out your conscientious and
understanding help. I wish also to express our gratitude to the
Republican party for its share in the final enfranchisement of the
women of the United States...."

To Mr. White Mrs. Catt said: "There is one important Democratic factor
which should be included in the record and that is the fearless and
able sponsorship of the amendment by the leader of your party, the
President of the United States.... He has never hesitated to let
members of his party know in every State that he favored
ratification.... His championship furnishes cause for pride to all
forward-looking Democrats, since his vision foresaw this now achieved
fact of the enfranchisement of the women of this country. On behalf of
the National American Woman Suffrage Association, I wish to thank you
and your party for its share in the completion of the task to which
our association set itself more than fifty years ago."

Mrs. Catt said in the course of her summing up: "Women owe much to
both political parties but to neither do they owe so much that they
need feel themselves obligated to support that party if conscience and
judgment dictate otherwise. Their political freedom at this time is
due to the tremendous sentiment and pressure produced by their own
unceasing activities over a period of three generations. Had either
party lived up to the high ideals of our nation and courageously taken
the stand for right and justice as against time-serving, vote-winning
policies of delay, women would have been enfranchised long ago.... If,
however, neither of the dominant parties has made as clean and
progressive a record as its admirers could have wished, there is no
question but that individual men of both parties have given heroic
service to the cause of woman suffrage and this has been true in every
State, those which ratified and those which rejected. Women should not
forget these men who have stepped in advance of the more slow moving
of their own constituents to help this great cause of political
freedom."

RATIFICATION.

Before this Federal Amendment could become effective it had to be
ratified by the Legislatures of thirty-six States, three-fourths of
the whole number. The plan by which Mrs. Catt, president of the
National American Suffrage Association, had expected ratification to
follow the submission immediately was that all of the western equal
suffrage States would ratify at once. To make certain that this would
be done a