shall be wiped away.  Woman suffrage is a question of righting a nation-wide injustice, of establishing a phase of unquestioned human liberty and of carrying out a proposition to which our nation is pledged; it therefore transcends all considerations of states rights.  This objection comes chiefly from Southern Democrats, who claim that it is a form of oppression for three-fourths of the states to foist upon one-fourth measures of which the minority of states do not approve.  Yet the provision for so amending the Constitution was adopted by the states and has stood unchallenged in the Constitution for more than a century.  If it be unfair, undemocratic or even unsatisfactory, it is curious that no movement to change the provision has ever developed.  The Constitution has been twice amended recently and it is interesting to note that it happened under a Democratic Administration.  More, the child labor and eight-hour bills, while not constitutional amendments, are subject to the same plea that no state shall have laws imposed upon it without its consent.  Both measures were introduced by Southern Democrats.  The pending Federal Prohibition Amendment was also introduced by a Southern Democrat and is supported by many others.  Upon consideration of these facts, it would seem that “states rights” is either a theory to be invoked whenever necessary to conceal an unreasoning hostility to a measure or that those who advance it are guilty of extremely muddy thinking.

The Constitution of the United States as now amended provides that no male citizen subject to state qualifications shall be denied the vote by any state.  Were all the state constitutions amended so as to enfranchise women, the word male would still stand in the National Constitution.  Men and women would still be unequal, since the National Constitution can impose a penalty upon a state which denies the vote to men, but none upon the state which discriminates against women.  A woman comes from Montana to represent that state in Congress.  The State of Montana has done its utmost to remove her political disabilities, yet should she cross the border of her state and live in North Dakota, she loses all that Montana gave her.  Not so the male voter.  Enfranchised in one state, he is enfranchised in all (subject to difference of qualification only).  The women of this nation will never be content with less protection in their right to vote than is given to men and there is no other possible way to secure that protection except through amendment to the National Constitution.  No single state, nor the forty-eight collectively, can grant that protection except through the Federal Constitution.

As granting to half the population of our country the right of consent to their own government, whose expenses they help to pay, is a question of fundamental human liberty, Congress and the legislatures should be proud to act and to add one more immortal chapter to America’s history of freedom.