Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/698

nf>O HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFI- RAGE Representatives, as -was clearly shown in Article I, Section 2, which prescribes the manner of their election and the qualifica- tions of the electors in the different States. Later it fixed a time for these elections. This authority was conferred when, after the amendment was adopted for the election of U. S. Senators by the voters, Congress enacted that all who were qualified to vote for Representatives should be eligible to vote for Senators. The leaders of the National American Suffrage Association recog- nized the constitutionality of the bill and for many years kept a standing committee on it but they did not believe Congress ever would accept it. Us advocates claimed that if members of Congress had -women for their constituents they would soon sec that the States enfranchised them. The national leaders held that if women could elect members of Congress it would not take them long to compel the submission of :i federal Aineml- nient and that the members would not put this power into their hands. They held also that it would be just as much a violation of the State's right to determine its own voters as would the Federal Amendment itself. The Southern Woman Suffrage Conference, or Association, however, had a committee to further this I'. S. Klections Liill. At the annual convention of the National American Associa- tion in 1914 its Congressional Committee was instructed to in- clude this bill in the measures which it promoted. It was re- endorsed at the conventions of 1915 and 1916. Miss Clay went to Washington and lobbied for it with all the prestige of her family back of her and with all her commanding ability, sup- porting it by unanswerable argument. Members often presented it in both Mouses but it never was reported by a committee. NATIONAL COLLEGE EQUAL SUFFRAGE LEAGUE. While Miss Maud Wood of Boston was a senior in Radcliffe College her attention was directed to woman suffrage by the efforts of its women opponents in Cambridge to enlist the college girls on their side. Later, hearing a speech in favor of it by Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, she associated herself with the Massachusetts Suffrage Association, spoke at its next annual convention and was drawn into its work. After hearing and