y to the boiling point; for, if
there is anything that exasperates her, it is to be remanded, as
she says, to John Morrissey's constituency for her rights. She
contends that if the United States authority could punish her for
voting in the State of New York, it has the same power to protect
her there in the exercise of that right. Moreover, she said, we
have two wings to our movement. The American Association is
trying the popular-vote method. The National Association is
trying the constitutional method, which has emancipated and
enfranchised the African and secured to that race all their civil
rights. To-day by this method they are in the courts, the
colleges, and the halls of legislation in every State in the
Union, while we have puttered with State rights for thirty years
without a foothold anywhere, except in the territories, and it is
now proposed to rob the women of their rights in those
localities. As the two methods do not conflict, and what is done
in the several States tells on the nation, and what is done by
congress reacts again on the States, it must be a good thing to
keep up both kinds of agitation.

In the middle of November the National Association sent out
thousands of petitions and appeals for the sixteenth amendment,
which were published and commented on extensively by the press in
every State in the Union. Early in January they began to pour
into Washington at the rate of a thousand a day, coming from
twenty-six different States. It does not require much wisdom to
see that when these petitions were placed in the hands of the
representatives of their States, a great educational work was
accomplished at Washington, and public sentiment there has its
legitimate effect throughout the country, as well as that already
accomplished in the rural districts by the slower process of
circulating and signing the petitions. The present uncertain
position of men and parties, has made politicians more ready to
listen to the demands of their constituents, and never has woman
suffrage been treated with more courtesy in Washington.

To Sara Andrews Spencer we are indebted, for the great labor of
receiving, assorting, counting, rolling-up and planning the
presentation of the petitions. It was by a well considered _coup
d'etat_ that, wi