s from the constitution of his
State but the U. S. Constitution delegates the power and duty to
qualify citizens to vote for them to the Legislatures, in the
first section of Article II, in these words: "Each State shall
appoint in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct a
number of electors equal to the whole number of Senators and
Representatives to which the State may be entitled in Congress."
Probably U.S. Senator George F. Hoar was the first to discover
that this power given to Legislatures involved the possibility of
the enfranchisement of women for presidential electors.

The conspicuous position that women suddenly attained in American
politics in 1912 was due to the fact that in six States women
were able to determine the choice of thirty-seven presidential
electors. The large interests involved in a presidential
administration, among which are 300,000 offices of honor and
emolument, cause keen political concern from the fact that women
voters may hold the balance of power in a close election. The
whole number of electoral votes in the nine States where women
now have full suffrage is fifty-four. These were attained by
campaigns for constitutional amendments that involved vast outlay
of time and treasure. Simply by act of Legislature, Illinois has
added twenty-nine to the list, an increase of over thirty-three
per cent., thus bringing an incalculable influence and power into
the arena of national politics....

Mrs. Mary E. Craigie made her usual report of the excellent work done
by her Church Committee. She gave a list of the Catholic clergy who
had declared in favor of woman suffrage and told of the cordial assent
by those of other denominations to include it in their sermons on
Mother's Day. She named some of the many questions of social reform to
which pulpits were freely opened--temperance, child labor, pure food,
the white slave traffic and others--and asked: "Why does not woman
suffrage, the reform that would bring two-thirds more power to all
such movements, receive the same cooperation and support from the
churches? The answer plainly is: Because of the apathy of women in
demanding it."

The changing character of the national suffrage conventions is
illustrated by the reports in the _Woman's Journal_, whose editors had
for a generation collected and preserved in its pages the u