has not given consent. These bills were proposed in one House or
both by southern Democrats; Federal prohibition was proposed in
both Houses by southern Democrats and passed by the votes of
others. So it appears that the theory of State's rights is only
invoked when women plead at the bar of justice for that voice in
their Government to which all those who submit to authority are
entitled. Now, as to the negro problem. We southern women feel
that the time has come to lay once and for all this old, old
ghost that stalks through the halls of Congress. It is a phantom
as applied to woman suffrage. In fifteen States south of the
Mason and Dixon line there are over a million more white women
than negro men and women combined. There are only two States in
which the negro race predominates, South Carolina and
Mississippi. In the former the percentage is 55.2, but there a
voter must read and write and own and pay taxes on $300 worth of
property. In Mississippi the percentage is 56.2 but there also
they impose an educational qualification. In the eight years
since these figures were estimated by the Government this
percentage has greatly decreased, so that South Carolina claims
that there is now no preponderance of negroes. In the other four
States also in the so-called "black belt" an educational test is
imposed upon the voters. In addition to all this we must consider
that during the last decade the negro population has increased 11
per cent and the white population 22 per cent. Furthermore, in
the past year alone 75,000 negroes have gone from one southern
State to the north, and 73,000 have gone from three other
southern States to one northern State alone. So it appears that
we must transfer part of our rather hysterical anxieties with
regard to the southern negro vote to some other States.

Mrs. Allen spoke from the standpoint of one who had lived many years
in a State where women voted and asked the question: "Can you
gentlemen not think what it means to women to know that their men are
so chivalrous and have such a belief in their integrity and their
intelligence that they are willing to make them their equal partners
politically? Can you not see that under such conditions men and women
are firmer friends; that husbands and wives are closer together and
that all of the family re