their claims. Such activities bore some results. Many eminent
congressmen were converted to their cause and presented it ably to their
colleagues of both chambers. Still the subject was ridiculed by the
newspapers and looked upon as freakish by the masses.

=The State Campaigns.=--Discouraged by the outcome of the national
campaign, suffragists turned to the voters of the individual states and
sought the ballot at their hands. Gains by this process were painfully
slow. Wyoming, it is true, while still a territory, granted suffrage to
women in 1869 and continued it on becoming a state twenty years later,
in spite of strong protests in Congress. In 1893 Colorado established
complete political equality. In Utah, the third suffrage state, the
cause suffered many vicissitudes. Women were enfranchised by the
territorial legislature; they were deprived of the ballot by Congress in
1887; finally in 1896 on the admission of Utah to the union they
recovered their former rights. During the same year, 1896, Idaho
conferred equal suffrage upon the women. This was the last suffrage
victory for more than a decade.

=The Suffrage Cause in Congress.=--In the midst of the meager gains
among the states there were occasional flurries of hope for immediate
action on the federal amendment. Between 1878 and 1896 the Senate
committee reported the suffrage resolution by a favorable majority on
five different occasions. During the same period, however, there were
nine unfavorable reports and only once did the subject reach the point
of a general debate. At no time could anything like the required
two-thirds vote be obtained.

=The Changing Status of Women.=--While the suffrage movement was
lagging, the activities of women in other directions were steadily
multiplying. College after college--Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Smith, Wellesley,
to mention a few--was founded to give them the advantages of higher
education. Other institutions, especially the state universities of the
West, opened their doors to women, and women were received into the
professions of law and medicine. By the rapid growth of public high
schools in which girls enjoyed the same rights as boys, education was
extended still more widely. The number of women teachers increased by
leaps and bounds.

Meanwhile women were entering nearly every branch of industry and
business. How many of them worked at gainful occupations before 1870 we
do not know; but from that year forward we have the