requested to invite
to his office the congressional delegation from the State to receive
its women who were in attendance at the convention. There were thirty
of these gatherings and in many instances all the delegation were
present. Senators Penrose and Knox refused to call the Pennsylvania
members together. It is impossible to go into details but most of the
interviews were satisfactory, the women asking solely for votes in
favor of the Federal Suffrage Amendment, and it was said that
thirty-five were won for it. From fifty to one hundred women were in
many of the groups. To the Missouri delegation, headed by Mrs. Walter
McNab Miller, vice-president of the National Association, Speaker of
the House Champ Clark said: "If my vote is necessary to pass the
amendment I will cast it in favor," and the delegation was solid for
it except Representative Jacob E. Meeker. Senator Warren G. Harding
received the Ohio women, led by Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, State
president, and Mrs. Baker, wife of the Secretary of War, and later, he
voted for the amendment. A hundred women called on the Virginia
members and fifty on those of Alabama, without effect, but many of the
large groups of southern women did receive much encouragement from the
members from their States. President Wilson himself gave an audience
to the Arkansas women, whose Legislature had recently granted full
Primary suffrage and whose entire congressional delegation would vote
for the Federal Amendment. This was found to be the case in nearly all
of the northern and western States.

Forty-four States had sent delegates to the convention and from the
equal suffrage States of Montana and Wyoming came Mrs. Margaret
Hathaway and Mrs. Mary G. Bellamy, members of the Legislature; from
Colorado, Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford, State Superintendent of Public
Instruction; from New Mexico, Mrs. W. E. Lindsay, wife of the
Governor, and from Kansas, Mrs. W. Y. Morgan, wife of the Lieutenant
Governor. Fraternal delegates were present from four countries. The
convention was opened Wednesday afternoon, December 12, with an
invocation by the honorary president of the association, the Rev. Anna
Howard Shaw. In her brief words of greeting Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt,
the president, who was in the chair, declared her firm conviction that
the American Congress would not allow this country to be outstripped
in the race toward the enfranchisement of women while the countries of
Europe were hastening