October 19, 1915 — New Jersey

For more than sixty years women have been trying to win suffrage by the State referendum method, advocated by President Wilson. This has meant the expenditure of an enormous amount of energy, of time, and of money. Women are now beginning to feel that the State referendum campaigns in which the question of women’s political freedom is left in the hands of the most ignorant men voters in the State are too wasteful and indirect to be much longer continued.

They are turning to the national Government, asking enfranchisement by action of the United States Congress. We approach the next session of Congress full of hope that the leverage which the suffrage movement possesses in Congress as a result of the fact that one-fourth of the Senate, one-sixth of the House and one-fifth of the electoral vote for President now comes from suffrage States will mean the passage of the national suffrage amendment, thus doing away with costly and laborious State campaigns such as has just been unsuccessfully waged in New Jersey.