beliefs, it desires to strongly reassert the position which it
has held of being nonpartisan.

A hearing was granted by the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage the
morning of January 24. Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. Minor, Mrs. Duniway, Mrs.
Johns, the Rev. Olympia Brown, the Rev. Miss Shaw and Miss Alice Stone
Blackwell were introduced to the committee by Miss Anthony, and each
from a different standpoint presented the arguments for the submission
of a Sixteenth Amendment enfranchising women.

On February 7, Senator Blair reported for the committee--Senators
Charles B. Farwell (Ill.), Jonathan Chace (R. I.), Edward O. Wolcott
(Col.), in favor of the amendment. After an able and exhaustive
argument the report closed as follows:

Unless this Government shall be made and preserved truly
republican in form by the enfranchisement of woman, the great
reforms which her ballot would accomplish may never be; the
demoralization and disintegration now proceeding in the body
politic are not likely soon to be arrested. Corruption of the
male suffrage is already a well-nigh fatal disease; intemperance
has no sufficient foe in the law-making power; a republican form
of government can not survive half-slave and half-free.

The ballot is withheld from women because men are not willing to
part with one-half the sovereign power. There is no other real
cause for the continued perpetration of this unnatural tyranny.

Enfranchise women or this republic will steadily advance to the
same destruction, the same ignoble and tragic catastrophe, which
has engulfed the male republics of history. Let us establish a
government in which both men and women shall be free indeed. Then
shall the republic be perpetual.

The women of the nation are deeply indebted to Senator Blair for his
able and persistent efforts in their behalf. Year after year, in the
midst of the great pressure of duties connected with his office, he
carefully prepared these constitutional and legal reports knowing that
they could have only the indirect results of educating public
sentiment and contributing to the history of this great movement for
the political rights of half the race.

The other members of the committee, Senators Zebulon B. Vance (N. C.),
Joseph E. Brown (Ga.), J. B. Beck (Ky.), announced that they should
present a minority report in opposition, but as "Letters from a
Chimney Cor