Hearing before the U.S. Committee on Judiciary of the House of Representatives, Tuesday, February 13, 1900.

H. J. Res. No. 114, and which is as follows:

“Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-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, namely:

“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 provision of this article.’” being under consideration—

Hon. George W. Ray, chairman of committee, introduced Rev. Anna Shaw, who said:

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee: It is my privilege as Vice-president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association to introduce to you this morning the women who will present our claims according to the views held by our association. We thank you for giving us this opportunity. This is the sixteenth Congress before which we have appeared to express our belief in the fundamental principles of our national life.

Four of the five women whom I now present appear for the first time before your committee.

Lillie Dereveux Blake, of New York, will now give the constitutional argument in favor of our claim.

CONSTITUTIONAL ARGUMENT PRESENTED BY MRS. LILLIE DEVEREUX BLAKE.

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee: We are here to ask you to take measures to protect all the women of this nation in the right of suffrage, a privilege now most unjustly denied to a majority of them, who are still in the condition of the subjects of a monarchy, forced to submit to a government to which they have not consented and to pay taxes without representation. A few considerations will prove that this injustice, this denial of our chartered rights, is inflicted in defiance of the provisions of the Constitution which you, gentlemen, have sworn to maintain.

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Many of these provisions promised the full meed of liberty to all the people, for the words of that noble instrument are ringing with a message of freedom to the women as well as the men of the nation, and we are here to protest against a false interpretation of these grand utterances, which has inflicted an age-long tyranny on one-half of the loyal, law-abiding inhabitants of this country.

We find it declared in Article I, section 2, that “The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several Stats.” Nothing can be clearer than the language of this article, nothing more obvious than its intent. It was framed to secure to the plain law-abiding inhabitants of the country a direct voice in the government, through those whom their suffrages have selected to represent them in what has been called “the popular branch of Congress,” that portion which you, gentlemen, represent. Now, I ask you, who are your constituents? Who form a large portion of those whom you address in your campaign speeches! Are not your audiences frequently made up of women and men to whom you talk with equal earnestness? Have you ever at some great meeting checked the flow of your eloquence to call attention to the fact that when you talked of the power and potency of their action in securing the prosperity of the nation by your election, you trusted that all would remember that these remarks only applied to the men present! Looking into the earnest faces of the wives of farmers, who have many times listened enrapt to your burning words as you spoke of the blessings of a free government, have you paused to explain that, so far as they were concerned, you trusted they would remember that the pledges and the privileges of the Constitution were not for them, and have added that this refusal of the privilege of helping to elect you by their ballots was a grievous wrong, and that you earnestly believed in a government which, in the words of the immortal Lincoln, would be “a government of the people, for the people, and by the people!”

What is it now? It is a government “of the men people, for the men people, and by the men people,” and, unless the pledges of this great man and of many others are fulfilled, we shall insist that the phraseology of the Constitution shall be changed in accordance with facts. In the future let us have plan, true statements instead of specious falsehoods. Let us have new editions of the Constitution and of the laws amended so as to be in accordance with the existing conditions. Then shall the Declaration of Independence read: “We hold this fact to be self-evident, that all men people are born free and equal and that the governments derive their just powers from the consent of the men people.” The preamble to the Constitution shall declare that it was ordained and established “by the men people of the United States,” and Article I, section 2, of the Constitution will read, “the House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen by the men people.” Let our national Constitution be at least honest, so that a large portion of the people of this Commonwealth will not be forced to live under an instrument that is false in its statements, foolish in its interpretation, and cruel in its administration.

We find that it is declared in Article IV, section 4, that “The United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government,” Gentlemen, what is a republican form of government! In a monarchy, the theory of government is that all power flows directly from the monarch; even in constitutional monarchies each concession has been obtained “by consent of our gracious sovereign,” When the laws are based on the idea that the caprices of the ruler regulate the 0033privileges granted to the people, it is at least logical, even if it is cruel, to refuse the right of suffrage to any class of the community. You will agree that this is not a monarchy, where power flows from the sovereign to the people, but a republic, where the sovereign people give to the Executive they have chosen power to carry out their will. Can you really claim that we live under a republican form of government when one-half the adult inhabitants are denied all voice in the affairs of the nation? It may be better described as an oligarchy, where certain privileged men choose the rulers who make laws for their own benefit, too often to the detriment of the unrepresented portion of that people, who are denied recognition as completely as was over an oppressed class in the most odious form of oligarchy which ever usurped a government.

It is true that we have within our borders four real republics, glorious exceptions to this stern rule of tyranny. In four States all the people have an equal share in the election of the officials, women as well as men casting their ballots for those who shall make and enforce the laws under which all must live. Every other one of the forty-five States of this Union is a despotism in which one-half of the people are held in a condition of political slavery. In those four great free States women have shown themselves peaceable, law-abiding, competent, and faithful citizens, indorsing no fanatical reforms, but, by their influence, helping to build up prosperous, happy, and—in these cases—free commonwealths.

Article XIV, section 2, provides that “Representation shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.” What sort of justice is there in excluding from the basis of representation Indians who are not taxed and including women who are taxed? The framers of this amendment were evidently impressed with the tenet that taxation and representation should be associated, and that as the Indian paid no taxes, and was not, therefore, forced to carry the burdens of citizenship, he might, with justice, be denied the privileges of citizenship. But by what specious reasoning can anyone maintain that it is honest to tax the great body of women citizens, to count them in the basis of representation and yet deny to them the right of personal representation at the ballot box? What excuse can be made for this monstrous perversion of liberty? Each one of you, gentlemen, sit here as the representative of thousands of women who, by their money, have helped to build this Capitol in which you assemble, to pay for the seats in which you sit; nay, more, they pay one-half of the salary of every man here, and yet what real representation have they? How much do you think of the women of your States and of their interests? How much do you reflect on the injustice that is daily and hourly done them by denying to them all voice in this body, wherein you claim to “represent” the “people” of your respective States? You are totally indifferent to the political interests of one-half of the population of your homes, and are willing to place the educated, intelligent women of this our native land, as well as those of our foreign possessions, on a level with the wild savages to whom you deny the right of suffrage. Gentlemen, have you ever tried to realize how heavy are the burdens imposed upon women by disfranchisement?

Some years ago, when the bill regulating affairs in Utah was under discussion in the Senate, Senator Edmunds said: “Disfranchisement is a cruel and degrading penalty, that ought not to be inflicted except for crime.” But this cruel and degrading penalty is inflicted upon 0044nearly all the women of the United States. Of what crime have we been guilty? Or is our mere sex a fault for which we must be punished? Would not any body of men look upon disfranchisement as “a cruel and degrading penalty?” Suppose the news were to be flashed across our country to-morrow that the farmers of the nation were to be disfranchised, what indignation there would be. How they would leave their homes to assemble and protest against this wrong. They would declare that disfranchisement was a burden too heavy to borne; that if they were unrepresented laws would be passed inimical to their best interests; that only personal representation at the ballot box could give them proper protection, and they would hasten here, even as we are doing, to entreat you to remove from them the burden of “the cruel and degrading penalty of disfranchisement.

And now, gentlemen, I desire to call your attention to a series of declarations in the Constitution which prove beyond all possibility of contravention that the Government has solemnly pledged itself to secure to the women of the nation the right of suffrage. In order to make my position clear, I will first briefly state what are the propositions I intend to establish and then give you the clauses in the Constitution which will sustain them. I shall prove to you by the words of that instrument, which has been called “the charter of our liberties”—

First, that women are citizens;

Secondly, that the right to vote is held to be one of the rights of the citizens of the nation, and

Thirdly, that the Constitution ordains that the rights of the citizens under the Government shall be the same in all the States of the Union.

A few quotations will prove the irrefutable truth of these statements.

Article XIV, section 1, declares that “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.” The women of this country are then citizens thereof and entitled to all the rights of citizens.

Article XV speaks of “the right of a citizen to vote” as if that were one of the most precious privileges of citizenship, so precious that its protection is embodied in a separate amendment.

If we now turn to Article IV, section 2, we find it declares that “the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.”

Now, gentlemen, what do these statements mean? Is there one of you who can explain away these noble guarantees of the right of individual representation at the ballot box as mere one-sided phrases, having no significance for one-half the people? These grand pledges are abiding guarantees of human freedom, honest promises of protection to all the people of the Republic.

Let me repeat the proposition, women are citizens (Art. XIV); the exercise of the right of suffrage is one of the privileges of citizenship (Art. XV), and the Government pledges itself to secure to the citizens of every State the privileges of the citizens of all the other States (Art. IV).

In four of the States of the Union women have the right to vote; in all the other States women are denied the right to vote, and this wrong is inflicted in direct violation of these constitutional guarantees. In four States all women citizens are protected in the privilege of voting. The Constitution solemnly promises to secure to the citizens of all the States the privileges enjoyed by the citizens of any of the States. We ask you to insist that these noble guarantees shall be carried out, and 0055that the privilege of voting, now secured to the women of Wyoming, Colorado, Utab, and Idaho, shall be secured to the women citizens of every State, from the pine forests of Michigan to the everglades of Florida and from the rock-bound coast of Maine to the golden shores of California.

You, gentlemen, have sworn to carry out all the provisions of the Constitution. Does not this oath lay upon you the duty of seeing that this great pledge is fulfilled and that the Fifty-sixth Congress shall set its mark in history by fulfilling these guarantees and securing the ballot to the millions of women citizens, possessing every qualification for the intelligent use of this mighty weapon of liberty?

The Dome of this Capitol is surrounded by a magnificent statue representing the genius of American freedom. How is this mighty power embodied? As a majestic woman, full-armed and panoplied to protect the liberty she has won. Is not this symbol a mockery while nearly all the women of the country are held in political slavery? We ask you to insist that the pledges of the Republic shall be redeemed, that its promises shall be fulfilled, and that American womanhood shall be enfranchised.

Gentlemen, we leave our cause in your hands, confident in your wisdom, your, honesty, and your love of justice.

Miss Shaw. The next paper has been prepared by Elisabeth Cady Stanton and will be read by Harriet May Mills, or New York. Mrs. Stanton is now in her eighty-fifth year and is as earnest in her belief as when she began her efforts half a century ago.

MRS. STANTON'S APPEAL TO THE CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE.

Honorable Gentlemen: In adjusting the rights of citizens in our newly acquired possessions, the whole question of suffrage is again fairly open for discussion in the House of Representatives; and as some of the States are depriving the colored men of the exercise of the right of suffrage, and all of the States, except four, deny it to all women, I ask Congress to pass an amendment to the national Constitution declaring that citizens not allowed a voice in the Government shall not be taxed or counted in the basis of representation.

To every fair mind, such an amendment would appear preeminently just, since to count disfranchised classes in the basis of representation compels citizens to aid in swelling the number of Congressmen to legislate against their most sacred interests. If the Southern States that deny suffrage to negro men found that it limited their power in Congress by counting only those citizens who voted in the basis of representation, they would see that the interests of the races lay in the same direction. A constitutional amendment to this effect would also rouse the Northern States to their danger, for the same rule applied there in excluding all women from the basis of representation would reduce the number of their members of Congress one-half. And if the South should continue her suicidal policy toward women as well as colored men, those States would be at a still greater disadvantage.

We have long asked Congress for an amendment to the national Constitution, forbidding the States to disfranchise any of their citizens on the ground of sex. The amendment I now propose makes it to the direct interest of the ruling classes, both North and South, to carry out the spirit of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments.

Leading statesmen and lawyers were of the opinion that women, as 0066well as the slaves, were enfranchised by these amendments, and made able arguments to that effect, but the Supreme Court decided that they made no change in the political status of woman; hence we now make our demand that all disfranchised classes shall be counted out of the basis of representation, thereby appealing to the self-interest of the ruling classes. Such an amendment to our national Constitution, affecting equally all our States and Territories, making the power of the ruling classes depend on the practical recognition of the political rights of the whole people, would be unassailable as a principle of government.

Matthew Arnold says: “The first desire of every cultured mind is to take part in the great work of government,” By every principle of our republic, logically considered, woman's emancipation is a foregone conclusion. The great “declarations,” by the fathers, regarding individual rights and the true foundations of government, are not glittering generalities for demagogues to quote and ridicule, but eternal laws of justice, as fixed in the world of morals as are the laws of attraction and gravitation in the material universe.

As our appeals for a sixteenth amendment to the national Constitution, asking the right of suffrage, have been denied, we now ask that women be no longer counted in the basis of representation. Senator Anthony, of Rhode Island, in a discussion on the rights of women, on the floor of the Senate thirty years ago, said: “It is not a fair statement of the case to say that man represents woman, because it is an assumption on the part of the man. It is an involuntary representation on the part of the woman. Representation implies a certain delegated power, and a certain responsibility on the part of the representative toward the party represented—a representation to which the represented party does not assent is no representation at all, but is adding insult to injury.”

In regard to the injustice of taxing unrepresented classes, Lord Coke says:

“The supreme power can not take from any man his property without his consent in person, or by representation. The very act of taxing those who are not represented appears to me to deprive them of one of their most sacred rights as free men, and if continued, seems to be in effect an entire disfranchisement of every civil right; for what one civil right is worth a rush after a man's property is subject to be taken from him without his consent?

Woman's right to life, liberty, and happiness, to education, property, and representation, can not be denied, for if we go back to first principles, where did the few get the right, through all time, to rule the many? They never had it, any more than pirates had the right to scour the high seas—force and fraud took the place of right in both cases.

Honorable gentlemen, in reading the speeches made in Congress, I notice frequent references to biblical texts, and to what the great Creator of the universe commands. If the members of this committee believe in an over-ruling Providence and His revealed will, I would refer them to what the Lord said, through Moses, when the five daughters of Zelophehad appeared before the Jewish congress in their capitol. The sacred historian, in the twenty-seventh chapter of Numbers, tells us that these ladies were remarkably well-developed specimens of womanhood, and very eloquent in their appeals for their civil rights.

They made such an impression on Moses that he immediately retired alone, and laid their case before the Lord, who said: “The daughters of Zelophehad speak right; thou shalt surely give them possession of 0077their inheritance.” Thus did the daughters of Zelophehad secure their rights at the first appeal, before the whole legislative assembly, while the daughters of the Knickerbockers, Van Rensselaers, and Stuyvesants, vouchsafed only a committee, have made their appeals in vain for the last thirty years. This must be due to one of two reasons—either that the daughters of the Knickerbockers are not possessed of such eloquence and personal attractions as the Jewish petitioners, or the committee are not so faithful in their daily devotions as Moses was, listening to the still, small voice of the Lord, saying: “The daughters of the Republic are right; secure to them just inheritance, civil, and political equality as citizens of a great nation, by a sixteenth amendment to the national Constitution, declaring that only those who exercise the right of suffrage shall be counted in the basis of representation.”

Miss Shaw. The next speaker is a young woman from the State of Connecticut, Elizabeth Sheldon Tillinghast, who will present the economic basis of woman suffrage.

THE ECONOMIC BASIS OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

My argument rests upon two fundamental propositions, viz, that—

1. Our greatest source of national wealth lies in the brains of our people, and

2. Whatever stunts their growth—physical, mental or moral—impairs their economic value.

A nation is rich and prosperous in proportion as its inhabitants have health and have the ability to mix skill with the raw materials they produce and brains with their daily affairs.

A manufacturing nation is richer than an agricultural country, not only because there can be several crops of manufactured goods produced in a year and only one crop of farm products, but because the chief value of manufactured goods lies in the skill put into them, and we can not only sell our skill, and keep it, too—and keep it unexhausted—but we increase its value by use, while the soil is constantly impoverished.

So a nation like the French, who add artistic taste to skill in manufactures has an even greater economic resource in the capabilities of its people.

The great crop to be cultivated and fostered, then, is the crop of ideas, in order that we may invent and develop new means of controlling the gifts and forces of nature for the use of man.

On the whole, if men are to have ideas their makers must have had ideas too. For this reason it is imperative that women as the makers of the future men should not only be allowed to develop in every way to the utmost of their capacity, but should be encouraged to do so by every possible means. Ability is developed by doing things.

It is true that women may take an interest in politics and public questions that will give stimulus to their thoughts and broaden their ideas without the ballot, but only the comparatively exceptional woman will do it until it becomes either a duty or is seen to be an economic weapon.

So far as development is concerned, any kind of a “must” is more efficient than almost any kind of a “may.” It is coming to be an almost universally accepted theory that the greater the development of the workers the more profitable it is to employ them, in spite of the higher wages that they command. This is now being demonstrated 0088strikingly in the industrial experiments in Dayton, Ohio. But in order to make a nation economically strong this development must be general.

A nation is not economically strong that is composed of a few industrial giants and millions of human machines, even though the human machines are all at work. This is the economic weakness of slavery—that the individuals can not stand alone and have no motive for self-improvement. True strength lies in stimulating the economically weak into a higher average of power and capability, in making every link in the economic chain as strong as possible.

However we may explain it, and whether we like it or not, woman has become an economic factor in our country and one that is constantly assuming larger proportions. The question is now what treatment will make her an element of economic strength instead of economic weakness as at present.

The presence of woman in business now demoralizes the rate of wages even more than the increase in the supply of labor and the decrease in the cost of living would necessarily entail. Why? Principally, I believe, because she can be bullied with greater impunity than voters— because she has no adequate means of self-defense. This seems a hard accusation, but I believe it to be true.

Trade is a fight—an antagonism of interests which are compromised into contracts and in which the economically stronger always wins the advantage. There are many things that contribute to economic strength besides ability, and among them the most potent is coming more and more to be the power that comes from organization expressing itself in political action.

Without political expression woman's economic value is at the bottom of the scale. She is the last to be considered and the consideration is usually about exhausted before she is reached.

She must do better work than men for equal pay or equal work for less pay. In spite of this she may be supplanted at any time by a political adherent or her place may be used as a bribe to an opposing faction.

Women are weak in the business world because they are new to it; because they are only just beginning to learn their economic value; because their inherent tendencies are passive instead of aggressive, which makes them as a class less efficient fighters than men.

For these reasons women are and must be for years if not for generations economically weaker than men.

Does it appeal to anyone's sense of fairness to give the stronger party in a struggle additional advantages and deny them the weaker one? Would that be considered honorable—would it be considered tolerable even among prize fighters? What would be thought of a contest between a heavy-weight and a feather-weight in which the heavy-weight was allowed to hit below the belt and the feather-weight was confined to the Marquis of Queensberry's rules?

And yet these are practically the conditions under which women do business in forty-one of our States.

While the State does not owe any able-bodied, sound-minded man or woman a living it does owe them all a fair—yes even a generous opportunity to earn their own living and livings, that shall not be prolonged dyings.

Moreover, it does not pay, even the most sordid, to make economic conditions so severe as to crush large classes into hopeless poverty or lives of crime, for then they must be supported by the State 0099at the public expense. This is the paradox of our present civilization—of our transition state between old-time force and the coming altruism—that we crush the weak wholesale by law and then try to rescue their mangled remains retail by charity.

We add a fiendish cruelty to the natural law of the survival of the fittest by keeping the unfit alive, in humiliating dependence, conscious of their failure. And we call this philanthropy; we even blaspheme by calling it Christianity, when it is not even second-rate statesmanship.

Statisticians tell us that the greatest source of economic waste in this country is sickness. I believe that a considerable part of the illness of women comes from the lack of vivifying interest in large questions.

It comes from the monotonous recurrence of their daily duties, the unremitting, anxious, cramped, nerve-destroying scrutiny through their microscopes at the minutiæ of their own personal lives, or the scarcely larger life of their immediate family, with never a comprehensive glance at the wide fields of human activities or the hills beyond which we hope to reach.

There have been cases of long-continued physical weakness overcome by the sheer force of expanding interests. The noble founder of the social settlement at Hull House was an invalid as a society woman, but she has done the work of a dozen men for the last fifteen years with the impetus given by her growing, active interest in larger affairs. I have heard of men who were not in politics for their health, but I recommend politics for women as a therapeutic agent—as a health resort, and therefore as a check to economic waste—and I believe this to be a far less fanciful idea than one would at first suppose.

Dr. Herron says that “the real religious creed of the people, the unmistakable evidence of what they actually believe, is their politics.”

But women have a trust religion and no politics, and men have a trust in politics and, judging by the state of public affairs, no religion to speak of. Religion and life are one thing, and politics is the gauge that indicates the depth of the moral life of the voters.

If you want to purify politics put the pure into them—consolidate the trust in religion with the trust in politics. I believe it would pay in dollars and cents, for I have an old-fashioned belief that honesty is the best policy, as well as its own exceeding great reward, and a new-fashioned idea that cooperation and altruism are cheaper, as well as better, than competition and selfishness, and that woman's effective influence through the ballot would tend to hasten the day when these shall prevail.

I do not claim that woman's suffrage would be a panacea for all our economic woes. These are caused by much more fundamental facts in our economic and financial policy. But I claim that it would remove one handicap that women workers have to bear in addition to all those they share in common with the men.

I do claim that the men of the future will be healthier, wiser, and more efficient wealth producers if their mothers are stimulated by a practical interest in public affairs. I do claim that nation will be the strongest in which the economic conditions are the most nearly just to all and in which cooperation and altruism are the most completely incorporated in the lives of the people.

Miss Shaw. Hala Hammond Butt, of Mississippi, the president of the Mississippi Woman Suffrage Association, will speak upon the changed intellectual qualifications of women of this century.

THE CHANGED INTELLECTUAL QUALIFICATIONS OF THE WOMEN OF THIS CENTURY.

The advanced intellectual status of women is the special philosophical phase of the woman suffrage question which I have been invited by the courtesy of the National American Woman Suffrage Association to present to this committee.

By way of preface, understanding that in the very nature of things, advancement in the one means the uplift of both sexes—of the race—should I become discursive in my remarks and stray perhaps into the province of sociology and racial science, you will bear with me, appreciating the largeness of my subject.

We are said to be evolving into rational human beings, rational implying a tendency to conviction, which, followed up in logical sequence, or by moral analogy, if you will, leads to a condition of practical action—a literal “Faith justified of her works.” That we are developing into rational creatures the trend of events both proves and disproves. That we are beginning to think, that convictions once formless and inert are struggling for recognition in our mental and moral consciousness, needs not the effort of logic to sustain it. Also, that theories once are facts to-day is as axiomatic as significant.

In the province of thought we are analyzing existing conditions—our relations social and civic; we are adjusting effect to cause; we are even testing the validity of the first principles into which these specific relations resolve themselves. With a prehensile energy born of dormant ages and stimulated to abnormal proportions by the combined impetus of present and conscious individual need, and a newly-awakened cognizance of the need of men, we are dredging every channel for its hidden pearl; we are exploring every mine for its hoarded gem. Indeed, so multirooted have grown the tenets of our faith that all soils become responsive, each yielding according to its richness, or the strength of our demands.

Who shall say that thought and theory—“dreams and visions”—are not the antitypes prefiguring actual conditions?

Every ascending graduation in this evolutionary process of human souls is a battle ground where meet in mortal combat the legions of light and darkness—the poignant spear of reason unsheathed against the blunted weapon of force. After the reaction, then comes the adjustment to new conditions; and thus it is that every era of progress is born. But while individual reason may, and does, abound, universal force continues to settle in arbitrary fashion the world's great problems.

To individual intelligence, voluntarily or involuntarily, we all yield abeyance; to collective force, with true democratic policy, we submit, because it is the court of last resort. That reason should be the dominant principle, not merely of life as a unit, but of life as a concretion of social, civil, and political entities, we can but admit. And more especially when we contrast the moral and psychic conditions of this age—as the fruit of systematic theory and rational appliance—with the unorganized and mongrel elements of ignorance, of weakness, of bigotry, of fanaticism; yea, of savagery that swayed the world in other ages.

Not yet we reached the plane of universal conviction. That we are not forced under pressure of physical torture to subscribe to tenets we have outgrown in no wise proves conclusively that in the appeal to reason lies the final arbitrament of all our perplexities.

These mark the hour: Personal consciousness and conviction; organized effort; a mental inquietude that presages the final overthrow of unequal conditions; increased activity along intellectual lines; the promotion 01111of marvelous philanthropic and benevolent schemes; a mighty outflowing of humane and generous impulses; yet each and all vexed and thwarted by artificial restraints and oppressive systems. To hamper free thought, ages of prejudicial teaching; to offset effort, the authority of history; to discount the value of education, the “evils of liberty;” to annul peace congresses, the carnival of war.

Whence the clash of arms the recent months have dinned into our ears? Whence the volcanic outbursts of popular passion that draw their fires from the secret springs of our natures yet untamed? What of him whom all America adores—who binds as one barbaric horde the barbarians of this our twentieth centuried civilization—Kipling? He, indeed, is master who plays with skillful hand upon our memories of primeval forests, quickening the currents in our veins with the first fierce instincts of freedom, shattering our rituals and formalism with the untamed strength of our savage ancestors. What, then, you will ask, is the power the restrains these tiger passions, that curbs these primeval instincts in the breasts of men to-day? Is it the science of reason or the ethics of egoism? Unquestionably, as individuals we have preserved our barbaric instincts, yet likewise as a race have we adjusted them to ethical grooves. Our earliest conception of the ethical principle was based egoism. The larger ethics of communities and peoples, which is the social science that incorporates in its doctrine all existent human relations, the “give and take” of every system of interdependence known to the world, is an outgrowth of this individual principle. This in turn must eventually be absorbed by a larger socialism, which involves the equality of a human brotherhood. And, too, this egoistic ethics is a form of despotism which, while promoting the individual good, or his conception of it, restrains at the same time the individual savage. But not all despotisms are of men. In times past both men and conditions were the despots, the latter the offspring of the single ethical principle in the former; women the subjects of both. Of prehistoric races we have no record save that of a heritage of systems to which the times gave birth. From these have sprung other systems, adjusted to changed environments, perhaps, yet each the definite and unquestioned exponent of a spirit—its raison d'être.

Strangely enough, this earlier absolutism was based upon moral grounds—the ground of woman's natural inferiority. That woman intellectually has never been, nor is now, under the ban of nature, but of statute and custom, history weaves for us a network of evidence.

Founded upon church precept, sustained by ecclesiastical and civil authority, and bequeathed to the outlying races as a fundamental of moral creed and legal jurisprudence, no merely a physical but a mental and moral inferiority as well, has for long ages stigmatized the mother of the human race. A distorted idea of God as a merciless, masculine tyrant has marred the scheme of nature by investing man, his after-type, with the crown of authority, woman with the badge of servility. The repudiated feminine principle in the Godhead has wrought untold degradation to women and branded with sin and infamy a human race.

This condition, strengthened by the conservative tendency of the human mind, which tendency is after all nothing more than a habit of thought induced by authoritative teaching, has starved and repressed by its ages of barren inaction the mental cravings of women until the channels of individual effort and individual will seemed most effectually dammed.

In speaking of the moral influence of law, Sheldon Amos says: “As 01212soon as a law is made and lifted out of the regions of controversy, it begins to exercise a moral influence, no less intense and widespreading for being almost imperceptible. Though law can never attempt to forbid all that is morally wrong, yet that gets to be held as morally wrong which the law forbids.”

Thus we can see how customs of society have been built up through the influence of religious and civil laws, founded though they be upon a misconception both of God and man. These are the despotic conditions that so long denied to the mothers of the race that freedom of thought and action which alone subserves the highest and holiest purposes of being.

“God thy law; thou, mine,” as an expression of the relationship between man and wife, inimical though it was to truth and justice, was no more an embodiment of Milton's individual creed than an actual exponent of the spirit of the age in which he lived.

So much, then, for the ban of law and custom under which the women of the race have struggled; by which they have been so effectually handicapped in every phase of the world's activity.

Do you marvel that the women who have distinguished themselves in the history of the world are the exceptions?

Yet Oh, with what travail of soul do we relinquish even now, in this century of reason and intelligence, these moribund tenets on which the race has fed, on which society has builded, and whereon rests the orthodoxy of our present creature comforts, our hopes for the eternal future!

Truly this is the faith unto which we were born—woman's inferiority and subordination to man—and the creed has overshadowed us even unto the dawning of the twentieth century.

But, after all, the medal has its obverse, luminous with revelation of the future. The inclusive ethical principle that it germinating to-day puts to blush the fanaticism that scarcely more than two score years ago made even the question of woman's humanity a debatable one. What would she of intellectuality, whose inferior state, as embodied in Luther's maxim, “No gown or garment worse becomes a woman than that she will be wise,” fitted her solely for the menial offices of the slave and subordinate?

The church had for ages refused her recognition—to a great extent withholds it still; declared her possessed of no individual rights; defining such meager privileges as she may have had the “gifts” of her lord and master; determined her normal condition as one of ignorance and impurity, maintaining that education was the prerogative of man alone; interpreted moral and ecclesiatical teachings always to her detriment; outlined her “sphere” by her obedience to masculine supremacy and submission to man's will; crushed and degraded her, questioning even her kinship with the human race, her possession of a soul, until woman herself had well nigh lost in continued darkness and repression her inner consciousness of personal and liberty coexistent with individual creation. Can we wonder that this barbaric conception of woman's position, which was undoubtedly a spiritual force in the early history of the church, her stigmatism as a “curse” whereon it was legitimate to heap the world's contumely and reproach, should have resulted in a mental atrophy, a stifling of intellectual growth, that scarcely yet have had their just and adequate stimulus to full development? Thousands of women there are to-day who, by reason of this accumulated heritage of passive, unquestioned submission to civil and religious authority, will never awake from the deep sleep that has fallen upon 01313them; even as there are countless masculine minds who still interpret governments and religious in masculine tongues.

Doubtless it has occurred to many of the thoughtful that humanity itself will eventually solve this stupendous racial and sociological question that women have dared to raise—this question of the equality of the sexes. Aye, humanity must settle it; but there will be no compromise; it must be settled by a natural, an absolute equation.

It has not been so many years since women, seeking admission to the university at Oxford, were denounced as making an effort to defeat Divine Providence and Holy Scripture—to unsex themselves. To-day there are but few university doors closed upon them; but mark the mental reservation, the note of foreboding that mars the beauty of man's growing graciousness. Education means emancipation; it means that women are becoming a formidable factor in intellectual, industrial, and economic conditions be reason of this mental growth, and herein are the tokens of apprehension and unrest. The world's work is held put to them; but again a note of alarm is sounded from the watch-tower—they are displacing man, the legitimate wage-earner; they are complicating economic problems by receiving less hire for their labor, since they must live; they are threatening the stability of social institutions, the family, and the home; again are they forging fetters for themselves, and from “subordinates and inferiors;” they are become, by the cruel exactions of physical need, “man's enemy and rival.”

How we hug these soulless creeds to our bosoms! What a cloak we make of conservatism and religion!

But this question of labor and monopoly—these industrial revolutions, political, social, are the courier avant of a greater revolution than the world yet has known. It requires no prophetic eye to see that mind is gaining ascendency over things of baser mold; that with our enlarged conceptions of the dignity and strength of the human intelligence we are equalizing surely as sexes, we are blending forces in the battles to be fought; we will yet share the glories of victory.

What is the basic principle of this revolution that each succeeding day foreshadows with increased intensity? The recognition of women, not merely as “daughters of men,” but as created and equal intelligences in the harmony of nature. It has been a painful, a tedious journey. Every step has been tracked with blood; but withal it has been a passage cheered by the consciousness of right, sustained by that faith that sees in truth the ultimatum of the soul's best desires.

Many of the harsh and tyrannical conditions that governed the lives of women have been obliterated—vastly many; but the spirit of the law by which they are bound is not yet thoroughly subdued.

The battles that have been fought since 1797, when Charles Fox said, “It has never been suggested, in all the theories and projects of the most absurd speculation, that it would be advisable to extend the elective franchise to the female sex” the battles waged and won since then have been stupendous. Then, her humanity was questioned; now, her spiritual and moral force is the corner stone of civilization. Then, individualism, and masculine individualism, was a science; to-day, socialism is a religion. This is the true significance of the peace congresses, of the triumphs of arbitration, of the demand for an equitable division of labor, for a practical apotheosis of an ideal republic where government shall be “of, for, and by the people.”

No menace so great to home and society to-day as the trusts, as those governmental policies that can not subserve the best interests of the masses as a discriminative legislative power. Is our present 01414recognized citizenship sufficient to cope with these evils? Woman's attitude toward these measures can not be called in question. Then does not the very conservation of our republican form of government demand her services as a citizen, a voter?

Woman's intellectual growth, summarily, is absolutely commensurate with her freedom. With enlarged opportunity has her mental growth kept pace, until, freed from a limited perception of egotistic good, she has brought human racial qualities into the larger sweep of humanity, and humanity has been revivified.

“Not woman, but the condition of woman, has always been a doorway of evil.”

The rudimentary tenets being destroyed by a process at once involuntary and forceful—the stress of necessity and education—our human motherhood is not creating anew, but is setting free. Nor is this change a thing of prophecy. In general terms it has already come. Neither is it a thing to plead for; the potential spirit of social evolution, of racial advancement, is urging it on. We may frustrate, but never permanently abort it.

There are mighty forces striving within our souls—a latent strength is astir that is lifting us out of our passive sleep and drawing us nearer to the heart of humanity. And yet from the heart of humanity are we barred. Defenseless, still are we subject to restrictions, bonds as illogical in theory as unjust in practice. Helpless, we may formulate as we will; but demonstrate we may not. The query persists in thrusting itself upon my mind, Why should I be amenable to a law that does not accord me recognition? Why, indeed, should I owe loyalty and allegiance to a Government that stamps my brow with the badge of servility and inferiority?

Our human interests are identical—yours and mine; our paths not far apart; we have the same loves, the same hates, the same hopes, the same desires; a common origin, a common need, a common destiny. Our moral responsibilities are equal, our civil liabilities not less than yours, our social and industrial exactions equally as stringent as yours, and yet—O crowning shame of the nineteenth century!—we are denied the garb of citizenship. Gentlemen, is this justice!

Miss Shaw . Catherine Waugh McCulloch, of Illinois, will give you our thought along the line of the protective value of the ballot. Mrs. McCulloch is the president of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association.

THE PROTECTIVE VALUE OF THE BALLOT.

What do the people and nations of the age seek? Why do individuals labor and strive? For what do nations battle and seize territory and seek spheres of influence? The savage Filipino, the desperate Slav, the rough Boer, the strenuous Anglo-Saxon, for what do they all struggle? Freedom, opportunity, power.

To-day none is too degraded, savage, or mean to feel within his breast the desire for liberty, independence, and improved conditions. Life itself is sacrificed in the struggle. Many precious lives are counted none too great a price for a people's liberty.

Even against the greatest odds, sometimes in face of almost certain defeat, goes on the struggle for independence and equality. To the one vanquished in such a fight we give the laurel wreath. Far nobler to have struggled and died opposing tyranny than to have lived at ease a dependent, a subject.

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The spirit of struggle against oppression and dependence is in the air, and all have breathed it in—women as well as men. The red corpuscles of the blood have been transmitted to daughters as well as sons. If women to-day did not feel this spirit of ambition, did not feel this thrill of aspiration, they would prove themselves untrue members of the race, of some other blood unrelated to humanity. But women are human. They are not only wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters, but are a portion of humanity. They, too, feel the desire for freedom, opportunity, progress; the wish for liberty, a share in government, emancipation.

The practical method by which these aspirations can be realized is through the ballot. The ballot to-day represents all for which this great world-struggle is being carried on. It is the insignia of power.

The Outlander wants it; so does the Filipino, the Slav, the Cuban. So do women.

Women need the ballot not only for the honor of being esteemed free women among their peers, but they want it for the practical value it will be to them in protecting them in the exercise of a citizen's prerogatives. This is, perhaps, a selfish view. It might be a more lofty and unselfish purpose to desire to benefit others, the nation, the world, through women's ballots, but still the protection of women themselves is of considerable importance. Women need protection of life, liberty, property. They want protection in securing educational advantages, in entering remunerative employments, in obtaining fair wages for work, protection for the safety of their persons from assault and disease, protection for their property from unjust seizure, unfair taxation, and outside encroachments. They want protection in the discharge of wifely duties and motherly cares. They want protection for the home and for the little ones for whose sakes they have imperiled their own lives.

But it is asked: Have not women had some sort of protection, without the ballot? Yes, but it has been only such protection as the caprice of affection of the voting class has given mere gratuities, revocable at will.

The man of wealth or power defended his wife, daughter, or sweetheart because she was his, just as he would have defended his property. His own opinions, not her views, decided him concerning the things from which she should be protected. Should she ever have needed protection as against “her protector,” there was no one to give it. She had as much protection as other nonvoting classes who must always acquiesce and never demand.

The chivalric protecting knight and the tender compliant dependent woman were the poets’ ideal. But in practical humdrum life this ideal has in many particulars not been realized.

Protection has often been needed when it has not been forthcoming, and women bereft of masculine protectors had no way of protecting themselves.

Protection for women's lives, for their persons, is somewhat improved since the days when the husband or father had complete control, even the power to inflict the death penalty.

The husband can no longer punish his wife with a stick the thickness of his thumb. Yet mild, corrective measures are not often considered seriously by judges. This change in the degree of punishment has not only benefited women, but has affected all subordinate creatures. Apprentices, children, and even dumb brutes must not be cruelly beaten.

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But there are other wrongs done women's person, and they are not estimated at their full enormity by men—judges and jurors.

To assault a girl above the age of consent or to ruin one below the age of consent, which is in many States fourteen years, is esteemed a crime no worse than horse stealing, meriting no greater punishment than would a theft of $15 or $20 worth of property. Seduction is counted no crime, merely a misdemeanor. These sexual crimes, which are essentially against womanhood, are punished with inadequate fines or brief imprisonments.

In seeking punishment of such crimes, which are always of a man against a woman, we may see the disadvantage under which women labor when they want legal protection. When a woman resorts to the court, the judge, the jury, the clerks, the bailiffs are all men elected by men, or appointed by men liable to look at each point from the man's side. If she receives justice, great and lofty must be the spirit of those law enforcers, for it would not be unnatural if they should have been prejudiced against her, and not improbable that the side of the voters who were in the case would have been more powerful.

But should a judge continue to be fair to women, parties in action, it would not be an impossible thing for his supporters, the voters, to serve notice on him that he was elected by them and should not decide against them. Of course one or two isolated cases might make no great difference; but suppose all the women had a good cause of action against all the men and a judge elected by men voters only, with a jury selected from these same men, tries the case. Even if the women were right they would not win. The full influence of the ballot in securing protection would there appear. In the case of one woman against one man, as would generally be the case in such legal procedure, a proportionate amount of influence would be felt. The power of the ballot to influence the judiciary must be admitted, especially where judges are elected.

As to women's personal liberty it is protected in a general way and yet not always from a woman's husband. There are decisions on the records sustaining a husband in restraining a wife's liberty, if he desired her not to go visiting or if he wanted to prevent her spending money or going to church. But few husbands would need such harsh measures to keep them from church.

The husband's right to choose the family home, whether the wife must follow or be left out in the cold and be adjudged guilty of deserting him, is another violation of the wife's personal liberty.

But the ownership by the husband of the family pocketbook is a certain method of restraining a wife's liberty of movement, for street cars and railroad trains carry no passenger without fares. So, unless the wife is a good pedestrian, the withholding from her of money restrains her liberty. She who gives her life and strength to family cares should be protected in her right to use some portion of family money. If women voted they certainly would be assured of some share in family funds.

Women need protection from disease, and yet that is largely a matter of enforcement of law. Women generally desire this protection. A recent instance of women's interest in warding off disease occurred in New Orleans, where many women came forward to vote for a better system of sewers. The women property owners were generally for the new method of sanitation, and with the men voters of similar views they made a majority. Women rejoiced and thought they had succeeded. But at the election of councilmen, for which women had 01717no votes, members were elected who had no sympathy with the new plans, and so the women's great efforts in behalf of sanitation were almost useless. Without the ballot for officers their wishes were not mandatory and had no influence.

Women's education is now receiving attention in many public and private schools. But the majority of our schools are public schools regulated by the voters through elected officials.

The great common school system of this country rests on votes. The increasingly valuable State universities and normal schools rest also on votes. Admission to these schools is regulated by laws framed by people elected by voters. The money to run these schools is collected and expended by other officials elected by voters.

The subjects taught are decided by the representatives of voters.

Women have now no assurance of continued entrance to these schools, desirable curricula, or wise expenditure of the tax money, except through man's gratuity. To protect women in their aspiration for school privileges nothing but the ballot is sufficient.

Concerning entrance into remunerative employments, that in many instances has been denied women. In many of the State the professions of law, medicine, dentistry, and all elective offices were closed by law. Even appointive positions which women might legally hold were practically closed to women because of their lack of the ballot. The appointing power—President, governor, mayor, judge, or commissioner—allowed their own positions to votes who expected some minor appointment in acknowledgement of service. Sometimes the appointing power found himself with less places at hand than he had given promises. His task then was to invent new places or evade civil-service laws to supply all his supporters, or else he must forget his promises. It can scarcely be expected, then, if he desired reelection, that he would give any of these places to women who could not vote of him.

The newspapers tell us occasionally about some department or bureau even here in Washington where no more women clerks are wanted, or where women are barred out, because voters are clamorous for places. Even civil-service laws do not protect women in securing places. Only 10 percent of the women who have passed the civil-service examinations obtain work under the Government, while 26 percent of the men who pass receive appointments. Women should be protected in receiving comfortable Government positions, and the only way in which they be honorably assured of such protection is by holding the ballot in their own hands.

Even large private corporations not supposed to be influenced by votes have in certain instances closed their doors upon women seeking employment when the special line of employment could as well be performed by women as by men. These great enterprises have occasionally desired and received governmental help and protection. In return, the employees of these enterprises have been advised to vote for the party which has protected their employer's business.

At a caucus, a street parade, and on election day, the 500 or 10,000 or 100,000 persons employed in a certain industry make a considerable political showing if they are all voters. In a street parade it is not the floats filled with pretty girls, but the rows of sturdy men, trudging steadily forward, even without flowers or tarleton or smiles or frizzes, who count. We look on them, remembering their voting power, and feel they are the procession. On such occasions women employees are of little value.

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When some pretty factory girls once went to Washington, beseeching increased tariffs, their influence was intestinal. Their visit was of no value except to make a news item. A similar delegation of men might not looked as sweet , but they, being voters, could have accomplished more. So when a great corporation considers its occasional need of votes, they employ few women.

Women being refused employment in such enterprises are injured not in their feelings, their pride, but in the matter of bread and butter. Women are not protected in their right to earn bread and butter.

But there are many different kinds of employment which do not debar women, and in these women need protection in securing a fair return for their labor. This is no more than men workers ask, and it should be granted. But one peculiar thing appears in examining the schedules of wages for men and women—men's wages are higher. For instance, in Massachusetts 72 per cent of the females employed received less than $1 per day, while only 20 per cent of the males received such low wages. This would not be less unjust if men always did harder work or better work; but men as a rule receive higher wages even in cases where their work is not more difficult and no more carefully done.

In an investigation conducted by the United States Department of Labor, concerning the wages received by men, women, and children, it appeared that in 75 per cent of the 782 instances investigated men received 50 per cent higher wages than did women laboring with the same degree of efficiency on the same sort of work.

This is not an isolated case of inequality, but averages of all, and it is a question of serious importance to women why their wages are so low. It is a question of even greater importance how these wages can be made higher. Dollars mean more than pride in good service—they mean relief from hunger, thirst, cold, freedom to be good.

Women need special and peculiar factory legislation for their protection from long hours and insanitary conditions. Women inspectors are needed, but only six States recognize this necessity for women do not vote. Women wage-workers need the ballot to secure proper protection.

The American Workingman is the superior of the workingmen in other countries, because of the ballot which he possesses.

Men laborers have the same political rights and liberties as other classes of citizens and their votes are protected by the law against intimidation. Special statues against alien labor and against convict labor, whether right or wrong are the direct result of the wishes of the voting laboring man.

Special privileges given Grand Army of the Republic men even in civil-service laws show the value of votes in securing renumerative positions. Those who are best informed as to women wage-earners concur in the view that they should have the ballot.

Carroll D. Wright has said, “Industrial and political equality will be coordinate results. Political influence will bring industrial emancipation.” But while the wage-earning women need protection, the 19,000,000 of home women who work for their own families need even more legal attention, for they have no wages. Wages even low wages are some what of a protection. Some plan would speedily be devised whereby home workers would be justly recompensed if women voted.

Women also need protection of their property. A man who knew the ways of assessors said once, “Widows and minors are always assessed for more than men.” No statistics have ever been taken of 01919this branch of the question, but it is a matter of common knowledge that many men desire to be assessor, and that the assessor when in office is in receipt of many requests from property owners to lower their assessments. If the assessor desires reelection, one of the easiest methods of securing it is to lower the assessments of the most important politicians who control most voters.

Women without votes could not force lowering of excessive assessments, even if they proceeded according to law; the employment of attorneys, the time expended in looking after the matter, and the uncertainty of justice when other politicians should decide, keep women from proceeding at law.

If government or a foreign enemy has encroached on a woman's property, her claim must be presented to a government elected, not by her vote, not by the votes of other women, but by the votes of men. Would it be strange if similar claims of men should first receive attention and that hers would be too late to come in for compensation? If her claims were speedily adjusted by men elected by men voters only, what generosity must have prompted them. This gratuitous attention, which she could not have forced, is not enough to satisfy her when she has no assurance of its continuance for future needs.

Women also want protection for the one sphere which even the most conservative loudly proclaim should be theirs—the home.

That the water supply is full and abundant; that the sewage is carried away carefully and speedily; that contagious cases are isolated; that food is pure in quality and reasonable in price; that inspection of food is honest and scientific; that weights and measures are true; that gas and electricity be constant and inexpensive; that the buildings be strongly constructed—these are all matters under the control of certain officials elected by voters. That women largely do receive as much benefit as do men from these regulations is because women and men live in the same quarters of a city. If disfranchised women, however, lived in one ward, and enfranchised men in another, who doubts that the voters’ Ward—the men's ward—would have the best attention?

Women, too, want protection for the children of the home. They desire proper regulations as to trains at crossings, as to villains, tramps, and child abductors. They want strict regulations against obscene literature, sensuality, and the unhealthy cigarette, and desire that which is equally important, honest enforcement of such laws and ordinances. Without the ballot women can not protect their children. In such numerous ways women need protection, and in many of these instances they have it not.

Such protection as has been allowed women has no more substantial foundation than the changing discretion of men.

Should carpenters, engineers, lawyers want protection for such varied purposes, or for any one purpose, on what would they depend? It would be upon their right to vote, and this right to vote would often cause their needs, their requests, to be anticipated and granted even before spoken. They would never trust their own protection to those whose interests were different and possibly antagonistic. They would prefer the ballot to protect themselves.

The thousands of illiterate and degraded who are seen crowding about the judges seeking naturalization, are they anxious whether the party of Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln wins; do they worry about the gold standard or single tax? Are they naturalized for the purpose of saving the nation? They seek this honor because they want 02020the 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 governmental 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 legislature 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 do 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 place, 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 the 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. If 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 02121have an intelligent, broad-minded, large-hearted manhood, we must have that form of motherhood, the colleges were opened, because it was believed it would be better for men, better for the home, and better for the Government.

Dire results have been predicted at every step of radical progress. When women first enjoyed higher education the cry went out that the home would be destroyed. It was said that if all women were educated all women would become bluestockings, and if all women became bluestockings all women would write books, and if all women wrote books what would become of the homes, who would rear the children? But the schools were opened and women entered them and it has been discovered that the intelligent woman makes a wiser mother, a better homemaker, and a much more desirable companion, friend, and wife than a woman who is illiterate, whose intellectual horizon is narrowed by the circuit of embroidery and the minuet.

In many of the States, where the laws were based on the old English common law, women found that after being paupers dependent upon the bounty of their fathers they became paupers dependent upon the bounty of their husbands. The husband absorbed the wife's property as he absorbed her personal rights. Then came the demand for property rights for women. Then the cry went up, the women will desert their homes. Yet is was found that there were thousands of women who could have no home if they were not permitted to pursue avocations in the outside world. It was said that the moral life of woman would be degraded by public contact, and yet the statistics show that in those occupations in which women are able to earn a livelihood in an honorable and respectable manner they have raised the standard of morality rather than lowered it.

The results have not been those which were predicted. The homes have not been broken up; for human hearts are and always will be the same, and so long as God has established in this world a greater force than all other forces combined, which we call the divine gravity of love, just so long human hearts will continue to be drawn together, homes will be founded, families will be reared, and never so good a home, never so good a family as that home and family founded in justice and educated upon right principles. Consequently the industrial emancipation of women has been of benefit to the home, to women, and to men.

The claim is made that we are building a barrier between men and women, that we are antagonistic to men because men are men and we are women. This is not true. We believe there never was a time when men and women were such good friends as now, when they esteemed each other as they do now. We have coeducation in our schools; boys and girls work side by side and study and recite together. When coeducation was first tried men thought they would easily carry off the honors; but soon they learned their mistake. That experience gave to men a better opinion of woman's intellectual ability.

The larger intellectual powers of women and the greater financial independence of women have tended to elevate the home. There is nothing in liberty which can harm either man or woman. There is nothing in justice which can work against the best good of humanity; and when on the ground of expediency this measure is opposed, in the words of Wendell Phillips, “whatever is just, God will see that it is expedient.” There is no greater inexpediency than injustice.

Gentlemen, year after year we have and will come to you like that good woman in the Scriptures who continued to plead her case before 02222the unjust judge. We are not pleading before the unjust judge, but before just judges who, we believe, will accede to our demand because it is fair and just.

We do not claim that the millennium will come when we are enfranchised, but we do claim that the millennium will never come until justice is done to all mankind. We do not ask the ballot because we do not believe in men or because we think men unjust or unfair. We do not ask to speak for ourselves because we believe men unwilling to speak for us; but because men by their very nature never can speak for women. It would be as impossible for all men to understand the needs of women and care for their interests as it would be for all women to understand the needs of men and care for the interests of men. So long as laws affect both men and women, men and women together should make those laws.

Gentlemen, we leave our case with you. I wish those who oppose this measure could know women's great need of the power of the ballot in the hands of those who struggle in the world's affairs.

I thank you, in the name of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, for your great kindness in listening to us. There will never be laid before you a claim more just—one more in accord with the fundamental principles of our national life.

Hearing before Committee on the Judiciary, February 13, 1900, of Those Opposed to Female Suffrage.

Hon. George W. Bay, chairman, presiding.

The hearing of those favoring woman suffrage having closed, the chairman said:

The Chairman. All ladies who have addressed the committee will be given leave to extend their remarks in the record if they will furnish the extension.

This committee voted some time ago to give this day until 12 o'clock to those who favor woman suffrage, and that we have done. They have not used quite all of that time. Certain ladies and one or two gentlemen on behalf of the ladies opposed applied to me asking that the committee give part of the time to those opposed to woman suffrage. They stated they were here at this time and would be at the expense of coming at some hither time if a hearing were not given this day. I told them that I would submit the matter to the committee, and if the committee consented to sit after 12 o'clock and hear arguments in opposition, we would give them a hearing. They are waiting to know the wish of the committee and I now submit the question to the committee.

(After some discussion.)

The Chairman. This committee gave to those who favor woman suffrage the time of the committee to-day up to 12 o'clock, and you were duly notified. There has been no disposition shown at any time on the part of those in favor of woman suffrage to prevent the other side from being heard.

(The committee, by vote, gave one hour to those opposed to woman suffrage.)

Mr. Shafroth. I do not wish to be heard before the committee if the parties who are to appear against suffrage are ladies; but if men are to appear, I would like to have a rejoinder of ten or fifteen minutes in answer thereto.

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The Chairman. I presume that would be accorded, but I understood that certain ladies would be heard.

Mrs. George. We will give this hour that the committee has voted to be controlled by you as you see nt in opposition to the proposition to extend the right of suffrage to women.

STATEMENT OF MRS. A. J. GEORGE, OF BOSTON.

Mr. Chairman, I will ask that Mr. Russell, of Massachusetts, be heard. I will further ask that the gentleman who asked for the privilege of rejoinder be not given it, as I understand that in the last hour or two hours the petitioners have had sufficient opportunity to present the arguments of the suffragists, and that this hour has now been given to the remonstrants.

I will call upon Mr. Russell, who not only represents the united associations opposed to woman suffrage, but was a member of the Man Suffrage Association of Massachusetts, which did active work in the campaign of 1895.

The Chairman. Are you ready now to commence?

Mrs. George. Yes.

The Chairman. We extend to you the privilege of one hour and you can fill that time with such speakers as you select.

STATEMENT OF MR. THOMAS RUSSELL, OF BOSTON.

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I have come here at the request of the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women to represent them at this hearing. I do not propose to make an argument on the subject of woman suffrage. I shall ask Mrs. George, who is much better able, to do that for me; but I do wish to tell you something about what the association that has asked me to come here is and what it stands for.

For some twenty-five years previous to 1895 those women who desired the suffrage in Massachusetts had been going to the Massachusetts legislature requesting that suffrage should be extended to them in different forms—municipal suffrage, full suffrage, Presidential suffrage, suffrage on the liquor license question, and school suffrage. They had by constantly appearing, putting in petitions purporting to have large numbers of names, given the general impression to the legislators that there was a large number of women in Massachusetts desirous of the suffrage, and not having very much opposition, in fact no organized opposition, the legislators had the mistaken impression that possibly the men of Massachusetts were not averse to granting this. In 1895 the legislature of Massachusetts passed a bill for taking a test vote on this question. It merely provided that at the coming State election the question should be submitted to a vote, under the Australian ballot: Is it expedient that municipal suffrage should be extended to women in Massachusetts? On that question not only were the male voters given an opportunity to vote, but all the women of the State who were entitled to register and vote on the question of school committee were also allowed to register and vote on that question. It bound the State to nothing. It merely was for the sake of information to the legislature that all women over 21 years of age were allowed to vote on this question on the same terms that men voted.

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The Chairman. Did all women vote?

Mr. Russell. No, sir; I was coming to that. At that election the vote of the men of Massachusetts on that question stood 187,000 against granting this extension of suffrage to 87,000 for it. The exact majority was 100,006—more than 2 to 1. On that question in the State of Massachusetts there were 575,000 women entitled to register and vote. Of that number 43,000 registered. Of that number 23,000 voted. Of that 23,000, 22,000 voted in favor of it, and that was the whole number of women in Massachusetts that were ready to record themselves as being in favor of this measure.

The Chairman. How many registered?

Mr. Russell. Forty-three thousand.

The Chairman. Out of over 500,000?

Mr. Russell. Out of 575,000 roughly.

The Chairman. And out of the 40,000 who registered——

Mr. Russell. Out of the 43,000 who registered 23,000 voted. Of those, 22,000 and odd voted in favor. The small vote against it may be accounted for by the fact that the Man Suffrage Association was formed a few weeks before this vote was taken for the purpose of conducting a campaign against the granting of suffrage to women, and that association and also this association for which I appear to day sent out circulars and filled the newspapers with appeals that called on the women of the State opposed to this measure not to register and not to vote, since silence would show just as well as a vote what their sentiment was. That may account for the fact that 19,000 women registered, but after registering did not vote.

That showed that in the State of Massachusetts, where they had previously put in petitions purporting to have the names of 30,000 signers, about 22,000 women were ready to say that they desired the suffrage. The men voted so overwhelmingly against it that since then there has been no danger of any legislature in Massachusetts extending the suffrage to women and there will be no danger for some years to come.

This association that I appear for was formed in May, 1895, shortly before that vote was taken. It is composed entirely of women over 21 years of age. The lists are revised every year so that there will be none of the rolls who have changed their minds or none who have died, and to-day it has a membership of 7,900 in the State, which represents 177 cities and towns. It has headquarters in Boston and has 27 branch committees throughout the State.

Mr. Littlefield. This is the Antisuffrage Association?

Mr. Russell. Yes, sir; the Massachusetts association opposed——

Mr. Littlefield. Composed of men?

Mr. Russell. No; entirely of women. The Man Suffrage Association was formed about six weeks before this election of 1895. It was formed for the purpose of calling the attention of the voters of the State to the fact that the question was to be put upon the ballot, and to call upon them to vote “No.” Our main object, however, was to see that the voters knew that the question of extending the franchise was to come up and to see that they voted upon it. We felt perfectly sure what the vote would be if they only voted. Such questions coming at the end of a ballot are very apt to be neglected. In fact, the vote on that question was the largest that has ever been given in Massachusetts on any question submitted to the people.

Mr. Littlefield. Any constitutional question, you mean?

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Mr. Russell. It is only constitutional questions that have been submitted to the people. The others have been local questions submitted to localities, but that was the largest vote on any question, constitutional or otherwise. The vote was 57,000 larger than the vote on the prohibition amendment, and the majority against it was more than double that given against any other measure submitted to the people's vote.

That Man Suffrage Association has served its purpose. It sent out circulars. It posted large notices throughout the State calling the attention of the voters to the fact that this question was coming up and it called upon “all who voted, men or women,” to vote “no.” It said in its appeals that it did not call upon women to vote, as it did not think it wise for them to do so, but if they voted it called upon them to vote “no.” The result of our efforts was this very large vote and this very large majority against the expediency of granting suffrage to women. There is no question about how Massachusetts stands on this question. And this association of women was formed so that hereafter there would be no danger of this matter going by default in the legislature and of the legislators thinking there were no women opposed to it. Since then they have conducted the battle, and have conducted it very ably, and it is safe to leave it in their hands.

I will now ask Mrs. George to appear and speak.

STATEMENT OF MRS. A. J. GEORGE.

Mr. Chairman: You have in your hands credentials accounting for my appearance to-day. In pursuance of those credentials I read the following communication to your body:

Gentlemen: We appear before you honorable committee, by direction of the “Associations Opposed to the Extension of the Suffrage to Women,” to protest in their behalf against the proposed amendment of the Constitution of the United States, advocated by the petitioners who have appeared before you. We oppose the amendment on the ground that it is unnecessary. The object sought can be accomplished without any amendment whatever to the Constitution whenever public opinion in the several States shall be pronounced in its favor.

Any amendment to the Constitutional requires the approval of three-fourths of the States of the Union. If that proportion is in favor of the extension of suffrage to women, it can be indicated by their action at any time without applying to Congress for constitutional amendments. While it is probable that if three-fourths of the States should enact the desired legislation the remaining one-fourth might fall into line, still, if any of them should refuse to extend the suffrage to women, it would be manifestly impolitic and unjust for the other States to attempt to coerce the minority on a question dependent upon the expression of public opinion alone.

There would seem therefore to be no possible justification for the effort now being made to secure Federal interference with the reserved rights of the several States. So far as the reasons given by the petitioners are purely sentimental, they should have no weight in so serious a matter as amending the Constitution of the United States. The mere fact that this amendment is asked as a compliment to the leading advocate of woman suffrage, on the attainment of her eightieth birthday, is evidence of the emotional frame of mind which influences the 02626advocates of the measure, and which is scarcely favorable to the calm consideration that should be given to fundamental political principles. With all the admiration which is felt for the vigorous character and consistent effort of Miss Anthony, it is absurd to suppose that the complicated machinery required to be put in motion in order to amend the Constitution of the United States should be started because this venerable woman has achieved length of days and enjoys the respect of so many persons.

The question of suffrage is dealt with in the first article of the Constitution, which was adopted after long and patient discussion, in which various limitations were advocated and rejected. The convention wisely left the qualifications for suffrage with the several States. This regulation of the suffrage was regarded as a sovereign right of the States, of which they could not be deprived without destroying republican institutions. It is in fact the very essence of home rule, which is ingrained in our institutions as the palladium of civil liberty. During more than a hundred years, in which we have lived and prospered under the Constitution, no effectual attempt has ever been made to limit the suffrage in any respect whatever. The Fifteenth amendment, which deals with the subject, simply registered the result of the greatest conflict in our history, by which slavery perished and the involuntary servitude specified in the Constitution ceased to exist. It did not extend the suffrage in any way, but it prevented its restriction by reason of a condition which no longer existed.

If the view here presented commends itself to your committee it will be a waste of time to present any arguments either for or against the granting of suffrage to women, because this is a question not in issue at this time or upon this occasion. The proper sphere of discussion of this question is in the several States, and there is nothing whatever to prevent suitable legislation whenever public opinion shall demand it. It may be proper to add, however, that so far as we can judge, there is no general demand for such legislation. We are convinced that if the proposition to enlarge the suffrage were submitted to the votes of the women of the United States it would be rejected by an overwhelming majority. We are convinced that what is termed a “right” of suffrage is rather a duty to be performed, and a duty of such a nature that women are disqualified for many reasons from assuming this responsibility. We feel that the exemption of women from the performance of this duty is a privilege which they are not prepared to surrender, and which has been conferred upon them as a compensation for limitations and duties imposed upon them by their sex, and which can not by any possibility be transferred to the domain of masculine service. We know that women are physically unable to perform the duties which men are compelled to perform under every well-regulated government. The enforcement of law involves not only the performance of jury duty, but in the last emergency the employment of military force, in neither of which can women discharge the responsibility of actual service.

No better illustration of the difficulties which would arise in case women were endowed with the duties of suffrage can be presented than the situation which has so lately existed in the State of Kentucky. Imagine women taking part in the strife of that State, involving insurrection, riot, bloodshed and assassination as the consequences of a political dispute. If either one of the claimants of the office of governor had been a woman it is perfectly obvious that confusion would have been worse confounded, and that in the last resort under the Constitution 02727the Federal authorities would have been analyzed by the necessity for using military force against the women of the State. The word “chaos” alone gives adequate expression to the state of affairs which would have existed in Kentucky if the women as well as the men had been compelled to take part in the unhappy controversy which has convulsed that State, and might have entangled the General Government in its solution.

Further consideration will serve to show that the proposed amendment would in no respect promote the objects of the constitution, which are declared in the preamble “to form a more perfect union, establish justice, encourage domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

The “union” referred to was one of States, but if the phrase could be strained so as to refer to the union or harmony between men and women, it seems evident that the suffrage would not tend to perfect this union, but would produce strife that would render “domestic tranquility” a by-word among the people, and would be far from promoting the general welfare. Women could not take part in the “common defense,” which is essential to establish justice. the extension therefore of the suffrage so as to include women not merely be an invasion of the sovereign right of the State, but would tend to disrupt society.

It seems only necessary to present this brief statement of the actual condition of the question to convince your committee that the proposition to give the suffrage to women is a departure from the traditional conditions of the Constitution, not justified by any compensating advantages whatsoever—a change not desired by a majority of the women of this country, and a measure liable to produce intolerable confusion leading the to the destruction of social order.

Mrs. Francis M. Scott, Honorary Chairman.

Mrs. Gilbert E. Jones, Acting Chairman. New York State Central Association.

Mrs. J. Elliot Cabot, President.

Mrs. Charles E. Guild, Vice-President. Massachusetts Association.

Mrs. R. W. Wilbur, President.

Mrs. W. J. Ladd,

Mrs. J. B. Montgomery, Vice-Presidents. Oregon Association.

Mrs. Arthur M. Dodge, Chairman Interstate Committee (New York).

Mrs. Henry M. Whitney, Chairman Interstate Committee (Massachusetts).

Mrs. George (continuing). There is no reason at this time that we should argue for or against woman suffrage. In the two hours that have been consumed by those who have been speaking in favor of woman suffrage, you have doubtless heard the arguments which have been given for the last fifty years. We are not here to ask any enactment against the enfranchisement of woman, but to protest in the interest of what we believe is the silent majority of women.

The agitation for woman suffrage has been going on for the last fifty years. Within the last ten years there have been 160 separate defeats 02828of woman-suffrage measures in 34 States. I have here a careful tabulation which I shall be glad to give to anymore who may desire to see it:

State. 1889. 1890. 1891. 1892. 1893. 1894. 1895. 1896. 1897. 1898. 1899. Arizona 1 1 1 Arkansas 1 1 1 California 1 1 2 1 1 1 Connecticut 5 1 2 2 1 Dakota 3 Delaware 2 Illinois 1 1 2 4 Indiana 1 1 1 Iowa 3 1 1 1 1 Kansas 2 1 2 1 Kentucky 1 1 1 1 Maine 1 1 1 1 1 1 Massachusetts 2 1 1 4 1 1 2 3 4 4 3 Michigan 1 1 1 1 Minnesota 1 1 1 Mississippi 1 Missouri 1 1 1 1 Montana 1 1 1 North Dakota 1 1 1 1 Nebraska 1 1 2 Nevada 1 1 1 New Hampshire 1 1 New Mexico 1 1 New Jersey 1 New York 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 Ohio 2 1 1 Oklahoma 1 1 2 1 Rhode Island 1 1 1 1 1 South Dakota 1 1 1 1 South Carolina 1 Vermont 1 1 1 1 1 Washington 1 1 1 1 West Virginia 1 Wisconsin 1 Total 24 8 15 13 16 6 20 7 21 10 20

160 defeats of woman-suffrage in 34 States from 1889 to 1890, inclusive.

What we wish to have recognized is the fact that the women who protest against the enfranchisement of their sex are striving for the same end which those seeks who are in favor of enfranchisement, but that the former, unlike the latter, have recognized sex not as a taunt, but as a stubborn fact, and they further recognize that the division of labor which gives a certain portion of the world's work to man and another portion to woman is founded on facts that are not to be put aside by legislative enactment.

We have been told within the past week, during the conference here in Washington, that the women who oppose the suffrage are unpatriotic; that they have “befogged and beclouded intellects;” that they are not self-sacrificing, and that in no case are they identified with those movements which make for the welfare of the nation. And it is because such statements are made that we are bound to protest.

It is very natural mistake which the suffragists make when they ask for the ballot, but it is a mistake, for during these fifty years while they have been making this demand many of the limitations which were formerly put upon women have been removed, and woman has been given her “rights” in proportion as she has shown her ability to use them. Take alone the matter of higher education of women. There is no privilege in that particular line which has not been open to a woman if it be open to her brother. In fact, by a careful study of the colleges of the United States which are open to men and women, there are more colleges found to be open to women than to men. If this continues, we should be prepared for a declaration of man's rights.

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Take the matter of industrial opportunity: According to the last census, 360 out of 369 industries in the United States are now open to women. We are told last Sunday evening, at a meeting of the suffragists, that over 400 industries are engaged in by women. Whichever figures one takes, one sees the great field of industrial opportunity open to the women of to-day.

As regards legal disabilities, many have been removed without woman's vote, and although full justice may not have been done, woman does not need the ballot to secure her rights before the law. In many States women have greater privileges than men before the law.

The fact is, gentlemen, we do not believe that a monopoly of virtue or intelligence is possessed by either sex, and we do trust the men of the United States, not looking upon man as “our common enemy,” as Miss Anthony has called him. We are still dependent upon the chivalry, upon the strength, upon the manhood of this country, and we are gladly dependent, just as we believe that the men of this country are dependent upon the tenderness, the devotion, and the wise sympathy of women. We believe that the strength which would go into the performance of political duties,if suffrage were imposed upon women, would be taken from the performance of those tasks which now fill woman's life. Of the phrases “woman's sphere” and “woman's mission” we are not afraid, for we believe that woman has a sphere and has a mission, but that neither of these includes political activities or political responsibilities.

By woman's sphere I not merely mean the home, but the church, the hospitals, the schools, and the many other places of public activity where the exceptional woman may take her stand and work with men. It is one thing for a few women to enter into public work, it is quite another for all women to go into political life; it is one thing to offer educational opportunities, to open the professions, the trades, the industries, and the many other doors of activity wherein a woman may enter if she so choose, and quite another to open a new door and compel all women to enter and say, “Here you must quit yourselves like men,” for women must take up men's methods whenever they go into political life. If a woman may vote, she must vote. She must accept office and assume the working duties incident to office. She must be prepared to work for those for whom she would vote. Anything short of this would be interference and not influence. Would women be more likely to agree upon any question than men are? Would they create any new, any better way of looking at public questions; or, in case they did, would they be any more likely to make their views prevail than are the best men now? It is very honestly believed that some women by the exercise of the franchise would be make more competent, more earnest, more responsible. The exercise of the suffrage is expected to impart weight and dignity, soberness and gravity, where levity has prevailed. It is further said that other women need the franchise to open “the golden gate of opportunity” to an experience for which all their powers fit them. If in these days any woman's life is insignificant, it is her own fault.

One of the striking differences in the point of view of woman suffragists and antisuffragists is the tendency of the former to look to legislation for the remedy of abuses, while the latter criticise individual negligence and strive for improvements through a better developed moral sense in the community and a higher standard of education. Law can restrain a man, may cause him to be harmless, but it can not make him beneficent of useful. By law comes neither redemption from sin 03030nor reformation of character. In vain do we think to promote temperance by putting the word “prohibition” into the State constitution; or to promote religion by writing the word “God” into a national constitution.

We are convinced that legislative work does not reach the solution of the great problems of our day. Something deeper is needed—an advanced moral standard and public opinion that shall be true as the pole to right living and high thinking. Women are equally responsible with men for low standards of living in the community, and it is to the fountain head, the family, that we must turn if we hope to establish true aims and noble conduct. Shall women try for the lesser object when they have the highest at command? Let us be true to the duties that especially belong to women and the ballot will take care of itself. With this conservation view of women which we hold there is ample opportunity for all our powers.

To be a remonstrant against the enfranchisement of women is to plead for the retention of her right to make of herself the highest power for good in the State, to keep her untramelled by political duties that she may be free to serve the State as only woman can. We claim this as her right, and that supreme right of the State to which all individual right must defer.

I thank you, gentlemen; I will not delay you further, but will call upon Miss Bissell—

The Chairman. Do you reside in Massachusetts?

Mrs. George. Yes.

The Chairman. I would like to ask you one or two questions before you take your seat. Do you happen to know whether or not any particular effort was made in the State of Massachusetts to get the women to express themselves upon the question of their desire to have the right to vote given to the women in that State?

Mrs. George. Yes, sir, I do. I fortunately have here the pamphlets issued by the suffragists. I quote from their organ, the Woman's Journal, under date of October 12, 1895, giving the plan of campaign of the suffragists to bring out the woman vote. Do you wish it read?

The Chairman. I simply wish to know the facts.

Mrs. George. There was a very strong effort made, and by means of the splendid equipment which has been perfected by the many years of existence of the Suffrage Association, the State was covered by a network of organization, all of which was worked to its utmost limit; every effort was made to bring out the vote of the women for suffrage.

I also have the document issued by the Man Suffrage Association, showing that the failure of the women to register and vote was not to be taken as an inference that they did not with to vote.

The Chairman. There is one other question that I would like to ask you. Out of some 500,000 women voters in the State—that is, who could have been voters—it seems that some 21,000 expressed themselves in favor of it.

Mrs. George. About 4 per cent.

The Chairman. Now, can you tell me from what part of the State those 20,000 votes came; from the cities, large towns, or scattered throughout the State according to the population?

Mrs. George. About evenly divided; but I judge more from the cities.

The Chairman. That is, there was a larger vote in the cities?

Mrs. George. Very slightly larger in the cities.

The Chairman. Larger in proportion, I mean.

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Mrs. George. No; not so large in proportion in the cities.

The Chairman. And was there a larger vote in any particular section of the State—for instance, the central or western section; was there any particular difference?

Mrs. George. No.

Mr. Alexander. What was the character of these ladies, their social position? For instance, in Boston from what wards did they come?

Mrs. George. Do you mean those opposed?

Mr. Alexander. Those who voted for it.

Mrs. George. From all the wards of Boston.

Mr. Alexander. And was there a greater percentage in the upper wards on Commonwealth Avenue and along there than in the lower wards.

Mrs. George. No. May Mr. Russell answer the question?

Mr. Alexander. Certainly.

Mr. Russell. Mr. Chairman, I think that there can hardly be a line drawn. I think in some wards, the wards where there is the largest foreign population, there was a smaller vote than in some of the other wards. I think in the wards where the population is distinctly foreign there was a smaller vote than in the other wards.

The Chairman. You made a remark here that rather indicated that you thought those who favored woman suffrage were trying to force female suffrage on the women of the country. You used the expression “compelling them.”

Mrs. George. Yes, with reason, for since I have been here I have heard the statement made at the conference that the business of the National Association of Suffragists through their Organization Committee is to make those want suffrage who do not now want it, and we have come to protest against being made to want a thing that we do not want.

And, too, I wish to say one thing more, because the constant trend of the remarks of the suffragists in their conference here—and I take that as the expression of their platform—is that the remonstrants include only those women who are so happily circumstanced that they are quite superior to the needs of their sisters, who would find in suffrage a benefit, for we are told that the enfranchisement of women would “work the moral regeneration of the race.” I only speak for Massachusetts; in fact, I can only speak for Brookline, where I happen to be the chairman of the Anti-Suffrage Association. We have in Brookline an organization composed of 600 women. We have in our ranks a large percentage of wage-earners, of school teachers, of tax-paying women, and of single women, and we feel that we are a representative body of American women, and do not represent a class.

STATEMENT OF MISS EMILY P. BISSELL, OF WILMINGTON, DEL.

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: It is not the tyranny but the chivalry of men that we American women have to fear. The men of America want to give us everything we really need, and the danger is that they will mistake a minority for a majority. That is why we are here to-day. We hold a brief for the silent majority who do not want the ballot. There are no doubt thousands of women who wish the ballot, and wish it earnestly, but there are millions who do not desire it.

The proof that we represent this majority may be asked for. It lies in this—that the suffrage movement must be against the opinions of 03232most of our sex, since it has been pushed for fifty years by as able a woman and as popular a one as Miss Anthony, and yet still remains a minority movement. In these fifty years every other woman's movement really desired by women has succeeded. The educational movement (not necessarily the coeducational) is a magnificent success; and, by the way, I may mention here that the presidents of four of the most prominent women's colleges are all antisuffragists. The movement for property rights is so successful that even married women now have more property rights than married men. The entrance of women into all occupations and professions has been so great that out of a possible 369 occupations over 360 have been conquered for our sex, according to the census of 1890, while now a suffragist speaker at the conference this week claims that we are to-day represented in over 400 trades and occupations. And the club movement—well, gentlemen, wherever there are two women nowadays there is a club. The remotest hamlet is no exception to this rule. These movements have had no trouble in winning their way, and they have not taken half a century to do it, either. The woman suffrage movement is the only woman's movement in existence that after fifty years’ hard work finds itself not only in the minority, but with strong associations of women banded against it.

The suffrage movement is a minority movement, even where it has succeeded. In Colorado, where I have been twice since the equal-suffrage law was passed, and where I have friends who are old residents I have been assured that the majority of women did not desire to vote, and have been indifferent ever since as to casting their ballots. When I was going to Oregon last year I had a most interesting talk with an Oregon suffragist, who sought to dissuade me from opposing suffrage. I asked her if she did not think that I represented the majority, and she said: “Why, of course the majority of women here in the East are against us, and you will find the majority out there against us too, but when they have to vote they will vote.” And when I reached Oregon I found that she was right in her first remark, at least. The great majority of all the women I met there did not care a button for the ballot, and a strong organization has been formed there against it. In this connection I may add, since the success of municipal suffrage in Kansas is often spoken of by the suffragists, that one of the members of the standing committee of this Oregon State Association Opposed to the Extension of the Suffrage to Women came upon that committee because, as she said, she had been living in Kansas under municipal suffrage, and was so disgusted with it that when she moved to Oregon she wanted no more suffrage at all.

The suffrage movement is a minority movement, too, in that the four States which have accepted suffrage are not representative of our large communities. Colorado, by the census of 1890, had less inhabitants in the whole State than the city of Baltimore. By the last estimate, made by its governor, it had just about 20,000 inhabitants more than Baltimore, which is not much of a margin. Wyoming's total population is less than the foreign population of Maryland, and Maryland is not a land of immigrants by any means. The population of Idaho is far below the number of colored people in Maryland. Utah (where the admission of women to the suffrage can hardly be said, in view of recent events, to have elevated the character of the candidates) has less population than there are negroes in Arkansas; and altogether the four States that have equal suffrage all put together have fewer people in them (700,000 fewer) than Chicago, and not half as many as New 03333York City. Gentlemen, results from such States, even if they were conclusive and positive, would still be minority results.

But even in those States the results are negative. Colorado has no advance in legislation to speak of; no purification of politics; no improvement of municipal conditions; no raising of working-women's wages; no tokens of the millennial dawn whatever. Utah has sent Mr. Brigham Roberts here, but he has been returned with thanks (through the efforts of the women without the ballot), so that Utah's effort to uplift the country goes for nothing. Wyoming has had equal suffrage for thirty years, yet nothing important has happened any more than in Idaho, which has but just begun the experiment. Negative results, such as these, speak powerfully against suffrage, to our mind.

I may be asked by what authority I speak for Colorado. I have here letters from Colorado men, signed with their names and giving their opinion as to the negative or evil results of suffrage in Colorado. It may be said that you would prefer to hear from the women, and I also have a letter from a Denver woman, who signs her name to it and who shows up the name evils. [Here the speaker read two letters, one from an official of the fire and police board of Denver, and one from a Denver lawyer, which spoke emphatically of the failure of woman suffrage to purify politics, advance the cause of temperance, or remedy municipal corruption. Both these letters particularly referred to the vote of the disreputable women as being the only solid and result-producing women's vote in Denver politics. One of these letters was written by a man who had voted for woman suffrage and still theoretically approved of it, but considered its practical working so far exceedingly disastrous. The letter from a Denver woman particularly emphasized the extraordinary expense for carriage hire at recent Denver elections, amounting to $10,000 at a recent city election, and also said, “he would be a bold man indeed who should claim that the municipal affairs of the city of Denver are to-day in the hands of cleaner or more disinterested politicians that before the days of woman suffrage.”]

In conclusion, gentlemen, if you will excuse a personal detail, I wish to say that if any woman in the United States needs a vote I ought to be that woman. The suffragists ask for the ballot in the name of the self-supporting woman, who must be a bread winner not only for herself, but often others; they ask it for the property owning woman, who needs it on account of taxation; they ask it for the temperance woman, so that she can save those nearest and dearest to her from the saloon; they ask it for the club woman, because her intelligence and interest in public affairs deserves it. And above all, they ask it for the poor downtrodden single woman, who has no one to look out for her or take care of her interests. Well, gentlemen, by a freak of coincidence I happen to be myself a single woman, a club woman, a temperance woman (though not a prohibitionist), a small property owner and a self-supporting woman these many years. And yet, though I ought to have thus a fivefold longing for suffrage, I have never yet been so situated that I could see where a vote could help me. If I felt that it would, I might become a suffragist—perhaps—but as it is, I remain with a majority of my sex, and I beg you to believe that we do not want to vote, and that Miss Anthony (whose courage, whose devotion, whose intellect, whose determined perseverance we sincerely admire) is nevertheless not backed by the women of America, but is leading a minority movement only.

STATEMENT OF MRS. ROSSITER JOHNSON, OF NEW YORK.

Mrs. Johnson said:

Gentlemen, by our opponents we have been led to dwell on these smaller, minuter, rather personal matters. They have in their other hearings based all American institutions upon the real meaning of the Constitution. Certainly there is some historic reason why the word “male” was inserted in our State constitutions and why the progressive Republic finds itself in the condition it does to-day, having granted women every privilege and having stood against this movement in every State and in Congress steadily.

We see that there is not a solitary republic in this world that has introduced woman suffrage. It belongs with two things abroad—aristocracy and socialism. And both those things are more favorable to woman suffrage than any progressive republicanism anywhere. For instance, take Russia and its dependencies; that has a nearer approach to woman suffrage than any other place; and while Italy on the one hand, and Austria-Hungary on the other, have a share of it, it is restricted everywhere to simply the property vote, for it is the property that votes and never the woman. But little Switzerland has no woman suffrage, Sweden, with its aristocratic institutions, has more or less of that restricted woman suffrage; but little Norway, that has lately raised its flag in its own ports, has none except a little school suffrage; men have been glad to grant that until they find that even now women will not use it, and it has met with defeat in three States recently, and Ohio and Connecticut are both proposing to abolish it. France has never had any woman suffrage; although this movement began in revolutionary France, it really was brought here by the men who favored that movement over there, and it was carried along in the same way. In England it is favored to-day by the Conservatives and never by the Liberals.

The great Liberal leaders, John Bright and Gladstone, have opposed it and published pamphlets against, it showing its deleterious effects and their constitutional reasons for opposing it. Then as to the Australian colonies, woman suffrage was introduced there as a part of the socialistic movements that have swept those colonies, and it has gone hand in hand with them. Wherever there was a steady growth, for instance, in New South Wales, in Victoria, the vote has been kept entirely in the hands of men until very recently a little socialistic movement has crept in there and introduced a little woman suffrage, which I see now, however, they are about to reject, and the federation, which is beginning to be a union somewhat similar to our own, has voted strongly, 23 to 12, against admitting women to suffrage for its parliament. The legislature of South Australia voted that they would give the public money to build communistic villages and at the same time voted woman suffrage; but now, with the federation, they have taken that back and only the women tax-payers can vote.

In our country woman suffrage began in Utah with Mormonism when Utah was first a Territory, and when the vote was taken away from the women of Utah our suffrage friends tried to protest against that.

With this wave of political hysteria that is sweeping over our country the women opposed to the enfranchisement of their sex have been called into action because they are afraid that the men will forget that we must be defended securely by the votes of the men; that the ballot does not mean anything in itself; that it only means the power to defend the ballot, and in civil and military matters both, they must 03535stand behind the ballot or we shall none of us have freedom to carry out the great progressive movements which we have so well established and which have been established by the women who have never favored this suffrage movement.

Mrs. George. We women who are still willing to abide by a flag whose blue field bears a star for each State in our Union thank the committee for this opportunity of presenting our cause. We had to come to the suffrage conference to find a flag with but four stars on its field, representing the four “true States”—Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado. This is the banner under which the petitioners ask to be enfranchised. We believe that the majority of the women of the United States accept the flag which is authorized by the Congress of the United States, and that that majority does not wish to be enfranchised. We thank you for your courtesy.