age.
Senator LaFollette presented his own platform to the convention in
which was a plank favoring the extension of suffrage to women but it
went down to defeat. Two days later the convention amid great
excitement nominated President Taft by a vote of 561 while Colonel
Roosevelt's vote was only 107. Directly after the convention adjourned
the delegates who favored Roosevelt assembled at Orchestra Hall and
nominated him in the name of the new Progressive party, Miss Addams
seconding the nomination.

Soon after Colonel Roosevelt announced his candidacy he was visited
by Judge "Ben" Lindsey of Denver, a representative of the progressive
element in politics, who pointed out to him the great assistance it
would be to his campaign for him to come out for woman suffrage.
Roosevelt, who was an astute politician, saw the advantage of
enlisting the help of women, who through their large organizations had
become a strong factor in public life. Judge Lindsay therefore was
authorized to announce that he would favor a woman suffrage plank in
the Progressive platform and Roosevelt confirmed it. This caused wide
excitement and the suffragists throughout the country began to rally
under the Roosevelt banner. He had always been theoretically in favor
but with many reservations and during his two terms as President he
had refused all appeals to endorse it in any way. When he went to
Chicago to the first convention of the Progressive party August 5 he
carried with him the draft of the platform and in it was a plank
favoring woman suffrage but calling for a nation-wide referendum of
the question to women themselves!

When this plank was submitted to the Resolutions Committee, on which
were such suffragists as Miss Addams, Judge Lindsay and U. S. Senator
Albert J. Beveridge, they vetoed it at once. It had already been
issued to the press in printed form and telegrams recalling it had to
be sent far and wide. The plank presented by the Resolutions Committee
and unanimously adopted by the convention read as follows: "The
Progressive party, believing that no people can justly claim to be a
true democracy which denies political rights on account of sex,
pledges itself to the task of securing equal suffrage to men and women
alike."

Many States sent women delegates and they were cordially welcomed. The
convention was marked by a deep, almost religious zeal, the delegates
breaking frequently into the singing of hymns of which Onward
Christian