Kelley, of Pennsylvania, who believed
in woman suffrage and voted for it, but did not feel enough interest to
push the matter in Congress, she wrote, January 6, 1884:

No one shrinks more from making herself obnoxious than I do, and
but for the sake of all women, your darling Florence included, I
should never again say a word to you on the subject of using your
influence to secure the passage of a Sixteenth Amendment
proposition. Last winter you put off my appeal for help with, "This
is the short session and the tariff question is of momentous
importance." Now, since this is the "long session," will you not
take hold of this work, and with the same earnestness that you do
other questions?

It is cruel for you to leave your daughter, so full of hope and
resolve, to suffer the humiliations of disfranchisement she already
feels so keenly, and which she will find more and more galling as
she grows into the stronger and grander woman she is sure to be. If
it were your son who for any cause was denied his right to have his
opinion counted, you would compass sea and land to lift the ban
from him. And yet the crime of denial in his case would be no
greater than in that of your daughter. It is only because men are
so accustomed to the ignoring of woman's opinions, that they do not
believe women suffer from the injustice as would men; precisely as
people used to scout the idea that negroes, whose parents before
them always had been enslaved, suffered from that cruel bondage as
white men would.

Now, will you not set about in good earnest to secure the
enfranchisement of woman? Why do not the Republicans push this
question? The vote on Keifer's resolution showed almost a party
line. Of the 124 nays, only 4 were Republicans; while of the 85
yeas, only 13 were Democrats. Even should you fail to get another
committee, the discussion and the vote would array the members and
set each man and party in their true places to be seen of all men,
and all women too.

The term of the select committee on woman suffrage having expired with
the close of the Forty-seventh Congress, a new one was appointed by the
Senate of the Forty-eighth. The House committee on rules refused to
report such a committee but placed the question in the hands of
Representative Warren Keifer, of Ohio, who made a gall