West Virginia's Vote Cheers Suffrage Head

1920

"The Struggle Is Over," Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt Declares.

NEW YORK, N.Y., March 18. — "Suffrage is won. The words are simple, but they thrill as few words do or can." This was the encouraging conclusion of Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, in a statement issued here on receipt of news that the West Virginia Senate had ratified the Federal suffrage amendment by a vote of 15 to 14. With West Virginia won and the Washington and Delaware legislatures meeting soon in special session, the opinion expressed at headquarters was that "the struggle is over."

"People who have followed the course of woman suffrage from the outside with indifference or small understanding of what has been at stake," said Mrs. Catt, "will have no comprehension of the real message which the West Virginia victory carries to women. To us it means that the nation is won, that the seventy-five year struggle is over, that the women of America are enfranchised women.

"And now whatever comes out of granting the suffrage to women, it is safe to predict that it will never be responsible for any offering to the general welfare except those things which have been well considered and intelligently endorsed."