49th Congress, 
 Ist Session, 
 
 SENATE. 
 
 j Report 
 \ No. 70. 
 
 IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 February 2, 1886.— Ordered to be printed. 
 
 Mr. Blair, from the Select Committee on Woman Suffrage, submitted 
 
 the following 
 
 REPORT: 
 
 [To accompany S. Res. 5. ] 
 
 The Committee on Woman Suffrage, to whom was referred Senate 
 resolution No. 5, being " Joint resolution proposing an amendment to the 
 Constitution of the IJuited States extending the right of suffrage to 
 women," have considered the same, and report thereon favorablj', and 
 do recommend that the article proposed in said resolution be submitted 
 to the legislatures of the several States for ratification, as an amend- 
 ment to the Constitution of the United States. 
 
 The joint resolution is in the following words : 
 
 Joint Resolution proposing an amendraeut to the Constitution of the United States extending the 
 
 right of suffrage to women. 
 
 Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in 
 Congress assembled {tivo-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following 
 article be proposed to the legislatures of the several States as an amendment to the 
 Constitution of the United States; which, when ratified by three-fourths of the said 
 legislatures, shall be valid as part of said Constitution, namelj^: 
 
 Article — . 
 
 Section 1, The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied 
 or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. 
 
 Sec. 2. The Congress shall have power, by appropriate legislation, to enforce the 
 provisions of this article. 
 
 The proposition to amend the Constitution of the United States by 
 extending suffrage to women has been several times considered hj com- 
 mittees of the Senate, and in the form herein recommended was reported 
 favorably to the Senate by the Committees on Woman Suffrage of the 
 Forty-seventh and the Forty-eighth Congresses, but by the pressure 
 of other important matter its consideration and action thereon b}' the 
 Senate was prevented. 
 
 The report of the majority of the committee in the Forty-seventh Con- 
 gress was able and elaborate, but too long for citation here. That of 
 the Forty-eighth Congress was a condensed and vigorous general state- 
 ment of the subject, and we incorporate the same with this expression 
 of the views of your committee : 
 
 [Senate Report No. 399, Forty-eighth Congress, first session.] 
 
 The Committee on Woman Suffrage submit the following report, to accompany Senate joint 
 resolution 19, proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States: 
 
 "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction 
 thereof are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." (XIV 
 amendment, section 1.) 
 
2 
 
 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 Women are persons born or naturalized in the United States, and are therefore citi- 
 zens of the United States and of the States in which they reside. 
 
 " No State shall make or enforce any law that shall abridge the privileges or immu- 
 nities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, 
 liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its 
 jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." 
 
 The privileges and immunities of women citizens are abridged by the several States 
 in many ways. The fundamental privilege — "the right of citizens to vote" — is not 
 only abridged, but in most of the States totally denied. 
 
 It is to be considered that in adopting this resolution Congress by no means im- 
 poses woman suffrage upon the country ; nor does it necessarily even declare in its 
 favor. But in view of the extent of the agitation upon the sirt)ject, and of the num- 
 ber and respectability of the petitioners in its favor, Congress simply takes the initia- 
 tive to submit the question to the people of the several States through their respective 
 legislatures. 
 
 The Constitution is wisely conservative in the provisions for its own amendment. 
 And your committee deem it eminently proper in view of the rapidly increasing num- 
 bers who have for the last eighteen years so earnestly, persistently, and patiently 
 indicated a desire for an amendment, that the amending power, the State legislatures, 
 should be consulted. 
 
 We therefore report back the proposed resolution for the consideration of the Sen- 
 ate, and recommend its passage. 
 
 The committee append hereto the remarks made before this committee, on March 
 7, 1884, and also the remarks made before the Senate Judiciary Committee, printed 
 in Senate Mis. Doc. No. 74, Forty-seventh Congress, first session, as a part of this 
 rej)ort. 
 
 T. W. PALMER. 
 H. W. BLAIR. 
 E. G. LAPHAM. 
 
 My view of the subject is embodied in my qualified assent to the report heretofore 
 made. 
 
 H. B. ANTHONY. 
 
 The following is the assent of Senator Anthony to the report of the Committee on 
 Woman Suffrage in the Forty- seventh Congress, above referred to : 
 
 "The Constitution is wisely conservative in the provision of its own amendment. 
 It is eminently proper that whenever a large number of the people have indicated a 
 desire for an amendment the judgment of the amending power should be consulted. 
 In view of the extensive agitation of the question of woman suffrage, and the numer- 
 ous and respectable petitions that have been presented to Congress in its support, I 
 unite with the committee in recommending that the proposed amendment be submitted 
 to the States. 
 
 '*H. B. ANTHONY." 
 
 To this statement of the Committee on Woman Suffrage of the 48th 
 Congress, we desire to add but little in the way of discussion of the 
 merits of the proposition to extend the suffrage to women, but have 
 thought proper to make a few suggestions in support of the right itself 
 before passing to the main question, which is that of the justice and pro- 
 priety of granting the petition of woman to be heard in support of her 
 demand for this amendment of the Constitution of the United States 
 before the people of the States, by whom alone the question can be de- 
 cided. 
 
 The rights for the maintenance of which human governments are con- 
 stituted are life, liberty, and property. These rights are common to 
 men and women alike, and whatever citizen or subject exists as a mem- 
 ber of any body i^olitic under any form of government, is entitled to 
 demand from the sovereign power the full protection of these rights. 
 
 This right to the protection of rights appertains to the individual, 
 not to the family alone, or to any form of association, whether social or 
 corporate. Probably not more than five-eighths of the men of legal age, 
 qualified to vote, are heads of families, and not more than that propor- 
 tion of adult women are united with men in the legal merger of married 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 3 
 
 life. It is therefore quite incorrect to speak of the state as an ag^^re- 
 gate of families duly represented at the ballot-box by their male liead. 
 The relation between the government and the individual is direct; all 
 rights are individual rights, all duties are individual duties. 
 
 Government in its two highest lunctions is legislative and judicial. 
 By these i)owers tlie sovereignty ])rescribes the law, and directs its ap- 
 plication to ihe vindication of rights and the redress of wrongs. Con- 
 science and intelligence are the only forces which enter into the exer- 
 cise of this highest and primary function of government. The remain- 
 ing department is the executive or administrative, and in all forms of 
 government — the republican as well as in tyranny — the primary' element 
 of administration is force, and even in this department conscience and 
 intelligence are indispensable to its direction. 
 
 It now we are to decide who of our sixty millions of human beings 
 are to constitute the citizenship of this Kepublic and by virtue of their 
 qualifications to be the law-making power, by what tests shall the se- 
 lection be determined? 
 
 The suffrage which is the sovereignty is this great primary law- 
 making power. It is not the executive power proper at all. It is not 
 founded upon force. Only that degree of physical strength which is 
 essential to a sound body — the home of the healthy mental and moral 
 constitution — the sound soul in the sound body is required in the per- 
 formance of the function of primary legislation. Never in the history 
 of t]iis or any other genuine Republic has the law-making power, whether 
 in general elections or in the framing of laws in legislative assemblies, 
 been vested in individuals who have exercised it by reason of their 
 physical powers. On the contrary, the physically weak have never for 
 that reason been deprived of the suffrage nor of the privilege of service 
 in the public councils, so long as they possessed the necessary powers 
 of locomotion and expression, of conscience and intelligence which are 
 common to all. The aged and the physically weak have, as a rule, by 
 reason of superior wisdom and moral sense far more than made good 
 any bodily inferiority by which they have differed from the more robust 
 members of the community in the discussions and decisions of the 
 ballot-box and in councils of the state. 
 
 The executive power of itself is a mere physical instrumentality — an 
 animal quality — and it is confided from necessity to those individuals 
 who possess that quality, but always with danger, except so far as 
 wisdom and virtue control its exercise. And it is obvious that the 
 greater the mass of higher and spiritual forces, whether found in those 
 to whom the execution of the law is assigned or in the great mass by 
 whom the suffrage is exercised, and who direct the execution of the law, 
 the greater will be the safety and the surer will be the happiness of the 
 state. 
 
 It is too late to q\iestion the intellectual and moral capacity of woman 
 to understand great political issues (which are always primarily questions 
 of conscience — questions of the intelligent application of the principles 
 of right and of wrong in public and private affairs) and properly decide 
 them at the polls. Indeed, so far as your committee are aware, the pre- 
 
 I tense is no longer advanced that woman should not vote by reason of 
 her mental or moral unfitness to perform this legislative function; but 
 the suffrage is denied to her because she cannot hang criminals, sup- 
 
 • press mobs, nor handle the enginery of war. We have already seen 
 the untenable nature of this assumption, because those who make it be- 
 
 I stow the suffrage upon very large classes of men who, however well 
 qualified they may be to vote, are physically unable to perform any of 
 
 I 
 
4 
 
 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 the duties wbicli api)eitaiii to tbe execution of the law and the defense 
 of the state. Scarcely a Senator on this floor is liable by law to per- 
 form a military or other administrative duty, yet the rule so many set 
 up aj>'ainst the right of women to vote would disfranchise nearly this 
 whole body. 
 
 But it is unnecessary to grant that woman cannot fight. History is 
 full of examples of her heroism in danger, of her endurance and forti- 
 tude in trial, and of her indispensable and supreme service in hospital 
 and field ; and in the handling of the deft and horrible machinery and 
 infernal agencies which science and art have prepared and are prepar- 
 ing for human destruction in future wars, woman may perform her whole 
 part in the common assault or the common defense. It is hardly worth 
 while to consider this trivial objection that she is incompetent for pur- 
 poses of national murder or of bloody self-defense as the basis of tbe denial 
 of a great fundamental right, when we consider that if that right were 
 given to her she would by its exercise almost certainly abolish this great 
 crime of the nations, which has always inflicted upon her the chief burden 
 of w oe. 
 
 But your committee have not thought best at this time to enter at large 
 upon a general discussion of the right or fitness of woman to vote in the 
 abstract, and hence, with these suggestions as to the true nature of the 
 suffrage itself, which is a mental and moral and not a physical opera- 
 tion, and of the inadequacy and injustice of the theory of representation 
 of the w hole community, including woman, by the male heads of families, 
 as wxll as of the absurd and illogical objection based upon physical in- 
 capacity, we pass to a brief consideration of the main question, which 
 is. Shall the cause of woman be heard when she asks this amendment 
 to the National Constitution? 
 
 Your committee believe that thpe nature of our Government, being one 
 by written constitutions and laws, which must, like the people theujselves, 
 be subject to progression and change, demands as the only safeguard 
 against violence, if not of destruction, that whenever Sinj considerable 
 body of the people desire to be heard in the arena of legislation, whether 
 in Congress, the State law-making assemblies, or before the great body 
 of sovereigns at large, it becomes an absolute duty to grant that re- 
 quest under the forms which those constitutions and laws have pre- 
 scribed. What, then, is the fact as to the existence of any such con- 
 siderable body of American citizens desiring an opportunity to petition 
 for a redress of grievances by the extension of suffrage to women I 
 
 This movement for woman suffrage has developed during the last half 
 century into one of great strength. The first petition was presented 
 to the legislature of New York in 1835. It was repeated in 1846, and 
 since that time the petition has been urged upon nearly every legisla- 
 ture in the Northern States. Five States have voted upon the question 
 of amending their constitutions by striking out the word '*male" from 
 tbe suffrage clause — Kansas in 1867, Michigan in 1874, Colorado in 
 1877, Nebraska in 1882, and Oregon in 1884. 
 
 The ratio of the popular vote in each case was about one-third for the 
 amendment and two-thirds against it. Three Territories have or have 
 had full suffrage for women. In two, Wyoming since 1869 and Wash- 
 ington since 1883, the experiment (!) is an unqualified success. In Utah 
 Miss Anthony keenly and justly observes that suffrage is as much of a 
 success for the Mormon w omen as for the men. 
 
 In eleven States school suffrage for women exists. In Kansas, from 
 her admission as a State. In Kentucky and Michigan fully as long a 
 time. School suffrage for women also exists in Colorado, Minnesota, 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 5 
 
 UTew Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, New York, Nebraska, and 
 Oregon. 
 
 In all these States, except Minnesota, scliool suffrage was extended 
 to women by tlie respective legishitures, and in Minnesota by the pop- 
 ular vote, in November, 187G. Not only these eleven States, but in 
 nearly all the other Northern and Western States women are elected to 
 the offices of county and city superintendent of i)ublic schools and as 
 members of school boards. In Louisiana the constitution of 1879 makes 
 women eligible to school offices. 
 
 It may also be observed as indicating a rising and controlling public 
 sentiment in recognition of the right and cai)acity of woman for public 
 affairs that she is eligible to such offices as that of county clerk, register 
 of deeds, and the like in many and ])erhaps in all the States. Kansas 
 and Iowa elected several women to these positions in the election of 
 November, 1885, while President Grant alone appointed more than five 
 thousand women to the office of i)ostmaster ; and although many women 
 have been appointed in the Departments and to i)ension agencies and 
 like im])ortant emi)loyments and trusts, so far as your committee are 
 aware no charge of incompetency or of nuilfeasance in office has ever 
 yet been sustained against a woman. 
 
 It may be further stated in this connection that m^arly every North- 
 ern State has had before it from time to time since 1870 a bill for the 
 submission of the question of woman suffrage to the popular vote. In 
 some instances such a resolution has been passed at one session and 
 failed to be ratified at another by from one to three votes ; thus Iowa 
 passed it in 1870, killed it in 1872; passed it in 1874, failed to do so in 
 1876 ; j)assed it in 1878, and failed in 1880 : passed it again in 1882, and 
 defeated it in 1884; four times over and over, and this winter these 
 heroic and indomitable women are trying it in Iowa again. 
 
 If men were to make such a struggle for their rights it would be 
 considered a fine thing, and th^re would be books and even poetry 
 written about it. 
 
 In New York, since 1880, the women have urged this great measure 
 before the legislature each year. There it takes the form of a bill to 
 prohibit the disfranchisement of women. This bill has several times 
 come within five votes of passing the assembly. 
 
 In many States well sustained efforts for municipal suffrage have 
 been made, and, as if in rebuke to the conservatism, or worse, of this 
 ^•reat Re})ublic, this right of municipal suffrage is already enjoyed in 
 the i)rovince of Ontario, Canada, and throughout the island of Great 
 Britain by unmarried women to the same extent as by men, there being 
 the same property qualification required of eaeh. 
 
 The movement for the amendment of the National Constitution be- 
 gan by petitioning Congress December, 18()r), and since 1800 there have 
 been consecutive applications to every Congress praying for the sub- 
 mission to the IStates of a proposition similar v'o the joint resolution 
 herewith revmrted to the Senate. 
 
 The petitions have come from all parts of the country ; more especially 
 from the Northern and Western States, although there is an extensive 
 and increasing desire for the suffrage existing among the women in the 
 Southern States, as we are informed by those whose interest in the sub- 
 ject makes them familiar with the real state of feeling in that part of 
 our country. It is impossible to know just what proportion of the i)eo- 
 ple — men and women — have expressed their desire by petition to the 
 national legislature during the last twenty years, but we are informed 
 by Miss Anthony that in the year 1871 Senator Sumner collected the 
 
6 
 
 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 petitioDsfrom the files of the Senate and House of Representatives, and 
 that there were then an immense number. A far greater number have 
 been presented since that time, and the same lady is our authority for 
 the estimate' that in all more than two hundred thousand petitions, by 
 select and representative men and women, have been poured upon Oon- 
 jiress in behalf of this prayer of woman to be free. Who is so interested 
 in the framing of the law as woman, whose only defense is the law ? 
 There never was a stronger'exhibition of popular demand by American 
 citizens to be heard in the court of the people for the vindication of a 
 fun dn mental right. 
 
 We insist earnestly that the real question is not whether woman shall 
 be enfranchised, but whether the sense of the great American law-making 
 power shall be taken ; whether the people who can vote shall hear the 
 petition of the disfranchised half of the community to be allowed the 
 exercise of the fundamental right of freemen ; shall one half the citi- 
 zens of America who are not free be heard by the other half who gov- 
 ern the whole on their petition to be allowed the exercise of their own 
 judgment and conscience in making the laws which fix their destinj^ ? 
 It is not a question whether the suffrage shall be granted to woman ; it 
 is the other still greater question denied never but to the slave; and, 
 then, and for that reason, God smote the nation until the hills w^ere red 
 with blood and the valleys were heaped with slain. 
 
 Shall woman be denied the right to be heard? Shall she be denied 
 the right to petition? That is the question. She desires to petition 
 the voters in the States, who alone can grant her request, that she her- 
 self may vote. She desires to vote in the national elections and in 
 those of the States. 
 
 By the Constitution of the land Congress can confer no such power; 
 but, on the other hand, through Congress she can best advance her 
 plea to the great tribunal of the people themselves, where she can be 
 heard and her cause be decided. It is no answer to this just demand of 
 American citizens — for women are citizens, even though they cannot 
 vote — to tell her that in our opinion she has no right to vote; that she 
 is unfit to vote ; that she is too good or that she is too bad to vote; that 
 she cannot tight, or that she is too much an angel or incompetent; that 
 not until they all desire to vote shall any one of them be allowed to 
 vote; that we can perform that duty and exercise that right, and will 
 discharge for her the functions of thought, conscience, and will. She 
 has the right to petition. Through us she can petition. Not to us, but 
 by us as an agency to transmit her plaint by the solemn forms of the 
 law to the people in the States. Nor can we reply to her that the suf- 
 frage is a matter wholly within the jurisdiction of the States. Even if 
 it were, it would still be competent and desirable for her to petition for 
 the cession of the right, that it may be locked uj) in the impregnable 
 provisions of the National Constitution, safe from the adverse action 
 and fluctuations of feeling in the several States. 
 
 The individual States cannot amend the National Constitution, save 
 as it is done under the forms of the already existing Constitution and 
 the prior exercise of the power of submission of her petition by the two- 
 thirds vote of the national legislative power to the peoi)le, that she may 
 by argument, entreaty, and the blessing of God prevail with her breth- 
 ren and masters in three- fourths of the legislatures of these States. 
 
 The majority of your committee are persuaded, whatever may be their 
 individual opinions upon the question of the desired extension of the 
 suffrage itself, that it is a dangerous and tyrannical act to throttle these 
 women who are pleading only to be heard. 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 7 
 
 Wearied with a half century of watching and labor, limited and fet- 
 tered in material resources, without the co operation of parties and other 
 organizations, with no weapons save her cause and her voice, conscious 
 of her equality with her brethren in all that constitutes ujmght ftnd 
 capable citizenship, feeling, although she may seldom express, a deep 
 sense of wrong in the butfetings and denial of her long withheld natural 
 right, a vast number of the women of our country are ])raying for the 
 realization of their hopes through the more convenient, comprehensive^ 
 and equally legitimate action of Congress and three-fourths of the sev- 
 eral States. 
 
 Profoundly impressed with the importance and solemn nature of the 
 subject and of the grievous wrong of longer denial of the right of peti- 
 tion to the vast number of our mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives, 
 who plead for and righteously demand it through our indispensable and 
 constitutional action, your committee report back favorably and earn- 
 estlv recommend the adoption of the joint resolution. 
 
 HENRY W. BLAIR. 
 
 THOMAS W. PALMER. 
 
 JONATHAN CHACE. 
 
 THOMAS M. BOWEN. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 ARGUMENTS BEFORE THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON WOMAN 
 SUFFRAGE, UNITED STATES SENATE, MARCH 7, 1884, 
 
 BY 
 
 A committee of the Sixteenth Annual Washington Convention of the Na- 
 tional Woman Suffrage Association in favor of a sixteenth amendment 
 to the Constitution of the United States, that shall protect the right of 
 women citizens to vote in the several States of the Union. 
 
 ORDER OF PROCEEDING. 
 
 The Chairman (Senator Cockrell). We have allotted the time to be divided as 
 the speakers may desire among themselves. We are now Aady to hear the ladies. 
 
 Miss Susan B. Anthony. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the select committee : 
 This is the sixteenth time that we have come before Congress in person, and the nine- 
 teenth annually by petitions. Ever since the war, from the winter of 186r)-'66, we 
 have regularly sent up petitions asking for the national protection of the citizen's 
 right to vote when the citizen happens to be a woman. We are here again for the 
 same purpose. I do not propose to speak now, but to introduce the other speakers, 
 and at the close perhaps will state to the committee the reasons why we come to 
 Congress. The other speakers will give their thought from the standpoint of their 
 respective States. I will first introduce to the committee Mrs. Harriet R. Shattuck, 
 of Boston, Mass. 
 
 REMARKS BY MRS. HARRIET R. SHATTUCK. 
 
 Mrs. Shattuck. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen : It seems as if it were almost un- 
 necessary for us to come here at this meeting, bepause I feel that all we have to say 
 and all we have to claim is known to you, and we cannot add anything to what has 
 been said in the past sixteen years. 
 
 But I should like to say one thing, and that is, that in ray work it has seemed that 
 if we could convince everybody of the motives of the suffragists we would go far to- 
 wards removing prejudices. I know that thosemotives are very much misunderstood. 
 Persons think of us as ambitious women, who are desirous for fame, and who merely 
 «ome forward to make speeches and get before the public, or else they think that we 
 are unfortunate beings with no homes, or unhappy wives, who are getting our liveli- 
 hood in this sort of way. If we could convince every man who has a vote in this Re- 
 public that this is not the case, I believe we could go far toward removing the preju- 
 dice against us. If we could make them see that we are working here merely because 
 we know that the cause is right, and we feel that we must work for it, that there is a 
 power outside of ourselves which impels us onward, which says to us go forward and 
 speak to the people and try to bring them up to a sense of their duty and of our right. 
 This is the belief that I have in regard to our position on this question. It is a mat- 
 ter of duty with us, and that is all. 
 
 In Massachusetts 1 represent a v.ery much larger number of women than is supposed. 
 It has always been said that very few women wish to vote. Believing that this ob- 
 jection, although it has nothing to do with the rights of the cause, ought to be met, 
 the association of w^hich I am president inaugurated last year a sort of canvass, which 
 I believe never had been attempted before, whereby we obtained the proportion of 
 women in favor and opposed to suffrage in different localities of our State. We took 
 four localities in the city of Boston, two in smaller cities, and two in the country 
 districts, and one also of school teachers in nine schools of one town. Those school 
 teachers were unanimously in favor of suffrage, and in the nine localities we found 
 8 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 9 
 
 that the proportion of women in favor was very large as against those opjjosed. The 
 total of women canvassed was 814. Those in favor were 405 ; those oi)posed, 44 ; in- 
 different, 10() ; refnsed to sign, 1()U ; not seen, :i9. This, yon see, is a very hirge propor- 
 tion in favor. Those indifferent, and those who were not seen, were not included, 
 because we claim that nobody can yet say that they are opposed or in favor until 
 they declare themselves; but the 40r) in favor against the 44 opposed were as 9 to 1. 
 These canvasses \v(!re made by women who were of perfect rcs])ectability and respon- 
 sibility, and they swore before a justice of the peace as to the truth of their state- 
 ments. 
 
 So we have in Massachusetts this rtiliable canvass of the number of women in favor 
 as to those opposed, and we iind that it is 9 to 1. 
 
 These women, then, are the class whom I rejjresent here, and they are women who 
 cannot come here themselves. Veiy few women in the country can come here and do 
 this work, or do the work in their States, because they are in their hom<\s attending 
 to their duties, but none the less are they believers in this cause. We would not any 
 more than any man in the country ask a, woman to leave her home duties to go into 
 this work, but a few of us are so situated that we can do it, and we come here and 
 we go to the State legislatures representing all the women of the country' in this 
 work. 
 
 What we ask is, not that we may have the ballot to obtain any particular thing, 
 although we know that better things will come about from it, but merely because it 
 is our right, and as a matter of justice w(^ claim it as human beings and as citizens, 
 and as moral, responsible, and spiritual beings, whose voice ought to be heard in the 
 Government, and who ought to take hand with men and help the world to become 
 better. 
 
 Gentlemen, you have kept women just a little step below you. It is only a short 
 step. You shower down favors upon us it is true, still we renuiiu below you, the re- 
 cipients of favors without the ri :,ht to take what is our own. We ask that this shall 
 be changed ; that you sliall take us by the hand and lift us u]) to the same political 
 level with you, where w*^ shall have rights with you, and stand e<iual with you before 
 the law. 
 
 REMARKS BY MRS. MAY WRIGHT SEWALL. 
 
 Miss Anthony. I will now introduce to the committee Mrs. May Wright Sewall,of 
 Indianapolis, who is the chairman of our executive committee. 
 
 Mrs. ISewall. Gentlemen of the committee : Gentlemen, I believe, differ somewhat 
 in their political ojiinions. It will not then be surprising, I supi)ose, that I should 
 differ somewhat from my friend in regard to the knowledge that you })robal)ly possess 
 upon our question. I do not l)elieve that you know all that we know about the wo- 
 men of this country, for I believe that if yon did know even all that I know, and my 
 knowledge is much more limited than lhat of many of my sisters, long ago the six- 
 teenth amendment, for which we ask, would have been passed through your intiu- 
 ence. 
 
 I remember that when I was here two years ago and had the honor of appearing 
 before the committee, who granted us, on that occasion, what you are so kind and 
 courteous to grant on this occasion, an opportunity to speak before you, I told you 
 that I re})resented at least seventy thousand women who had asked for the ballot in 
 my State, and I tried then to remind the members of the committee tliat had seventy 
 thousand Indiana men asked for any measur*^ from the Congress that then occupied 
 this Capitol, that measure would have secured the most deliberate consideration from 
 theii hands, and, in all probability, its passage by the Congress. Of that there can 
 be no doubt. 
 
 I do not wish to exaggerate my constituency, but during the last two years, and 
 since I had the honor of addressing the committee, the work of woman suffrage has 
 progressed very rapidly in my State. The number of women who have found them- 
 selves in circumstances to work openly, and whose spirit has been drawn into it, has 
 largely increased, and as the workers have multiplied the results have increased. 
 While we have not taken the careful canvass that has been so wisely and judiciously 
 taken in Massachusetts, so that I can present to you the exact number of women who 
 would to-day appeal for suffrage, I know that I can, far within the bounds of possible 
 truth, state that while I represented seventy thousand women in my State two years 
 ago, who desired the adoption of the sixteenth amendment, I represent to-day twice 
 that number. 
 
 Should any one come up from Indiana, pivotal State as it has been long called in 
 national elections, saying that he represented the wish of one hundred and forty 
 thousand Indiana men, gentlemen, would you scorn his appeal ? Would y(Mi treat it 
 liglitly ? Not at all. You know that it would receive the most candid consideration. 
 You know tliat it would receive not merely resi)ectful consideration, but immediate 
 and prompt and Just action upon your part. 
 
10 
 
 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 I hav^e been told since I have reached Washington that of all women in the conntry 
 Indiana women have the 1< ast to complain of, and the least reason for coming to the 
 United States Capitol with their petitions and the statement of their needs, because 
 we have received from our own legislature such amendment and amelioration of the 
 old unjust laws. In one sense it is true that we are the recii)ientr. In our own State 
 of many civil rights and of a very large degree of civil equality. It is true that as 
 respects property rights, and as respects industrial rights, the women of my own 
 State may perhaps be the envy of all other women in the laud, but, gentlemen, you 
 have always told men that the greater their rights and the more numerous their 
 privileges the greater their responsibilities. That is equally true of woman, and 
 simply because our property rights are enlarged, because our industrial field is en- 
 larged, because we- have more women who are producers in the industrial world, 
 recognized as such, who own property in their own uame«j and consequently pay 
 taxes upon that property, and thereby have greater financial and larger social, as 
 well as industrial and business interests at stake in our own commonwealth, and in 
 the manner in which the administration of national atfairs is conducted — because of 
 all of these privileges we the more need the power which shall emphasize our influ- 
 ence upon political actions. 
 
 You know that industrial and property rights are in the hands of the law-makers 
 and the executors of the laws. Therefore, because of our advanced position in that 
 matter, we the more*need the recognition of our political equality. I say the recog- 
 nition of our political eqnalitj^, because I believe the equality already exists. I be- 
 lieve it waits simply for your recognition; that were the Constitution now justly con- 
 strued, and the word "citizens," as used in your Constitution, justly applied it would 
 include us, the women of this country. So I ask for the recognition of an equality 
 that we already possess. 
 
 Further, because of what we have we ask for more. Because of the duties that w^e 
 are commanded to do, we ask lor more. My friend has said, and it is true in some re- 
 spects, that men have always kept us just a little below them where they could shower 
 upon us favors, and they have always done that generously. So they have, but, 
 gentlemen, has your sex been more generous in its favors to women than women have 
 been generous toward your sex in their favors ? Neither one can do without the other ; 
 neither can disi)ei se with the service of the other; neither can dispense with the rev- 
 erence of the other, with the aid of the other in domestic life, in social life. The men 
 of this nation are rapidly finding that they cannot dispense Avith the service of wo- 
 men in business life. 1 know that they aie al!<o feeling the need of what they call the 
 moral support of women in their public life, and in their political life. 
 
 I always feel that it is not for ^yomen alone that I appeal. As men have long rep- 
 resented me, or assumed to do so, and as the men of my own family always have done 
 so justly and most chivalrously, I feel that in my appeal for political recognition I 
 represent them ; that I represent my husband and my brotlier and the inteiest of the 
 sex to which they belong, for you, gentlemen, by lifting the women of the nation into 
 political equality would simply place us where .ve could lift you where you never yet 
 have stood, u])()n a moral equality with us. Gentlemen, that is true. You know it 
 as well as I. J do not speak to you as individuals ; I speak to you as the representa- 
 tives of your sex, as I stand here the representative of mine, and never until we are 
 your equals politically will the moral standard for men be what it now is for women, 
 and it is none too high. Let it grow the more elevated by our growth in spirituality, 
 by every aspiration which we receive from the God whence we draw our life and 
 whence we draw our impulses of life. Let our standard remain where it is and be 
 more elevated. Yours must come up to match it, and never will it until we are your 
 equals politically. So it is for men, as well as for women, that I make my appeal. 
 
 I know that there are some gentlemen upon this conmiittee who, when we were 
 here two years ago, had something to say about the rights of the States and of their 
 disinclination to interfere with the rights of the States »n this matter. I have great 
 sympathy with the gentlemen from the South, who, I hope, do not forget that they are 
 representing the women of the Soutli in their work here at the national capital. Al- 
 ready some Northern States are making rapid strides towards the enfranchisement of 
 their women. The men of some of the Northern States see that they can no longer 
 accomplish the purposes politically which they desire to accomplish without the aid 
 of the women of their respective States. Washington is the third Territory •that has 
 added women to its voting force, and consequently to its politicel power at the national 
 capital, as well as its own capital. Oregon will undoubtedly, as her representative 
 will tell you to-day, soon add its women to its voting force. The men who believe 
 that each State must be left to do this for itself will soon find that the balance of 
 power between the North and South is destroyed, unless the women of the South ai^ 
 brought forward to add to the political force of the South as the women of the North 
 are being brought forward to add to the political force of the North. 
 
 This should not be acted upon as a partisan measure. We do not appeal to you as 
 Republicans or as Democrats. We have among us Republicans and Democrats; we 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 11 
 
 have our party affiliations. We, of course, were reared with our brothers under the 
 political belief and faith of our fathers, and ])robably as much influenced by that 
 rearing as our brothers were. We shall go to strengthen both the political parties, 
 neither one nor the other the more, probably. 80 that it is not as a partisaii measure ; 
 it is as a just measure, which is our due, not because of what we are, gentlemen, but 
 because of what you are, and because of what we are through you, of what you shall 
 be through us; of what we, men and women, both are by virtue of our heritage and 
 our one Father, our one nu>ther eternal, the s))irit created and i)rogressive, that has 
 thus far sustained us, and that will carry us and you forward to the action which we 
 demand of you to take, and to the results which we anticipate will att(;nd upon that 
 action. 
 
 REMARKS BY MRS. HELEN M. GOUGAR. 
 
 Miss Anthony. I think I will call upon the other representative of the State of In- 
 diana to speak now, Mrs. Helen M. Gougar, of La Fayette, Ind. 
 
 Mrs. Gougar. Gentlemen, we are here on behalf of the women citizens of this Re- 
 public, asking for political freedom. I maintain that there is no political question 
 paramount to that of woman suffraije before the people of America to-day. Political 
 parties would fain have us believe that tariff is the great question of the hour. Po- 
 litical parties know better. It is an insult to the intelligence of the ])resent hour to 
 say that when one-half the citizens of this Republic are denied a direct voice in making 
 the laws under which they shall live, that tariff, or that the civil rights of the negro, 
 or any other question that can be brought up is equal to the one of giving political 
 freedom to women. So I come to ask you, as representative men, making laws to 
 govern the women the same as the men of this country (and there is not a law that 
 you make in the United States Congress in which woman has not an equal interest 
 with man), to take the word "male" out of the constitutions of the United States and 
 the several States, as you have taken the word "white" out, and give to us women a 
 voice in the laws uiuler which we live. 
 
 You ask me why I am inclined to be practical in my view of this question. In the 
 first place, speaking from niy own standpoint, I ask you to let me have a voice in the 
 laws under which I shall live because the older empires of the earth arc sending in 
 upon our American shores a population drawn very largely from the asylums, yes, 
 from the penitentiaries, the jails, and the poor-houses of the Old \Vorld. They are 
 emptying those men upon our shores, and within a few months they are intrusted 
 with the ballot, the law-making })Ower in this Republic, and they and their repre- 
 sentatives are seated in official and legislative positions. I, as an American-born 
 woman, to-day enter my protest at being compelled to live under laws made by this 
 class of men very largely, and myself being rendered utterly incapable of the protec- 
 tion that can only come from the ballot. While I would not have you take this right 
 or privilege from those men' whom we invite to our shores, I do ask yon, in the face of 
 this immense foreign immigration, to enfranchise the tax-paying, intelligent, moral, 
 native-born women of America. 
 
 Miss Anthony. And foreign women too. 
 
 Mrs. Gougar, Miss Anthony suggests an amendment, and I indorse it most heartily, 
 and foreign women too, because if we let a foreign man vote I say let the foreign 
 woman vote. I am in favor of universal suffrage. 
 
 Gentlemen, I ask this as a matter of justice ; I ask it because it is an insult to the 
 intelligence of the present to draw the sex line upon any right whatever. I know 
 there are many objections urged, and I am sure that you have considered this (lues- 
 tion ; but I only make the demand from the standpoint, not of sex, but of humanity. 
 
 As a Northern woman, as a woman from Indiana, I know that we have the intelli- 
 gent, thinking, cultured, pure, patriotic men and women with us. We have the 
 women who are engaged in philanthropic enterprises. We have in our own State the 
 signatures of over 5,000 of the school teachers asking for woman's ballot. I ask yoa 
 if the United States Government does not need the voice of those 5,000 educated 
 school teachers as much as it needs the voice of the '240 male criminals who are. on an 
 average, sent out of the penitentiary of Indiana every year, who go to the ballot-box 
 upon every question whatever, and make laws under which those school teachers must 
 live, and under which the mothers of our State must keep their homes and rear their 
 children ? 
 
 On behalf of the mothers of this country I demand that their hands shall be loosened 
 befoie the ballot-box, and that they shall have the privileg-e of throu ing the mother 
 heart into the laws that shall follow their sons not only to the age of majority that 
 only has been n ade legal, but is never recognized, and I ask you to let ilie mothers 
 carry their intluence in ])rot<'cting laws aioiind rhe footsteps of those boys, even after 
 their hair has turned gray and they have seats in the Kiiired States Congress. I ask 
 you to give them the j)owei- to throw )»rotecting laws arouiul those boys to the very 
 confines of eternity. This can be done in im iuilireet way : it cannot lie done by the 
 
12 
 
 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 silent iuflueuce ; it cannot be done by prayer. While I do not underestimate the power 
 of prayer, I say give me my ballot on election day that shall send pure men, good men, 
 intelligent men, statesmen, instead of the modern politician into our legislative halls. 
 I would rather have that ballot on election day than the prayers of all the disfran- 
 chised women in the universe. 
 
 So I ask you to loosen our hands. I ask you to let us join with you in developing ' 
 this science of human government. What is politics after all but the science of 
 government ? We are interested in these questions, and we are investigating them 
 already. We have our opinions. Recently an able man has said that we have been 
 grandiy developed physically and mentally, but as -a nation we are. a political infant. ; 
 So we are, gentlemen ; we are to-day in America politically simply an infant. Why is ' 
 it ? It is because we have not recognized God's family ])lan in government — man and i 
 woman together. He created the male and female, and*gaA'e them dominion togetheV. ' 
 We have dominion in every other interest in society, and why shall we not stand 
 shoulder to shoulder and have dominion in the science in government, in making the 1 
 laws under which we shall live ? | 
 
 We are taxed to support this Government — this immense Capitol building is built 
 largely from the industries of the tax-paying women of this country — and yet we are 
 denied the slightest voice in distributing our taxes. Our foreparents did not object 
 to taxation, but they did object to taxation without representation, and we, as think- 
 ing, industrious, active American women, object to taxation without rei)resentation. 
 We are willing to contribute our share to the support of this Government, as we al- 
 ways have done ; but we have a right to ask for our little yes and no in the form of 
 the ballot so that we shall have a direct influence in distributing the taxes. 
 
 Gentlemen, I am amenable to the gallows and the penitentiary, and it is no more 
 than right that I shall have a voice in framing the laws under which I shall be re- 
 warded or punished. Am I asking too much of you as representative men of this 
 great Government when I ask you to let me have a voice in making the laws under 
 which I shall be rewarded or punished ? It is written in the law of every State in 
 this Union that a person in the courts shall have a jury of his peers, yet so long as 
 the word "male" stands as it does in the Constitutions of the United States and the 
 States no woman in any State of this Union can have a jury of her peers. I protest 
 in the name of justice against going into the court-room and being compelled to run 
 the gantlet of the gutter and of the saloon — yes, even of the police court and of the 
 jail — as we are compelled to do to select a male jury to try the interests of women, 
 whether relating to life, property, or reputation. So long as the word. " male"' is in 
 our constitutions just so long we cannot havQ a jury of our peers in any State in the 
 Union. 
 
 I ask that the women shall have the right of the ballot that they may go into our 
 legislative halls and. there provide for the prevention rather than the cure of crime. 
 I ask you on behalf of the twelve hundred children under twelve yeai's of age, who 
 are in the poor-houses of Indiana, of the sixteen hundred in the poor-houses of Illi- 
 nois, and on that average in every State in the Union, that you shall take the word 
 " male " out of the constitutions and allow the women of this country to sit in legis- 
 lative halls and provide homes for and look after the little waifs of society. There 
 are hundreds of moral questions to-day requiring the assistance of the moral element 
 of womanhood to help make the laws under which we shall live. 
 
 Gentlemen, the political i)arty that lives in the future must tight the moral battles 
 of humanity. Th<^ day of blood is passed ; the day of brain and heart is upon us ; and 
 I ask you to let the moral constituency that resides in woman's nature be represented. 
 Let me say right here that I do not believe that there is morality in sex, but the 
 social customs have been such that woman has been held to a higher standard. May 
 the day hasten when the social custom shall hold man to as high a moral standard as 
 it to-day holds woman. 
 
 This is the condition of things. The political party that presumes to fight the 
 moral battles of the future must have the women in its ranks. We are non-partisan, 
 as has been well said by my friend from Indiana (Mrs. Sewall). We come Demo- 
 crats, Republicans, and Greenbackers, and I expect if there were a half dozen other 
 political parties some of us would belong to thetn. We ask this beneficent action 
 upon your part because we believe that the intelligence and the justice of the hour is 
 demanding it. We do not want a political party action. We want you to keep this 
 question out of the canvass. We ask you in the name of justice and humanity alone, 
 and not on the part of party. 
 
 I hold in my hand a petition sent from one district in the State of Illinois with the 
 request that 1 bear it to you. Out of three hundred electors the names of two hun- 
 dred stand in this petition that I shall leave in your hands. In this list stand not the 
 wife-whippers, not the drunkards, *not the dissolute, but every minister in that town, 
 every editor in that town, every professional man in that town, every banker, and 
 every prominent business man in that town of three hundred electors. I believe that 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 13 
 
 petitions conUl be rolled up iu this way in every town in the Northern aixl in many 
 of the Southern States. I leave this petition with you for your consideration. 
 
 llpdn no question whatever has such a large number of ])etitions been sent as upon 
 this demand for woman sutfrage. You have the petitions in your liands, and I ask you 
 in the name of justice and humanity not to let this Congress adjourn without action. 
 
 You ask us if we are im])aticnt. Yes; we are imjiatient. Some of us may die, and 
 I -want our grand old standard-bearer, Susan B. Anthony, whose name will go (lowii 
 to history beside that of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Wendell Phil- 
 lips — I want that woman to go to Heaven a free angel from this Republic. The ])ower 
 lies in your hands to make us all free. May the blessing of God be upon the hearts of 
 every one of you, gentlemen ; may the scales of prejudice fall from your eyes, and may 
 you, representing the Senate of the United States, have the grand honor of telegraph- 
 ing to us, to the millions of waiting women from one end of this country to the other, 
 that the sixteenth amendment has been submitted to the ratification of the several 
 legislatures of our States striking the word "male " out of the constitutions ; and that 
 this shall be, as we promise it to be, a Government of the people, for the people, and 
 by the people. 
 
 REMARKS BY MRS. ABIGAIL SCOTT DUNIWAY. 
 
 Miss Anthony. I now, gentlemen of the committee, introduce to you Mrs. Abigail 
 Scott Duniway, from the extreme Northwest ; and before she speaks. I wish to say 
 that she has been the one canvasser iu the great State of Oregon and Wnshingtoii 
 Territory, and that it is to Mrs. Duniway that'the women of Washington Territory 
 are more indebted than to all other intluences for their enfranchisement. 
 
 Mrs. Duniway. Gentlemen of the committee, do you think it possible that an agi- 
 tation like this cau go on and on forever without a victory f Do you not see that the 
 golden moment has come lor this grand committee to achieve immortality upon the 
 grandest idea that has ever stirred the heart-beats of American citizens, and will you 
 not in the magnanimity of noble purposes rise to meet the situation and accede to our 
 demand, which iu your hearts you must know is just f 
 
 I do not come before you, gentlemen, with the expectation to instruct you in regard 
 to the laws of our country. The women around us are law-abiding women. They 
 are the motliere, many of them, of true and noble men, the wives, many of them, of 
 grand, free husbands, who are listening, watching, w^aiting eagerly for successful tid- 
 ings of this great experiment. 
 
 There never was a grander theory of government than that of 'these United States. 
 Never were grander principles enunciated upon any platform, never so grand before 
 and never can be grander again, than the declaration that "all me'\," including of 
 course all women, since women are amenable to the laws, "are created equal; that 
 they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights * * * fljat 
 to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just 
 powers from the consent of the governed." 
 
 Gentlemen, are we allowed the opportunity of consent ? These women, who are here 
 from Maine to Oregon, from the Straits of Fuca to the reefs of Florida, who. iu their 
 representative capacity, have come up here so often, augmented in their numbers year 
 by year, looking with eyes of hope and hearts of faith, but oftentimes with hopes de- 
 ferred upon the final solution of this great problem, which it is so much iu yourhauds 
 to hasten in its st)hition — these women are in earnest. My State is far away beyond 
 The confines of the Rocky Mountains, away over beside the singing Pacific sea, but the 
 8j)irit of liberty is among us there, and the public heart has been stirred. The hearts 
 of our men have l)een moved to listen to our deuuinds, and in AVashington Territory, 
 as one speaker has informed you, women to-day are endowed with full and free enfran- 
 chisement, and the rejoicing throughout that Territory is universal. 
 
 In Oregon men have also listene(l to our demand, and the legislature has in two suc- 
 cessive sessions agreed upon a proposition to amend our State constitution, a proposi- 
 tion which will be submitted for ratification to our voters at the coming June election. 
 It is simply a proposition declaring that the right of suffrage shall not hereafter be 
 prohibited in the State of Oregon on account of sex. Your action in the Senate of the 
 United States will greatly determine the action of the voters of Oregon on our, or 
 rather on their, election day, for we stand before the public in the anomaly of peti- 
 tioners upon a great <]uestion in which we in its final decision are allowed no voice, 
 and we can only stand with expectant hearts and almost bated breath awaiting the 
 action of men who are to make this decision. 
 
 We have great hope for our victory, because the men of the broad free West are 
 grand, and chivalrous, and free. They have gone across the mighty continent with 
 free steps; they have raised the standard of a new Pacific empire ; they have imbibed 
 the spirit of liberty with their very breath, and they have listened to us far in ad- 
 vance of many of the men of the older States who have not had their opportunity 
 among the grand free wilds of nature for expansion. 
 
14 
 
 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 So all of our leaders are with us to-day. You may go to either member of the Sen- 
 ate of the United States from Oregon, and while I cannot speak so positively for the 
 senior member, as he came over here some years ago before the public were so well 
 educated as now, I can and do proudly vouch for the late Senator-el f^ct Dolph, who now 
 has a seat upon the floor of the Senate, who is, heart and soul and hand and purse, in 
 sympathy with this great movement for the enfranchisement of the women of Oregon. 
 I would also be unjust to our worthy Representative in the lower House, Hon. M. C. 
 George, did I not proudly speak his name in this great connection. Men of this class 
 are with us, and without regard to party affiliations we know that they are upon our 
 side. Our governor, our associate supreme judge for the district of the Pacific, all of 
 these men, are leading in the grand free way that characterizes the men of the West 
 in assisting in this work. But we have — alas, that I should be compelled to say it — a 
 great many men who pay no heed whatever to this question. Men will be entitled to 
 a voice in this decision who are not, like members of Congress, the picked men of the 
 nation or the State, bat men, many of whom cannot read, who will have an oppor- 
 tunity to decide this question as far as theii- ballots can go. These are they to whom 
 the enlightened, educated motherhood of the State of Oregon must look largely for 
 the decision. 
 
 This brings me to the grand point of our coming to Congress. Some of you say to 
 us, "Why not leave this matter for settlement in the different States?" When we 
 leave it for settlement in the different States we leave it just as I have told you, be- 
 cause of the constitutional provisions of our organic law we cannot do otherwise ; but 
 if the question were to be settled by the legislature of Oregon alone it would be settled 
 now ; and I, as a representative of tliat State only, would have no need of coming 
 here ; it would be settled just as it has been settled in Washington Territory ; but 
 when we come here to Congress it is the great nation asking you to take such legisla- 
 tive action in submitting an amendment to the Constitution of the United States as 
 shall recognize the equality of these women who are here ; these women who have 
 come here from all parts of the country, whose constituents are looking on while we 
 are here before you. As we reflect that our feeblest words uttered before this com- 
 mittee will go to the confines of thio nation and be cabled across the great Atlantic 
 and around the globe, we realize that more and more prominently our cause is grow- 
 ing into public favor, and the time is just upon us when some decision must be made. 
 
 Gentlemen of the committee, will you not recognize the importance of the move- 
 ment? Who among you will be our standard-bearer? Who among you will achieve 
 immortality by standing up in these halls in which we are forbidden to speak, and in 
 the magnanimity of' your own free wiJls and noble hearts champion the woman's 
 cause and make us before the law, as we of right ought now to be, free and independ- 
 ent? 
 
 REMARKS BY MRS. CAROLINE GILKEY ROGERS. 
 
 Miss Anthony. I now call upon Mrs. Caroline Gilkey Rogers, of Lansingburg, N. 
 Y., to address the committee 
 
 Mrs. Rogers. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, in our efforts to se- 
 cure the right of citizenship we appeal only to your sense of justice and love of fair 
 dealing. 
 
 We ask for the ballot because it is the symbol of equality. There is no other rec- 
 ognized symbol of equality in this country. We ask for the ballot that we may be 
 equal to man before the law. We urge a twofold right — our right to the Republic, 
 the Republic's right to us. We believe the interests of the country are identical with 
 the interests of all its citizens, including women, and that the Government can no 
 longer afford to shut women out from the afl'airs of the State and nation, and wise 
 men are beginning to know that they are needed in the Government ; that they are 
 needed where our laws are made as well as where they are violated. 
 
 Many admit the justice of our claim, but will say. Is it safe? Is it expedient? It 
 is always safe to do right ; it is always expedient to be just. Justice can never bring 
 evil in its train. 
 
 The question is asked how and what would the women do in the State" and nation? 
 We do not pledge ourselves to anything. I claim that we cannot have a better gov- 
 ernment than that of the people. The present Government is of only a part of the 
 people. We have not yet entered upon the system of higher arbitration, because the 
 Government is of man only. If we had been marching along with you all this time 
 I trust we should have reached a higher plane of civilization. 
 
 We believe that all the virtue of the world can take care of all the evil, and all the 
 intelligence can take care of all the ignorance. Let us have all the virtue confront 
 all the vice. 
 
 There is no need to do battle in this matter. In all kindness and gentleness we 
 urge our claims. There is no need to declare war upon men, for the best of men in 
 this country are with us heart and soul. 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 15 
 
 It is a common remark that unless some now element is infnsed into onr political 
 life our nation is doomed to destruction. What more fitting element than the nohle 
 type of American womanhood, who have taught our Presidents, Senators, and Con- 
 gressmen the rudiments of all they know. 
 
 Think of all the foreigners and all our own nativ^e-born ignorant men who cannot 
 write their own names or read the Declaration of Inde])endeiiee making laws for such 
 women as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and SnsaTi B. Anthony. Think of jurors drawn from 
 these ranks to watch and try young giils for crimes often committed against them 
 when the male criminal goes free. Think of a single one of thes<' votes on election 
 day outweighing all the women in the country. Is it not humiliating for me to sit, 
 apolitical cipher, and see the colored man in my employ, to whom I have taught the 
 al])habet, go out on election day and say by his vote what shall be done with my tax 
 moiM-y. How would you like it ? 
 
 When we think of the wives trami)led on by husbands whom the law has taught 
 theiu TO regard as inferior beings, and of the mothers whose children aie torn from 
 their arms by the direct behest of the law at the bidding of a dead or Irving father, 
 when we think of these things, our hearts ache Avith pity and indignation. 
 
 If mothers could only realize how the laws which they have no voice in making 
 and no power to change affects them at every point, how they enter every door, 
 whether palace or hovel, touch, limit, and bind, every article and inmate from the 
 smallest child uj), no woman, however shrinking and delicate, can escape it, they 
 wouhl get beyond the meaningless cry, "I have all the rights I want." Do these 
 women know that in most States of the Union the shameful fact that no woman has 
 any legal right to her own child, except it is born out of wedlock! In these States 
 there is not a line of positive law to protect the mother : the father is the legal ])ro- 
 tector and guardian of the children. 
 
 Under the laws of most of the States to-day a husband may by his last will bequeath 
 his t hild aw^ay from its mother, so that she might, if the giiardian chose, never see it 
 again. 
 
 The husband may have been a very bad man, and in a moment of anger made the 
 will. The guardian he has appointed may turn out a malicious man, and take pleas- 
 ure' in tormenting the mother, or he may bring up the children in a way that the 
 mother thinks ruinous to them, and she has no redress in law. Why do not all the 
 fortunate mothers in the land cry out against such a law ? Why do not all women 
 say, " Inasmuch as the law has done this wrong unto the least of these my sisters it 
 has done it unto me" It is true that men are almost always better than their laws, 
 but while a bad law remains on the statute books it gives to any unscrupulous man 
 a right to be as bad as the law. 
 
 It is often said to us when all the women ask for the ballot it will be granted. Did 
 all the married women petition the legislatures of their States to secure to thera the 
 right to hold in their own name the property that belonged to them? To secure to 
 the poor forsaken wife the right to her earnings ? 
 
 All the women did not ask for these rights, but all accepted them with joy and glad- 
 ness when they were obtained, and so it will be with the franchise. But woman's 
 rights to self-government does not depend upon the numbers that demand it, but upon 
 precisely the same principles that man claims it for himself. 
 
 Where did man get the authority that he now claims to govern one-half of humanity, 
 from what power the right to place woman, his helpmeet in life, in an inferior position f 
 Came it from nature ? Nature made woman his superior when she made her his 
 mother— his equal when she fitted her to hold the sacred position of wife. Did 
 women meet in council and voluntarily give up all their claim to be their own law- 
 makers ? 
 
 The power of the strong over the weak makes man the master. Yes, then, and then 
 only, does he gain the authority. 
 
 It is all very well to say " Convert the women." While we most heartily wish 
 they could all feel as we do, yet when it comes to the decision of this great question 
 they are mere cipher>s, for if this question is settled by the States it will be left to 
 the voters, not to the women to decide. Or if suffrage comes to women through a 
 sixteenth amendment to the national Constitution, it will be decided by legislatures 
 elected by men. In neither case will women have an opportunity of passing upon 
 the question. So reason tells us we must devote our best efforts to converting those 
 to whom we must look "for the removal of our disabilities,*which now prevent our ex- 
 ercising the right of suffrage. 
 
 The arguments in favor of the enfranchisement of women are truths strong and un- 
 answerable, and as old as the free institutions of our Government. The principle of 
 
 taxation without representation is tyranny," applies to women as well as men, and 
 is as true to-day as it was a hundred years ago. 
 
 Our demand for the ballot is the great onward step of the century, and not, as some 
 claim, the idiosyncracies of a few unbalanced minds. 
 
 Every argument that has been urged against this question of woman's suffrage has 
 
16 
 
 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 beeu urged against every reform. Yet the reforms have fought their way onward and 
 became a part of the glorious history of humanity. 
 
 So it will be with suffrage. " You can stop the crowing of the cock, but you can- 
 not stop the dawn of the morning." And now, gentlemen, you are responsible, not 
 for the laws yon find on the statute books, but for those you leave liiere. 
 
 REMARKS BY MRS. MARY SEYMOUR HOWELL. 
 
 Miss Anthony. I now introduce to the committee Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell, the 
 president of the Albany, N. Y., State society. 
 
 Mrs. Howell. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the coraraiitee : Miss Anthony gives 
 me five minutes. I shall have to talk very rapidly. I ask you for the ballot because 
 of the very first principle that is often repeated to you, that " taxation without rep- 
 resentation is tyranny." I come from the city of Albany, where many of my sisters 
 are taxed for millions of dollars. There are three or four women in the city of Albany 
 who are worth their millions, and yet they have no voice in the laws that govern and 
 control them. One of our great State senators has said that you cannot argue five 
 minutes against woman suffrage without repudiating every princiole that this great 
 Republic is founded upon. 
 
 I ask you also for the ballot for the large class of women who are not taxed. They 
 need it more than the women who are taxed. I have found in every work that I have 
 conducted that because I am a woman I am not paid for that work as a man is paid 
 for similar work. 
 
 You have heard, and perhaps some of you are thinking — I hope not— that women 
 should be at home. I wish to say to you that there are millions of women in the 
 United States who have no homes. There are millions of women who are trying to 
 earn their bread and hold their purity sacred. For that class of women I appeal to 
 you. In the city of Albany there are hundreds of women in our factories making the 
 shirts that you can buy for $1 50 and $'2, and all those women are paid for making the 
 shirts is 4 cents apiece. There are in the State of New York 18,000 teachers. When 
 I was a teacher and taught with gentleuien in our academies, I received about one- 
 fourth of the pay becanse I hapi)ened to be a woman. I consider it an insult that 
 forever burns in my soul, that I am to be handed a mere pittance in comparison with 
 what man receives for same quality of work. When I was sent out by our superin- 
 tendent of public instruction to hold conventions of teachers, as I have often done in 
 our State of New York, and when I did one-third more work than the men teachers so 
 sent out, but because I was a woman and had not the ballot I was only paid about 
 half as much as the man ; and saying that once to our superintendent of public in- 
 struction in Albany, he said, " Mrs. Howell, just as soon as you get the ballo*^ and have 
 a political influence in the work you will have the same pay as a man." 
 
 We ask for the ballot for that great army of fallen women who walk our streets and 
 who break up our homes and ruin our husbands and our dear boys. We ask it for those 
 women. The ballot will lift them up. Hundreds and thousands of women give up 
 their purity for tke sake of s arving children and families. There is many a woman 
 who goes to a life of degradation and pollution shedding burning tears over her 4-cent 
 shirts. 
 
 We ask for the ballot for the good of the race. Huxley says, "admitting for the sake 
 of argument that woman is the weaker, mentally and physically, for that very reason 
 she should have the ballot and should have every help that the world can give her." 
 When you debar from your councils and legislative halls the purity, the spirituality, 
 and the love of woman then those legislative halls and those councils are apt to become 
 coarse and brutal. God gave us to you to help you in this little journey to a better 
 land, and by our love and our intellect to help to make our country pure and noble, 
 and if you would have statesmen you must have stateswomen to bear them. 
 
 I ask you also for the ballot that I may decide what I am. I stand before you, but 
 I do not know to-day whether I am legally a " person " according to the law. It has 
 been decided in some States that we are not " persons." In the State of New York, in 
 one village, it was decided that women are not inhabitants. So I should like to know 
 whether I am a person, whether I am an inhabitant, and above all I ask you for the 
 ballot that I may become a citizen of this great Republic. 
 
 Gentlemen, you see before you this great convention of women from the Atlantic 
 •slopes to the Pacific Ocean, from the North to the South. We are in dead earnest. A 
 reform never goes backward. This is a question that is before the American nation. 
 Will you do your duty and give us our liberty, or will you leave it for braver hearts 
 to do what must be done ? For, like our forefathers, we will ask until we have 
 gained it. 
 
 Ever the world goes round and round ; 
 
 Ever the truth comes uppermost ; and ever is justice done. 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 17 
 
 REMARKS BY MRS. LILLIE DEVEREUX BLAKE. 
 
 Miss Anthony. I nowliave the pleasant of introducing to th(; coniuiittee Mrs. Lillie 
 Devert'iix Bhiko, of New York. New York is a y.reat State, and therefore it has three 
 representatives here to-day. 
 
 Mrs. Blakk. Mr. Chairman and j^entlenien of tlie committee : A recent writer in an 
 English magazine, in speaking of tlie great advantage which to-day flows to the labor- 
 ing classes of that nation from having received the right of suffrage, made the state- 
 ment that disfranchised classes are oppressed, not because there is any desire what- 
 ever to do injustice to them, but because they are forgotten. We have year after year 
 and session after session of our legislatures and of our Congresses proved the correct- 
 ness of this statement. While we ha ve nothing to complain of in the courtesy wliich 
 we receive in private life; still when we see nuissesof men assemble together for politi- 
 cal action, whether it be of the nation or of the State, we lind that the women are 
 totaly forotteu. 
 
 hi the limited time that is mine I cannot go into any lengthy exposition upon this 
 point. I will simply call your attention to the total forgetfulness of the Congress of 
 the United States to the debt owed to the women of this nation during the war. You 
 have passed a pension bill upon which there has been much conunent throughout the 
 nation, and yet, when an old army nurse applies for a pension, a woman who is broken 
 down by her devotion to the nation in hospitals and upon the battle-field, she is met 
 at the door of the Pension Bureau by this statement, " the Government has made no 
 appropriation for the services of women in the war." One of these women is an old 
 nurse whom some of you may remember, Mother Bickerdyke, who went out onto many 
 a battle-field, when she was in the prime of life, twenty years ago, and at the risk of 
 her life lifted men who were wounded, in her arms, and carried them to a place of 
 safety. She is an old woman now, and where is she ! What reward lias the nation 
 bestowed to her faithful services ? The nation has a pension for every man who has 
 served this nation, even down to the boy recruit who was out but three months ; 
 but Mother Bickerdyke, though her health has never been good since her service 
 then, is earning her living at the wash-tub, a monument to the ingratitude of a Repub- 
 lic as great as was that when Belisarius begged in the streets of Rome. 
 
 I bring up this illustration alone out of innumerable others that are possible, to try 
 to impress upon your minds that we are forgotten. It is not from any unkindness on 
 your part. Who would think for one moment, looking upon the kindly faces of this 
 committee, that any man on it would do an injustice to women, especially if she were 
 old and feeble ? But because we have no right to vote, as I said, our interests ai;e over- 
 looked and forgotten. 
 
 It is often said that we have too many voters ; that the aggregate of vice and igno- 
 rance among us should not be increased by giving women the right of suffrage. I 
 wish to remind you of the fact that in the enormous immigration that pours to our 
 shores every year, numbering somewhere in the neighborhood of half a million, there 
 come twice as many men as women. The figures for the last year were two hundred 
 and twenty-three thousand men and one hundred and thirteen thousand women. 
 What does this mean ? It means a steady influx of this foreign element; it means a 
 constant preponderance of the masculine over the feminine ; and it means also, of 
 course, a preponderance of the voting power of the foreigner as compared to the 
 native born. To those who fear that our American institutions are threatened by 
 this gigantic inroad of foreigners I commend the reflection that the best safeguard 
 against any such preponderance of foreign nations or of foreign influence is to put 
 the ballot in the hands of the American born women, and of all other women alSo, so 
 that if the foreign born man overbalances us in numbers we shall be always in a pre- 
 ponderance on the side of the liberty which is secured by our institutions. 
 
 It is because, as many of my predecessors have said, of the diflerent elements repre- 
 sented by the two sexes, that we are asking for this liberty. When I was recently in 
 the capitol of my own State of New Y'ork, I was reminded there of the dificreuce of 
 temperament between the sexes by seeing how children act when coming to the doors 
 of the capitol wlkich have been constructed so that they are very hard to open. Whether 
 that is because they want to keep us women out, or not I am not able to say ; but for 
 some reason the doors are so constructed that it is nearly impossible to open them. 
 I saw a number of little girls coming in through those doors — every child held the 
 door for those who were to follow. A number of little boys followed just after, and 
 every boy rushed through and let the door shut in the face of the one who was coming 
 behind him. That is a good illustration of thedifiereut qualitiesof the sexes. Those 
 boys were not unkind, they simply represented that onward push which is one of the 
 grandest characteristics of your sex; and the little girls, on the other hand, repre- 
 sented that gentleness and tlioughtfuluess of others which is eminently a character- 
 istic of women. 
 
 S. liep. 70 
 
18 
 
 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 This woman element is needed in every branch of the Government. Look at the 
 wholesale destrnction of the forests throughout our nation, which has gone on until 
 it brings direct destruction to the land on the lines of the great rivers of the West, 
 and threatens us even in New York, with destroying at once the beauty and the use- 
 fulness of oiir i'ar-famed Hudson. If women were in the Government do yon not think 
 they would protect the economic interests of the nation ? They are the born and 
 trained economists of the world, and when you call them to your assistance you w^iil 
 find an element that has not heretofore been felt with the weight which it deserves. 
 
 As we walk through the Capitol we are struck w'ith the significance of the symbolism 
 on every side ; we view the adornments in the beautiful room, and we find here every- 
 where emblematically woman's figure. Here is woman representing even war, and 
 there are woukmi representing grace and loveliness and the fullness of the harvest ; 
 and, above all, they are extending their protecting arms "ttver the little children. 
 Gentlemen, I leave you under this symbolism, hoping that you will see in it the type 
 of a coming day when we shall have women and men united together in the national 
 councils in this great building. 
 
 REMARKS BY DR. CLEMENCE S. LOZIER. 
 
 Miss Anthony. I meant to have said, as I introduced Mrs. Blake, that sitting on 
 the sofa, is Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, w^ho declines to speak, bnt I want her to stand up, 
 because she represents New York City. 
 
 Dr. Lozier. 1 thank you. I am very happy to be here, but I am not a fluent 
 speaker. I teel in my heart that I know Avhat justice means; that I know what mercy 
 means, and in all my rounds of duty in my profession I am happy to extend not only 
 food bnt shelter to many poor ones. The need of the ballot for working girls and 
 those who pay no taxes is not understood. The Saviour said, seeing the poor widow 
 cast her two mites, w^hicli make a farthing, into the public treasury, "This poor widow 
 hath cast more in thau all they which have cast into the treasury." I see this among 
 the poor working girls of the city of New York, sick, in a little garret bedroom, per- 
 haps, and although needing medical care and needing food, they will say to me, 
 " above all things else, if I could only pay the rent." The rent of their little rooms 
 goes into the coffers of their laudlords and pays taxes. The poor women of the city 
 of New York aiid everywhere are the grandest upholders of this Government. I be- 
 lieve they pay indirectly more taxes than the monopoly kings of our country. It is 
 for them that I want the ballot., 
 
 REMARKS BY MRS. ELIZABETH BOYNTON HARBERT. 
 
 Miss Anthony. I now introduce to the committee Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, 
 of Illinois, and before Mrs. Harbert speaks I wish to say that for the last six years 
 she has edited a department of the Chicago Inter-Ocean called the " Women's King- 
 dom." 
 
 Mrs. Harbert. Mr. Chairman and honorable gentlemen of the committee, after the 
 eloquent rhetoric to which yon have listened I merely come in these five minutes with 
 a plain statement of facts. Some friends have -said, " Here is the same company of 
 women that year after year besiege you with their petitions." We are here to-day in 
 a representative capacity. From the great State of Illinois I come, representing 200,000 
 men and women of that State who have recorded their written petitions for woman's 
 ballot, 90,000 of these being citizens under the law, male voters ; those 90,000 having 
 signed petitions for the right of women to vote on the temperance question ; 90,000 
 women also signed those petitions ; 50,000 men and women signed the petitions for 
 the school vote, and nearly 60,000 more have signed petitions that the right of suffrage 
 might be accorded to woman. 
 
 This growth of public sentiment has been occasioned by the needs of the children and 
 the working women of that great State. I come here to ask yoi^ to make a niche in 
 the statesmanship and legislation of the nation for the domestic interests of the peo- 
 ple. You recognize that the masciiline thought is more often turned to 'the material 
 and political interests of the nation. I claim that the mother thought, the woman 
 element needed, is to supplement the concurrent statesmanship of American men on 
 political and industrial affairs with the domestic legislation of the nation. 
 
 There are good men and Avomen w'ho believe that women should use their influence 
 merely through their social sphere. I believe both of the great parties are repre- 
 sented by us. You remember that a few weeks ago when tjiere came across the coun- 
 try the news of the decision of the Supreme Court as regards the negro race the poli- 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 19 
 
 ticians spranj; to the platform, aud our editors hastened to their sanctums, to pro- 
 chiim to the people that that did not interfere with the civil riolits of the ney:ro ; 
 that only their social ri<;hts were affected, and that the civil ri<;lits of man, those 
 rights worth dying for, were not affected. Gentlemen, we who are trying to help the 
 men in our municipal governments, who are trying to save tin; children from our 
 poor-houses, begin to realize that whatever is good and essential for tiie liberty of 
 the black man isgt)od for the white woman and for all womiui. We are hert; to claim 
 that wiiatever liberty has done for you it should be allowed to do for us. Take a 
 single glance through the past; recognize the position of American mauhood before 
 the world to-day, and whatever liberty has done for you, liberty will surely do for 
 the motbers of the race. 
 
 MKS. SARAH E. WALE. 
 
 Miss Anthony. Gentlemen of the committee, here is another woman 1 wish to show 
 yon. Sarah E. Wall, of Worcester, Mass., who, for the last twenty-live years, has re- 
 sisted Ihe tax-gatherer when he came around. I want you to look at her. Slu; looks 
 very harmless, but she will not pay a dollar of tax. She says when the Comhion wealth 
 of Massachusetts will give her the right of representation she will pay her taxes. I 
 do not know exactly how^ it is now, but the assessor has left her name otf the tax-list, 
 and passed her by rather than have a laAvsuit with her. 
 
 REMARKS BY MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY. 
 
 Miss Anthony. I wish I could state the avocations and professions of the various 
 women who have spoken in our convention during the last three days. I do not 
 wish to speak disparagingly in regard to the men in Coiigiess, but I doubt if a man 
 on the floor of either house could have uuide a better speech tlian some of those 
 which have been made by women during this conveutioii. Twenty-six States and 
 Territories are represented with live women, traveling all the w^ay from Kansas, Ar- 
 kansas, Oregon, and Washington Territory. It does seem to me that after all these 
 years of coming up to this Capitol an impression should be made upon the minds of 
 legislators that we are never to be silenced until we- gain the demand. We have 
 never had in the whole thirty years of our agitation so many States represented in 
 any convention as we have had this year. 
 
 This fact shows the growth of public sentiment. Mrs. Duniway is here, all the way 
 from Oregon, and you say, when Mrs. Duniwaj^ is doing so well up there, and is so 
 hopeful of carrying the State of Oregon, why do not you all rest satisfied with that 
 plan of gaining the suffrage? My answer is that I do not wish to seei;he women 
 of the thirty-eight States of this Union compelled to leave their homes and canvass 
 each State, school district by school district. It is asking too much of a moneyless 
 class of people, disfranchised by the constitution of every State in the Union. The 
 joint earnings of the marriage copartnership in all the States belong legally to the 
 hushand. If the wife goes outside the home to work, the law in most of the States per- 
 mits her to ow^n and control the money thus earned. We have not a single State in 
 the Union where the w ife's earnings inside the marriage copartnership are owned by 
 her. Therefore, to ask the vast majority of women who are thus situated, without 
 an independent dollar of their own', to make a canvass of the States is asking too 
 much. 
 
 Mrs. GouGAR. Why did they not ask the negro to do that ? 
 
 Miss Anthony. Of course the negro was not asked to go begging the white man 
 from school district to school district to get his ballot. If it was known that we 
 could be driven to the ballot-box like a llock of sheep, and all vote for one party, 
 there would be a bid made for us; but that is not done, because we cannot promise 
 you any such thing; "because we stand before you and honestly tell you that the 
 women of this nation are educated equally with tbe men, and that they, too, have 
 political opinions. There is not a w^oman on our platform, there is scarcely a woman 
 in this city of Washington, whether the wife of a Senator or a Congressman — I do not 
 believe you can find a score of women in the whole nation — who have not o])inionsou 
 the pending Presidential election. We all have opinions; we all have parties. Some 
 of us like one partj' and one candidate and some another. 
 
 Therefore we cannot promise you that women will vote as a unit when they are en- 
 franchised. Suppose the Democrats shall put a woman-sutfrage plank in their plat- 
 form in their Presidential convention, and uomiuate an open and avowed friend of 
 woman suffrage to stand upon that platform ; we cannot pledge you that all the 
 women of this nation will work for the success of that party, nor can I pledge you 
 
20 
 
 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 that they will all vote for the Republican party if it should be the one to take the 
 lead in their enfranchisement. Our women will not toe a mark anywhere ; they will 
 think and act for themselv^es. and when they are enfranchised they will divide upon 
 all political questions, as do intelligent, educated men. 
 
 •I have tried the experiment of canvassing four States i)rior to Oregon, and in each 
 State with the best canvass that it was possible for us to make we obtained a vote of 
 one-third. One man out of every three men voted for the enfranchisement of the 
 women of their households, while two voted against it. But we are proud to say that 
 our splendid minority is always composed of the very best men of the State, and I 
 think Senator J?*almer will agree with me that the forty thousand men of Michigan 
 who voted for the enfranchisement of the women of his State were really the picked 
 men in intelligence, in culture, in morals, in standing, and in every direction. 
 
 It is too much to say that the majority of the voters in any State are superior, edu- 
 cated, and capable, or that they investigate every question thoroughly and cast the 
 ballot thereon intelligently. We all know that the majority of the voters of any 
 State are not of that stamp. The vast masses of the people, the laboring classes, have 
 all they can do in their struggle to get food and shelter for their families. They have 
 very little time or opportunity to study great questions of constitutional law. 
 
 Because of this impossibility for women to canvass the States over and over to edu- 
 cate the rank and file of the voters we come to you to ask you to make it possible for 
 the legislatures of the thirty-eight States to settle the question, where we shall have 
 a few representative men assembled before whom we can make our appeals and argu- 
 ments. 
 
 This method of settling the question by the legislatures is just as much in the Hue 
 of States' rights as is that of the popular vote. The one question before you is, will 
 you insist that a majority of the individual voters of every State must be converted 
 before its women shall have the right to vote, or will you allow the matter to be set- 
 tled by the representative men in the legislatures of the several States? You need 
 not fear that we shall get suffrage too quickly if Congress shall submit the proposi- 
 tion, for even then we shall have a hard time in going from legislature to legislature 
 to secure the two-thirds votes of three-fourths of the States, necessary to ratify the 
 amendment. It may take twenty years after Congress has taken the initiative step to 
 make action by the State legislatures jjossible. 
 
 I pray you, gentlemen, that you will make your report to the Senate speedilj*. I 
 know you are ready to make a favorable one. Some of our sjjeakers may not have 
 known this as well as I. I ask you to make a report and to bring it to a discussion 
 and a vote on the floor of the Senate. ' 
 
 You ask me if we want to press this question to a vote, provided there is nut a ma- 
 jority to carry it. I say yes, because we want the reflex influence of the discussion 
 and of the opinions of Senators to go back into the States to help us to educate the 
 people ot the States. 
 
 Senator Lapham. It would require a two-thirds vote in both the House and the 
 Senate to submit the amendment to the State legislatures for ratification. 
 
 Miss Anthony. I know that it requires a two-thirds vote of both Houses. But still, 
 I repeat, even if you cannot get the two-thirds vote, we ask you to report the bill 
 and bring it to a discussion and a vote at the earliest day possible. We feel that this 
 question should be brought before Congress at every session. We ask this little 
 attention from Congressmen whose salaries are paid from the taxes; women do their 
 share for the support of this great Government. We think we are entitled to 
 two or three days of each session of Congress in both the Senate and House. There- 
 fore I ask of you to help us to a discussion in the Senate this session. There is no 
 reason why the Senate, composed of seventy-six of the most intelligent and liberty- 
 loving men of the nation, shall not pass the resolution by a two-thirds vote. I 
 really believe it will do so if the friends on this committee and on the floor of the 
 Senate will champion the measure as earnestly as if it M^ere to benefit themselves in- 
 stead of their mothers and sisters. 
 
 Gentlemen, I thank you for this hearing granted, and I hope the telegraph wires 
 will soon tell us that your report is presented, and that a discussion is inaugurated 
 on the floor of the Senate. 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 21 
 
 [Senate Mis. Doc. No. 74. Fortj'-seventh Cousress, first ses-siou. | 
 
 ARGUMENTS OF THE WOMAX-SVFFRAG E DELEGATES BEFORE THE COM- 
 MITTEE Oy THE JUDICIARY OF THE UNUrED STATES SENATE, JAN- 
 UARY 23, 1880. 
 
 March 30, 1882.— Reported from the Conuiiittee ou tlie Judiciary, ordered to be ])riiited foi' the use of 
 tlie counnittee, and recominitted. 
 
 The CoMMiiTEE on the Judiciary, 
 
 United States Senate, 
 
 FYiday, January 23, 1880. 
 
 The conuiiittee assembled at half-past 10 o'clock a. m. 
 
 Present, Mr. Thurman, cliairnjau, Mr. McDonald, Mr. Bayard, Mr. Davis of Illinois, 
 Mr. Edmunds. 
 
 Also Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace, of Indiana; Mrs. Elizabeth L. Saxon, of Louisiana; 
 Mrs. Mary A. Stewart, of Delaware; Mrs. Lucinda B. Chandler, of Pennsylvania; 
 Mrs. Julia Smith Parker, of Gla.stonbury, Conn. ; Mrs. Nancy R. Allen, of Iowa; Miss 
 Susan B. Anthony, of New York; Mrs. Sara A. Spencer, of the city of Wa.shington, 
 and others, delegates to the twelfth Washington convention of the National Woman- 
 Sutlrage Association, held .January 2\ and 1880. 
 
 The Chairman. Several members of the committee are unable to be here. Mr. 
 Lamar is detained at his home in Mississippi by sickness; Mr. Carpenter is confined 
 to his room by sickness; Mr. Conkling has been unwell ; I do not know how he is this 
 morning; and Mr. Garland is chairman of the Committee on Territories, which has 
 a meeting this morning that he could not omit to attend. I do not think we aro 
 likely to have any more members of the committee than are here now, and we will 
 hear you, ladies. 
 
 REMARKS BY MRS. ZERELDA G. WALLACE, OF INDIANA. 
 
 Mrs. Wallace. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee: It is scarcely 
 necessary to recite that there is not an effect without a cause. Therefore it would be 
 well for the statesmen of this nation to ask themselves the question. What has brought 
 the women from all parts of this nation to the capital at this tiiue; the wives and 
 mothers, and sisters ; the home-loving, law-abiding women ? W^hat has been the 
 strong motive that has taken us away from the quiet and comfort of our own homes 
 and brought us before you to-day ? As an answer i)artly to that question, I will read 
 an extract from a speech made by one of Indiana's statesmen, and probably if I tell 
 you his name his sentiments, ma.y have some weight with you. He fouiul out by 
 experience and gave us the benefit of his experience, and it is what we are rapidly 
 learning: 
 
 " Y'^ou can go to meetings ; you can vote resolutions; you can attend great dem- 
 onstrations on the street ; but, after all, the only occasion where the American citi- 
 zen expresses his acts, his opinion, and his power is at the ballot-box; and that little 
 ballot that he drops in there is the written sentiment of the times, and it is the power 
 that he has as a citizen of this great Republic." 
 
 That is the reason why w^e are here ; that is the reason why we want to vote. We 
 are no seditious women, clamoring for any peculiar rights, but we are patient w^omen. 
 It is not the woman question that brings us before you to-day ; it is the human ques- 
 tion that underlies this movement among the women of this nation ; it is for God, 
 and home, and native land. W« love and ai)preciate our country ; we value the in- 
 stitutions of our country. We realize that we owe great obligations to the men of 
 this nation for what they have done. We realize that to their strength we owe the 
 subjugation of all tJie material forces of the universe which give us comfort and lux- 
 ury in our homes. W^e realize that to their brains we owe the machinery that gives 
 us leisureJ'or intellectual culture aiul achievement. We realize that it is to their 
 education we owe the opening of our colleges and the establishment of our public 
 schools, which give us these great and glorious inivileges. 
 
 This movement is the legitimate result of this development, of this enlightenment, 
 and of the suffering that woman has undergone in the ages past. We find ourselves 
 hedged in at every etlbrt we make as mothers for the amelioration of society, as phi- 
 lanthropists, as Christians. 
 
 A short time ago I \\ent before the legislature of Indiana with a*petitiou signed 
 by '25, dOO women, the best women in the State. I a])|)eal to ihe memory of Judge 
 McDonald to substantiate the truth of what I say. .Judge McDonald knows that I 
 am a home-loving, law -pbidiug, tax-paying woman of Indiana, and have been lor fifty 
 
22 
 
 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 years. When 1 went before our legislature and found that one hundred of the rilest 
 men in our State, merely by the possession of the ballot, had more intluence with the 
 law-makers of our land than the wives and mothers of the nation, it was a revelation 
 that was perfectly startliiio-. 
 
 You Uiust admit <hat in popular government the ballot is the moat potent means of 
 all moral and social reforms. As members of society, as those who are deeply in- 
 terested in the pioniotiou of good morals, of virtue, and of the proper protection of 
 men from the con>equ('uces of their own vices, and of the protection of women, too, 
 we are dee})ly interested in all the social problems with which you have grappled so 
 long unsuccessfully. We do not intend to depreciate .your efforts, but you have at- 
 tempted to do an impossible thing. You have attempted to represent the whole by 
 one-half ; and we come to you to-day for a recognition of the fact that humanity is 
 not a unit ; that it is a unity ; and because we are one-half-^that go to make up that 
 grand unity we come before you to-daj^ and ask you to recognize our rights as citizens 
 of this Republic. 
 
 We know that many of us lay ourselves liable to contumely and ridicule. We have 
 to meet sneers; but we are determined that in the defense of light we will ignore 
 everything but what we feel to be our duty. 
 
 We do not come here as agitators, or aimless, dissatisfied, unhappy women by any 
 means; but we come as human beings, recognizing our responsibility to God for the 
 advantages that have come to us in the development of the ages. We wish to dis- 
 charge that responsibility faithfully, effectually, and conscientiously, and we cannot 
 do It under our form of government, hedged in as we are by the lack of a power which 
 is such a mighty engine in our form of government for every means of work. 
 
 I say to you, then, we come as one-half of the great whole. There is an essential 
 difference in the sexes. Mr. Farkraan labored very hard to prove what no one would 
 deny, that there is an essential difference in the sexes, and it is because of that very 
 dift'erentiation, the union of which in home, the recognition of which in society, brings 
 the greatest happiness, the recognition of which in the church brings the greatest 
 power and influence for good, and the recognition of which in the Government would . 
 enable us finally, as near as it is possible for humanity, to perfect our form of govern- 
 ment. Probably we can never have a perfect form of government, but the nearer we 
 approximate to the divine the nearer will we attain to perfection ; and the divine 
 government recognizes neither caste, class, sex, nor nationality. The nearer we ap- 
 proach to that divine ideal the nearer we will come to realizing our hopes of finally 
 securing at least the most perfect form of human government that it is posssible for 
 us to secure. 
 
 I do not wish to trespass upon your time, but I have felt that this movement is not 
 understood by a great majority of people. They think that we are unhappj^, that we 
 are dissatisfied, that we are restive. That is not the case. When we look over the 
 statistics of our State and find that 6U per cent, of all the crime is the result of drunk- 
 enness ; when we find that 60 per cent, of the orphan children that fill our pauper 
 homes are the children of drunken parents ; when we find that after a certain age the 
 daughters of those fathers who were made paupers and drunkards by the approbation 
 and sanction and under the seal of the Government, go to supply our houses of pros- 
 titution, and when we find that the sons of these fathers go to fill up our jails and our 
 penitentiaries, and that the sober, law-abiding men, the pains-taking, economical, and 
 many of them widowed wives of this nation have to pay taxes and bear the expenses 
 incurred by such legislation, do you wonder, gentlemen, that Ave at least want to try 
 our hand and see what we can do ? We may not be able to bring about that Utopian 
 form of government which we all desire, but we can at least make an effort. Under 
 our form of government the ballot is our right; it is just and proper. When you de- 
 bate about the expediency of any matter you have no right to say that it is inexpedi- 
 ent to do right. Do right and leave the result to G(|d. You will have to decide be- 
 tween one of two things : either you have no claim under our form of Constitution for 
 the privileges wliich you enjoy, or you will have to say that we are neither citizens 
 nor persons. 
 
 Realizing this fact, and the deep interest that we take in the successful issue of this 
 experinu^ut that humanity is making for self-government, and realizing the fact that 
 the ballot never can be given to us under more favorable circumstances, and believing 
 that here on this continent is to be wrought out the great problem of man's ability to 
 govern himself— and when I say man I use the word in the generic sense— that human- 
 ity here is to work out the great problems of selt-government and developnuiut, and 
 recognizing, as I said a feT\' miuutes ago, that we are one-half of the great whole, we 
 feel that we ought to be heard when we come before you and make the plea that we 
 make to-day. 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 23 
 
 REMARKS BY MRS. JULIA SMITH PARKER, OF GLASTONBURY, CONN. 
 
 Mrs. Pauker. GeuthMiien : Von may be sm pi iscd, and not so nmcli snrpriscd as I 
 am, to see a woman of over fonr-score years of a<;e appear before yon at this time. 
 She came into the world and reached years of matnrity and discretion before any per- 
 son in this room was born. She now comes before you to i)lead that she can vote and 
 have all the ])rivileiies that men have. She has sntfored so mncli individually tliat 
 she thought when she was xouuii- she had no riiiht to speak before the men ; but still 
 she had courage to <?et an education ecpial to that of any man at the college, and she 
 had to sutler a great deal on that account. She went to New Haven to sthool, and it 
 was noised that she had studied the languages. It was such an astonishing thing for 
 girls at that time to have the advantages of education that I had absolutely to goto 
 cotillion i)arties to let people see that I had connuon sense. [Laughter.] 
 
 She has >utlered; she had to i)ay nmney. She has had to i)ay $2i)0 a year in taxes 
 without the least privilege of knowiug what bt-comes of it. She does not know but 
 that it goes to support grog-shops. She knows nothing about it. She has had to suf- 
 fer her cows to be sold at the sign-i)ost six times. She suttered her meadow land to 
 be sold, worth S*2,000, for a tax of less than !S50. If she could vote as the men do .she 
 would not have sutfered this insult ; and so much would not have been said against 
 her as has been said if men did not have the whole power. I was told that they had 
 the power to take anything that I owned if I would not exert myself to pay the 
 money, I felt that I ought to have some little voice in determining what should be 
 done with what I jniid. I felt that I ought to own my own property; that it ought 
 not to be in these men's hands ; and I now come to plead that I Tuay liave the same 
 privileges before the law that men have. I have seen what a difference there is, when 
 I have had my cows sold, by having a voter to take my part. 
 
 I have come from an obscure town (I cannot say that it is obscure exactly) on the 
 banks of the Connecticut, where I was born. I was brought up on a farm. I never 
 had an idea that it could be possible that I should ever come all the way to Washing- 
 ton to speak before tho.se who had not come into existence when I was born. Now, 
 I plead that there may be a sixteenth amendment, and that women may be allowed 
 the i^rivilege of owning their own property. That is what I have taken pains to ac- 
 complish. I have sutfered so much myself that I felt it might have some etfect to 
 plead before this honorable committee. I thank you, gentlemen, for hearing me so 
 
 REMARKS BY MRS. ELIZABETH L. SAXON, OF LOUISIANA. 
 
 Mrs. Saxox. Gentlemen: I almost feel that after Mrs. Wallace's plea there is scarcely 
 a necessity for me to say anything ; she echoed my own feelings so entirely. I come 
 from the extreme South, she from the West. In this delegation, and in tlie conven- 
 tion which has just been held in this city, women have come together who never met 
 before. People have asked me why I came. I care nothing for sutt'rage so far as to 
 stand beside men, or rush to the polls, or take any privilege outside of my home, 
 only, as Mrs. Wallace says, for humanity. Years ago, when a little child, I lost my 
 mother, and I was brought up by a man. If I have not a man's brain I had at least 
 a man's instruction. Ho taught me that to work in the cause of reform for women 
 was just as great as to work in the cause of reform for men. But in every etibrt I 
 made in the cause of reform I was combated in one direction or another. I never 
 took part with the sutfragists, I never realized the importance of their cause, until 
 we were beaten back on every side in the work of reform. If we attempted to put 
 ■women in charge of pri.sons, believing that wherever woman sins and suffers women 
 should be there to teach, help, and guide, every place was in the hands of men. If 
 we made an etfort to get women on the school boards we were cojnbatedand could do 
 nothing. Every place seemed to be changed, when there were good men in tho.se 
 places, by changes of politics, and the mothers of the land, having had to i)rostrate 
 themselves as beggars, if not in fact, really in sentiment and feeling, have become at 
 last almost desi)erate. 
 
 In the State of Texas I had a niece living who.se father was an inmate of a lunatic 
 asylum. She exerted as wide an influence in the State of Texas as any woman there. 
 I allude4;o Miss Mollis Moore, who was the ward of Mr, Cushing. I give this illustra- 
 tion as a reason why Southern women are taking part in thisnu^vemeut. Mr, Wallace 
 had charge of that lunatic asylum for years. He was a good, honorable, ablo mau. 
 Everj- one was endeared to him ; every one appreciated him ; the Stjite appreciated 
 him as superintendent of this a.sylum. 
 
 When a political change was nuide and Governor Robinson came in. Dr. Wallace 
 was ousted for ])olitical purposes. It almost broke the hearts of some of the women 
 who had sons, <iaughters. or husbands there. They determiiu'd at once to try to .seek 
 
24 
 
 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 some redi e.s8aiid ha ve him reinstated. It was inii)OSHible. He was out, and what could 
 we do? I do not know that we could reach a case like that; but such cases have 
 stirred the women of the whole laud, for the reason that when they try to do good, or 
 want to help in the cause of humanity, they are comhated so bitterly and persistently. 
 
 I leave it to older and abler w omen, who have labored in this cause so long, to ^jrove 
 whether it is or is not constitutional to give the ballot to women. 
 
 A gentleman said to me a few days ago, These women want to marry." I am mar- 
 ried ; I am a mother ; and in our home the sous and brothers are all standing like a 
 wall of steel at my back. I have cast aside every prejudice of the past. They lie like 
 rotted hulks behind me. 
 
 After the fever of 1878, when our constitutional convention was going to convene, I 
 broke the agony and grief of my own heart, for one of ujy children died, and took part m 
 the suffrage movement in Louisiana, with the wife of Chief- Jmstice Merrick, Mrs. Sarah 
 A. Dorsey, and Mrs. Harriet Keatinge, of New York, the niece of Mr. Lozier. These 
 three ladies aided me faithfully and ably. When they found we would be received, I 
 went before the convention, I went to Lieutenant-Governor Wiltz, and asked him if 
 he would present or consider a petition which I wished to bring before the convention. 
 He read the petition. One clause of our State law is that no woman can sign a will. 
 We will have that question decided before the meeting of the next legislature. Some 
 ladies donated property to an asylum. They wrote the will and signed it themselves, 
 and it was null and void, because the signers were women. They not knowing the 
 law, believed that they were human beings, and signed it. That clause, perhaps, 
 will be wiped out. Many gentlemen signed the petition on that account. I took the 
 paper around myself. Governor Wiltz, then lieut<-nant-governor, told me he would 
 present the petition. He was elected president of the convention. I presented my 
 tirst i)etitiou, signed by the best names in the city of New Orleans and in the State. 
 
 I had the names of seven of the most prominent physicians there, leading with the 
 name of Dr. Logan, and many men, seeing the name of Dr. Samuel Logan, also signed 
 it. I went to all the ditt'erent |)hysicians and n)inisters. Three prominent ministers 
 signed it for moral purposes alone. When Mrs. Dorsey was on her dying bed the last 
 time she ever signed her name was to a letter to go before that convention. No one 
 believed she would die. Mrs. Merrick and myself went before the conveiition. I was 
 invited before the conmiittee on the judiciary. I made an impression favorable enough 
 thereto be invited before the convention with these ladies. I addressed the conven- 
 tion. We made the petition then that we make here ; that we, the mothers of the 
 land, are bap^'ed on every side in 'the cause of reform. I have strived hard in the work 
 of reform for women. I pledged my father on his flying bed that I would never cease 
 that work until woman stood wdth man equal before the law, so far a^ my efforts could 
 accomplish it. Fiuding myself baffled in that work, I could only take the course which 
 we have adopted, and urge the proposition of the sixteenth amendment. 
 
 I beg of you, gentlemen, to consider this question apart from the manner in which 
 it was formerly considered. We, as the women of the nation, as the motln is, as the 
 wives, have a right to be heard, it seems to me, before the nation. We represent 
 precisely the position of the colonies when they plead, and, in the words of Patrick 
 Henry, they were "spurned with contempt from the foot of the throne." We have 
 been jeered and laughed at and ridiculed; but this question has passed out of the 
 region of ridicule. 
 
 The moral force inheres in woman and in man alike, and unless we use all the moral 
 power of the Government we certainly cannot exist as a Government. 
 
 We talk of centralization, we talk of division; we have the seeds of decay in our 
 Government, and unless right soon we use the moral force and bring it forward in all 
 its strength and bearing, we certainly cannot exist as a happy nation. We do not exist 
 as a hap{)y nation now. This clamor for woman's suffrage, for woman's rights, for 
 equal re]>resentation, is extending all over the land. 
 
 I plead beca usenjy work has been combatted in the cause of reform CA^ery where that 
 I have tried to accomplish anything. The children that fill the houses of prostitution 
 are not of foreign blood and race. They come from sweet American homes, and for 
 every woman that went down some mother's heart broke. I plead by the power of 
 the ballot to be allowed to help reform women and benefit mankind. 
 
 REMARKS OF MRS. MARY A. STEWART, OF DELAWARE. 
 
 Mrs. Stewart; I come from a small State, but one that is represented in this Con- 
 gress, I consider, by some of the ablest men in the land. Our State, though small, 
 has heretofore possessed and to-day possesses brains. Our sons have no more right 
 to brains than our daugliters, yet we are tied down by every chain that could bind 
 the Georgian slave befon^ the war. Aye, we are worse slaves, because the Georgian 
 slave could go to the sah^ block and tliere be sold. The woman of Delaware must 
 sul)mit to her chains, as tliere is no sale for her; she is of no account. 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 25 
 
 Womau from all time has occupied the liij>;he.st positions in the world. She is jnst 
 as competent to-day as she was hundreds of years ago. We are taxed without leprc- 
 sentation ; there is no mistake about that. The colonies screamed that to Enj^hmd ; 
 Parliament screamed back, "Be still; long live the king, and we will help you." 
 Did the colonies submit? They did not. Will the wonuui of tins country submit? 
 They will not. Mark me, we are the sisters of those hghting Kevolut iouary uumi ; we 
 are the daughters of the fathers who sang back to England that they would not sub- 
 mit. Then, if the same blood courses in our veins that courses in yours, dare you ex- 
 pect us to submit f 
 
 The white men of this country have thrown out ui)on us, the women, a race inferior, 
 you must admit, to your daughters, and yet that race has the ballot, and why ? He 
 has a right to it ; he earned and paid for it with his blood. Whose blood ])aid for yours f 
 Not your blood; it was the bloo<l of yf)ur forefathers; and were they not our tore- 
 fathers f Does a num earn a l^udred thousand dollars and lie down ami die, saying, 
 " It is all my boys' f Not a bit of it. He <li<\s saying, " Let my (;hildren, be they 
 cri[)ples, be they idiots, be they boys, or be they girls, inherit all my property alike." 
 Then let us inherit the sweet boon of the ballot alike. 
 
 When our fathers were driving the great ship of state we were willing to ride as 
 deck or cabin passengers, just as we felt disposed ; we had nothing to say; but to-day 
 the boys are about to run the ship aground, and it is high time that the nmtiiers 
 should be asking, "What do you nu>antodo?" It is high time that the mothers 
 should be denumding what they .should long since have had. 
 
 In our own little State the laws have been very much modified in regard to women. 
 My father was the first num to blot out the old English law allowing the eldef^t son 
 the right of inheritance to the real estate. He took the first step, and like all those 
 who take first stejis in improvement and reform he received a mountain of curses 
 from the oldest male heirs ; but it did not matter to him. 
 
 Since I have, by niy own individual efforts, by the use of hard-earned money, 
 gone to our legislature time after time and have had this law and that law passed for 
 the benefit of the women ; and the same little ship of state has sailed on. To-day our 
 men are just as well satisfied with the laws of our State for the benefit of women in 
 force as they were years ago. In our State a woman has a right to make a will. In 
 our State she can hold bonds and mortgages as her own. In our State she has a right 
 to her own property. She cannot sell it, though, if it is real estate, sini})ly because 
 the moment she marries her husband has a life-time right. The woman does not 
 grumble at that; but s^ill when he dies owning real estate, she gets only the rental 
 value of one-third, which is called the widow's dower. Now I think the man ought 
 to have the rental value of one-third of the woman's niaiden property or real estate, 
 .Mid it ought to be called the widower's dower. It would be just as fair for one as for 
 the other. All that I want is equality. 
 
 The Avonien of our State, as 1 said before, are taxed without representation. The 
 tax-gatherer comes every year and demands taxes. For twenty years have I paid 
 tax under protest, and if I live twenty years longer I shall pay it under protest every 
 time. The tax-gatherer came to my place not long since. " Well," said I, " good 
 morning, sir." Said he, Good morning." He smiled and said, "I have come l)oth- 
 ering you." Said I, ''I know your face well. You have come to get a right nice lit- 
 tle woman's tongue-lashing," Said he, " I suppose so, but if you will just pay your 
 tax I will leave." I paid the tax, "But," said I, "remember I pay it under protest, 
 and if I ever pay another tax I intend to have the protest written and make the tax- 
 gatherer sign it before I pay the tax, and if he will not sign that i)rotest then I shall 
 not pay the tax, and there will be a fight at once." Said he, " Why do you keej) all 
 the time protesting against ])aying this small tax f ' Said I. " Whv do you pay your 
 tax ?" " Well," said Lie, " I would not pay it if I did not' vote."" Said I, " that is 
 the very reason w liy I do not want to pay it. I cannot, vote and I do not want to pay 
 it." Now the women have no right when election day comes around. Who stay at 
 home from the election ? The women and the black and' white men who have been 
 to the whipping-post.. Nice company to put your wives and daughters in. 
 
 It is said that the women do not want to vote. Here is an array of women. Every 
 woman sitting here wants to vote, and must we be debarred the privilege of voting 
 because'some luxurious woman, rolling around in her carriage and pair in her little 
 downy nest that some good, benevolent nfau has provided for her, does not want to 
 vote ? 
 
 There was a society that existed up in the State of New York called the Cove- 
 nanters that never voted. A man who belonged to that sect or society, a man whiter- 
 haired than any of you, said to me, " I never voted. I never intende<l to vote. I 
 never felt that 1 could conscientiously support a Government that had its Ct)ustitii- 
 tion blotted and blackened with the word 'slave,' and 1 never did vote until after 
 the abolition of slavery." Now, were all you men disfranchised because that class or 
 sect u]) in New York would not vote 1 Did you all ])ay your taxes and stay at home 
 and refrain trom voting because the Covenanters did not vote ? Not a bit of it. You 
 went to the election and told them to stay at home if they wanted to, but that you, 
 
26 
 
 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 as citizens, were going to take care of yourselves. That was right. We, as citizens, 
 want to take care of ourselves. 
 
 One more thought, arid I will be through. The fourteenth and tifteenth ameud- 
 raents give the right of suffrage to women, so far as I know, although you learned 
 men perluqis see a little differently. I see through the glass dimly ; you may see 
 tl) rough it after it is polished up. The fourteenth aud fifteenth amendments, in my 
 opij)ion, and in the opinion of a great many smart men in the country, and smart 
 women, too, give the right to women to vote without any "ifs" or "ands" about it, 
 and the United States protects us in it ; but there are a few who construe the law to 
 suit themselves, aud say that those amendiiients do not mean that, because the Con- 
 gress that passed the fourteenth and tifteenth amendments did not mean to do that. 
 Well, the Congress that passed them were mean enough for anything if they did not 
 moan to do that. Let the wise Congress of to-day take tlifc eighth chapter and the 
 fourth verse of the Psalms, which says, "What is i*an, that Thou art mindful of 
 him ?" aud amend it by adding, What is woman, that they never thought of her?" 
 
 REMARKS BY MRS. LUCINDA B. CHANDLER, OF PENNSYLVANIA. 
 
 Mrs. Chandler. Gentlemen, it will be conceded that the progress of civilization, 
 all that lifts humanity above a groveling, sensual, depraved state, is marked by the 
 position, intelligence, and culture of women. Perhaps you think that American 
 women have no rightful claim to present: but American women and mothers do claim 
 that they should have the power to protect their children, not only at the hearth- 
 stone, but to supervise their education. It is neither presuming nor unwomauly for 
 the mothers and women of the land to claim that they are competent and best fitted, 
 and that it rightfully belougs to them to take part in the management and control 
 of the schools, and the instruction, l)oth intellectual and moral, of their children, and 
 that in penal, eleemosynary, or reformatory institutions women should have positions 
 as inspectors of prisons, physicians, directors, and superintendents. 
 
 I have here a brief report from an association which sent me as a delegate to the 
 ^iational Woman Sufliage Convention, in which it is stated that women in Pennsyl- 
 vania can be elected as directors on school boards or superintendents of schools, but 
 €annot help to elect those officers. It must very readily occur to your minds that 
 when women take such interest in the schools as mothers must needs take they must 
 feel many a wish to control the election of the officers, superintendents, and managers 
 of the schools. The ladies here from New York City could, if they had time, give 
 you much testimony in regard to the management of schools in New York City, aud 
 the need there of woman's love and woman's power in the schools and on the school 
 boards. I am also authorized by the association which sent me here to report that 
 the woman-sulfragists and some.other woman organizations of the city of Philadelphia 
 have condemned in resolution the action of the governor a year ago, I think, in veto- 
 ing a bill which passed largely both houses of the legislature to appoint women in- 
 spectors of prisons. On such questions woman feels the need of the ballot. 
 
 The mothers of this land, having breathed the air of freedom and received the ben- 
 efits of education, have come to see the necessity of better conditi ms to fulfill their 
 divinely appointed aud universally recognized office. The mothers of this land claim 
 that they have aright to assist m making thjelaws which control the social relations. 
 We are under the laws inherited from barbarism. They are not the conditions suited 
 to the best exercise of the office of woman, and the women desire the ballot to purge 
 society of the vices that are sure to disintegrate the home, the State, the nation. 
 
 I shall not occujiy your time further this morning. I only present briefly the 
 mother's claim, as it is so universally conceded. We now have in our schools a very 
 large majority of women teachers, aud it seems to me no one can but recognize the 
 fact that mothers, through their experience in the family, mothers who are at all 
 ■competent and fit to fulfill their position as mothers in the family, are best fitted to 
 understand the needs and at least should have an equal voice in directing the man- 
 agement of the schools, and also the management of penal and reformatory institu- 
 tions. 
 
 I was in hopes that Mrs. Wallace would give you the testimony she gave us in the 
 convention of the wonderful, amazing good that was accomplished in a reformatory 
 institution where an incorrigible woman was taken from the men's prison aud became 
 not only very tractable, but very helpful in an institution uuder the influence and 
 management of women. That reformatory institution is managed wholly by women. 
 There is not a man, ]\Irs. Wallace says, in the building, except the engineer who con- 
 trols the fire departmeut. Under a luanagement wholly by women, the institution is 
 a very great success. We feel sure that in many ways the influence and power that 
 the motliers bring would tend to convert many conditions that are now tending to 
 destruction through vices, would tend to elevate us morally, purify us, bring us still 
 higher in the standard of humanity, and make us what we ought to be, a holy as well 
 as a happy nation. 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 27 
 
 REMARKS BY MRS. SARA A. SPENCER, OF WASHINGTON. 
 
 Mrs. Spencer. Miss Susan B. Anthony was chosen to jnosent tlie constitutional 
 argument in our case before the committee. Unless there is more important business 
 for the individual niembers of the committee than the protection of one-luilf of our 
 population, I trust tliat the limit tixed for our hearing will be extended. 
 
 The Chaihmax. Miss Anthony is entitled to an hour. 
 
 Mrs. Spencer. Good. Miss Anthon3' is from the United States; the whole United 
 States (daini her. 
 
 Mrs. Ai.LEN. I have made arrangements with Miss Anthony to say all that I feel it 
 necessary for me to say at this time. 
 
 Mrs. Spenceu. I have beeu so informed. 
 
 REMARKS BY MRS. NANCY R. ALLEN, OF IOWA. 
 
 Mrs. Allen. Mr. Chairnuan and gentlemen of the Judiciary Committee : I am not 
 a State representative, but I am a representative of a large class of women, citizens 
 of Iowa, who are heavy tax-payers. That is a subject which we are very seriously 
 contemplating at this time. There is now a petition being circulated throughout our 
 State, to lie presented to tlie legislature, praying that women be exempted from tax- 
 ation until they have some voice in the nuinagenieut of local atl'airs and the atfairs of 
 the State. You may ask. " Do not your husbands protect you? Are not all the men 
 protecting you ? " \\e answer that our husbajuls are grand, noble men, who are will- 
 ing to do all they can for us, but there are uumy Avho have no husbands, and who 
 own a great deal of property in the State of Iowa. Particularly in great moral re- 
 forms the women there feel the need of the ballot. By presenting long petitions to 
 the legislature they have succeeded in having better temperance laws enacted, but 
 the men have failed to elect otticials who will enforce those laws. Consequently they 
 have become as dead letters upon the statute-books. 
 
 I would refer again to taxes. I have a list showing that in my city three women 
 pay more taxes than all the city ofificials included. Those women are good temperance 
 women. Our city council is composed almost entirely of saloon men and those who 
 visit saloons and brewery men. There are some good men, but the good men being 
 in the minority, the voices of these women are but little regarded. All these otficials 
 are paid, and we have to help support them. All that we ask is an equality of rights. 
 As Sumner said, ''Equality of rights is the tirst of rights." If we can only be equal 
 with man under the law it is all that we ask. We do not propose to relinquish our 
 domestic circles; in fact, they are too dear to us for that ; they are dear to us as life 
 itself; but we do ask that we may be permitted to be represented. Equality of tax- 
 ation without representation is tyranny. 
 
 REMARKS BY MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY, OF NEW YORK. 
 
 Miss Anthony. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen: Mrs. Spencer said that I would 
 make an argument. I do not propose to"do so, because I take it for granted that the 
 members of this committee understand that we have all the argument on our side, 
 and such an argument would be simply a series of platitudes and maxims of govern- 
 ment. The theory of this Government from the beginning has been perfect equality 
 to all the i)eople. That is shown by every one of the fundamental i)rinciples, which 
 I need not stop to repeat. Such being the theory, the apjdication would be, of course, 
 that all persons not having forfeited their right to representation in the Government 
 should be possessed of it at the age of twenty -one. But instead of adopting a practice 
 in conformity with the theory of our Government, we began lirst by saying that all 
 men of property were the ]»eople of the nation u])on whom the Constitution conferred 
 equality of rights. The next step was that all white men were the people to whom 
 should be })ractioally applied the fundamental theories. There we halt to-day and 
 stand at a deadlock so far as the api)lication of our theory may go. We women have 
 been standing before the American Republic for thirty years asking the men to take 
 yet one ste|) further and extend the practical api)licatiou of the theory of equality of 
 rights to all the people to the other half of the people, the women. That is all that 
 I stand here to-day to attempt to demand. 
 
 Of course, I take it for granted that the committee are in sympathy at least with 
 the reports of the Judiciary Committees presented both in the Senate and the House. 
 I remember that after the adoption of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments Sena- 
 tor Edmunds re])orted on the petition of the ten thousand foreign-born citizetis of 
 Rhode Island who were denied equality of rights in Rhode Island simply because of 
 
28 
 
 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 their foreign birth ; and in that report held that the amendments were enacted and 
 attached to the Constitution simply for men of color, and therefore that their provis- 
 ions could not be so construed as to bring within their purview the men of foreign 
 birth in Rhode Island. Then the House Committee on the Judiciary, with Judge 
 Bingham, of Ohio, at its head, made a similar report upon our petitions, holding that 
 because those amendments were made essentially with the black men in view, there- 
 fore their provisions could not be extended to the women citizens of this country or 
 to any class except men citizens of color. 
 
 I voted in the State of New York in 1872 under the construction of. those amend- 
 ments, which we felt to be the true one, that all persons born in the United States, or 
 any State thereof, and under the jurisdiction of the United States, were citizens, and 
 entitled to equality of rights, and that no State could deprive them of their equality 
 of rights. I found three young men, inspectors of election,-^vho were simple enough 
 to read the Constitution and understand it in accordance with what was the letter 
 and what should have been its spirit. Then, as you will remember, I was prosecuted 
 by the officers of the Federal court, and the cause was carried through the differen t 
 courts in the State of New York, in the northern district, and at last I was brought 
 to trial at Canandaigua. When Mr. Justice Hunt was brought from the Supreme 
 bench to sit upon that trial, he wrested my case from the hands of the jury altogether, 
 after having listened three days to testimony, and brought in a verdict himself of 
 guilty, denying to my counsel even the poor privilege of having the jury polled. 
 Through all that trial when I, as a citizen of the United States, as a citizen of the 
 State of New York and city of Rochester, as a person who had done something at least 
 that might have entitled her to a voice in speaking for herself and for her class, in all 
 that trial I not only was denied my right to testify as to whether I voted or not, but 
 there was not one single woman's voice to be heard nor to be considered, except as 
 witnesses, save when it came to the judg*e asking, Has the x)risouer anything to say 
 why sentence shall not be pronounced?" Neither as judge, nor as attorney, nor as 
 jury was I allowed any person who could be legitimately called my peer to speak for 
 me. 
 
 Then, as you will remember, Mr. Justice Hunt not only pronounced the verdict i 
 of guilty, but a sentence of .flOO fine and costs of prosecution. I said to him, "May 
 it please your honor, I do not propose to pay it;" and I never have paid it, and I 
 never shall. I asked your honorable bodies of Congress the next year — in lb74 — to 
 pass a resolution to remit that hue. Both houses refused it; the committees reported 
 agaiust it; though through Benjamin F. Butler, in the House, and a member of your 
 committee, and Matthew H. Carpenter, in the Senate, there were plenty of precedents 
 brought forward to show that in the cases of multitudes of men fines had been remitted. 
 I state this merely to show the need of woman to speak for herself, to be as judge, to 
 be as juror. 
 
 Mr. Justice Hunt in his opinion stated that suffrage was a fundamental right, and 
 therefore a right that belonged to the State. It seemed to me that was just as much 
 of a retroversion of the theory of what is right in our Government as there could pos- 
 sibly be. Then, after the decision in my case came that of Mrs. Minor, of Missouri. 
 She prosecuted the officers there for denying her the right to vote. She carried her 
 case up to your Supreme Court, aud the Supreme Court answered her the same way; 
 that the amendments were made for black men; that their provisions could not pro- 
 tect women; that the Constitution of the United States has no voters of its own. 
 
 Mrs. Spencer. And you remember Judge Cartter's decision in my case. 
 
 Miss Anthony. Mr. Cartter said that women are citizens and may be qualified, 
 &.C., but that it requires some sort of legislation to give them the right to vote. 
 
 The Congress of the United States notwithstanding, and the Supreme Court of the 
 United States notwithstanding, with all deference and respect, I differ with them all, 
 and know that I am right and that they are wrong. The Constitution of the United 
 States as it is protects me. If I could get a practical application of the Constitution 
 it would protect me and all women in the enjoyment of perfect equality of rights 
 everywhere under the shadow of the American flag. 
 
 I do not come to you to petition for special legislation, or for any more amendments 
 to the Constitution, because I think they are unnecessary, but because you say there 
 is not in the Constitution er.ough to protect me. Therefoie I ask that you, true to 
 your own theory and assertion, should go forward to make more constitution. 
 
 Let me remind you thai in the case of all other classes of citizens under the shadow 
 of our flag you have been true to the theory that taxation and representation ar<^ in- 
 separable. ^Indiiins not taxed are not counted in the basis of representation, and are 
 not allowed to vote ; but the minute that your Indians are counted in the basis of 
 representation and are alio we 1 to vote they are taxed ; never before. In my State of 
 New York, and in nearly all the States, the members of the State militia, hundreds 
 and thousands of men, are exempted from taxation on proi)erty ; in my State to the 
 value of $?^()0, and in inost of the States to a value in that neighborhood. While such 
 a member of the militia lives, receives his salary, and is able to rarn moTiey. he is ex- 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 29 
 
 empted ; but wiien he dies the assessor puts his widow's uanie down upon the asses- 
 sor's list, and the tax collector never fails to call upon the widow and make her i)ay 
 the full tax upon her property. In most of the States cler<;ymen are exempted. In 
 my State of New York they are exem])te(l on i)roperty to the value of §1,500. As lon<; 
 as the clerjjjyman lives and receives his fat salary, or his lean one, as tlie case may he, 
 he is exempted on that amount of ])ro\)erty ; but when the l)reath leaves the body of 
 the clertj^ynian, and the widow is left without any income, or wilhout an}" means ot 
 support, the State comes in and taxes the widow. 
 
 So it is with regard to all black men. In the State of New York up to the day of 
 the passage of the tifteenth amendment, black men who were willing to renniin with- 
 out reporting themselves worth as much as 8"^i30, and thereby to reiiniin without ex- 
 ercising th ' right to vote, never had their names put on the assessor's list ; they were 
 passed by, while, if the poorest colored woman owned .50 feet of real estate, a little 
 cabin anywhere, that cohn-ed woman's name was always on the assessor's list, and she 
 was comi)el]ed to pay her tax. While Frederick Douglas lived in my State he was 
 never allowed to vote until he could show himself worth the re(]uisite i^2b0; and when 
 he did vote in New York, he voted not because he was a man, not because he was 
 a citizen of the United States, nor yet because he was a citizen of the State, but 
 simply be(,'ause he was worth the ret{uisite amount of money. In Connecticut both 
 black men and black women were exem})ted from taxation prior to the adoption 
 of the fifteenth amendment. The law was amended in 1848, by which black men 
 were thus exempted, and black women followed the same rule in that State. That, 
 I believe, is the only State where black women were exempted from taxation un- 
 der the law. When the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments were attached to the 
 Constitution they carried to the black man of Connecticut the boon of the ballot, as 
 well as the burden of taxation, whereas they carried to the black woman of Con- 
 necticut the burden of taxation, but no ballot by which to protect her property. I 
 know a colored woman in New Haven, Conn., worth 850,000, and she never paid a 
 penny of taxation until the ratification of the tifteenth a.iiendment. From that day 
 on she is compelled to pay a heavy tax on that amount of property. 
 
 Mrs. Spexcer. Is it because she is a citizen f Please explain. 
 
 Miss Anthony. Because she is black. 
 
 Mrs. Spencer. Is it because the fourteenth and tifteenth amendments made women 
 citizens ? 
 
 Miss Anthony. Certainly; because it declared the black people citizens. 
 
 Gentlemen, you have before you various propositions of amendment to the Federal 
 Constitution. One is for the .election of President by the vote of the people direct. 
 Of course women are not people. 
 
 Senator Edmunds. Angels. 
 
 Miss Anthony. Yes ; angels up in Heaven or else devils down there. 
 Senator Edmunds: I have never known any of that kind. 
 
 Miss Anthony. I wish you, gentlemen, would look down there and see the myriads 
 that are there. We want to help them and lift them up. That is exactly the trouble 
 with you, gentlemen ; you are forever looking at your own wives, your own njothers, 
 your own sisters, and your own daughters, and they are well cared for and protected; 
 but only look down to the struggling masses of women who have no one to protect 
 them, neither husband, father, brother, son, with no mortal in all the land to protect 
 them. If you would look down there the question would be solved ; but the difficulty 
 is that you think only of those who are doing well. We are not speaking for our- 
 selves, but for those who cannot speak for themselves. We are speaking for the 
 doomed as much as you. Senator Edmunds, used to speak for the doomed on'the plan- 
 tations of the South. 
 
 Amendments have been proposed to put God in the Constitution and to keep God out 
 of the Constitution. All sorts of propositions to amend the Constitution have been 
 made ; but I ask that you allow no other amendment to be called the sixteenth but 
 that which shall put into the hands of one-half of the entire i)eople of the nation the 
 right to express th^ir opinions as to how the Constitution shall be amended hence- 
 forth. Women have the right to. say whether we shall have God in the Constitution 
 as well as men. Women have a right to say whether we shall have a national law or 
 an amendment to the Constitution prohibiting the importation or manufacture of alco- 
 holic liquors. We have a right to have our opinions counted on every possible ques- 
 tion concerning the public welfare. 
 
 You ask us why we do not get this right to vote first in the school districts, and on 
 school questions, or the questions of liquor license. It has been shown very clearly 
 why we need something more than that. You have good enough laws to-day in every 
 State in this Union for the suppression of what are termed the social vices: for the sup- 
 pression of the grog-shops, the gambling houses, the brothels, the obscene shows. 
 There is plenty of legislation in every State in this Union for their suppression if it 
 could be executed. Why is the Government, why are the States and the cities, unable 
 to execute those lawsf Simply because there is a largo balance of power in every city 
 
30 
 
 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 that does not want those laws executed. Consequently both parties must alike cater 
 to that balance of political power. The party that puts a plank in its platform that 
 the laws against the grog-shops and all the other sinks of iniquity must be executed, 
 is the party that will not get this balance of power to vote for it, and, consequently, 
 the party that cannot get into power. 
 
 What we ask of you is that you will make of the women of the cities a balance of 
 political power, so that when a mayor, a member of the common council, si supervisor, 
 a justice of the peace, a district attorney, a judge on the bench even, shall go before 
 the ])e(q)le of tliat city as a candidate for the sutfrages of the people he shall not only 
 be compelled to look to the men who frequent the grog-shops, the brothels, and the 
 gambling houses, who will vote for hinj if he is not in favor of executing the law, 
 but that he shall have to look to the mothers, the sisters, the wives, the daughters 
 of those deluded men to see what they will do if he does not^^xecute the law. 
 
 We want to make of ourselves a balance of political power. What we need is the 
 power to execute the laws. We have got laws enough. Let me give you one little 
 fact in regard to my own city of Eochester. You all know how that wonderful whip, 
 called the temperance crusade, roused the whisky ring. It caused the whisky force 
 to concentrate itself more strongly at the ballot-box than ever before, so that when 
 the report of the elections in the spring of 1874 went over the country, the yesnlt was 
 that the whisky ring was triumphant, and that the whisky ticket was elected more 
 largely than ever before. Senator Thurman will remember how it was in his own 
 State of Ohio. Everybody knows that if my friends, Mrs. Ex-Governor Wallace, Mrs. 
 Allen, and all the women of the great West could have gone to the ballot-box at 
 those municipal elections and voted for candidates, no such result would have oc- 
 curred ; while }on refused by the laws of the State to the women the right to have 
 their opinions counted, every rumseller, every drankard, every pauper even from the 
 poor-house, and every criminal outside of the State's prison came out on election day 
 to express his opinion and have it counted. 
 
 The next result of that political event was that the ring demanded new legislation 
 to protect the whisky trathc everywhere. In my city the women did not crusade the 
 streets, but they said they would help the men to execute the law. Thej' held meet- 
 ings, sent out committees, and had testimony secured against every man who had vio- 
 lated the law, and when the board of excise held its meeting those women assembled, 
 three or four hundred, in the church one morning, and marched in a solid body to the 
 common council chamber where the board of excise was sitting. As one rum-seller 
 after another brought in his petition for a renewal of license who had violated the 
 law, those women presented the testimonv against him.. The law of the State of New 
 York is that no man shall have a uenewai who has violated the law. But in not one 
 case did that board refuse to grant a renewal of license because of the testimony which 
 those women presented, and at the close of the sitting it was found that twelve hun- 
 dred more licenses had been granted than ever before in the history of ttie State. 
 Then the defeated women said they would have those men punished according to law. 
 Again they retained an attorney and appointed committees to investigate all over the 
 city. They got the proper ofticer to prosecute every rum-seller. I was at their meet- 
 ing. One woman reported that the officer in every city refused to prosecute the liquor 
 dealer who had violated the law. Why ? Beca;use if he should do so he would lose 
 the votes of all the employes of certain shops on that street, if another he would lose 
 the votes of the railroad employes, and if another he would lose the German vote, if 
 another the Irish vote, and so on. I said to those women what I say to you, and what 
 I know to be true to-day, that if tlie w^omen of the city of Rochester had held the 
 power of the ballot in their hands they would have been a great political balance of 
 power. 
 
 The last report was from District Attorney Raines. The women comx)lained of a 
 certain lager-beer-garden keeper. Said the district attorney, "Ladies, you are right, 
 this man is violating the law, everbody knows it, but if I should prosecute him I 
 would lose the entire German vote." Said I, " Ladies, do you not see that if the women 
 of the city of Rochester had the right to vote, District Attorney Raines would have 
 been compelled to have stopped and counted, weighed aud measured. He would 
 have said, 'If I prosecute that lager-beer German I shall lose the 5,000 German votes 
 of this city, but if I fail to prosecute him and execute the laws I shall lose the votes 
 of 20,000 women.'" 
 
 Do you not see, gentlemen, that so long as you put this power of the ballot in the 
 hands of every possible man, rich, poor, drunk, sober, educated, ignorant, outside of 
 the State's prison, to make and unmake, not only every law and law-maker, but every 
 office-holder who has to do with the executing of the law, and take the power from 
 the hands of the women of the nation, the mothers, you put the long arm of the lever, 
 as we call it in mechanics, in the hands of the whisky power and make it utterly im- 
 possible for regulation of sobrietj^ to be maintained in our community? The first 
 step towards social regulation and good society in towns, cities, and villages is the 
 ballot in the hands of the mothers of those places. I appeal to you especially in this 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 31 
 
 matter. I do not know what you think about the proper sphere of women. It 
 matters little what any of us think about it. We shall each and every individual 
 lind our own proper sphere if we are left to act in freedom ; but my opinion is that 
 when the whole arena of politics and o;overninent is thrown open to woniejx they 
 will endeavor to do very much as they <l() in their homes; that tin; men will look 
 after the <^reenback theory or the hard-money theory, that you will look after fnje- 
 trade or tariff, and the women will do the home housekeeping of the gov(M iinuuit, 
 which is to take care of the moral government and the social regulation of oui' homo 
 department. 
 
 It seems to me that we have the power of government outside to shape and control 
 circumstances, but that the inside power, the government houseke(^ping, is i)owerless, 
 and is compelled to aecept whatever conditions or circumstances shall be granted. 
 
 Therefore I do not ask for lifpior suffrage alone, nor foi- school suffrage aloni', be- 
 cause that would amount to ru)thing. We must be able to have a voice in the elec- 
 tion not oidy of every law-maker, bub of every one who has to do either with the 
 making or the executing of the laws. 
 
 Then you ask why we do not get suffrage by the popular-vote method, State by 
 State? I answer because there is no reason why I, for instauce, sh(»uld desire the 
 women of oue State of this nation to vote any more than the women of another State. 
 I have no more interest as regards the women of New York than I have as regards the 
 women of Indiana, Iowa, or any of the States represented by the women avIio have 
 come u)> here. The reason why I do not wish to get this right by what you call the 
 poj)ular-vote method, the State vote, is because I believe there is a United States 
 citizenship. I believe that this is a nation, and to be a citizen of this nation should 
 be a guaranty to every citizen of the right to a voice in the Government, and should 
 give to me my right to express my opinion. You deny to me my liberty, my freedom, 
 if you say that I shall have no A^oice whatever in making, shaping, or controlling the 
 conditions of vSoeiety in which I live. I differ from Judge Hunt, and I hope I am re- 
 spectful when I say that I think he made a very funny mistake when he said that 
 fundamental rights belong to the States and only surface rights to the National 
 Government. I hope you will agree with me that the fundamental right of citizen- 
 ship, the right to voice in the Government, is a national right. 
 
 The National Government nuiy concede to the States the right to decide by a ma- 
 jority as to what banks they shall have, what laws they shall enact with regard to 
 insurance, with regard to property, and any other question ; but I insist upon it that 
 the National Government should not leave it a question with the States that the ma- 
 jority in any State may disfranchise the minority under any circumstances whatso- 
 ever. The franchise to you men is not secure. You hold it to-day, to be sure, by the 
 common consent of white men, but if at any time, on your principle of government, 
 the majority of any of the States shoukl choose to amend the State constitution so as 
 to disfranchise this or that portion of the white men by making this or that condi- 
 tion, by all the decisions of the Supreme Court and by the legislation thus far there is 
 nothing to hinder them. 
 
 Therefore the women demand a sixteenth amendment to bring to women the right 
 to vote, or if you please to confer upon women their right to vote, to protect them in 
 it, and to secure men in their right, because you are not secure. 
 
 I would let the States act upon almost every other question by majorities, except 
 the power to say whether my opinion shall be counted. I insist upon it that no State 
 shall decide that question. 
 
 Then the popular- vote method is an impracticable thing. We tried to get negro 
 suffrage by the popular vote, as you will remember. Senator Thurman will remember 
 that in Ohio the Republicans submitted the question in 1867, and with all the pres- 
 tige of the National Republican party and of the State party, when every inlluence 
 that could be brought by the power and the patronage of the i)arty in power was 
 brought to bear, yet negro suffrage ran behind the regular Republican ticket 40,000. 
 It was tried in Kansas, it was tried in New York, and everywhere that it was sub- 
 mitted the question w^as voted down overwhelmingly. Just so we tried to get women 
 suffrage by the ]>oplar-vote method in Kansas in 18G7, in Michigan in 1874, in Colo- 
 rado in 1877, and in each case the result was precisely the same, the ratio of the vote 
 standing one-third for women suffrage and two-thirds against women suffrage. If we 
 wefe to canvass State after State we should get no better vote than that. Why ? Be- 
 cause the question of the enfranchisement of women is a question of government, a 
 (question of philosophy, of understanding, of great fundamental principle, ami the 
 masses of the hard-working people of this nation, men and women, do not think u})OU 
 princijiles. They can only think on the one eternal struggle wherewithal to be fed, 
 to be clothed, and to be sheltered. Therefore I ask you not to compel us to have this 
 question settled by what you term the popular-vote method. 
 
 Let me illustrate by Colorado, the most recent State, in the election of 1877. I am 
 happy to say to you that I have canvassed three States for this (]uestion. If Senator 
 Chandler were alive, or if Senator Ferry were in this room, they would remember 
 
32 
 
 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 that I followed in their train in Michigan, with larger audiences than either of those 
 Senators throughout the whole canvass. I want to say, too, that, although those 
 Senators may have believed in woman suffrage, they did not say much about it. 
 They did not help us much. The Greenback movement was quite popular in Michi- 
 gan at that' time. The Republicans and Greenbackers made a most humble bow to 
 the Grangers, but woman sutfrage did not get much help. In Colorado, at the close 
 of the canvass, 6,666 men voted ''Yes." Now, I am going to describe the men who 
 voted Yes." They were native-horn white men, temperance men, cultivated, broad, 
 generous, just men, men.who think. On the other hand. 16,007 voted " No." Now, 
 I am going to describe that class of voters. lu the southern part of that State there 
 are Mexicans, who speak the Spanish language. They put their wheat in circles on 
 the ground with the heads out, and drive a mule around to thrash it. The vast popu- 
 lation of Colorado is made uj> of that class of people. I was sent out< to speak in a 
 voting precinct having 200 voters; 150 of those voters were Mexican greasers, 40 of 
 them foreign-born citizens, and just 10 of them w^ere born in this country; and I 
 was supposed to be competent to convert those men to let me have as much right in 
 this Government as they had, when, unfortunately, the great majority of them could 
 not understand a word that I said. Fifty or sixty Mexican greasers stood against 
 the wall with their hats down over their faces. The Germans put seats in a lager- 
 heer saloon, and would not attend unless I made a speech there; so I had a small 
 audience. 
 
 Mrs. Archibald. There is one circumstance that I should like to relate. In the 
 county of Las Animas, a county where there is a large population of Mexicans, and 
 where they always have a large majority over the native population, they do not 
 know our language at all. Consequently a number of tickets must be printed for 
 thx)se people in Spanish. The gentleman in our little town of Trinidad who had the 
 charge of the printing of those tickets, being adverse to us, hsJd every ticket printed 
 against woman suffrage. The samples that were sent to us from Denver were "for" 
 or '"against," but the tickets that -were printed only had the word "against" on 
 them, so that our friends had to scratch their tickets, and all those Mexican people 
 who could not understand this trick and did not know the facts of the case, voted 
 against woman suffrage; so that we lost a great many votes. This was man's gen- 
 erosity. 
 
 Miss Anthony. Special legislation for the benefit of w^omau ! I will admit you 
 that on the floor of the constitutional convention was a representative Mexican, in- 
 telligent, cultivated, chairman of the committee on suffrage, who signed the petition, 
 and was the first to speak in favor of woman suffrage. Then they have in Denver 
 about four hundred negroes. Governor koutt said to me, " The four hundred Denver 
 negroes are going to vote solid for woman suffrage." I said, " I do not know much 
 about the Denver negroes, but I know certainly what all negroes were educated in, 
 and slavery never educated master or negro into a comprehension of the great prin- 
 ciples of human freedom of our nation; it is not possible, and I do not believe they 
 are going to vote for us." Just ten of those Denver negroes v^oted for woman suftrage. 
 Then, in all the mines of Colorado the vast majority of the wage laborers, as you 
 know, are foreigners. There may be intelligent foreigners in this country, and I know 
 there are, who are in favor of the enfranchisement of woman, but that one does not 
 happen to be Carl Schurz, I am ashamed to say. And I want to say to you of Carl 
 Schurz, that side by side with that man on the battle-fields of Germany was Madame 
 Anneke, as noble a w^oman as ever trod the American soil. She rode by the side of 
 her husband, who was an officer, on the battle-field ; she slept in battle-field tents, 
 and she fled from Germany to this country for her life and property, side by side with 
 Carl Schurz. Now, what is it for Carl Schurz, stepping up to the very door of the 
 Presidency and looking back to Madame Anneke, who fought for liberty as well as he, 
 to say, " You be subject in this Republic, I will be sovereign." If it is an insult for 
 Carl Schurz to say that to a native-born woman, what is it for him to say it to Mrs. 
 ex-Governor Wallace, Elizabeth Cady Stanton^ Lucretia Mott, to the native-born, ed- 
 ucated, tax-paying women of this Republic ? I can forgive an ignorant foreigner ; I 
 can forgive an ignorant negro ; but I cannot forgive Carl Schurz. 
 
 Right in the file of the foreigners opposed to woman suffrage, educated under mon- 
 archical governments that do not comprehend our principles, whom I have seen trav- 
 eling through the prairi-.^s of Iowa, or the prairies of Minnesota, are the Bohemians, 
 Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, Irishmen, Menuonites ; I have seen them riding on 
 those magnificent loads of wheat with those magnificent Saxon horses, shining like 
 glass on a sunny morning, every one of them going to vote "no" against woman suf- 
 frage. You cannot convert them ; it is impossible. Now and then there is a whisky 
 manufacturer, drunkard, inebriate, libertine, and what we call a fast man, and a 
 colored man, broad and generous enough to be willing to let women vote, to let his 
 mother have her opinion counted as to whether there shall be license or no license, 
 but the rank and file of all classes who wish to enjoy full license in what are termed 
 the petty vices of men are pitted solid against the enfranchisement of women. Then, 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 33 
 
 in addition to all these, there are, as you know, a few relitj;ion8 bigots left in the world 
 who really believe that somehow or other if women are allowed to vote Saint Paul 
 would feel badly about it. I do not know but that some of the gentlemen i)reseur be- 
 long to that class. [I^aughter.] So when you put those best men of the nation having 
 religion about everything except on this one ([uestion, whose predjiulices control them^ 
 with all this vast mass of ignorant, uneducated, degraded i>opulation in this country, 
 you make an overwhelming and insurmountable nuijority against the enfranchisement 
 of women. 
 
 It is because of this fact that I ask you not to rt>mand us back to the States, but to 
 submit to the States the proposition of a sixteenth amendment. The popular vote 
 method is not only of itself an impossibility bnt it is too humiliating a i)roc('ss to 
 compel the women of this nation to submit to any longer. 
 
 I am going to give you an illnstration, not because I have any disrespect for the per- 
 son, because on nuiny other ([uestions he was really a good deal better than a good mauy 
 other men who had not so bad a name in this nation. When, under the old iriiime, 
 John Morrissey, of my State, the king of gamblers, was a Representative on the lloor 
 of Congress, it was humiliating enough for Lucretia Mott, tor Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 
 for all of us to come down here to Washington and beg at the feet of John Morrissey 
 that he would let intelligent, native-born women vote, and let us have as much right 
 in this Government and in the government of the city of New York as he had. When 
 John Morrissey was a member of the New York State legislature it would have been 
 humiliating euiuigh for us to go to the New York State legislatnre and pray of John 
 Morrissey to vote to ratify the sixteenth amendment, giving to us a right to vote : but 
 if instead of a sixteenth amendment you tell nsto go back to the ()oj)uhir vote metluxl, 
 the ohl-tinie method, and go down into John Movrissey's Seventh Congressional dis- 
 trict in the city of New York, and there, in the slonghs and slum of that great So<lom, 
 in the grog-shops, the gambling-houses, and the brothels, beg at the feet of each in- 
 dividual hsticutf of his constituency to give the noble, educated, native-born, tax- 
 paying women of the State of New York as much right as he has, that would be too 
 bitter a pill for a native-born woman to swallow any longer. 
 
 I beg you, gentlemen, to save us from the morti tication and the humiliation of ap- 
 pealing to the rabble. We already have on our side the vast majority of the better 
 educated — the best classes of men. You will remember that Senator Christiancy, of 
 Michigan, two years ago, said on the lloor of the Senate, that of the 40,000 men who 
 voted for women suffrage in Michigan it was said that there was not a drunkard, 
 not a libertine, not a gambler, not a depraved, low man amongst them. Is not that 
 something that tells for us, and for our right ? It is the fact, in every State of the 
 Union, that we have the intelligent lawyers and the most liberal ministers of all the 
 sects, not excepting the Roman Catholics. A Roman Catholic priest preached a ser- 
 mon the other day, in which he said, "God grant that there were a thousand Susan 
 B. Anthonys in this city to vote and work for temperance." When a Catholic i)rie8t 
 says that there is a great moral necessity pressing down upon this nation demanding 
 the enfranchisement of women,! ask you that you shall not drive us back to beg our 
 rights at the feet of the most ignorant and depraved men of the nation, but that you, 
 the representative men of the nation, will hold the (question in the hollow of your 
 hands. We ask you to lift this (juestion out of the hands of the rabble. You who are 
 here upon the floor of Congress in both Houses are the picked men of the nation. You 
 may say what you please about John Morrissey, the gambler, ifec. ; he was head and 
 shoulder above the rank and tile of his constituency. The world may gabble ever so 
 much about members of Congress being corrupt and being bought and sold ; they are 
 as a rule head and shoulders amqngst the great majority who compose their State 
 governments. There is no doubt about it. Therefore I ask of you, as representative 
 men, as men who think, as men who study, as men who philosophize, as men who 
 know, that you will not drive us l)ack to the States any more, but that you will carry 
 out this method of procedure which has been practiced from the beginning of the 
 Government; that is, that you will put a prohibitory amendment in the Constitution 
 and submit the proposition to the several State legislatures. The amendment which 
 has been jiresented before you reads : 
 
 Articlk XVI. 
 
 Section 1. The right of suffrage in the United States shall be based on citizenship, 
 and the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged 
 by the United States, or by any State, on account of sex, or for any reason not equally 
 applicable to all citizens of the United States. 
 
 Sfx. 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. 
 
 In this way we would get the right of suffrage just as much by what you call the 
 consent of the States, or the States' rights method, as by any other method. The only- 
 point is that it is a decision by the representative men of the States instead of by the 
 
 S. Rep. 70 3 
 
84 
 
 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 rank and file of the ignorant men of tlie States. If you would submit this proposition 
 for a ^sixteenth amendment, by a two-thirds vote of the two Houses, to the several 
 legislatures, and the several legislatures ratify it, that would be just as much by the 
 consent of the States as if Tom, Dick, and Harry, vdted ''yes" or "no." Is it not, 
 Senator? I want to talk to Democrats as well as Republicans, to show that it is a 
 States' rights method. 
 
 Senator Edmunds. Doe? anybody propose any other, in case it is done at all by the 
 nation ? 
 
 Miss Anthony. Not by the nation, but they are continually driving us back to get 
 it fioiu the States, State by State. That is the point I want to make. We do not 
 want yon to drive us back to the States. We want you men to take the question out 
 of the hands of the rabble of the State. 
 
 The Chairman, May I interrupt yon f 
 
 Miss Anthony. Yes, sir; I wish you would. 
 
 The Chairman. You have reflected on this subject a great deal. You think there 
 is a mnjority, as I understand, even in the State of New York, against woman suffrage? 
 Miss Anthony. Yes, sir; overwhelmingly. 
 
 Tht' Chairman. How, then, would you get legislatures elected to ratify such a con- 
 stitutional amendment f 
 
 Miss Anthony. That brings me exactly to the point. 
 
 Th«' Chairman. That is the point 1 wish to hear you upon. 
 
 I^Iiss A.vthony. l^ecause the members of the State legislatures are iutelligent men 
 and can vote and enact lavvs embodying great X)rinciples of the Government without 
 in any^vise endangering their positions with tlieir constituencies. A constituency 
 com])osed of ignorant men would voXa solid against us because they have never thought 
 on the (inestion. Every man or woman who believes in the enfranchisement of women 
 is educated out of every idea that he or she was born into. We were all born into 
 the idea that th(^ proper s])here of woman is subjection, and it takes education and 
 thought and oultjire to lift us out of it. Therefore when men go to the ballot-box 
 they all vote " no," unless they have actual argument on it. I will illustrate. We 
 have six legislatures in the nation, for instance, that have extended the right to vote 
 on scliool (fuestionsto the women, and not a single member of a State legislature has 
 ever lost his ofHce or forfeited the respect or conindence of his constituents as a repre- 
 sentive because he voted to give women the right to vote on scliool questions. It 
 is a question that the unthinking masses never have thought upon. They do not care 
 about it one way or the other, only they have an instinctive feeling that because women 
 never did vote therefore it is wrong that tjiey ever should vote. 
 
 Mrs, Spp:ncer. Do make the ])oint that the Congress of the United States leads the 
 legislatures of the States and educates thein. 
 
 Miss Anthony, When you, representative men, carry this matter to legislatures, 
 State by State, they will ratify it. My point is that you can safely do this. Senator 
 Thuriuan, of Ohio, would not lose a single vote in Ohio in voting in favor of the en- 
 franchisement of women. Senator Edmunds would not lose a single Republican vote 
 in the State of Vermont if he puts himself on our side, which, 1 think, he will do. It 
 is not a political question. We are no political i)ower that can make or break either 
 party to day. Consequently each man is left independent to express his own moral 
 and intellectual convictions on the matter without endangering himself politically. 
 
 Senator Edmunds. I think. Miss Anthony, you ought to put it on rather higher, I 
 will not say stronger, ground. If you can convince us that it is right we would not 
 stop to see how it aifected us politically. 
 
 Miss Anthony, I was coming to that. I was going to say to all of you men in oflfice 
 here to day that if you cannot go forward and carry out either your Democratic or 
 your Republican or your Greenback theories, for instance, on the finance, there is no 
 great political power that is going to take you away from these halls and prevent 
 you from doing all those other things which you want to do, and you can act outyour 
 own moral and intellectual convictions on this without let or hindrance. 
 Senator Edmunds. Without any danger to the public interests, you mean. 
 Miss Anthony, Without any (ianger to the public interests. I did not mean to 
 make a bad insinuation. Senator. 
 
 1 want to give you another reason why we appeal to you. In these three States 
 where the question has been submitted and voted down we cannot get another legis- 
 lature to resubmit it, because they say the people have expressed their oi)inion and de- 
 cided no, and therefore nobody with any political sense would resubmit the question. 
 It is therefore impossible in any one of those States. We have tried hard in Kansas 
 for ten years to get the question resubmitted ; the vote of that State seems to be taken 
 as a finality. We ask you to lift the sixteenth amendment out of the arena of the 
 public mass into the arena of tliinking legislative brains, the brains of the nation, 
 under the law and the Constitution. Not only do we ask it for that purpose, but 
 when you will have by a two-thirds vote submitted the proposition to the several legis- 
 latures, you have put the pin down and it never can go back. No subsecxuent Congress 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 35 
 
 c«an revoke tlint .submistsion of the i>ro|)08irioii : there will be so imuh gained ; it can- 
 not slide back. Then we will go to New York or to Pennsylvania, and urge upon tho 
 legiylatnres the ratification of that ameminieut. They may refuse; they may vote it 
 down the first time. Then we will go to the next legishitnre, and the next legisla- 
 ture, and plead and yilead, from year to year, if it takes ten years. It is an ojxm f[ues- 
 tion to every legislature until we can get one that will ratify it, and when that leg- 
 islature has onee voted and ratified it no subsetiuent legishition can revoke their 
 ratiiication. 
 
 Thus, you perceive, Senators, that every stey* we would gain by this sixteenth 
 amendment process is fast and not to be done over agaiti. That is why I api)eal to 
 you especially. As I have shown you in the respective States, if we fail to educate 
 the people of a whole State— and in Michigan it was only six months, and in Colorado 
 less than six months — the State legislatures say that is the end of it. I appeal to you, 
 therefore, to adopt the course that we suggest. 
 
 Gentlemen of the committee, if there is a (luestion that you want to ask me before 
 I make my final appeal, I should like to have you put it now ; any question as to con- 
 stitutional law or your right to go forward. Of course, you do not deny to us that 
 this amendment will be right in the line of all the amendments heretofore. The 
 eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth amendments are all in line prohib- 
 iting the States from doing something which they heretofore thought they had a 
 right to do. Now we ask you to prohibit the States from denying to women their 
 rights. 
 
 I want to show you in closing that of the great acts of justice done during the war 
 and since the war the first one was a great military necessity. We never got one 
 inch of headway in putting down the rebellion until the purpose of this great nation 
 was declared that slavery should be abolished. Then, as if by magic, we went for- 
 ward and put down the rebellion. At the close of the rebellion the nation stood again 
 at a perfect deadlock. The Rei:)ublican party w^as tremblirtg in the balance, because 
 it feared that it could not hold its ])osition until it should have secured by legislation 
 to the Government what it had gained at the point of the sword, and when the na- 
 tion declared its purpose to enfranchise the negro it was a political necessity. 1 do not 
 want to take too much vainglory out of the heads of Republicans, but nevertheless 
 it is a great national fact that neither of those great acts of beneficence to the negro 
 race was dojie because of any high, overshadowing moral conviction on the part of 
 any considerable minority even of the peoj)le of this nation, but simply because of a 
 military necessity slavery was abolished, and 8im})ly because of a political necessity 
 black men were enfranchised. The blackest Republican State you had voted down 
 negro suffrage, and that was Kansas in 1^67. Michigan voted it down in 1867: Ohio 
 voted it down in 18(57. Iowa was the only State that ever voted negro suffrage by a 
 majority of the citizens to which the question was submitted, and they had not more 
 than seventy-five negroes in the whole State; so it w^as not a very practical question. 
 Therefore, it may be fairly said, I think, that it was a military necessity that compelled 
 one of those acts of justice and a political necessity that compelled the other. 
 
 It seems to me that from the first word uttered by our dear friend, Mrs. Ex-Gover- 
 nor Wallace, of Indiana, all the way down, we have been presenting to you the lact 
 that there is a great moral necessity pressing upon this nation to-day that you shall 
 go forward and attach a sixteenth amendment to the Federal Constitution which shall 
 put in the hands of the Avomen of this nation the power to help make, shape, ami con- 
 trol the social conditions of society everywhere. I appeal to you fron» that stand- 
 point that you shall submit this pro|)osition. 
 
 There is one other ])oint to which I want to call your attention. The Senate Judi- 
 ciary Committee, Senator Edmunds, chairman, reported that the United States could 
 do nothing to protect women in the right to vote under the amendments. Now, I 
 want to give you a few points where the United States interferes to take away the 
 right to vote from women where the State has given it to them. In Wyoming, for 
 instance, by a Democratic legislature, the women were enfranchised. They were not 
 only allowed to v^te, but to sit upon juries, the same as men. Those of you who 
 read the reports giving the results of that action have not forgotten that the first 
 result of women sitting upon juries was that wlu-rever there was a violation of the 
 whisky law they brought in verdicts accordingly, for the execution of the law : and 
 you will remember, too, that the first man who ever had a verdict of guilty for 
 murder in the first degree in that Territory was tried by a jury made up largely of 
 women. Always up to that day every jury had brought in a venlict of shot in self-de- 
 fense, although the person shot down may have been entirely unarmed. Then in cities 
 like Cheyenne and Laramie, ])ei\sons entered com[>laints against keepers of houses of 
 ill-fame. Women were on the jury, and the result was in every case that befoi c the 
 juries could bring in a bill of indictment the women had taken the train and l<-ft the 
 town. Why do you hear no more of women sitting on juries in that Territory? 
 Simply because the United States marshal, who is appointed by the President to go 
 
36 
 
 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 to vVyoiuiuo^, refuses to })ut tbe uaiiies of \voiiieu iuto tbe box from which the jury 
 is drawD. There the Uuitetl States Government interferes to take the right away. 
 
 A Dp:legate. I shouhl like to state that Governor Hoyt, of Wyouiing, who was the 
 governor who signed the act giving to women this right, informed me that the right 
 had been restored, and that his sister, who resides there, recently sei. ved on a jury. 
 
 Miss Anthony. I am glad to hear it. It is two years since 1 was there, but I was 
 told that that was the case. lu Utah the women were given the right to vote, but a 
 year and a half ago their legislative assembly found that although they had the right 
 to vote the Territorial law jnovided that only male voters should hoi office. The 
 legislative assembly of Utah passed a bill providing that women should be eligible 
 to all the offices of the Territory, The school officers, superintendents of schools, were 
 the officers in particularto vvhich the women wanted to be elected. Governor Emory, 
 appointed by the President of the United States, vetoed that*bill. Thus the full op- 
 erations of enfranchisement conferred by two of the Territories has been stopped by 
 Federal interference. 
 
 You ask why I come here instead of going to the State legislatures. You say that 
 whenever the legislatures extend the right of suffrage to us by the constitutions of 
 their States we can get it. Massachusetts. New Hampshire, Minnesota, Colorado, 
 Kansas, Oregon, all these States, have had the school suffrage extended by legislative 
 enactment. If the question had been submitted to the rank and file of the people of 
 Boston, with 66,000 men paying nothing but the poll-tax, they would have undoubt- 
 edly voted against letting women have the right to vote for members of the school 
 board; but their intelligent representatives on the floor of the legislature voted in 
 favor of the extension of the school suffrage to the women. The first result in Boston 
 has been the election of quite a number of women to the school board. In Minnesota, 
 in the little town of Rochester, the school board declared its purpose to cut the 
 women teachers' wages down. It did not propose to touch the principal, who w^as a 
 man, but they proposed to cut all the women down from $50 to $35. One woman put 
 her bonnet on and went over the entire town and said, " We have got a right to vote 
 for this school board, and let us do so." They all turned out and voted, and not a 
 single $35 man was re-elected, but all those who were in favor of paying $.50. 
 
 It seems to be a sort of charity to let a woman teach school. You say here that if 
 a woman has a father, mother, or brother, or anybody to support her, she cannot have 
 a place in the Departments. In the city of Rochester they cannot let a married woman 
 teach school because she has got a husband, and it is supposed he ought to support 
 her. The women are working in the Departments, as everywhere else, for half price, 
 and the only pretext, you tell us, for keeping women there is because the Government 
 can economize by employing women for less money. The other day when I saw a 
 newspaper item stating that the Government proposed to compensate Miss Josephine 
 Meeker for all her bravery, heroism, and terrible sufferings by giving her a place in 
 the Interior Depaitraent, it made my blood boil to the ends of my fingers and toes. 
 To give that girl a chance to work in the Department ; to do just as much work as a 
 man, and pay her half as much, was a charity. That was a beneficence on the part 
 of this grand Government to her. We want the ballot for bread. When we do equal 
 work we want equal wages. 
 
 Mrs. Saxon. California, in her recent convention, prohibits the legislature hereafter 
 from enacting any law for woman's suffrage, does it not ? 
 
 Miss Anthony. I do not know. I have not seen the new constitution. 
 
 Mrs. Saxon. It does. The convention inserted a provision in the constitution that 
 the legislature could not act upon the subject at all. 
 
 Miss Anthony. Everywhere that we have gone. Senators, to ask our right at the 
 hands of any legislative or political body, we h-ave been the subjects of ridicule. For 
 instance, I went before the great national Democratic convention in New York, in 1868, 
 as a delegate from the New York Woman Suffrage Association, to ask that great party, 
 now that it wanted to eome to the front again, to put a genuine Jeffersonian plank in 
 its platform, pledging the ballot to all citizens, women as well as men. should it come 
 into power. You may remember how Mr. Seymour ordered my petition to be read, 
 after looking at it in the most scrutinizing n)anner, when it was referred to the com- 
 mittee on resolutions, where it has sle])t the sleep of death from that day to this. But 
 before the close of the convention a body of ignorant workingmen sent in a petition 
 clamoring for greenbacks, and you remember that the Democratic i)arty bought those 
 men by putting a solid greenback plank in the platform. Everybody supposed they 
 would nominate Pendleton, or some other man of pronounced views, but instead of 
 doing that they nominated Horatio Seymour, who stood on the fence, politically speak- 
 ing. My friends, Mrs. Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and women who have brains and educa- 
 tion, women who are tax-payers, wentthere and i)etitioued for the luactical application 
 of the fundamental principles of our Government to one-half of the ])eople. Those 
 most ignorant workingmen, the vast mass of them foreigners, went there, and peti- 
 tioned that that great political party should favor greenbacks. Why did they treat 
 those workingmen with respect, and' put a greenback plank in their platform, and 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 37 
 
 only table us, acd ignore us ? Simply because the workingnien represented the power 
 of the ballot. They could make or unmake the great Democratic party at that election. 
 The women were powerless. We could be ridiculed and ignored with impunity, and 
 so we were laughed at, and put on the table. 
 
 Then the Republicans went to Chicago, and they did just the same thing. They 
 said the Government bonds must be paid in precisely the currency specified by the 
 Congressional enactment, and Talleyrand himself could not have devised how not to 
 say anything better than the Republicans did at Cliica«;o on that question. Then 
 tney nominated a man who had not any financial opinions whatever, and who was 
 not known, except for his military record, and they went into the campaign. Both 
 those parties had this petition from us. 
 
 1 met a wonian in Grand Rapids, Mich., a short time ago. She came to me one 
 morning and told me about the obscene shows licensed in that city, and said that she 
 thought of memorializing the legislature. I said, Do ; you cannot do anything 
 else; yon are helpless, but you can petition. Of course, they will laugh at you." 
 Notwithstanding, I drew up a petition and she circulated it. Twelve hundred of the 
 best citizens signed that petition, and the lady carried it to the legislature, just as Mrs. 
 Wallace took her petition in the Indiana legislature. They read it, laughed at it, and 
 laid it on the table : and at the close of the session, by a unanimous vote, they re- 
 tired in a solid body to witness the obscene show themselves. After witnessing it, 
 they not only allowed the license to continue for that year, but they have licensed 
 it every year from that day to this, against all the protests of the petitioners. 
 [Laugliter. ] 
 
 Senator Edmunds. Do not think we are Avanting in respect to you and the ladies 
 here because you say something that makes us laugh. 
 
 Miss Anthony. You are not laughing at me ; you are treating me respectfully, be- 
 cause you are hearing my argument ; you are not asleep, not one of you, and I am de- 
 lighted. 
 
 Now, I am going to tell you one other fact. Seven thousand of the best citizens of 
 Illinois petitioned the legislature of 1S77 to give them the poor privilege of voting on 
 the license question. A gentleman presented their petition ; the ladies were in the 
 lobbies around the room. A gentleman made a motion that the president of the State 
 Association of the Christian Temperance Union be allowed to address the legislature 
 regarding the petition of the memorialists, when a gentleman sprang to his feet, and 
 said it \\ as well enough for the honorable gentleman to present the petition, and have 
 it received and laid on the table, but '* for a gentleman to rise in his seat and propose 
 that the valuable time of the honorable gentlemen of the Illinois legislature should be 
 consumed in discussing the nonsense of those women is going a little too far. I move 
 that the sergeant-at-arms be ordered to clear the hall of the house of representatives 
 of the mob referring to those Christian women. Now, they had had the lobbyists 
 of the whisky ring in that legislature for years and years, not only around it at respect- 
 ful distances, but inside the bar, and nobody ever made a motion to clear the halls of 
 the whisky mob there. It only takes Christian women to make a mob. 
 
 Mrs. Saxon. We were treated extremely respectfully in Louisiana. It showed 
 plainly the temper of the convention when the present governor admitted that 
 woman suffrage was a fact bound to come. They gave us the privilege of having 
 women on the school boards, but then the officers are appointed by men who are poli- 
 ticians. 
 
 Miss Anthony. I want to read a few words that come from good authority, for 
 black men at least. I find here a little extract that I copied years ago from the Anti- 
 Slavery Standard of 1870. As you know, Wendell Phillips was the editor of that paper 
 at that time : 
 
 *'A man with the ballot in his hand is the master of the situation. He defines all 
 his other rights; what is not already given him he takes.'' 
 
 That IS exactly what we want, Senators. The rights you have not already given 
 us ; we want to get in such a position that we can take them. 
 
 ''The ballot makes^every class sovereign over its own fate. Corruption may steal 
 from a man his independence : capital may starve, and intrigue fetter him, at times; 
 but against all these, his vote, intelligently and honestly cast, is, in the long run, his 
 full protection. If, in the struggle, his fort surrenders, it is only because it is betrayed 
 from within. No power ever permanently wronged a voting class without its own 
 consent." 
 
 Senators, I want to ask of you that you will, by the law and parliamentary rules of 
 your committee, allow us to agitate this question by publishing this report and the 
 report which you shall make upon our i)etitions, as I hope you will make a report. If 
 your committee is so pressed with business that it cannot possibly consider and report 
 upon this question, I wish some of you would make a motion on the lloor of the Senate 
 that a special committee be appointed to take the whole question of the enfranchise- 
 ment of women into consideration, and that that committee shall have nothing else 
 to do. This off-year of politics, when there is nothing to do but to try how not to do 
 
38 
 
 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 it (politically, I mean, I am not speaking personally), is the best time you can have 
 to consider the question of woman suffrage, and I ask you to use your influence with 
 the Senate to have it specially attended to this year. Do not make us come here 
 thirty years longer. It is twelve years since the first time I came before a Senate com- 
 mittee. 'I said then to Charles Sumner, if I could make the hciiorable Senator from 
 Massachusetts believe that I feel the degradation and the humiliation of disfranchise- 
 ment precisely as he would if his fellows had adjudged him incompetent from any 
 cause whatever from having his opinion counted at the ballot-box we should have our 
 ri^ht to vote in the twinkling of an eye. 
 
 REMARKS BY MRS. SARA A. SPENCER, OF WASHINGTON. 
 
 Mrs. Spencek. Congress printed 10,000 copies of its proceedings concerning the 
 memorial services of a dead man. Professor Henry. It cost me three months of hard 
 work to have 3,000 copies of our arguments last year before the Committee on Privi- 
 leges and Elections printed for 10,000,000 living women. I ask that the committee 
 will have printed 10,000 copies of this report. 
 
 The Chairman. The committee have no power to order the printing. That can 
 only be done by the order of the Senate. A resolution can be offered to that effect in 
 the Senate. I have only to say, ladies, that you will admit that we have listened to 
 you with great attention, and I can certainly say with very great interest. What you 
 have said will be duly and earnestly considered by the committee. 
 
 Mrs. Wallace. I wish to make just one remark in reference to what Senator Thur- 
 man said as to the popular vote being against woman suffrage. The popular vote is 
 against it, but not the popular voice. Owing to the temperance agitation in the last 
 six years the growth of the suffrage sentiment among the wives and mothers of this, 
 nation has largely increased. 
 
 Mrs. Spen.cer. In behalf of the women of the United States, permit me to thank the 
 Senate Judiciary Committee for their respectful, courteous, and close attention. 
 
 o