The week following the convention a hearing was granted by the House Judiciary Committee to Dr. Mary Walker of Washington, Mary A. Tillotson of New Jersey and Mrs. N. Cromwell of Arkansas, urging a report in favor of woman's enfranchisement. On January 28, the House sub-committee on territories granted a hearing to Dr. Mary Walker and Sara Andrews Spencer, in opposition to the bill proposing the disfranchisement of the women of Utah as a means of suppressing polygamy. On January 30 the House Judiciary Committee granted Mrs. Hooker a hearing. Of the eleven members of the committee nearly all were present.[32] The room and all the corridors leading to it were crowded with men and women eager to hear Mrs. Hooker's speech. At the close of the two hours occupied in its delivery, Chairman Knott thanked her in the name of the committee for her able argument. Immediately after this hearing Mr. Frye of Maine, in presenting in the House of Representatives the petitions of 30,000 persons asking the right of women to vote upon the question of temperance, referred in a very complimentary manner to Mrs. Hooker's argument, to which he had just listened. Upon this prayer a hearing was granted to the president and ex-president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Frances E. Willard and Annie E. Wittenmyer. Hon. George F. Hoar of Massachusetts, February 4, presented in the Senate the 120 petitions with their 6,261 signatures, which, by special request of its officers, had been returned to the headquarters of the American Association, in Boston. In her appeal to the friends to circulate the petitions, both State and national, Lucy Stone, chairman of its executive committee, said: The American Suffrage Association has always recommended petitions to congress for a sixteenth amendment. But it recognizes the far greater importance of petitioning the State legislatures. _First_--Because suffrage is a subject referred by the constitution to the voters of each State. _Second_--Because we cannot expect a congress composed solely of representatives of States which deny suffrage to women, to submit an amendment which their own States have not yet approved. Just so it would have been impossible to secure the submission of negro suffrage by a congress composed solely of representatives from States which restricted suffrage to white men. While therefore we advise our friends to circulate both petitions together for signature, we urge them to give special prominence to those which apply to their own State legislatures, and to see that these are presented and urged by competent speakers next winter.