ting his share of the
petitions, he said, "I hope the time will come when this great body of
intelligent people will not find it necessary to petition for that
which ought to be accorded as a right in a country of equal
opportunities."

At the afternoon session a vote of thanks was given to Senator
LaFollette and all the Senators and Representatives who presented the
petitions. Deep appreciation was expressed of the labor of Mrs. Catt
in connection with the petitions and regret that she was not able to
be present at the Capitol. This was the last of the hundreds of
thousands of petitions to Congress for the submission of a National
Amendment to enfranchise women which began in 1866.[67]

Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton in her treasurer's report said the past year
had been an unusually hard one financially not because of adversity
but because of prosperity. Formerly the States had sent their money to
the national treasury to be used as the Official Board thought best,
but now there were so many campaigns and new lines of work in various
States that they wanted to disburse their own money. This was
encouraging but hard on the national work. Few were the years between
1899 and 1908 when some legacy was not received, as Miss Anthony never
missed an opportunity to urge women to make such bequests. After her
death Miss Mary Anthony followed her example but since both had passed
away little had been done in this direction. The total receipts for
1909 were $21,466, and the general disbursements $19,814. With the
headquarters in New York more money had been received but more also
had to be spent. Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont furnished the offices of
the Press Committee, paid their rent, the salaries of three workers
and all other expenses connected with it. Mrs. William M. Ivins of New
York City and Mrs. Mary Ely Parsons of Rye, N. Y., furnished Dr.
Shaw's office.

In closing Mrs. Upton said that the duties of the headquarters and of
the treasurer's office had been so closely connected that up to this
time it had been difficult to separate them. In fact from the time she
was elected to date she had always done some work properly belonging
to headquarters. From the first a clerk was supplied to her and she
was so situated that she could do this and was more than willing to.
She had edited twelve reports of annual conventions and was editor and
manager of _Progress_ for seven years. She told how letters and
requests continued to come t