g to the "negro
problem" in the South Mrs. Catt said:

In talking with some of the members of Congress we have learned
that an idea prevails throughout the South that the colored women
are more intelligent, ambitious and energetic than the men, and
that while it is easy enough to keep the men from exercising too
much ambition in the matter of politics, it will not be easy to
control the women. When talking with these same men about the
white women of the South, I have never known an exception to the
rule that they have finally rested their case upon the statement
that the women of the South do not want the vote anyway and if
they did they would only vote as their husbands do. To say that
means what? That the women of the South in the estimate of those
men are too weak-minded to have an opinion of their own; it means
that they have no independence of character; it means that they
have been reduced so far to nonentity that they will only echo
their husbands' opinions. Is living in the homes of the white men
of the South so degrading to the character of the white women
that they really cannot be trusted to have an honest conviction
of their own, but that living in the South outside of those homes
renders women more ambitious and more intelligent than the men?
Do these men realize that they are saying almost in the same
breath that the colored woman is superior to the colored man but
that the white woman is the inferior of the white man? Or is it
possible that the climate of the South produces a stronger
"female of the species" than male, and that the men of the South
are afraid of both the white and the black women?

Detached quotations give a most inadequate idea of this masterly
address which embodied the complete case for the advocates of the
Federal Amendment. Toward its close Mrs. Catt, in speaking of the
assertion of the "antis" that President Wilson was opposed to the
Federal Suffrage Amendment, made this significant answer: "I request
you, Mr. Chairman, to ask Mr. Wilson for a conference and go to it
taking Democrats and Republicans and say: 'Mr. President, are you or
are you not for this Federal Amendment?' Then you will know. I trust
that you will do this and that, if then it is possible to make a
public statement, you will do so." Afterwards it was apparent that she
knew of Mr. Wilson's