frage at the start and
thereafter made it a part of its active propaganda. All the minor
parties as a rule put planks for woman suffrage in their
platforms.[148]

Before the conventions in 1904 the board of the National American
Woman Suffrage Association secured full lists of delegates and
alternates of the two dominant parties--667 Republicans and 723
Democratic delegates; 495 Republican alternates and 384 Democratic, a
total of 2,269. To each a letter was sent directing his attention to a
memorial enclosed, signed by the officers of the association, an
urgent request for the insertion in the platform of the following
resolution: "Resolved, That we favor the submission by Congress to the
various State Legislatures of an amendment to the Federal Constitution
forbidding the disfranchisement of United States citizens on account
of sex."

The Republican convention met in Chicago June 21-23. The committee
appointed by the National Association consisted of Mrs. Harriet
Taylor Upton and Miss Elizabeth J. Hauser of Ohio, its treasurer and
headquarters secretary, and Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch of Chicago,
a former officer, who arranged the hearing. The beautiful rooms of the
Chicago Woman's Club were placed at their disposal, where they kept
open house, assisted by Mrs. Gertrude Blackwelder, president of the
Chicago Political League, Mrs. Ellen M. Henrotin and other prominent
club women. Mrs. McCulloch went to the Auditorium Annex to ask the
Committee on Resolutions for a hearing. Senator Hopkins of Illinois
presented her to Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, the chairman, and the
choice was given her of having it immediately or the next morning. She
chose the nearest hour and a little later returned with her committee.
Mrs. McCulloch introduced the speakers and made the closing argument.
Mrs. Upton, the Rev. Celia Parker Woolley and the Rev. Olympia Brown
addressed the committee. They were generously applauded, the suffrage
plank was referred to a sub-committee and buried.

The Democratic convention was held in St. Louis July 6-9 and Mrs.
Priscilla D. Hackstaff, an officer of the New York Suffrage
Association, secured a hearing before the Resolutions Committee. Mrs.
Louise L. Werth of St. Louis and Miss Kate M. Gordon of Louisiana
joined her on the opening day of the convention and at 8 o'clock the
evening of the 7th they appeared before the committee. Mrs. Hackstaff
argued on the ground of abstract justice and Miss Gordon fr