sent of the governed" does not mean that, what can it
mean? So I tried to persuade these women of the truth of that
which I supposed had been settled about one hundred and
twenty-one years ago. It is necessary to make women believe that
suffrage is a natural right rather than a privilege; that, while
abstractly it seems well for an intelligent citizen to govern an
ignorant one, human nature is such that the intelligent will
govern selfishly and leave the ignorant no opportunity to
improve.

It seems to me that the worst obstacle we have to encounter now
is not the prejudice of men against women's voting, but a
misunderstanding on the part of women of the real meaning of
government by the people. This may be ancient history to you, but
it impressed me deeply while I was in California and that is why
I write it. Of course there are many women who do not think. When
they hear woman suffrage spoken of, they go to their husbands and
ask them what they think about it, and their husbands tell them
that they are too good to vote, and those women are content. It
does not occur to them to ask why, if they are too pure and good
to vote, they are not excused from obeying the laws and paying
taxes.

The report of the first year's work done at national headquarters was
very satisfactory. In regard to the Press it contained the following:

The year 1896 has seen the beginning of an effort by our National
Association to use systematically the mighty lever of the public
press in behalf of our work. We have sent out in regular weekly
issues since March hundreds of copies of good equal suffrage
articles. These go into the hands of Press Committees in
forty-one States, and now between six and seven hundred papers
publish them each week. Of forty-one different articles by about
thirty different writers, nearly 25,000 copies have been
distributed to newspapers. These articles reach, in local papers,
not less than one million readers weekly.

We have taken charge of the National Suffrage Bulletin which is
edited by the chairman of the organization committee, have had it
printed in Philadelphia and mailed from the headquarters. In the
past twelve months there have been wrapped and sent out
separately 17,700 copies of the Bulletin. A portion of the
expenses has b