felt obliged to stand by it, but to most of those delegates
who had been in the movement for years it meant the abandonment of the
object for which the association had been formed and for which all the
founders, the pioneer workers and those down to the present day, had
devoted their best efforts. Dr. Shaw was the only member of the board
who had been many years connected with the association, and, while her
judgment was opposed to the new amendment, she yielded to the earnest
pleas of her younger colleagues and the optimistic members of the
Congressional Committee that it should have a fair trial. Miss
Blackwell, editor of the _Woman's Journal_, strongly endorsed it and
gave it the support of her paper in many long, earnest editorials. She
also granted columns of space to vigorous arguments on both sides by
suffragists throughout the country.[92] The question had been before
the State associations for the last seven or eight months.

Mrs. Mary Ware Dennett, corresponding secretary of the National
American Association, wrote to the State presidents the first week in
May, 1914: "Strange as it may seem, we find that quite a number of the
members of our association have gotten the impression that the
introduction of the Shafroth amendment means the abandoning of the old
amendment which has been introduced into Congress for forty years or
more, and which, as you know, has now been re-introduced and at this
session will be called the Bristow-Mondell amendment. Nothing could be
further from the truth. The reason for the introduction of the
Shafroth amendment is to hasten the day when the passage of the
Bristow-Mondell amendment will become a possibility.... Both
amendments are before Congress but only the new one stands any chance
of being acted upon before adjournment.[93] We stand by the old one as
a matter of principle; we push for the new one as a matter of
immediate practical politics and to further the passage of the old
one." Mrs. Dennett also vigorously advocated the new amendment in the
_Woman's Journal_.

At the opening of the second session of the convention devoted to the
subject Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch moved that the Shafroth amendment
be not proceeded with in the next Congress and it was seconded.
Instantly Mrs. Raymond Brown, president of the New York State
Association, offered as a substitute resolution: "It is the sense of
this convention that the policy of the National American Woman
Suffrage Associat