f complete victory a deadlock supervenes in the ratification of
this amendment and for that deadlock the Republican party must
carry its full share of responsibility, since three States with
Republican Legislatures remain on the unratified list. Republican
leaders frequently point out that their party has insured a far
larger proportion of ratifications than has the Democratic, and
apparently count on this situation to accrue to its advantage.
This position would be logical if the relative proportion between
Republicans and Democrats were the essential thing but it is by
no means the essential thing. The 36th State is the essential
thing.

Women who are waiting on that State for their right to vote in
the Presidential elections of 1920 cannot rest satisfied with the
assurance or the evidence that Republican leaders are doing all
in their power to bring about ratification. Women who are going
to vote the Republican ticket anyhow may be satisfied but they
are not the women whose vote is important to the party. The
important vote is the vote of the undecided woman who would just
as soon be a Republican as a Democrat. That woman has not been
convinced by the final Republican showing on ratification and she
will not be convinced until the 36th State has ratified. This
ratification is the only solution of the situation that can make
actual what is so far a merely potential claim of the Republican
party on the woman voter.

The National American Woman Suffrage Association urges upon this
convention the necessity for such action as will make inevitable
and immediate the ratification of the Federal Suffrage Amendment
by the 36th State.

This was signed by Mary Garrett Hay, acting president, in the absence
of Mrs. Catt in Europe; Gertrude Foster Brown, vice-president; Nettie
Rogers Shuler, corresponding secretary; Emma Winner Rogers, treasurer;
Esther G. Ogden, director, and Rose Young, press chairman.

Miss Hay called a conference of the suffragists attending the
convention in Chicago and a plank was drawn up. Miss Hay, Mrs. Richard
Edwards, Mrs. Maud Wood Park, Mrs. George Gellhorn, Miss Ada Bush and
Mrs. Pattie Ruffner Jacobs constituted a committee to present this
plank to the Resolutions Committee of which Senator James E. Watson
(Ind.) was chairman. Miss Hay made the principal speech and