ith this very troublesome
question?" ... I answer that if this Congress adjourns without
taking action on the woman suffrage amendment it will be because
the party deliberately dodged the issue. Every woman voter will
know this and we have faith that the woman voter will stand by
us. You will go to her and say: "We have lowered the tariff; we
have made new banking laws; we have avoided war with Mexico," and
she will say: "It is true you have done these things, but you
have done a great injustice to my sister in this nearby State.
She asked for a fundamental democratic right, a right which I
possess and which you are asking me to exercise in your favor.
It was in your power to extend this right to her and you refused,
and after this you come to me and ask me for my vote, but I shall
show you that we stand together on this question, my sister and
I."

Several of the committee made caustic remarks about trying to hold the
Democrats responsible after the Republicans had ignored them during
all the past years. Mrs. Evans then introduced Mary (Mrs. Charles R.)
Beard, wife of the well-known professor in Columbia University. Her
address in the stenographic report of the hearing filled seven closely
printed pages, an able review of the Democratic party's record in
regard to Federal legislation. It was the most complete expose of the
fallacy of the Democratic contention that this party stood for State's
rights as opposed to Federal rights ever made at a hearing in behalf
of woman suffrage and is most inadequately represented by quotations.
In the course of it she said:

Did Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, founders of the
Democratic party, rend the air with cries of State's rights
against Federal usurpation when the Federalists chartered the
first United States bank in 1791, and when the Federalist Court,
under the leadership of John Marshall, rendered one ringing
nationalist decision after another upholding the rights of the
nation against the claims of the States? Jefferson, as President,
acquired the Louisiana Territory in what he admitted was an open
violation of the Federal Constitution; and the same James Madison
who opposed the Federalist bank in 1790 as a violation of the
Constitution and State rights, cheerfully signed the bill
rechartering that bank when it became useful to the fiscal