It was not until 1911 that the Senate yielded to the overwhelming popular demand for a change in the methods of election provided in the Constitution. In December, 1909, Senator Bristow, of Kansas, introduced a resolution designed to effect this reform, and after a hot debate it was defeated on February 28, 1911, by a vote of 54 to 33, four short of the requisite two thirds. In the next Congress, which convened on April 4, ten Senators who had voted against the amendment had been retired, and the champions of the measure, taking it up again with renewed energy, were able to force it through the upper house on June 12, 1911, by a margin of five more than the two thirds. The resolution went to the House and a deadlock arose between the two chambers for a time over Federal control of elections, provided in the Senate resolution, which was obnoxious to many southern representatives. At length, however, on May 13, 1912, the opponents in the House gave way, and the resolution passed by an overwhelming vote. Within a year, the resolution was ratified by the requisite three fourths of the state legislatures, and it was proclaimed on May 31, 1913. * * * * * The advance of direct democracy in the West was accompanied by a revival of the question of woman suffrage. That subject had been earnestly agitated about the time of the Civil War; and under the leadership of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and others it made considerable headway among those sections of the population which had favored the emancipation of the slaves. Indeed, it was inevitably linked with the discussion of "natural rights," extensively carried on during the days when attempts were being made to give political rights to the newly emancipated bondmen. Woman suffrage was warmly urged before the New York state constitutional convention in 1867 by Mr. George William Curtis, in a speech which has become a classic among the arguments for that cause. During the seventies suffrage petitions bearing the signatures of thousands of men and women were laid before Congress, and an attempt was made to secure from the Supreme Court an interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment which would force the states to grant the ballot to women.