20                    WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
the nation to save them from ignorance, poverty, misery. They want to protect themselves by the governmental weapon of protection-the ballot.
A king, a leisure class, can not or will not plan for them the best government. This is the govermenta] question of the ages, and in this country it has been decided that no man should rule another. One class can not, will not, legislate better for all than all for all.
So men alone can not legislate better for women and men than can men and women together for men and women both.
Women need the ballot to protect themselves and all that they hold dear.
Miss SHAW. Gentlemen of the committee, I ask you to make a report favoring a sixteenth amendment to the national Constitution which shall grant to the women of the United States the right to vote on equal terms with men. There lie upon the table before you extracts from reports made by committees of former Congresses, by men who have believed in this fundamental principle of justice to women. We ask for a sixteenth amendment because we desire to take our case out of the hands of the mass of the voters and place it in the hands of the various legislatures of this country, believing that the intelligent and educated men of the country, the students of our Government and its principles, are the ones competent to settle this question. We do not ask this because we lack faith in the manhood of the country, but because we lack faith in the ignorant vote of the newly made citizens, the men who come from the Old World, who know nothing of our public institutions, who (lo not comprehend the principles underlying our Government, and who have not been reared in our spirit of freedom.
During a recent campaign in California I asked a man if he would carry some literature home to his wife. "I would not let my wife read it," he said. "Why not?" I asked him. "Because I want my wife to be where the women of my country have always been-in her pl;:ne, in her home." I said: " Sir, did you come to this country to remain in the place where the men in your country have always been, or have you reached out for those privileges, advantages, and opportunities which the men of this country believe are right for every man ? Do you vote?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Did you vote in the country from which you came?" "No," he replied. "Then," I said, "why are not you as content to remain in the condition you were in before you came to this country as you are that your wife shall remain in that condition in which tlie women have been in the country from which she came?" But he could not think she had the right to grow in the higher relations which men bear to the state.
We are not assuming that all women desire the ballot. All women do not desire any one good thing. There are some women who desire no good thing at all. There are some women who are not seeking the very best in any relation of life. It we had waited for a majority of the women of our nation to demand higher education when do you suppose the doors of our colleges would have been opened to them?
In a republic, at the last, everything depends, not upon our smokestacks and our belching furnaces, our ships that traverse the seas, the extent of our territory, and the material things of which men talk so much, but the prosperity of our nation depends upon the intelligence, the integrity, and the morality of its citizens. Realizing that the mothers of intelligent men should themselves be intelligent, that the fountain can not rise above its source, and consequently, if we are to
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