We all know that the majority of the voters of any State are not of that stamp.  The vast masses of the people, the laboring classes, have all they can do in their struggle to get food and shelter for their families.  They have very little time or opportunity to study great questions of constitutional law.

Because of this impossibility for women to canvass the States over and over to educate the rank and file of the voters we come to you to ask you to make it possible for the Legislatures of the thirty-eight States to settle the question, where we shall have a few representative men assembled before whom we can make our appeals and arguments.

This method of settling the question by the Legislatures is just as much in the line of States’ rights as is that of the popular vote.  The one question before you is, will you insist that a majority of the individual voters of every State must be converted before its women shall have the right to vote, or will you allow the matter to be settled by the representative men in the Legislatures of the several States?  You need not fear that we shall get suffrage too quickly if Congress shall submit the proposition, for even then we shall have a hard time in going from Legislature to Legislature to secure the two-thirds votes of three-fourths of the States necessary to ratify the amendment.  It may take twenty years after Congress has taken the initiative step to make action by the State Legislatures possible.

I pray you, gentlemen, that you will make your report to the Senate speedily.  I know you are ready to make a favorable one.  Some of our speakers may not have known this as well as I. I ask you to make a report and to bring it to a discussion and a vote on the floor of the Senate.

You ask me if we want to press this question to a vote provided there is not a majority to carry it.  I say yes, because we want the reflex influence of the discussion and of the opinions of Senators to go back into the States to help us to educate the people of the States.

    Senator LAPHAM.  It would require a two-thirds vote in both,
    the House and the Senate to submit the amendment to the State
    Legislatures for ratification.

Miss ANTHONY.  I know that it requires a two-thirds vote of both Houses.  But still, I repeat, even if you can not get the two-thirds vote, we ask you to report the bill and bring it to a discussion and a vote at the earliest day possible.  We feel that this question should be brought before Congress at every session.  We ask this little attention from Congressmen whose salaries are paid from the taxes; women do their share for the support of this great Government, We think we are entitled to two or three days of each session of Congress in both the Senate and House.  Therefore I ask of you to help us to a discussion in the Senate this session.  There is no reason why the Senate,