delegates present to cast the entire number of votes to which the
State was entitled by its paid membership. The convention finally
adopted the amendment that hereafter the delegates present should
cast only their individual votes. The election resulted in a change of
but two officers. Professor Breckinridge and Miss Ashley did not stand
for re-election and Miss Anita Whitney of California was chosen for
second vice-president and Mrs. Louise De Koven Bowen of Chicago for
second auditor.

A serious controversy arose during the convention in regard to the
deviation of some of the national officers from the time-honored
custom of non-partisanship. It had always been the unwritten but
carefully observed law of the association that no member of the board
should advocate or work for any political party. Mrs. George Howard
Lewis, a veteran suffragist of Buffalo, N.Y., sent a resolution to the
convention declaring that officers of the association must remain
non-partisan and Mrs. Ida Husted Harper presented it and led the
contest for it. Dr. Shaw announced before it was discussed that the
board recommended that it should not pass.

Women had taken a larger part in the political campaign which had just
ended than ever before and one of the officers and many of the
delegates present had spoken and worked for the Progressive party
because of the suffrage plank in its platform. Other members had done
the same for the Socialist and Prohibition parties for a like reason.
As a result, while the resolution had some warm support it was
defeated by a vote of ten to one, although it applied only to the
officers and left individual members free. The consequences of this
vote soon began to be realized by the board and the delegates and in
the official resolutions was one which said: "The National American
Suffrage Association reaffirms the position for which it always has
stood, of being an absolutely non-partisan, non-sectarian body." When
asked for an interpretation the officers answered that "the
association must not declare officially for any political party."[76]

One of the most enjoyable evenings of the convention was the one in
charge of the National College Equal Suffrage League, the program
consisting of a debate between groups of clever speakers, each
with one or more university degrees, half of them posing as
anti-suffragists, with Dr. Thomas, president of Bryn Mawr College and
of the league, in the chair. A suffrage meetin