equality of rights to
women shall be decided by the picked men of the nation in Congress,
and the picked men of the several States in their respective
legislatures.

The Senate committee again submitted a majority report in favor of a
Sixteenth Amendment enfranchising women, signed by T. W. Palmer, Blair,
Lapham and Anthony. The minority report, by Joseph E. Brown, Cockrell
and Fair, began: "The undersigned believe that the Creator intended that
the sphere of the males and females of our race should be different,"
etc.

The House Judiciary Committee gave a majority report in the
negative.[21] The minority report in favor was signed by Thomas B. Reed,
Maine; Ezra B. Taylor, Ohio; Thomas M. Browne, Indiana; Moses A. McCoid,
Iowa. It is one of the keenest, clearest expositions of the absurdity of
the objections against woman suffrage that ever has been made, and ends
with this trenchant paragraph:

It is sometimes asserted that women now have a great influence in
politics through their husbands and brothers. That is undoubtedly
true. But this is just the kind of influence which is not wholesome
for the community, for it is influence unaccompanied by
responsibility. People are always ready to recommend to others
what they would not do themselves. If it be true that women can not
be prevented from exercising political influence, is not that only
another reason why they should be steadied in their political
action by that proper sense of responsibility which comes from
acting themselves? We conclude then, that every reason which in
this country bestows the ballot upon man is equally applicable to
the proposition to bestow the ballot upon woman, and in our
judgment there is no foundation for the fear that woman will
thereby become unfitted for all the duties she has hitherto
performed.

Miss Anthony mailed 500 packages of copies of this report to different
points for distribution. Upon the urgent invitation of the suffrage
association of Connecticut she went there for a few days to assist at
their State convention, but in a letter to Mrs. Spofford she said: "I
shall return tomorrow night, if possible. I keep thinking of those men
at the Capitol not doing what I want them to." She afterwards wrote to
May Wright Sewall:

My plan is to get away from here the minute I can do so without
letting our work suffer in Congress. A