE evolution of government which has been going on since the dawn of civilization." He asked to have printed as part of his speech two chapters of Mrs. Catt's new book Woman Suffrage by Con- stitutional Amendment, which was so ordered. Senator Kendrick of Wyoming, former Governor, gave his experience of woman suffrage in that State for thirty-eight years. He declared that the early settlers -were of the type of the Revolutionary Fathers and gladly gave to woman any right they claimed. He testified to the help he had received from them "in the promotion of every piece of progressive legislation" and said: "If for no other reason than the forces that are fighting woman suffrage, every decent man ought to line up in favor of it." He closed as follows : "Here and now I want to give this Constitutional Amendment my unqualified endorsement. No State that has adopted woman suffrage has ever even considered a plan to get along without it. It is soon realized that the votes of -women are not for sale at any price, and, while they align themselves with the different parties, one thing is always and preeminently true they never fail to put principle above partisanship and patriotism above patronage." Senator William Howard Thompson of Kansas sketched the steady progress of woman suffrage in his State, told of its beneficent results and submitted a comprehensive address which he had made before the Senate in 1914. The committee listened with much interest to the first woman member of Congress, Representative Jeannette Rankin of Mon- tana, who reviewed the almost insurmountable difficulties of amending many State constitutions for woman suffrage and made an earnest plea for the Federal Amendment. Senator Charles S. Thomas of Colorado, -who for the past twenty-five years had been a consistent and never failing friend of woman suffrage, said in beginning: "I learned this lesson in my early manhood by reading the addresses of and listening to such ad- vocates as Susan B. Anthony," and he summed up his strong speech by saying: "The matter is simply one of abstract and of concrete justice. We cannot preach universal suffrage unless we practice it and we can never practice it while fifty per cent. of our population is disfranchised." Senator Reed Snioot of Utah, to whom the women of his State could always look for help