ublican or your
Greenback theories, for instance, on the finance, there is no
great political power that is going to take you away from these
halls and prevent you from doing all those other things which you
want to do, and you can act out your own moral and intellectual
convictions on this without let or hindrance.

SENATOR EDMUNDS. Without any danger to the public interests, you
mean.

MISS ANTHONY. Without any danger to the public interests. I did
not mean to make a bad insinuation. Senator.

I want to give you another reason why we appeal to you. In these
three States where the question has been submitted and voted down
we can not get another Legislature to resubmit it, because they
say the people have expressed their opinion and decided no, and
therefore nobody with any political sense would resubmit the
question. It is therefore impossible in any one of those States.
We have tried hard in Kansas for ten years to get the question
resubmitted; the vote of that State seems to be taken as a
finality. We ask you to lift the sixteenth amendment out of the
arena of the public mass into the arena of thinking legislative
brains, the brains of the nation, under the law and the
Constitution. Not only do we ask it for that purpose, but when you
will have by a two-thirds vote submitted the proposition to the
several Legislatures, you have put the pin down and it never can
go back. No subsequent Congress can revoke that submission of the
proposition; there will be so much gained; it can not slide back.
Then we will go to New York or to Pennsylvania and urge upon the
Legislatures the ratification of that amendment. They may refuse;
they may vote it down the first time. Then we will go to the next
Legislature, and the next Legislature, and plead and plead, from
year to year, if it takes ten years. It is an open question to
every Legislature until we can get one that will ratify it, and
when that Legislature has once voted and ratified it no subsequent
legislation can revoke their ratification.

Thus, you perceive, Senators, that every step we would gain by
this sixteenth amendment process is fast and not to be done over
again. That is why I appeal to you especially. As I have shown you
in the respective States, if we fail to educate the people of
a whole State--and in Michiga