d by
this sowing of suffrage literature by Mrs. Wattles, is largely
due the wonderful revival which has swept like one of our own
prairie fires over south-eastern Kansas during the past year; a
sentiment so strong as to need but "a live coal from off the
altar" to kindle into a blaze of enthusiasm. This it received in
the earnest eloquence of Mrs. Helen M. Gougar, who has twice
visited that portion of the State. All these writers express
their faith in a growing interest in the suffrage cause, and,
some of them, the belief that if the question were again
submitted to a vote of the people, it would carry.

In our State suffrage convention, June, 1884, among the demands
which we resolved to make of our incoming legislature, was the
submission of an amendment striking out the word "male" from the
State constitution. For myself, I entertained no hope that it
would succeed further than as a means of agitation and education.
On reflection, I hope it will not be done. The women of Kansas
have once been subjected to the humiliation of having their
political disabilities perpetuated by the vote of the "rank and
file" of our populace. While I believe the growth of popular
opinion in favor of equality of rights for women has nowhere been
more rapid than in Kansas, yet I do not lose sight of the fact
that thousands of foreigners are each year added to the voting
population, whose ballots in the aggregate defeat the will of our
enlightened, American-born citizens. Besides, it is a too
convenient way for a legislature to shirk its own responsibility.
If the demand is made, I hope it may be done in connection with
that for municipal and presidential suffrage.

The history of the woman suffrage organizations in Kansas since
1867, may be briefly told. The first owes its existence to one
copy of the _National Citizen and Ballot-Box_ subscribed for by
my husband, W. S. Wait, who by the merest chance heard Miss
Anthony deliver her famous lecture, "Woman wants Bread, not the
Ballot," in Salina, in November, 1877. The paper was religiously
read by Mrs. Emily J. Biggs and myself; although we did not need
conversion, both being radical in our ideas on this question, we
had long felt the need of something being done which would fix
public attention and provoke