This petition was presented to the Senate January 12. It requested that women should be placed on the board with men, but instead, the bill was passed in March creating a commission of men and authorizing them to appoint a number of women to constitute a "Board of Lady Managers." These 115 appointments were intended to be practically of a complimentary nature, it was not expected that the women would take any prominent part, and no particular rule was observed in their selection. While perhaps in some States they were not the ablest who might have been found, they were, as a board, fairly representative. To bring this great body into harmonious action and guide it along important lines of work, required a leader possessed of a combination of qualities rarely existing in one person--not only the highest degree of executive ability but self-control, tact and the power of managing men and women. They were found, however, in the woman elected to preside over this board, Mrs. Bertha Honore Palmer, of Chicago. At the close of the exposition it was universally conceded that she had proved herself pre-eminently the one woman in all the country for this place. Her record, during the several years that she held this very responsible position, is one of the most remarkable ever made by any woman. At the time Miss Anthony prepared her petition to Congress for representation, no action had been taken by any organized body of women in the country, and if she had not been on the field of battle in Washington and acted at the very moment she did, the bill would have passed Congress without any provision for women. They would have had no recognition from the government, no appropriations for their work, no official power, and their splendid achievements at the Columbian Exposition, which did more to advance the cause of women than all that had been accomplished during the century, would have been lost to the world. Having secured this great object, she asked no office for herself or for any other woman. On several public occasions, in the early months of the fair, she refused to speak or to sit on the platform, lest she might embarrass the President of the Board of Lady Managers by committing her to woman suffrage. Mrs. Palmer, however, showed her the most distinguished courtesy, in both public and private affairs, inviting her to the platform and including her in the social functions at her own residence. Miss Anthony soon felt that she was in full sympathy with herself in every measure which tended to secure for women absolute equality of rights, a point which Mrs. Palmer emphasized in the most unmistakable language in her eloquent address delivered in the Woman's Building, at the close of the exposition.