50th Congress, ) 1st Session. ) SENATE. j Mis. Doc. ( No. 114. HEARING BEFORE TWR COMMITTEE ON WOMAN SUFFRAGE, UNITED STATES SENATE, , ^PRIL 2, 1888. WASHINGTON: GOVERNMENT PRINTINO OFFICE. 1888. I Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library Gift of Seymour B. Durst Old York Library WOMAN SUFFRAGE. Monday, April 2, 1888 — 10 o'clock a. m. The committee met to hear arguments in behalf of woman suffrage from the delegates to the International Woman's Council. Present, Senators Cockrell (chairman), Brown, Blair, Palmer, Chase, and Bowen. STATEMENT OF MRS. ELIZABETH CADY STANTON. Mrs. Stanton. Flouorable gentlemen, for many successive years a class of women, fully comprehending the dignity of citizenship in a Re- public, have appeared before committees of the House and tbe Senate, praying that the national Constitution shouhl be so interpreted or amended as to secure to the women of the nation all the rights, privi- leges, and immunities of citizens. During this discussion the basic principles of republican government, the Declaration of Independence, the national Constitution, have been thoroughly studied by us, until it may be truly said that the leaders in the suffrage movement fully understand the Constitutiou, and that to them its provisions for the largest libert^^ are as familiar as the spelling book. Their arguments already gild the page of history and are highly creditable, for their research and eloquence, to the women of this gen- eration. Our champions, too, in the halls of Congress and legislative assem- blies in half the States of the Union have based their arguments on these immortal documents, which together form the Magna Charta of human liberties. Logical arguments against woman's enfranchisement can not be based on the principles of our Government, for they all alike proclaim "equal rights to all" without regard to race, color, sex, or previous conditions of servitude. Individual sovereignty, individual conscience and judgment, are the central truths of a republic, from which radiate the guiding principles that lighten our path through all the complications of government. The Constitution as it is, in spirit and letter, is broad enough to pro- tect the personal and property rights of all citizens under our Hag. By every principle of fair interpretation we need no amendment, no new definitions of the terms "people," "persons," "citizens," no additional power conferred on Congress to enable this body to establish a republi- can form of government in every State of the Union ; and whenever our rulers are ready to make the experiment they will see that they already possess all the constitutional power they need to act, and that the right of suffrage is, and always was, the inalienable right of every citizen under government. 3 4 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. Let me rehearse a few of the provisions of the Constitution to show your power and our riglits as citizens of a republic : We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, estab- lish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Articie I, section 2 : The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the Ki'v«^ral States, and the electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legis- lature. Section 4: The times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each State by the legislature thereof ; but the Congress may at any time by lavs^ make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators. (See Elliot's Debates, vol. 3, p. 366— remarks of Mr. Madison— Story's Commentaries, sees. 623, 626, 578.) Section 8. The Congress shall have power — To establish a uniform mode of naturalization, to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof. Section 9. Ko bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed. No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States. No State shall pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligations of contracts^ or grant any title of nobility. (See Cummings vs. The State of Missouri, Wallace Eep., 287, and ex parte Garland, same volume.) Article IV, section 2 : The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citi- zens in the several States. The elective franchise is one of the privileges secured by this sec- , tion. (See Corfieldm Coryell, 4 Washington Circuit Court Reps., 380, cited and approved in Durham vs. Lamphere, 3 Gray ; Mass. Kep., 276, and Bennett vs. Boggs, Baldwin Rep., p. 72, Circuit Court U. S.) Section 4 : The United States shall guaranty to every State in this Union a republican form of government. How can that form of government be republican when one-half the people are forever deprived of all participation in its affairs ? Article YI : This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pur- suance thereof, shall be the supreme law o? the land; and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding. XIV amendment: 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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immu- nities of the United Slates. Even the preamble of the Constitution is an argument for self-govern- ment — "We, the people." You recognize women as people, for you count us in the basis of representation. Half our Congressmen hold their seats to-day as representatives of women. We help to swell the figures by WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 5 which you are here, and top many of you, alas! are only figurative repre- sentatives, paying little heed to our rights as citizens. "No bill of attainder shall be passed." No title of nobility granted." So says the Constitution; and yet you have passed bills of attainder in every State of the Union making sex a disqualification for citizenship. You have granted titles of nobility to every male voter, making all men rulers, governors, sovereigns, over all women. " The United States shall guaranty to every State in the Union a republican form of government." And yet we have not a republican form of government in a single State in the Union. One-half the people have never consented to a single law under which they live. They have had rulers placed over them in whom they have no choice. They are taxed without representation, tried in our courts by men, for tlie viola- tion of laws made by men, with no appeal except to men, and for crimes over which men should have no jurisdiction whatever, while honorable gentlemen all — these, and many more provisions of the Constitution are violated every day that woman remains disfranchised. You are very conscientious in not using the power you already possess to crown us with all the rights of citizens. There is no significance in the argument that the fiithers did not in- tend to include women in these provisions. The contrary supposition is quite as fair as in spirit, and, better, they have done so. " We, the people" are three plain English words that do not admit of any subtle, symbolical meaning, and when you count us in the basis of represen- tation, as I said, you admit that we are people. Again, as women voted all along from the earliest days in England, and many voted and held important offices in colonial days in our country, the fact must have been familiar to the fathers. Article 4, section 2, says the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States. Yet, if citizens from Washington Territor^^, Wyoming, or Kansas, where women vote, pass into any other State or Territory fhey lose the right to vote, the fundamental right of citizenship. We have abundant guaranties in the Constitution to secure to woman all her rights. All we need is that some far-seeing statesman or chief justice may arise who shall fairly interpret the constitutional law we already possess ; a man who, like Lord Mansfield in the Somerset case, shall declare that, according to the genius of our institutions, no disfran- chised citizen can breathe on American soil. That simple declaration of Lord Mansfield struck every fetter from the slaves in every land and isle of the sea under the shadow of the English throne. The chief justice of Massachusetts abohshed slavery in that State by a similar declaration. The fact that the pronoun he" is used in various provisions of the Constitution does not decide that man alone is referred to, for in the whole criminal code the pronouns are "he," "his," "him." Surely if women can be made to pay all the penalties of violated law as "he," she might be permitted to enjoy all the privileges of a citizen as " he." If a woman can hang as "he," she might vote as "he." I would quote a few opinions of distinguished statesmen and publi- cists, to show what our ablest men think as to whert? the principles of our Government legitimately lead us in deciding the inalienable rights of citizens. The Declaration of Independence asserts that to secure the inalien- able rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of hapi)iness, governments are instituted among men, "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.^ 6 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. BeDjamin Franklin said: Liberty consists in having an actual share in the appointment of those wko firame the laws and who are the guardians of every man's life, property, and peace. That they who have no voice nor vote in the electing of representatives do not en- joy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to those who have votes and to their repre- sentatives. James Madison said : Under every view of the subject, it seems indispensable that the mass of the citizens should not be without a voice in making the laws which they are to obey, and in choosing the magistrates who are to administer them. Samuel Adams said : Representation and legislation, as well as taxation, are inseparable, according to the spirit of our Constitution and of all others that are free. Again, be said : No man can be justly taxed by, or bound in conscience to obey, any law to which he has not given his consent in person or by his representative. And again : No man can take another's property from him without his consent. This is the law of nature, and a violation of it is the same thing whether it is done by one man, who is called a king, or by live hundred of another denomination. James Otis, in speaking of tbe rights of the colonists as descendants of Englishmen, said they were not to be cheated out of them by any phantom of virtual representation, or any other fiction of law or politics." Again : No such phrase as virtual representation is known in law or constitution. It is altogether a subtlety and illusion, wholly unfounded and absurd. Among all the rights and privileges appertaining unto us, that of having a share in the legislation, and being governed by such laws as we ourselves shall cause, is the most fundamental and essential as well as the most advantageous and beneficial. The judicious Hooker wrote: Agreeable to the same just privileges of natural equity is that maxim of the En- glish constitution, that ''law, to bind all, must be assented to hy all," and there can be no legal appearance of assent without some degree of representation. In 1790, Condorcet, in his treatise on the admission of women to the rights of citizenship in France, says : Now, the rights of men result solely from the fact that they are rational beings, susceptible of acquiring moral ideas and reasoning on those ideas. Women, having the same qualities, have the same equal rights. Either no one individual of the hu- man kind has true rights or all have the same, and one who votes against the right of another, whatever be that other's religion, color, or ^ex, from that moment for- feits his own. Mirabeau condenses the whole question in his definition that a rep- resentative body should be a miniature of the whole community." The right of women to personal representation through the ballot seems to lue unassailable wherever the right of man is conceded and exercised. 1 can conceive of no possible abstract justification for the exclusion of the one and the inclusion 6f the other. For years we demanded our rights under the Constitution as it is, specifically under the fourteenth amendment. . Some of our coadjutors tested its legality by exercising the right of sulfrage in their respective States. Their cases were tried in the Supreme Court and decided against them, thus practically declaring that under neither State nor national constitutions is there any guaranty for the protection of the political rights of women, and their civil rights have also been denied WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 7 by both the State aud General Governments. A woman in the State of Illinois was denied the right to practice law, and the Supreme Court of the United States, to which she carried her case, confirmed the State's decision. Since these decisions we have asked for a sixteenth amendment, de- claring that all the provisions of the Constitution shall apply equally to men and women. Although we have had these hearings eighteen years in succession, and all the minority reports of our champions, from General Butler of Massachusetts, down to Senator Blair, of [N'ew Hampshire, have been able, unanswerable constitutional arguments, the majority reports have studiously avoided logic, common sense and Constitution, and based their objections upon the most trivial popular prejudices. Lecky, the historian, has well said the success of a movement depends much less on the force of its arguments, or upon the ability of its advocates, than the predisposition of society to receive it. Though our arguments have never been answered, it is fair to sup- pose that the honorable gentlemen who have written the adverse re- ports have read the Constitution which they have sworn to support, and are fully aware that the weight of argument rests on our side. Hence they betake themselves to the world of speculation, where they can manufacture statistics adapted to their prejudices. As our argu- ments are never answered, it is evident they make no impression on our opponents, as each committee in turn rehearses the popular objections, though we have pointed out their absurdity as often as they are offered. Instead of a constitutional argument at"^this time I will review a few of the points made by former majority committees, suggesting that the gentlemen to report on this hearing will try to strike out some new and more worthy trend of thought. It may not be known to you gentle- men that all these reports are published in the History of Woman Suf- frage and that these volumes have been not only extensively circulated in this country and placed in all our leading public libraries, but that they are also circulated in foreign lands and placed in all the old uni- versities in Great Britain aud Europe. However indifferent our statesmen may be to their own reputation their wives and daughters do not wish them to make fools of them- selves on the page of history. I never glance over these reports that I do not blush for my countrymen. My only consolation is that the able and eloquent minority reports do in a measure redeem the dignity of these committees in both the Senate and the House. In view of such reports as the majority have given us I can not express to you, gentle- men, the humiliation I feel, as a native-born American citizen^ much older, probably, than any member on the committee, that after half a century of weary waiting and watching, educated, refined women are still compelled to beg of their own Saxon fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons, for those civil and political rights so freely granted to every foreigner who lands on our shores. While I possess every qualification of a voter— age, property, educa- cation; while I fully appreciate the genius of republican institutions, and glory in the success of our triumphant democracy; while traveling in the Old World my proudest boast has ever been "I am an American citizen ; " yet to my pleadings for the political rights of women you turn a deaf ear, and hold the very idea of woman's enfranchisement up to scorn, while you extend the right hand of welcome to every ignorant foreigner . who lands on our shores, who has no idea of what constitutes a republic, nor of the duties self-government invokes; yet you crown 8 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. bim with the rights of American citizenship, rights for which your own mothers, wiv^es, sisters, and daughters plead in vain. Landing in New York one week ago, 1 saw 400 steerage passengers leave the vessel. Dull eyed, heavy -visaged, stooping with huge bur- dens and the oppressions they endured in the Old World, they stood in painful contrast with the group of brilliant women on their way to the International Council just held here in Washington. I thought, as this long line passed by, of the speedy transformation the genial influences of equality would effect in the appearance of these men, of the new dig- nity they would acquire, with a voice in the laws under which they live, and 1 rejoiced for them; but bitter reflections filled my mind when I thought these men are the future rulers of our daughters; these will in- terpret the civil and criminal codes by which they will be governed; these will be our future j udges and jurors to try young girls in our courts for the crime of infanticide, for trial by a jury of her peers has never yet in the history of the world been vouchsafed to woman. Here is a right so ancient that it is difiicult to trace its origin in history, a right so sacred that the humblest criminal may choose his juror. But, alas for the daughters of the people, their j udges, advocates, jurors, must be men, and for them there is no appeal. But this is only one wrong among many inevitable in a disfranchised class. It is impossible for you, gentle- men, to appreciate the humiliations women sufter at every turn. My joy in reaching my native land and meeting dear friends and family once more was shadowed by that vision on the wharf and by the knowl- edge that by the thousands still they come, and from lands where woman, as a mere beast of burden, is infinitely more degraded than by any possi- bility she can be here. Do you wonder, in view of what the character of our future law-makers may be, that we are filled with apprehensions of coming evil, and that we feel that there is no time to be lost, if our Saxon fathers ever propose to throw around us the j^rotecting power of law and Constitution ? The next generation of women will not argue with their rulers as patiently as we have done, and to so little purpose for half a century. You have now the power to settle this quest on by moral influences, by wise legislation. But, if you can not be aroused to its serious considera- tion, like every other stej) in progress, it will eventually be settled by violence. The wild enthusiasm of woman can be used for evil as well as good. To-day, you have the power to guide and direct it into chan- nels of true patriotism, but in future, with all the elements of discontent now gathering from foreign lands, you will have the scenes of the French Commune repeated in our land. What women, exasperated with a sense of injustice, have done, in dire extremities in tlie nations of the Old World, they will do here. The justice and moderation of our demands have always seemed to me so apparent that the bare statement should have sufficed long ago. The protracted struggle through which we have passed, and our labors not yet crowned with success, seems to me sometimes like a painful dream in which one strives to run and yet stands still, incapable alike of escaping or meeting the impending danger. I would not pain your ears with a rehearsal of the hopes ofttimes deferred and shadowed with fear, of the brightest anticipations again and again disappointed. I will leave it to your imagination to picture to yourselves how you would feel if you had had a case in court, a bill before some legislative body, or a political aspiration, for nearly half a century, with a con- tinual succession of adv^erse decisions, while law and common justice were wholly on your side. Such, honorable gentlemen, is our case. WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 9 Every point of constitutional law lias been argued over and over, not only by our coadjutors, but by some of the ablest men in the nation. These arguments still remain unanswered. It is fair to suppose that, understanding the provisions of the Consti- tution, you know that women being persons born and naturalized in this country are citizens of the United States, and of the Sta te wherein they reside, and that ihey have the same inalienable right to life, lib- erty, and happiness, to self government and self protection that each of you i^ossesses. Like you, women pay taxes and the pei alty of their own crimes. If they commit theft or murder they are imi)risoned and hung. If comj)elled to represent themselves on the gallows, why not at the polls? Surely the latter duty could be much more gracefully discharged than the former. In looking over the majority reports I find the chief subterfuge of some of our opponents is that woman would be a dangerous element in politics. First. They fear the vicious women, as it is supposed that +hey would rally a mighty multitude and all go to the polls, drive all the virtuous women away, completely demoralize the men, and sap the foundations of party platforms and political life. The women of the French revo- lution are supposed to illustrate what this class would do. Second. They fear the fashionable women, because they would vote for handsome men, make their padors symposiums for the discussion of questions of political economy, sacrifice their country to personal ambi- tion and family aggrandizement, and spend so much time in the galler- ies of legislative assemblies as to distract the attention of statesmen from the great work of government. Third. They fear religious, devout women, because they would destroy the secular nature of our Government by introducing the name of God into the Constitution, and establishing religious tests for polit- ical parties and platforms. Fourth. They fear married women, because they would vote with their husbands, and thus merely double the vote, or they would vote directly opposite, and thus destroy the family relation, which in either view would be a public and social calamity. Fifth. The colored women. After wasting reams of paper and an immense amount of brain force in drawing up the fourteenth amend- ment expressly to keep this class out of the body politic, it would be most aggravating, after twenty years of safety, to find them citizens of the United States under this very amendment. Though I believe in universal suffrage, yet I am willing you should begin the experiment of woinanhood suffrage with the smallest minority you deem sate, so that by enfranchising some women you overturn the present aristocracy of sex. Well, gentlemen, to make the first practical step for you as easy as possible, why not exclude .these five classes for the present and begin your experiment "with spinsters and widows" who are householders. This is the basis on which England extends municipal suflrage to women. You have the power to extend and withhold the sufirage, as you choose; -there is no reason why you should begin with universil suf- frage for women. We can not ask you to be more generous to us than you have been to your own sex. Men at one time voted on qualifica- tions of property, education, color, but each in turn were abolished in some States, and in some States still remain, except color, which was abolished for men by the fourteenth amendment. 10 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. Though my coadjutors all believe iu universal suffrage, yet I think we should be willing to let you start with spinsters and widows who are householders. Having homes of their own it is fair to suppose that tliev are iiulustrious, common-sense women, neither vicious, fashionable, nor jnnbitious tor fauiily position, women who lov^e their country (having no husbands to love) better than themselves. With this class, you es- cape all danger of family upheavals on the one side and doubling the vote on the other. In this way, by admitting some women into jjolitical life, we overturn the aristocracy of sex. Do you realize, gentlemen, that in establishing manhood suffrage you made all men sovereigns and all women subjects'? This, the most odious form of aristocracy that the world ever saw, is the only one we have; an aristocracy that makes all men, black and white, foreign and native, lettered and unlettered, washed and unwashed, virtuous and vicious, the rulers of refined, educated, native-born women ; an aristocracy that destroys the happiness of social life, exalting the son above the mother who bore him, engendering an insidious contempt for woman among all classes expressed in the debates on tliis question at every fireside, in the halls of legislation, in our laws and literature, alike in poetry and prose, most depressing to sensitive women, insulting to those who have a proper self-respect, and alike exasperating to all. In the history of the race there has been no struggle for liberty like this. Whenever the interest of the ruling classes has induced them to confer new rights on a subject class it has been done with no effort on the part of latter. Neither the American slave nor the English laborer demanded the right of suffrage. It was given in both cases to strengthen the liberal party. The philanthropy of the few may have entered into those reforms, but politicial expediency carried both meas- ures. Women, on the contrary, have fought their own battles; and in their rebellion against existing conditions have inaugurated the most fundamental revolution the world has ever witnessed. The magnitude and multiplicity of the changes involved make the obstacles in the way of success seem almost insurmountable. The narrow self-interest of all classes is opposed to the sovereignty of woman. The rulers in the state are not willing to share their power with a class equal, if not superior, to themselves, over which they could never hope for absolute control, and whose methods of government might in many respects differ from their own. The anointed leaders in the church are equally hostile to freedom for a sex supposed for wise purposes to have been subordinated by divine decree. The capitalist in the world of work holds the key to the trades and professions and undermines the power of labor unions in their struggles for shorter hours and fairer wages by substituting the cheap labor of a disfran- chised class that can not organize its forces, thus making wife and sister rivals of husband and brother in the industries, to the detriment of both classes. Of the autocrat in the home, John Stuart Mill has well said : No ordinary mau ia willing to find at his own fireside an equal in the person he calls wife. This society is based on this fourfold bondage of woman, making liberty and equality for her antagonistic to every organized institution. Where, then, can we rest the lever with which to lift one-half of human- ity from these depths of degradation, but on that columbiad of our ])olitical life — the ballots — which makes every citizen who holds it a full- armed monitor [Ai)plause.] Miss Anthony, I would say to the committee that Mrs. Stanton stands ready to answer any questions you may choose to ask her. I WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 11 see Senator Brown has come in ; I am happy to see him. Has he any questions to ask of Mrs. Stanton ? Senator Beown. I believe I have no questions to ask. STATEMENT OF MRS. SCATCHERD. Miss Anthony. If the committee have no questions to ask Mrs. Stanton, I should like to present to them representatives from the dif- ferent countries of the old world. First, I will introduce Mrs. Alice Scatcherd, of Leeds, England. She is here to represent the Edinburgh Women's Suffrage Society; also Yorkshire, Darlington, and Southport Women's Liberal Associations, the parent society of which is the Wo- men's Liberal Federation, with Mrs. Gladstone as the president. Mrs. Scatcherd. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I deem it a great privilege to be allowed to speak before this committee for a few mo- ments. We foreign delegates have had a most wonderful experience during the past week, but it did not take that experience to tell us what we already knew before, that the women of this great Republic have in many respects advantages over the women of the Old World. We came expecting to learn much, and we have, indeed, learned much from the women of your country. But on the other hand we see that there are some respects in which we English women, at any rate, have the advantage of them, and I think that is notably in the matter of voting at municipal and local elections. There never was a time in our country, so far as I have been able to ascertain, when women who paid the same rates and taxes as men had not the same local vote. That has been our right from time immemorial ; and whatever extension of local government is made in our country, no one ever dreams of depriving those women rate-payers, namely, the widows and spinsters who pay rates, of having the franchise. In the year 1835, when the municipal reform act was brought in, an attempt was made to deprive women for the time of that vote. It was done more from carelessness than intention. Various localities were then turned into municipalities, and for a time it occurred that women who had voted in the locality were deprived, when that locality was turned into a town, of the vote. Directly attention was called to this matter it was remedied at once. When the district of South wark was turned into a municipal borough, the majority of the householders were women, and it struck our legislators as absurd to give only to a minority of the householders the vote in local matters. Women also vote at the school-board elections with us, and I must say that they do use their vote largely and well, and take an especial in- terest in these elections. We have not found, because women mix freely with men on those occasions, any of the terrible things which were pre- dicted to happen. Women sit upon the school-boards and take an active part in the education of our country. But, more than that, we women also have a vote for what we call our poor-law boards — our boards of guardians — and women sit upon those boards. And here let me say that our men are beginning to realize that they can not settle great social problems without calling in the help of women; and that wherever children, the aged, the sick, the poor, the erring, the fallen, and the weak are concerned, there is woman's right place. (Applause.) It has often been said that women would not vote at elections, nor take part in them if they had the right to do so. My experience is ex* S. IUi$. 2 16 12 WOMAN SUFFRAGE- Hv tiu. ..nntrirv Our women do vote in quite as large a percentage actlN the ^^''^Vr^'rf rploction is lost in any ward of our town you botU be ^,<^"^^^!:;^"' ^'^j; ,^ere granted to our women rate-payers-and ra^rUnS. L^^U^^^favrr^^ ab^le to ta.e care of ^rior^Ci^U^dXeras^ lature and n. al.es ,ts own ^aw^ -b -^^t^^^^^^^^ , Jp.^d Parliament; and tj^'^^f ' x,nt only the women owners rates, who wei;e f ■"/t^^lVt" ^'^^^^^^^^^ there are six hundred of propem, ot aU no^ that were and iorty two. Uave vo^ happened, but I believe they have "■^f Til 1? ve^.;^-freft St to the government of that little kingdom, ''"w ,r ^v, Irwe not to?our ,>.^ franchise yet, the women "^^i^^^^o^^ try, and tbat they take a "g?eaUnterest, a very acti^ve interest^^m^^^^^^^^ country. It I 'if-L'^f^^i^^^i^^lyaaTpolitely examined by a woman ex- WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 13 town and the district and the county in which I live. Living, as I do, in the heart of a great manufacturing district, and looking on it not in the mere surface light, but grasping all the circumstances that affect the district, I must say that at every turn I am met with the conclusion that the franchise is necessary for women, not only to promote those social reforms and improvements which she has in her mind, but also to pro- tect such interests as she already possesses. I have never been one of those who have struggled for exact equality between men and women. I do not think, gentlemen, that we are equal in any way; rather are we equivalent, men and women, to each other. Men have done wonderful things. They have laid the material founda- tions of the social structure ; and as I come across in the grand ships which have been built, as I travel on your railways, I never cease to admire the foresight and the ability, the thought and the forethought which you have evinced ; but you can not now proceed as you ought to do unless you take into council the women of your country. You can not build the superstructure upon the foundations which you have laid unless you consult women. Mrs. Stanton has mentioned many of the social points on which we have views, and we long to lay those views before you to have them put in practice, and 1 do hope the time is coming when good men, those men who think seriously, will gradually come and say to us, what do you think upon these social problems" ? Will you come and will you help us solve them I do not wish to take up any more of your time. I am very grateful, indeed, for having been allowed to speak to this committee, and to tes- tify here before all these American women, and before you gentlemen, our great gratitude, and how much we have learned in your country, and how our thoughts have been drawn together at the great council which has just been held. [Applause.] STATEMENT OF MES. GROTH. Miss Anthony. Now I want to go across the narrow bit of water and introduce to you Mrs. S. Maglesson Groth, of Norway. Mrs. Groth. Gentlemen, I have seen very splendid things in America. I have seen evidences of your friendship and of your independence. I come to tell you that a law has been passed in Norway and all men are in favor of woman suffrage in Norway, and it has been very highly suc- cessful. [Applause.] STATEMENT OF MISS TRYGG. Miss Anthony. Miss Alii Try gg, of Finland, is not exactly a dele- gate, but she is a Finn. The delegate. Baroness Alexandra Gripen- berg, is at the Eiggs House, and has not been able to attend a single meeting ; but Miss Try gg, her intimate friend, who is an educator from the little country of Finland, is here, and so I want to introduce to you Finland. Miss Trygg. Gentlemen, I do not know English very well, but I come to speak to you a few words as well as I can. If I could speak it well I should have very much to tell you. I am a daughter of Finland, which is united with Eussia, and you know what that means so far as liberty is concerned. I can toll you what is the greatest moment in my whole life; it is when I stand here uuder this a^iling in a building 14 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. where laws are made for a free people, but your trouble is they are now made for a half of the people and uot made for the whole of the people. 1 can not tell you how much I enjoy my being here in America. I hope 1 sball be able to come back in ten years to the half-century jubilee, and then 1 shall see all the women in this great country represented, and then they need not come here and ask you any more to give these rights lo women. 1 hope to see that day. [Applause.] I thank you. STATEMENT OF MME. BOGELOT. Miss Anthony. Now I want to introduce to you Madame Bogelot, of Paris, France. Madame Bogelot addressed the committee in French. Gentlemen : 1 am here to represent the women of France who are working on behalf of prisoners of their own sex. We feel that the more oppressed is the woman by her own failure and by the want of pity in those about her, so much the more does she need the help and strength of all good women to save her from despair. We feel also that the laws of our country are very unjust to many women, and that until women have a voice in the making of laws they will continue to be so. We feel also that all our efforts for uplifting women are crippled by the in- ferior position of women to that of men before the law. STATEMENT OF MRS. CHANT. Miss Anthony. We have three delegates from England, but I am very sorry to say to you that the third one is overcome by our climate or our cordial welcome or something, and she is not able to be here this morning, and that is Mrs. Dilke. I now have the pleasure of introduc- ing to you Mrs. Laura Ormiston Chant, of London, who is present here with us by authority as a delegate of Edinburgh, of which society Mrs. Priscilla Bright McLaren is the president. Mrs. McLaren, as you recognize by the name, is the sister of John and Jacob Bright. Mrs. Chant also represents the Glasgow Women's Suffrage Society, the British Women's Temperance Society, the National Vigilance Associa- tion, as well as two or three others, including the Women's Peace and International Arbitration Society. Mrs. Chant. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen: It is a great thing, surely, to be allowed, as an English woman, to stand here and plead in the name of American women for that which we hope American women will soon enjoy. I should like to remind you that those of us women who are striving to gain the suffrage for women are not the indifferent, the vicious, or the fashionable, of whom Mrs. Cady Stanton spoke, but we are w omen of all countries who are prominent in all philanthropic work, all educational work, all literary work, and all work that is for the uplitting and advancement of humanity in any way. There are very few of us women— I can speak for Great Britain and Ireland — who have not noble ancestors who have stood prominently forth in the his- tory of the world as advocates of freedom of all kinds, and we think it a fitting and beautiful thing to-day that we, their daughters and grand- daughters and great-granddaughters should be standing here, some of us certainly, under the roof of a building which embodies the liberties of as great and magnificent a national constitution as the world has WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 15 yet seen. It is a fitting thing that we should be aiiowed tlie honor of standing before you to-day, echoing faintly, it may be, the voices of those, our men, who have gone before us, who sounded the first clarion notes of liberty, of which we hope we are giving the echoes. I stand here as the great-grandniece of one of the greatest orators and clearest and wisest statesmen that Europe has known, and that is Edmund Burke [applause]. It seems to me an almost overwhelming humility that I should be able to echo faintly the magnificent impeach- ment that he made against Warren Hastings, in our House of Commons, on behalf of the oppressed women of Hindostan, in this my passionate appeal on behalf of oppressed women all over the world. We women feel that while women have no voice whatever in making the laws, the central necessity of the human life is in great danger of being taken away from them, the necessity of earning bread and havingland on which to live. No one has denied to women the right of burial, and in that one sad necessity of human life they stand on an equal footing with men ; but I see in our England that while women have no recognized voice in making law by helping appoint the law-makers, the power of women to earn bread and possess a home is in constant danger, and is being les- sened more and more, as th3 increasing electoral right:; of men place greater differences between the sexes. Oh, I wish you could hear be- hind my voice, 1 wish you could feel behind my heart and my thought, the agonies and sorrows of those thousands of poor and oppressed and downcast women in our England who come to your shores as a last re- sort, to find that which the Old World has denied them ! We are op- pressed in our country by centuries of feudalism and monarchism, and you are not. We are old ; we are in the sunset of a grand past ; and you are in the glorious dawn somewhere near the morning and advanc- ing towards a day of which the world has never known she equal for its splendor. Therefore we pray to you, by the lessons taught by ancient Egypt, where they recognized and did not hesitate to nut into force the equality of women, by ancient Greece where women obtained an educational height that they have not yet attained anywhere els3 so iong as they were not the women of the family, and by ancient Eome, where women had such power that the life of a man in the arena might be dependent on the upturning or downturning of the thumb of the frivolous or the vicious woman in the amphitheater, to be wiser than them all, and free womanhood from the artificial disability of sex in national life. To-day the women who are laying down their lives for the good of their coun- try in temi:)erance, in puritj^ and in education, aye, in politics, too, be- cause we are most of us women who feel that what religion is to the individual, the duty to God and man, that politics is to the nation, duty to God and man also [applause] — we ask that the religion of the nation shall not exclude women any longer. When I saw your magnificent churches here yesterday opened to the voice of women in a way in which our English churches are not, I could only hope that we may be able to take back over the Atlantic the -ex- ample of the new country into the old to quicken the movement there and teach the great lesson that offices should be filled by those whose gifts render them fit for the post, irrespective of sex. In the enfranchisement of women is the race between the Old World and the New. We possess to-day a majority in our English House of Commons on behalf of woman sufirage, and we have never possessed that before ; but what blocks the way is the cause of that oppressed coun- 16 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. try, Ireland, and I, for one, feel that I would ratber that Ireland should continue to block the way till in her emancipation from centuries of injustice the great i)rinciple of freedom for all without respect of per- son, race, or sex has been vindicated in the eyes of the world by grant- ing her home rule. Here is the old mother with her grand past, and the daughter with her magnificent future. If you win this race we shall bless you, and you will see not only England, Scotland, and Ire- land, but Kuvssia, Germanj^, Italy, and Spain following in your lead. Do not let us fail. By all you have held most sacred and beautiful in the women who have loved you and made life possible for you — for their sake and in their name, I do entreat you no longer to allow one of your grandest women to plead for over half a century, but say " the l^ast has been a long night of wrong, the day has come and the hour in which justice shall conquer." Open your arms wide now and take into the protection of the law the womanhood as well as the manhood of your country. [Ai)plause.] STATEMENT OF MRS. JULIA WARD HOWE Miss Anthony. Now, gentlemen, I have the pleasure of introducing to you the woman who has stood at the head of literature in Boston, the woman who twenty-five years ago wrote "The Battle Hymn of the Ixepublic," the president of the Association for the Advancement of Women, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, of Boston. Mrs. Howe. Gentlemen, I had not expected to speak here to-day, and ray heart has been full enough with the words of others that have been here uttered ; but a single word will enable me to cast in my voice with theirs with all the emphasis that my life and such power as I have given it will enable me to add. Gentlemen, what a voice you have hereto-day for universal suffrage. Think that not only we American women, your own kindred, appear here, and you know what they represent, but these foremost women from other countries, representing not only the native intelligence and character of those countries, but deep and careful study, and the pre- cious experience which is derived from earnest labor for the good of society and for the elevation of the race ; and think that between them and us, who are for suffrage, there is entire unanimity. We all say the same words ; we all are for the same thing. • I have never had the honor to speak in this Capitol of our dear, glorious country before ; but in my adopted State of Massachusetts, the aspect of the legislature is not unfamiliar to me. How many times, with my colleagues, have I toiled up those steps, and have got more leaves to withdraw" than it is worth while to count here, but each one of those counts behind us : and as the difficulties had to be overcome, as the steps that had to be taken were taken, with each one there has been one cure for us there, and so we all pressed onward in one great and fervent hope, which is a deep religious hope, and which I am sure the oldest and most honored of us will live to see realized ; and as we speak not only together, but each has her own voice, I will say that while 1 desire very much that the two classes mentioned by our honored chief, Mrs. Stanton, shall be enfranchised, I will not abate one jot of my de- mand for all women [applause] — not that I love spinsters and widows less, but that I love all woman kind more [applause] WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 17 STATEMENT OF MRS. MERRICK. Miss Anthony. GentlenieD, I want to present to you a lady whom I see sitting bere. I remember when I talked to Senator Brown a couple of years ago be said he did not know a woman in the South, in all the Gulf States, who wanted to vote, and especially in Georgia. Kow, 1 bring you up a woman from Louisiana who does want to vote. Sena- tors, Mrs. Judge Merrick, of New Orleans. Senator Brown. With great deference, I think you state it a little too broadly. I said the number was not very large, probably. Miss Anthony. But I want to show^ you at least one. Mrs. Mer- rick is the widow of a man who prior to the war was chief-justice of Louisiana, and she is a woman who stands at the liead of a large num- ber of the most intelligent and cultivated and representative women of the Gulf States, and I do hope that our Southern members of Congress and of the Senate will come to know that there are women in their midst who want to vote, as well as the Northern representatives, who know they have among their constituents many such women. Mrs. Merrick. Honorable gentlemen : When Miss Anthony says that I wish to vote, she says the truth. If any one asks me when I be- came a convert, I will say that I believe I was born that way. I have been a married woman for forty years, and 1 have eight grandchildren, and my husband and my two sons and my brother indorse everything tbat I do on this question, but only of late years. It has taken those forty years to bring them to my position that I had in tbe beginning, for I always believed that woman was an equal factor, and wben she counts in the church and wben she counts in the family, she ought also to count in the government. But you have heard this thing over and over. It is not asking too much that when a woman is admitted to the tax list she should also be admitted to the ballot. W^hen my son became twenty-one years of age we were in the North, and he wanted very much to go South to vote for Cleveland. His father was unwilling that he should, but I used my in- fluence and he was permitted to go. When I took leave of him I said, " My dear son, you are so glad you are' going to vote, being twenty-one years of age, and now you are going South to vote for the first time; re- member that your mother will always be a perpetual minor and that she feels humiliated and mortified on that account." He said, "Mother, I wish you could vote." I said, " Well, I am so happy in having so young a sou express such a wish tbat I can do without voting for a while." [Laughter.] But when Miss Anthony invited me to come here I was sick and not able to come. My son said, "Although you are a woman's rights woman why should you commit suicide by going to Washington with that dreadful cold?" I said, ''My son, I am going to take my chances. Miss Anthony says she wants to see a Southern woman who wishes to vote, and I am going to stand up and be counted, even if I bav^e such a cold that I can not talk." Gentlemen, you are very kind to hear this Southern woman who does not bring anytbing but her simple voice, that she wants the ballot for herself and for her granddaughters, and she hopes they, at least, will live to see the time when they will have it if I do not. I thank you, gen- tlemen. S. Mis. 114 2 18 WOMAN SUFFRAGE, EEMARKS OF MISS ANTHONY. Miss Anthony. It in but fair for me to state that in this room there is probably at least one woman representing each --^tate or Territory of this Union. I think during the sessions of the council — we have been so busy that we have not had time to look it up — but we have not a State or a Territory that has not been represented in the meetings du- ring the past week. I need not say that we all hope that this first Congress of the second century will take the initiative step towards se- curing the enfranchisement of woman. I want to say in conclusion what perhaps I need not say, that I hope this committee or the chairman of it, will make a motion on the floor of the Senate that shall secure an order for the ])rinting of a good large number of the speeches and addresses which have been made here this morning. This convention, this year, rounds out the first forty years since woman began to make a public demand for enfranchisement in this country, and therefore it is fitting that your honorable committee shall make this hearing mark this epoch by thus publishing the report of the proceedings. I wish you would ask leave to publish a hundred thousand copies, that we might have them sent to every school district of the United States. But if you can not bear to have the Government do so much for the women of this Kepublic and of the world, ask for the largest number that the law will allow you to get. 1 thought I had asked a representative of every distant country to be heard, but I find that I have omitted to call upon Canada, which is not distant. I now present to you Mrs. Keefer, of Toronto. STATEMENT OF MRS. KEEFER. Mrs. Keeper. Mr. Chairman and honorable gentlemen of the com- mittee: I think that I am an American citizen, although 1 live jr.st across the line, and as I stood in your House of Eepresentatives the other day and watched the flag over the head of the Speaker, I won- dered to myself if the time would ever come when the beaver and maple leaf would find a place somewhere around and just under the stars and stripes. I am so glad to be here this morning, and to add my voice to the voices of your own women who have been ])leading with you for the vote. I do not ask the vote to be extended to spinsters and widows only. I do not ask you to ])ut a premium on unmarried women, al- though we have it in our country. I ask that the vote may be extended to all women as it is to all men, for right is right, and you can not make it wrong, and you can not make a part wrong of a whole right. We have a little experience in our country in regard to the woman^s vote, and we know that it is one of the very best factors that enter into an election. We have seen our council chambers purified of a great many things that were there before. We have seen cleaner, better, grander, nobler men put into our councils all through tlie province of Ontario because of the woman's vote. Men and brethren, you need the woman's vote here, just as much as we need the woman's vote over there. I know that a great many of you have an idea that if we women vote it will injure us. i'ou think that politics have got into such a muddle, have got so dirty some way or other that the dirty house is not fit for us to live in. But men and brethren, did you ever see a dirty house that was fit for a man to live WOMAN SUFFRAGE* 19 in iC II w as uot lit for a woman, and did you ever see a house that was clean enough for a man that was too dirty for a woman ? ^ay, further, did you ever see a dirt^' house that was fit for a man to live in until some woman or other had got into it and cleaned it up for him? [Ap- plause.] STATEMENT OF MISS FRANCES E. WHLARD. Miss Anthony. The committee ask to hear Miss Willard, and I ask her to please come forward. Gentlemen of the committee, here stands before you a woman who is commander-in chief of an army of women in these United States, who commands to-day an army of 250,000 women. It is said women do not want to vote, but this woman has led up this vast army to the ballot- box, or to a wish to get there. Gentlemen, I present to you Miss Wil- lard. Miss Willard. I suppose these honorable gentlemen think that we women want the earth, when we only want half of it. That is just ex- actly where we stand. We call their attention to the fact — I do not know whether it has been brought out here this morning, but it is a fact — that our brethren have encroached ui^on the sphere of woman. They have very definitely marked out that sphere, and then they have proceeded with their incursion by the power of invention. They have taken away the loom and the spinning-jenny, and they have obliged Jenny to seek her occupation somewhere else to an extent. They have set even the tune of the old knitting-needle to humming by steam. So that we women, full of vigor and full of desire to be active and useful and to re-act upon the world around us, finding our occupation indus- trially largely gone, have been obliged to seek out a new territory and to pre empt from the sphere of our brothers, as it was popularly supposed to be, some of the territory that they have hitherto consid- ered their own. As I understand it, that is the rationale of the present crowding in of these women. If jcm had left them spinning-jennies and looms and the knitting-needle, they might not be here. But you shrewd Yankees set to work and put spindles and steam at your serv- ice, and lo and behold we need more occupation, and so we think it will be very desirable indeed that you should let us lend a hand in the affairs of government. We know that in the olden time when force was at the fore, and had to be, women were at a discount, but we accept that and have no com- plaint to make. We think, however, in these piping times of peace" women may well pipe up and may be heard; and j'our presence, "grave and reverend signiors" and Senators, looking at us and beaming upon us so kindly and giving your time to us this morning, shows that you think just the same. We call you to remember a certain incident in politics, namely, that when women had the vote, as they had. for a brief space in New jersey, thanks to the kindliness of the Quakers, who always thought well of women and marked them at their true value, it was the decisive vote of women in New Jersey that put John Quincy Adams in the great ]]xecutive Mansion at Washington. Then he, like the true and loyal man he was, stood up and argued that women should have the right to l)at their signature to petitions, which had not been done before. He remembered the women that he left behind him, and he it was who, when men in the Capitol at Washington said that if women put their names to a bit of paper in the way of a signature to a petition they 20 WOMAN 8UFFRAGE. would lose their womanliness, that they would not care for their homes, and that they would become strong minded — he it was who declared that it would not make them a bit different, that they would still be womanly and kind and motherly and sisterly. The result was that women were given the right of petition, and have they not vindicated John Quincy Adams ? You can not legislate the womanly trait into being. It is said that if women are given the right to vote it will prevent their being womanly. I know it is a sentiment of chivalry in some good men that hinders them from giving us the ballot. They think we should not be what the^^ admire so much ; they think we should be lacking in womanliness of character, which we most certainly wish to preserve; but we believe that history proves they have retained that womanliness, and if we can only make men believe that, and if we can only make women believe that, the ballot will just come along sailing in a shii? with the wind beating every sail — the ballot will come in the next ten years. I ask you to notice here if the women who have been in this inter- national council, if the women who are school teachers all over this nation, if the hundreds of thousands are not a womanly set of women. They have gone outside of the old sphere. We believe that in the time of peace women can come forward, and can, with peaceful plans, use weapons that are grand and womanly, and that her thoughts, winged with hope and the force of the heart given to them, will have an effect far mightier than forceful power. For that reason we ask you that that class of our women who, having a level head upon their shoulders, can be trusted shall be allowed to stand at the ballot-box, because we be- lieve that at the ballot-box every person shows his individuality, and would show her individuality. The majesty or the meanness of the man — and by that I mean to include womanhood — comes out more at the ballot-box than anywhere else. The ballot is the compendium of all there is in civilization, and of all that civilization has done for us. We believe that the mothers who had the good sense to train noble men like you who have achieved high positions, had the good sense to train your sisters in the same way, and that it is a pity that the State has lost that other half of the conservative power that comes from a Christian rear- ing and a Christian character. 1 have spoken thus on the principles which have made me, a con- servative woman, devoted to the idea of the ballot, and have made me one in heart with all these good and true suffrage women, though not one in organic community. I represent before you the Woman^s Christian Temperance Union and not a suffrage society, but I bring these principles to your sight, and I ask you, my brothers, to be grand and chivalrous towards us on this new departure that we now wish to make. I ask you to remember that it is women who have given the costliest hostages to fortune, and out into the battle of life they have sent their best beloved with snares that have been legalized set on every hand. From the arnas that held him long the boy has gone forever, and he will not come back again to the home, and can not come back again into the world. Then let the world in the person of its womanhood go forth and make a home, and make that home in the State and in society. By all the pains and danger the mother has shared, by the hoars of patient watching over beds where little children tossed in fever and in pain, by the incense of ten thousand prayers wafted to God from earnest lips, I charge you, gentlemen, give women power to go forth so that when her WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 21 son undertakes life's treacherous battle still let his mother walk beside him weak but serious, and clad in the garments of power. [Applause.] Miss Anthony. The chairman assures me that the resolution for the printing shall be passed. The Ghaieman. No, presented. Miss Anthony. Presented. Of course we know t«hat whatever the chairman of this committee does present will be passed. Now, gentle- men, we are greatly obliged to you and 1 feel very proud of all my "girls" who have been brought up before you this morning, and you may consider the meeting adjourned.