Catt closed by tallying the staggering arithmetic of the suffrage movement: 45 state referenda, 480 legislative campaigns, 47 constitutional convention campaigns, 277 state party convention campaigns, 30 presidential convention campaigns, and 19 campaigns with 19 successive Congresses. 'Young suffragists who helped to forge the last links of that chain were not born when it began. Old suffragists who forged the first links were dead when it came to an end.' Then she reduced it all to a single principle, inherited from Mary Wollstonecraft: 'Women should advance and not retard progress.' The final line was personal — not just a message from the dead, but from a woman who had given her entire adult life to a cause and found, at 77, that the sacrifice had been worthwhile.