an it deserves and because it
may be used in an unfair way to embarrass the leaders of your
movement.

I thank the association for the kindly and cordial tone of the
resolutions transmitted and hope that the feature of Thursday
night's meeting, which you describe as having given your
association much sorrow, may soon be entirely forgotten.

Sincerely yours,
William H. Taft.

This closed the incident as far as it could be closed but there was a
great deal of sympathy with the sentiment expressed by Miss Alice
Stone Blackwell in the _Woman's Journal_: "It was known that while the
President was not an anti-suffragist he was not a strong suffragist
and might not even be wholly with us. It was, therefore, not expected
that he would at the convention 'come out for suffrage.' Indeed, he
was not invited to make an address but simply to extend to the
convention the welcome of the national capital, not because he was a
suffragist but because the convention thought that it was
representative enough and of sufficient size and standing in the
country to warrant asking the President to do this one thing. He could
have declined the invitation and no one would have been offended. He
could have said he was an anti-suffragist. He could have tactfully
omitted his opinion and confined his time to greetings and welcome as
Chief Executive to the convention as a large organization of the women
of the nation. At the point where the supposed hissing occurred, it
was as if the speaker had struck those women in the face with a whip.
Even those who most resented the President's remarks regretted the
expression of open disapproval in such a manner, but, to a person,
the audience felt that he had been untactful, and, however
unintentionally, had implied an odious comparison; that he had not
sufficiently considered this great body of the picked women of the
land to choose his language in addressing them."

The President's address was preceded by one given by Professor Potter
on The Making of Democracy, which had seldom been equalled in its
statesmanlike qualities. This was followed by a powerful argument on
Why Women Should Have the Suffrage, by Senator Robert L. Owen (Okla.),
one of the ablest speakers in the U. S. Senate and always an
uncompromising supporter of the political rights of women.

At an afternoon session Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery (P