ganization we have been
conducting hearings before this committee for over forty years,
and, as many of its members have served several terms, they are
as familiar as we are with the suffrage arguments. We, therefore,
decided to be perfectly frank with the committee and draw to
their attention the fact that they possessed the power, if they
wished to exercise it, to suggest to Congress some other form of
legislation than had been presented to them. Mrs. Funk made this
statement to them and said that in interviewing the members of
the Judiciary Committee individually we found that they were
convinced that woman suffrage was a question which was growing so
rapidly throughout the country that it would only be a short time
before the women would succeed in gaining their political
freedom, but that as a committee, and because there was a
majority of Democrats on it, they did not feel that they were
able to report the Mondell amendment in any form.[89]

Mrs. McCormick then called on Mrs. Funk to present the Shafroth-Palmer
Amendment, which had been introduced in the House by A. Mitchell
Palmer (Penn.), and the argument for it. The amendment read as
follows:

Whenever any number of legal voters of any State to a number
exceeding 8 per cent. of the number of legal voters at the last
preceding general election held in such State, shall petition for
the submission to the legal voters of said State of the question
whether women shall have equal rights with men in respect to
voting at all elections to be held in such State, such question
shall be so submitted, and if a majority of the legal voters of
the State voting on the question shall vote in favor of granting
to women such equal rights, the same shall thereupon be deemed
established, anything in the constitution or laws of such State
to the contrary notwithstanding.

In beginning her carefully prepared "brief" Mrs. Funk said:

This amendment to the U. S. Constitution must pass both branches
of the national Congress by a two-thirds vote and be ratified by
a majority vote of three-fourths of the State Legislatures before
it becomes a law. So far it is identical with the Bristow-Mondell
amendment. The difference between the two is that after the
latter amendment has passed three-fourths of the State
Legislatures