tted for two years. Meantime all the energy
that should be expended in directly educating the people must
again be wasted trying to get a majority vote in two successive
Legislatures. It is the opinion of one of the great suffrage
leaders in New York, as expressed to me, that if the amendment
does not carry in 1915 the people will not have an opportunity to
vote upon it for another fifteen or twenty years.[90]

The early passage of the Shafroth-Palmer amendment would
eliminate the State constitutional barrier and leave for the
State organization only the work of ratification of this
amendment, which only requires a majority vote in both branches
of the Legislature. Again the legislator is able to shift the
responsibility to the voters of his State. He is not voting
directly on the question himself--only to submit the question to
the people. You can readily see that here again this amendment
is easier to ratify in the Legislatures than the Bristow-Mondell
would be, because in the ratification of the latter the
legislators are practically casting the final vote on the
enfranchisement of the women all over the country.... The
simultaneous consideration of suffrage in every State at the same
time would give overwhelming accumulative impetus to the movement
and would increase suffrage activity inestimably. The fact that
the national Congress had taken any action whatsoever in regard
to the suffrage question would stamp it as a national issue, and
I very much doubt whether the Democratic and Republican parties
would be able to decline to put a suffrage plank in their
national platforms.

This ended Mrs. Funk's statement and Mrs. McCormick continued: "In
dividing up the work of the lobby Mrs. Sherman undertook to card
catalogue Congress by the same method which she used so successfully
in the Illinois Legislature and a list of members was prepared who
should be defeated on their record in Congress. Arthur Dunn, who had
been a Washington newspaper correspondent for thirty years, was put at
the head of the publicity bureau and proved to be of inestimable value
because of his personal acquaintance with every member of Congress."
Charles T. Hallinan, also an experienced newspaper man, had been made
chairman of the press bureau and in his report to the convention told
of the introduction of the latest