The dominant interest of the convention had been in a prospective campaign for a woman suffrage amendment to the constitution of Oregon. The Legislature had refused to submit it but under the Initiative and Referendum law this could be done by petition. Public sentiment throughout the State seemed to indicate that it was now ready to enfranchise women and officials from the Governor down believed an amendment could be carried. All the officers of the State Suffrage Association had joined in the invitation to the National Association to hold its convention of 1905 in Portland and inaugurate the campaign and to assist it in every possible way. After the report of the State vice-president, Dr. Annice Jeffreys Myers, had been read to the convention of 1904 a resolution had been moved by Mrs. Catt, seconded by Miss Anthony and unanimously adopted, that the association accept this invitation and a pledge of $3,000 had been made. Throughout the present convention the speeches of public officials and the pledges made on every hand encouraged the members to feel that the association should give all possible help in money and workers.[43] The public was much impressed at the last session by the appearance on the platform of four prominent politicians of the State representing the different parties and this was generally regarded as the opening of the campaign for woman suffrage. They were introduced by State Senator Henry Waldo Coe, M. D., who spoke in highest praise of homes and housekeepers as he had seen them in his practice and said: "The woman who takes an interest in the affairs of her country has the highest interest in her home, and the suffrage will not lessen her fitness as wife and mother." He introduced Mayor Harry Lane as the Democrat who carried a Republican city and who was the best mayor Portland ever had. Mr. Lane declared that women were as much entitled to the suffrage as men and that the enfranchisement of women would tend to purify politics. Dr. Andrew C. Smith, a Republican, was introduced as "the man who presented the names of thirteen women physicians to the State Medical Association and got them admitted." The press report said: "The prospective women voters were informed that they saw before them the next Governor of Oregon." Dr. Smith declared that he had been for woman suffrage twenty-five years and that "the United States was guilty of a national sin in not giving women equal rights." Thomas Burns, State Secretary of the Socialist party, asserted that it was the only one which had a plank for woman suffrage in its platform and the Socialists had fought for it all over the world. "Men have made a failure of government," he said, "now let the women try it." O. M. Jamison, of the Citizens' movement, said: "We have found women the strongest factor in our work for reform and I think 99 per cent. of us are for woman suffrage." B. Lee Paget, who spoke for the Prohibitionists, declared himself an old convert to