is to ask you to appoint a committee in the House on woman
suffrage, which corresponds with the one in the Senate, in order
that we may have hearings before a committee which is not so
burdened with other business as is the Committee on the
Judiciary.... It seems to the women of the United States that a
question of so much importance that the parliaments of Europe
feel under obligations to discuss and act upon it, is at least of
sufficient importance in this great republic of ours for the
committee which has it under consideration to take time for a
report. Year after year we have asked the Judiciary Committee not
that they should believe in woman suffrage or express any opinion
on it but only to report the measure either favorably or
unfavorably so as to bring it before the House, in order that the
representatives of the men of this country might be able to
consider it, but thus far it has been impossible to secure any
sort of a report....

Mrs. Helen H. Gardener (D. C.), after showing that woman suffrage was
a mere side issue with the Judiciary Committee and that it would be
busier than ever the coming session, said: "Those of us who live here
and have known Congress from our childhood know that an outside matter
has less chance to get any real consideration by such a committee
under such conditions than the proverbial rich man has of entering the
kingdom of heaven." She pointed out that over one-fifth of the Senate
and one-seventh of the House were elected by the votes of women and
continued:

You will remember that there is a committee on Indian Affairs.
Are the Indians more important than the women of America? They
did not always have a special committee, they used to be a mere
incident, as we now are. They used to be under the War
Department and so long as this was the case nobody ever doubted
for an instant that the "only good Indian was a dead
Indian"--just as under the incidental administration of the
Judiciary Committee it is not doubted by some that the only good
woman is a voteless woman. When the Indians secured a committee
of their own they began to get schools, lands in severalty and
the general status of human beings.... It became the duty of that
committee to investigate the real conditions, the needs, the
grievances and the best methods of promoting the interests