SECTION I. The right of citizens of the United States to vote

shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any

State on account of sex.

SEC. 2. The Congress shall have power, by appropriate legislation,

to enforce the provisions of this article.

Fortunately for the perpetuity of our institutions and the prosperity

of the people, the Federal Constitution contains a provision for its

own amendment. The framers of that instrument foresaw that time and

experience, the growth of the country and the consequent expansion of

the Government, would develop the necessity for changes in it, and

they therefore wisely provided in Article V as follows:

The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall deem it

necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on

the application of the Legislatures of two-thirds of the several

States, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which in

either case shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part

of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of

three-fourths of the several States, or by conventions in

three-fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of

ratification may be proposed by the Congress.

Under this provision, at the first session of the First Congress, ten

amendments were submitted to the Legislatures of the several States,

in due time ratified by the constitutional number of States, and

became a part of the Constitution. Since then there have been added to

the Constitution by the same process five different articles.

To secure an amendment to the Constitution under this article requires

the concurrent action of two-thirds of both branches of Congress and

the affirmative action of three-fourths of the States. Of course

Congress can refuse to submit a proposed amendment to the Legislatures

of the several States, no matter how general the demand for such

submission may be, but I am inclined to believe with the senior

Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. BLAIR], in the proposition submitted

by him in a speech he made early in the present session upon the

pending resolution, that the question as to whether this resolution

shall be submitted to the Legislatures of the several States for

ratification does not involve the right or policy of the proposed

amendment. I am also inclined to believe with him that should

the demand by the people for the submission by Congress to the

Legislatures of the several States of a proposed amendment become

general it would he the duty of the Congress to submit such amendment

irrespective of the individual views of the members of Congress, and

thus give the people through their Legislative Assemblies power to

pass upon the question as to whether or not the Constitution should be

amended. At all events, for myself, I should not hesitate to vote to

submit for ratification by the Legislatures of the several States an

amendment to the Constitution although opposed to it if I thought the

demand for it justified such a course.

But I shall vote for the pending joint resolution because I am in

favor of the proposed amendment. I have been for many years convinced

that the demand made by women for the right of suffrage is just, and

that of all the distinctions which have been made between citizens in

the laws which confer or regulate suffrage the distinction of sex is

the least defensible.

I am not going to discuss the question at length at this time. The

arguments for and against woman suffrage have been often stated in

this Chamber, and are pretty fully set forth in the majority and

minority reports of the Senate committee upon the pending joint

resolution. The arguments in its favor were fully stated by the senior

Senator from New Hampshire in his able speech upon the question before

alluded to, and now the objections to it have been forcibly and

elaborately presented by the senior Senator from Georgia [Mr. BROWN].

I could not expect by anything I could say to change a single vote in

this body, and the public is already fully informed upon the question,

as the arguments in favor of woman suffrage have been voiced in every

hamlet in the land with great ability. No question in this country has

been more ably discussed than this has been by the women themselves.

I do not think a single objection which is made to woman suffrage is

tenable. No one will contend but that women have sufficient capacity

to vote intelligently.

Sir, sacred and profane history is full of the records of great deeds

by women. They have ruled kingdoms, and, my friend from Georgia to

the contrary notwithstanding, they have commanded armies. They have

excelled in statecraft, they have shone in literature, and, rising

superior to their environments and breaking the shackles with which

custom and tyranny have bound them, they have stood side by side with

men in the fields of the arts and the sciences.

If it were a fact that woman is intellectually inferior to man, which

I do not admit, still that would be no reason why she should not

be permitted to participate in the formation and control of the

Government to which she owes allegiance. If we are to have as a test

for the exercise of the right of suffrage a qualification based upon

intelligence, let it be applied to women and to men alike. If it be

admitted that suffrage is a right, that is the end of controversy;

there can no longer be any argument made against woman suffrage,

because, if it is her right, then, if there were but one poor woman

in all the United States demanding the right of suffrage, it would be

tyranny to refuse the demand.

But our friends say that suffrage is not a right; that it is a matter

of grace only; that it is a privilege which is conferred upon or

withheld from individual members of society by society at pleasure.

Society as here used means man's government, and the proposition

assumes the fact that men have a right to institute and control

governments for themselves and for women. I admit that in the

governments of the world, past and present, men as a rule have assumed

to be the ruling classes; that they have instituted governments from

participation in which they have excluded women; that they have made

laws for themselves and for women, and as a rule have themselves

administered them; but that the provisions conferring or regulating

suffrage in the constitutions and laws of governments so constituted

determined the question of the right of suffrage can not be

maintained.

Let us suppose, if we can, a community separated from all other

communities, having no organized government, owing no allegiance to

any existing governments, without any knowledge of the character

of present or past governments, so that when they come to form a

government for themselves they can do so free from the bias or

prejudice of custom or education, composed of an equal number of

men and women, having equal property rights to be defined and to

be protected by law. When such community came to institute a

government--and it would have an undoubted right to institute a

government for itself, and the instinct of self-preservation would

soon lead them to do so--will my friend from Georgia tell me by what

right, human or divine, the male portion of that community could

exclude the female portion, although equal in number and having equal

property rights with the men, from participation in the formation of

such government and in the enactment of laws for the government of the

community? I understand the Senator, if he should answer, would

say that he believes the Author of our existence, the Ruler of the

universe, has given different spheres to man and woman. Admit that;

and still neither in nature nor in the revealed will of God do I find

anything to lead me to believe that the Creator did not intend that a

woman should exercise the right of suffrage.

During the consideration by this body at the last session of the bill

to admit Washington Territory into the Union, referring to the

fact that in that Territory woman had been enfranchised, I briefly

submitted my views on this subject, which I ask the Secretary to read,

so that it may be incorporated in my remarks.

The Secretary read as follows:

Mr. President, there is another matter which I consider pertinent

to this discussion, and of too much importance to be left entirely

unnoticed on this occasion. It is something new in our political

history. It is full of hope for the women of this country and

of the world, and full of promise for the future of republican

institutions. I refer to the fact that in Washington Territory the

right of suffrage has been extended to women of proper age, and

that the delegates to the constitutional convention to be held

under the provisions of this bill, should it become a law, will,

under existing laws of the Territory, be elected by its citizens

without distinction as to sex, and the constitution to be

submitted to the people will be passed upon in like manner.

I do not intend to discuss the question of woman suffrage upon

this occasion, and I refer to it mainly for the purpose of

directing attention to the advanced position which the people of

this Territory have taken upon this question. I do not believe

the proposition so often asserted that suffrage is a political

privilege only, and not a natural right. It is regulated by

the constitution and laws of a State I grant, but it needs no

argument, it appears to me, to show that a constitution and laws

adopted and enacted by a fragment of the whole body of the people,

but binding alike on all, is a usurpation of the powers of

government.

Government is but organized society. Whatever its form, it has its

origin in the necessities of mankind and is indispensable for

the maintenance of civilized society. It is essential to every

government that it should represent the supreme power of the

State, and be capable of subjecting the will of its individual

citizens to its authority. Such a government can only derive

its just powers from the consent of the governed, and can be

established only under a fundamental law which is self-imposed.

Every citizen of suitable age and discretion who is to be subject

to such a government has, in my judgment, a natural right to

participate in its formation. It is a significant fact that should

Congress pass this bill and authorize the people of Washington

Territory to frame a State constitution and organize a State

government, the fundamental law of the State will be made by all

the citizens of the State to be subject to it, and not by one-half

of them. And we shall witness the spectacle of a State government

founded in accordance with the principles of equality, and have a

State at last with a truly republican form of government.

The fathers of the Republic enunciated the doctrine "that all men

are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with

certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty,

and the pursuit of happiness." It is strange that any one in this

enlightened age should be found to contend that this declaration

is true only of men, and that a man is endowed by his Creator with

inalienable rights not possessed by a woman. The lamented Lincoln

immortalized the expression that ours is a Government "of the

people, by the people, and for the people," and yet it is far from

that. There can be no government by the people where one-half

of them are allowed no voice in its organization and control. I

regard the struggle going on in this country and elsewhere for

the enfranchisement of women as but a continuation of the great

struggle for human liberty which has, from the earliest dawn of

authentic history, convulsed nations, rent kingdoms, and drenched

battlefields with human blood. I look upon the victories which

have been achieved in the cause of woman's enfranchisement in

Washington Territory and elsewhere as the crowning victories of

all which have been won in the long-continued, still-continuing

contest between liberty and oppression, and as destined to exert a

greater influence upon the human race than any achieved upon the

battlefield in ancient or modern times.

Mr. DOLPH. Mr. President, the movement for woman suffrage has passed

the stage of ridicule. The pending joint resolution may not pass

during this Congress, but the time is not far distant when in every

State of the Union and in every Territory women will be admitted to

an equal voice in the government, and that will be done whether the

Federal Constitution is amended or not. The first convention demanding

suffrage for women was held at Seneca Falls, in the State of New York,

in 1848. To-day in three of the Territories of the Union women enjoy

full suffrage, in a large number of States and Territories they

are entitled to vote at school meetings, and in all the States and

Territories there is a growing sentiment in favor of this measure

which will soon compel respectful consideration by the law-making

power.

No measure in this country involving such radical changes in our

institutions and fraught with so great consequences to this country

and to humanity has made such progress as the movement for woman

suffrage. Denunciation will not much longer answer for arguments by

the opponents of this measure. The portrayal of the evils to flow from

woman suffrage such as we have heard pictured to-day by the Senator

from Georgia, the loss of harmony between husband and wife, and the

consequent instability of the marriage relation, the neglect of

husband and children by wives and mothers for the performance of their

political duties, in short the incapacitating of women for wives and

mothers and companions, will not much longer serve to frighten the

timid. Proof is better than theory. The experiment has been tried

and the predicted evils to flow from it have not followed. On the

contrary, if we can believe the almost universal testimony, everywhere

where it has been tried it has been followed by the most beneficial

results.

In Washington Territory, since woman was enfranchised, there have been

two elections. At the first there were 8,368 votes cast by women out

of a total vote of 34,000 and over. At the second election, which was

held in November last, out of 48,000 votes cast in the Territory,

12,000 votes were cast by women. The opponents of female suffrage

are silenced there. The Territorial conventions of both parties have

resolved in favor of woman suffrage, and there is not a proposition,

so far as I know in all that Territory, to repeal the law conferring

suffrage upon woman.

I desire also to inform my friend from Georgia that since women were

enfranchised in Washington Territory nature has continued in her

wonted courses. The sun rises and sets; there is seed-time and

harvest; seasons come and go. The population has increased with the

usual regularity and rapidity. Marriages have been quite as frequent,

and divorces have been no more so. Women have not lost their influence

for good upon society, but men have been elevated and refined. If we

are to believe the testimony which comes from lawyers, physicians,

ministers of the gospel, merchants, mechanics, farmers, and laboring

men, the united testimony of the entire people of the Territory, the

results of woman suffrage there have been all that could be desired by

its friends. Some of the results in that Territory have been seen

in making the polls quiet and orderly, in awaking a new interest in

educational questions and in questions of moral reform, in securing

the passage of beneficial laws and the proper enforcement of them;

and, as I have said before, in elevating men, and that without injury

to the women.

Mr. EUSTIS. Will the Senator allow me to ask him a question?

Mr. DOLPH. The Senator can ask me a question, if he chooses.

Mr. EUSTIS. If it be right and proper to confer the right of suffrage

on women, I ask the Senator whether he does not think that women ought

to be required to serve on juries?

Mr. DOLPH. I can answer that very readily. It does not necessarily

follow that because a woman is permitted to vote and thus have a voice

in making the laws by which she is to be governed and by which her

property rights are to be determined, she must perform such duty as

service upon a jury. But I will inform the Senator that in Washington

Territory she does serve upon juries, and with great satisfaction

to the judges of the courts and to all parties who desire to see an

honest and efficient administration of law.

Mr. EUSTIS. I was aware of the fact that women are required to serve

on juries in Washington Territory because they are allowed to vote.

I understand that under all State laws those duties are considered

correlative. Now, I ask the Senator whether he thinks it is a decent

spectacle to take a mother away from her nursing infant and lock her

up all night to sit on a jury?

Mr. DOLPH. I intended to say before I reached this point of being

interrogated that I not only do not believe that there is a single

argument against woman suffrage that is tenable, and I may be

prejudiced in the matter, but that there is not a single one that is

really worthy of any serious consideration. The Senator from Louisiana

is a lawyer, and he knows very well that under such circumstances, a

mother with a nursing infant, that fact being made known to the court

would be excused; that would be a sufficient excuse. He knows himself,

and he has seen it done a hundred times, that for trivial excuses

compared to that men have been excused from service on a jury.

Mr. EUSTIS. I will ask the Senator whether he knows that under the

laws of Washington Territory that is a legal excuse from serving on a

jury?

Mr. DOLPH. I am not prepared to state that it is; but there is no

question in the world but that any judge, that fact being made known,

would excuse a woman from attendance upon a jury. No special authority

would be required. I will state further that I have not learned that

there has been any serious objection on the part of any woman summoned

for jury service in that Territory to perform that duty. I have not

learned that it has worked to the disadvantage of any family in the

Territory; but I do know that the judges of the courts have taken

especial pains to commend the women who have been called to serve upon

juries for the manner in which they have discharged their duty.

I wish to say further that there is no connection whatever between

jury service and the right of suffrage. The question as to who shall

perform jury service, the question as to who shall perform military

service, the question as to who shall perform civil official duty in

a government is certainly a matter to be regulated by the community

itself; but the question of the right to participate in the formation

of a government which controls the life and the property and the

destinies of its citizens, I contend is a question of right that goes

back of these mere regulations for the protection of property and the

punishment of offenses under the laws. It is a matter of right which

it is tyranny to refuse to any citizen demanding it.

Now, Mr. President, I shall close by saying: God speed the day when

not only in all the States of the Union and in all the Territories,

but everywhere, woman shall stand before the law freed from the last

shackle which has been riveted upon her by tyranny and the last

disability which has been imposed upon her by ignorance, not only in

respect to the right of suffrage, but in every other respect the peer

and equal of her brother, man.

* * * * *

Mr. VEST. Mr. President, any measure of legislation which affects

popular government based on the will of the people as expressed

through their suffrage is not only important but vitally so. If this

Government, which is based on the intelligence of the people, shall

ever be destroyed it will be by injudicious, immature, or corrupt

suffrage. If the ship of state launched by our fathers shall ever be

destroyed, it will be by striking the rock of universal, unprepared

suffrage. Suffrage once given can never be taken away. Legislatures

and conventions may do everything else; they never can do that. When

any particular class or portion of the community is once invested with

this privilege it is used, accomplished, and eternal.

The Senator who last spoke on this question refers to the successful

experiment in regard to woman-suffrage in the Territories of Wyoming

and Washington. Mr. President, it is not upon the plains of the

sparsely-settled Territories of the West that woman suffrage can be

tested. Suffrage in the rural districts and sparsely settled regions

of this country must from the very nature of things remain pure when

corrupt everywhere else. The danger of corrupt suffrage is in the

cities, and those masses of population to which civilization tends

everywhere in all history. Whilst the country has been pure and

patriotic, the cities have been the first cancers to appear upon the

body-politic in all ages of the world.

Wyoming Territory! Washington Territory! Where are their large cities?

Where are the localities in these Territories where the strain upon

popular government must come? The Senator from New Hampshire, who is

so conspicuous in this movement, appalled the country some months

since by his ghastly array of illiteracy in the Southern States. He

proposes that $77,000,000 of the people's money be taken in order to

strike down the great foe to republican government, illiteracy. How

was that illiteracy brought upon this country? It was by giving the

suffrage to unprepared voters. It is not my purpose to go back into

the past and make any partisan or sectional appeal, but it is a fact

known to every intelligent man that in one single act the right of

suffrage was given without preparation to hundreds of thousands of

voters who to-day can scarcely read. That Senator proposes now to

double, and more than double, that illiteracy. He proposes to give the

negro women of the South this right of suffrage, utterly unprepared as

they are for it.

In a convention some two years and a half ago in the city of

Louisville an intelligent negro from the South said the negro men

could not vote the Democratic ticket because the women would not live

with them if they did. The negro men go out in the hotels and upon the

railroad cars. They go to the cities and by attrition they wear

away the prejudice of race; but the women remain at home, and their

emotional natures aggregate and compound the race-prejudice, and when

suffrage is given them what must be the result?

Mr. President, it is not my purpose to speak of the inconveniences,

for they are nothing more, of woman suffrage. I trust that as a

gentleman I respect the feelings of the ladies and their advocates. I

am not here to ridicule. My purpose only is to use legitimate argument

as to a movement which commands respectful consideration, if for no

other reason than because it comes from women. But it is impossible

to divest ourselves of a certain degree of sentiment when considering

this question.

I pity the man who can consider any question affecting the influence

of woman with the cold, dry logic of business. What man can, without

aversion, turn from the blessed memory of that dear old grandmother,

or the gentle words and caressing hand of that blessed mother gone to

the unknown world, to face in its stead the idea of a female justice

of the peace or township constable? For my part I want when I go to my

home--when I turn from the arena where man contends with man for what

we call the prizes of this paltry world--I want to go back, not to be

received in the masculine embrace of some female ward politician, but

to the earnest, loving look and touch of a true woman. I want to go

back to the jurisdiction of the wife, the mother; and instead of a

lecture upon finance or the tariff, or upon the construction of the

Constitution, I want those blessed, loving details of domestic life

and domestic love.

I have said I would not speak of the inconveniences to arise from

woman suffrage--I care not--whether the mother is called upon to

decide as a juryman or jury-woman rights of property or rights of

life, whilst her baby is "mewling and puking" in solitary confinement

at home. There are other considerations more important, and one of

them to my mind is insuperable. I speak now respecting women as a sex.

I believe that they are better than men, but I do not believe they are

adapted to the political work of this world. I do not believe that the

Great Intelligence ever intended them to invade the sphere of work

given to men, tearing down and destroying all the best influences for

which God has intended them.

The great evil in this country to-day is in emotional suffrage. The

great danger to-day is in excitable suffrage. If the voters of this

country could think always coolly, and if they could deliberate, if

they could go by judgment and not by passion, our institutions would

survive forever, eternal as the foundations of the continent itself;

but massed together, subject to the excitements of mobs and of these

terrible political contests that come upon us from year to year under

the autonomy of our Government, what would be the result if suffrage

were given to the women of the United States?

Women are essentially emotional. It is no disparagement to them they

are so. It is no more insulting to say that women are emotional than

to say that they are delicately constructed physically and unfitted to

become soldiers or workmen under the sterner, harder pursuits of life.

What we want in this country is to avoid emotional suffrage, and what

we need is to put more logic into public affairs and less feeling.

There are spheres in which feeling should be paramount. There are

kingdoms in which the heart should reign supreme. That kingdom belongs

to woman. The realm of sentiment, the realm of love, the realm of the

gentler and the holier and kindlier attributes that make the name of

wife, mother, and sister next to that of God himself.

I would not, and I say it deliberately, degrade woman by giving her

the right of suffrage. I mean the word in its full signification,

because I believe that woman as she is to-day, the queen of home and

of hearts, is above the political collisions of this world, and should

always be kept above them.

Sir, if it be said to us that this is a natural right belonging to

women, I deny it. The right of suffrage is one to be determined by

expediency and by policy, and given by the State to whom it pleases.

It is not a natural right; it is a right that comes from the state.

It is claimed that if the suffrage be given to women it is to protect

them. Protect them from whom? The brute that would invade their rights

would coerce the suffrage of his wife, or sister, or mother as he

would wring from her the hard earnings of her toil to gratify his own

beastly appetites and passions.

It is said that the suffrage is to be given to enlarge the sphere of

woman's influence. Mr. President, it would destroy her influence.

It would take her down from that pedestal where she is to-day,

influencing as a mother the minds of her offspring, influencing by her

gentle and kindly caress the action of her husband toward the good and

pure.

But I rise not to discuss this question, but to discharge a request.

I know that when a man attacks this claim for woman suffrage he is

sneered at and ridiculed as afraid to meet women in the contests for

political honor and supremacy. If so, I oppose to the request of these

ladies the arguments of their own sex; but first, I ask the Secretary

to read a paper which has been sent to me with a request that I place

it before the Senate.

The Chief Clerk read as follows:

_To the honorable Senate and House of Representatives_:

We, the undersigned, respectfully remonstrate against the further

extension of suffrage to women.

H.P. Kidder.

O.W. Peabody.

R.M. Morse, jr.

Charles A. Welch.

Augustus Lowell.

Francis Parkman, LL.D.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich.

Edmund Dwight.

Charles H. Dalton.

Henry Lee.

W. Endicott, jr.

Samuel Wells.

Hon. John Lowell.

William G. Russell.

John C. Ropes.

Robert D. Smith.

George A. Gardner.

F. Haven, jr.

W. Powell Mason.

B.F. Stevens.

Charles Marsh.

Charles W. Eliot, president, Harvard University.

Prof. C.F. Dunbar.

Prof. J.P. Cook.

Prof. J. Lovering.

Prof. W.W. Goodwin.

Prof. Francis Bowen.

Prof. Wolcott Gibbs.

Prof. F.J. Child.

Prof. John Trowbridge.

Prof. G.I. Goodale.

Prof. J.B. Greenough.

Prof. H.W. Torrey.

Prof. J.H. Thayer.

Prof. E.W. Gurney.

Justin Winsor.

H.W. Paine.

Hon. W.E. Russell.

James C. Fiske.

George Putnam.

C.A. Curtis.

T. Jefferson Coolidge.

T.K. Lothrop.

Augustus P. Loring.

W.F. Draper.

George Draper.

Francis Brooks.

Rev. J.P. Bodfish, chancellor, Cathedral Holy Cross.

Rt. Rev. B.H. Paddock, bishop of Massachusetts.

Rev. Henry M. Dexter.

Rev. H. Brooke Herford.

Rev. O.B. Frothingham.

Rev. Ellis Wendell.

Rev. Geo. F. Staunton.

Rev. A.H. Heath.

Rev. W.H. Dowden.

Rev. J.B. Seabury.

Rev. C. Woodworth.

Rev. Leonard K. Storrs.

Rev. Howard N. Brown.

Rev. Edward J. Young.

Rev. Andrew P. Peabody.

Rev. George Z. Gray.

Rev. William Lawrence.

Rev. E.H. Hall.

Rev. Nicholas Hoppin.

Rev. David G. Haskins.

Rev. L.S. Crawford.

Rev. J.I.T. Coolidge.

Rev. Henry A. Hazen.

Rev. F.H. Hedge.

Rev. H.A. Parker.

Rev. Asa Bullard.

Rev. Alexander McKenzie.

Rev. J.F. Spaulding.

Rev. S.K. Lothrop.

Rev. E. Osborne, S.S.J.E.

Rev. Leighton Parks.

Rev. H.W. Foote.

Rev. Morton Dexter.

Rev. David H. Brewer.

Rev. Judson Smith.

Rev. L.W. Shearman.

Rev. Charles F. Dole.

Rev. George M. Boynton.

Rev. D.W. Waldron.

Rev. John A. Hamilton.

Rev. Isaac P. Langworthy.

Rev. E.K. Alden.

Rev. E.E. Strong.

Rev. M.D. Bisbee.

Rev. Oliver S. Dean.

Henry Parkman.

W.H. Sayward.

Charles A. Cummings.

Hon. S.C. Cobb.

Sidney Bartlett.

John C. Gray.

Louis Brandeis.

Hon. George G. Crocker.

John Bartlett.

John Fiske.

J.T.G. Nichols, M.D.

C.E. Vaughan, M.D.

John Homans, M.D.

Chauncey Smith.

Benj. Vaughan.

Charles F. Walcott.

J.B. Warner.

Walter Dean.

S.H. Kennard.

E. Whitney.

W.P.P. Longfellow.

H.O. Houghton.

J.M. Spelman.

J.C. Dodge.

E.S. Dixwell.

L.S. Jones.

G.W.C. Noble.

Charles Theodore Russell.

Clement L. Smith.

Ezra Farnsworth.

H.H. Edes.

Hon. R.R. Bishop.

H.H. Sprague.

Charles R. Codman.

Darwin E. Ware.

Arthur E. Thayer.

C.F. Choate.

Richard H. Dana.

O.D. Forbes.

Edward L. Geddings.

William V. Hutchings.

John L. Gardner.

L.M. Sargent.

H.L. Hallett.

E.P. Brown.

W.A. Tower.

J. Edwards.

G.H. Campbell.

Samuel Carr, jr.

Edward Brooks.

J. Randolph Coolidge.

J. Eliot Cabot.

Fred. Law Olmstead.

Charles S. Sargent.

C.A. Richardson.

Charles F. Shimmin.

Edward Bangs.

J.G. Freeman.

H.H. Coolidge.

David Hunt.

Alfred D. Hurd.

Edward I. Brown.

W.G. Saltonstall.

Thomas Weston, jr.

Richard M. Hodges, M.D.

Henry J. Bigelow, M.D.

Charles D. Homans, M.D.

George H. Lyman, M.D.

John Dixwell, M.D.

R.M. Pulsifer.

Edward L. Beard.

Solomon Lincoln.

G.B. Haskell.

John Boyle O'Reilly.

Arlo Bates.

Horace P. Chandler.

George O. Shattuck.

Hon. Alex. H. Rice.

Henry Cabot Lodge.

Francis Peabody, jr.

Harcourt Amory.

F.E. Parker.

A.S. Wheeler.

Jacob C. Rogers.

S.G. Snelling.

C.H. Barker.

J.H. Walker.

Forrest E. Barker.

John D. Wasbburn.

Martin Brimmer.

Fred L. Ames.

Hon. A.P. Martin.

Mr. DOLPH. If the Senator from Missouri will permit me, those names

sounded very much like the names of men.

Mr. VEST. They are men's names. I did not say that the petition was

signed by ladies. I referred to the papers in my hand, which I shall

proceed to lay before the Senate.

I hold in my hand an argument against woman suffrage by a lady very

well known in the United States, and well known to the Senators from

Massachusetts, a lady whose philanthropy, whose exertions in behalf

of the oppressed and poor and afflicted have given her a national

reputation. I refer to Mrs. Clara T. Leonard, the wife of a

distinguished lawyer, and whose words of themselves will command the

attention of the public.

The Chief Clerk read as follows:

[Letter from Mrs. Clara T. Leonard.]

The following letter was read by Thornton K. Lothrop, esq., at

the hearing before the Legislative committee on woman suffrage,

January 29, 1884:

The principal reasons assigned for giving suffrage to women are

these:

That the right to vote is a natural and inherent right of which

women are deprived by the tyranny of men.

That the fact that the majority of women do not wish for the right

or privilege to vote is not a reason for depriving the minority of

an inborn right.

That women are taxed but not represented, contrary to the

principles of free government.

That society would gain by the participation of women in

government, because women are purer and more conscientious than

men, and especially that the cause of temperance would be promoted

by women's votes.

Those women who are averse to female suffrage hold differing

opinions on all these points, and are entitled to be heard

fairly and without unjust reproach and contempt on the part of

"suffragists," so called.

The right to vote is not an inherent right, but, like the right to

hold land, is conferred upon individuals by general consent, with

certain limitations, and for the general good of all.

It is as true to say that the earth was made for all its

inhabitants, and that human has a right to appropriate a portion

of its surface, as to say that all persons have a right to

participate in government. Many persons can be found to hold both

these opinions. Experience has proved that the general good is

promoted by ownership of the soil, with the resultant inducement

to its improvement.

Voting is simply a mathematical test of strength. Uncivilized

nations strive for mastery by physical combat, thus wasting life

and resources. Enlightened societies agree to determine the

relative strength of opposing parties by actual count. God has

made women weaker than men, incapable of taking part in battles,

indisposed to make riot and political disturbance.

The vote which, in the hand of a man, is a "possible bayonet,"

would not, when thrown by a woman, represent any physical power to

enforce her will. If all the women in the State voted in one way,

and all the men in the opposite one, the women, even if in the

majority, would not carry the day, because the vote would not be

an estimate of material strength and the power to enforce the

will of the majority. When one considers the strong passions and

conflicts excited in elections, it is vain to suppose that the

really stronger would yield to the weaker party.

It is no more unjust to deprive women of the ballot than to

deprive minors, who outnumber those above the age of majority, and

who might well claim, many of them, to be as well able to decide

political questions as their elders.

If the majority of women are either not desirous to vote or are

strongly opposed to voting, the minority should yield in this, as

they are obliged to do in all other public matters. In fact, they

will be obliged to yield, so long as the present state of opinion

exists among women in general, for legislators will naturally

consult the wishes of the women of their own families and

neighborhood, and be governed by them. There can be no doubt that

in this State, where women are highly respected and have great

influence, the ballot would be readily granted to them by men, if

they desired it, or generally approved of woman suffrage. Women

are taxed, it is true; so are minors, without the ballot; it is

untrue, to say that either class is not represented. The thousand

ties of relationship and friendship cause the identity of interest

between the sexes. What is good in a community for men, is good

also for their wives and sisters, daughters and friends. The laws

of Massachusetts discriminate much in favor of women, by exempting

unmarried women of small estate from taxation; by allowing women,

and not men, to acquire a settlement without paying a tax; by

compelling husbands to support their wives, but exempting the

wife, even when rich, from supporting an indigent husband; by

making men liable for debts of wives, and not _vice versa_. In the

days of the American Revolution, the first cause of complaint was,

that a whole people were taxed but not represented.

To-day there is not a single interest of woman which is not

shared and defended by men, not a subject in which she takes an

intelligent interest in which she cannot exert an influence in the

community proportional to her character and ability. It is because

the men who govern live not in a remote country, with separate

interests, but in the closest relations of family and

neighborhood, and bound by the tenderest ties to the other sex,

who are fully and well represented by relations, friends, and

neighbors in every locality. That women are purer and more

conscientious than men, as a sex, is exceedingly doubtful when

applied to politics. The faults of the sexes are different,

according to their constitution and habits of life. Men are more

violent and open in their misdeeds, but any person who knows human

nature well and has examined it in its various phases knows that

each sex is open to its peculiar temptation and sin; that the

human heart is weak and prone to evil without distinction of sex.

It seems certain that, were women admitted to vote and to hold

political office, all the intrigue, corruption, and selfishness

displayed by men in political life would also be found among

women. In the temperance cause we should gain little or nothing by

admitting women to vote, for two reasons: first, that experience

has proved that the strictest laws can not be enforced if a great

number of people determine to drink liquor; secondly, because

among women voters we should find in our cities thousands of

foreign birth who habitually drink beer and spirits daily without

intoxication, and who regard license or prohibitory laws as an

infringement of their liberty. It has been said that municipal

suffrage for women in England has proved a political success. Even

if this is true, it offers no parallel to the condition of things

in our own cities. First, because there is in England a property

qualification required to vote, which excludes the more ignorant

and irresponsible classes, and makes women voters few and

generally intelligent; secondly, because England is an old,

conservative country, with much emigration and but little

immigration.

Here is a constant influx of foreigners: illiterate, without love

of our country or interest in, or knowledge of, the history of our

liberties, to whom, after a short residence, we give a full share

in our government. The result begins to be alarming--enormous

taxation, purchasable votes, demagogism,--all these alarm the

more thoughtful, and we are not yet sure of the end. It is a wise

thought that the possible bayonet or ruder weapon in the hands

of our new citizens would be even worse than the ballot, and our

safer course is to give the immigrants a stake and interest in

the government. But when we learn that on an average one thousand

immigrants per week landed at the port of Boston in the past

calendar year, is it not well to consider carefully how we double,

and more than double, the popular vote, with all its dangers and

its ingredients of ignorance and irresponsibility. Last of all, it

must be considered that the lives of men and women are essentially

different.

One sex lives in public, in constant conflict with the world; the

other sex must live chiefly in private and domestic life, or

the race will be without homes and gradually die out. If nearly

one-half of the male voters of our State forego their duty or

privilege, as is the fact, what proportion of women would exercise

the suffrage? Probably a very small one. The heaviest vote would

be in the cities, as now, and the ignorant and unfit women would

be the ready prey of the unscrupulous demagogue. Women do not hold

a position inferior to men. In this land they have the softer

side of life--the best of everything. There are, of course,

exceptions--individuals--whose struggle in life is hard, whose

husbands and fathers are tyrants instead of protectors; so there

are bad wives, and men ruined and disheartened by selfish, idle

women.

The best work that a woman can do for the purifying of politics is

by her influence over men, by the wise training of her children,

by her intelligent, unselfish counsel to husband, brother, or

friend, by a thorough knowledge and discussion of the needs of her

community. Many laws on the statute-books of our own and other

States have been the work of women. More might be added.

It is the opinion of many of us that woman's power is greater

without the ballot or possibility of office-holding for gain. When

standing outside of politics she discusses great questions upon

their merit. Much has been achieved by women in the anti-slavery

cause, the temperance cause, the improvement of public and private

charities, the reformation of criminals, all by intelligent

discussion and influence upon men. Our legislators have been ready

to listen to women and carry out their plans when well framed.

Women can do much useful public service upon boards of education,

school committees, and public charities, and are beginning to

do such work. It is of vital importance to the integrity of our

charitable and educational administration that it be kept out of

politics. Is it not well that we should have one sex who have no

political ends to serve who can fill responsible positions of

public trust? Voting alone can easily be exercised by women

without rude contact, but to attain any political power women must

affiliate themselves with men; because women will differ on

public questions, must attend primary meetings and caucuses, will

inevitably hold public office and strive for it; in short, women

must enter the political arena. This result will be repulsive to a

large portion of the sex, and would tend to make women unfeminine

and combative, which would be a detriment to society.

It is well that men after the burden and heat of the day should

return to homes where the quiet side of life is presented to them.

In these peaceful New England homes of ours, great and noble men

have been raised by wise and pious mothers, who instructed them,

not in politics, but in those general principles of justice,

integrity, and unselfishness which belong to and will insure

statesmanship in the men who are true to them. Here is the

stronghold of the sex, weakest in body, powerful for good or evil

over the stronger one, whom women sway and govern, not by the

ballot and by greater numbers but by those gentle influences

designed by the Creator to soften and subdue man's ruder nature.

CLARA T. LEONARD.

Mr. HOAR. The Senator from Missouri has alluded to me in connection

with the name of this lady. Perhaps he will allow me to make an

additional statement to that which I furnished him, in order that the

statement about her may be complete.

All that the Senator from Missouri has said of the character and worth

of Mrs. Leonard is true. I do not know her personally. Her husband is

my respected personal friend, a lawyer of high standing and character.

All that the Senator has said of her ability is proved better than by

any other testimony, by the very able and powerful letter which has

just been read. But Mrs. Leonard herself is the strongest refutation

of her own argument.

Politics, the political arena, political influence, political action

in this country consists, I suppose, in two things: one of them the

being intrusted with the administration of public affairs, and second,

having the vote counted in determining who shall be public servants,

and what public measures shall prevail in the commonwealth. Now, this

lady was intrusted for years with one of the most important public

functions ever exercised by any human being in the commonwealth

of Massachusetts. We have a board, called the board of lunacy and

charity, which controls the large charities for which Massachusetts

is famous and in many of which she was the first among civilized

communities, for the care of the pauper and the insane and the

criminal woman, and the friendless and the poor child. It is one

of the most important things, except the education of youth, which

Massachusetts does.

A little while ago a political campaign in Massachusetts turned upon a

charge which her governor made against the people of the commonwealth

in regard to the conduct of the great hospital at Tewksbury, where

she was charged by her chief executive magistrate with making sale of

human bodies, with cruelty to the poor and defenseless; and not only

the whole country, but especially the whole people of Massachusetts,

were stirred to the very depths of their souls by that accusation.

Mrs. Clara T. Leonard, the writer of this letter, came forward and

informed the people that she had been one of the board who had managed

that institution for years, that she knew all about it through and

through, that the accusation was false and a slander; and before her

word and her character the charge of that distinguished governor went

down and sunk into merited obscurity and ignominy.

Now, the question is whether the lady who can be intrusted with the

charge of one of the most important departments of government, and

whose judgment in regard to its character or proper administration is

to be taken as gospel by the people where her reputation extends, is

not fit to be trusted to have her vote counted when the question

is who is to be the next person who is to be trusted with that

administration. Mrs. Leonard's mistake is not in misunderstanding the

nature either of woman or of man, which she understands perfectly; it

is in misunderstanding the nature of politics, that is, the political

arena; and this lady has been in the political arena for the last

ten years of her life, one of the most important and potent forces

therein.

It is true, as she says, that the wife and the mother educate the

child and the man, and when the great function of the state, as we

hold in our State and as is fast being held everywhere, is also the

education of the child and the man, how does it degrade that wife and

mother, whose important function it is to do this thing, to utter

her voice and have her vote counted in regard to the methods and the

policies by which that education shall be conducted?

Why, Mr. President, Mrs. Leonard says in that letter that woman, the

wife and the maiden and the daughter, has no political ends to serve.

If political ends be to desire office for the greed of gain, if

political ends be to get an unjust power over other men, if political

ends be to get political office by bribery or by mob violence or by

voting through the shutter of a beer-house, that is true: but the

persons who are in favor of this measure believe that those very

things that Mrs. Leonard holds up as the proper ends in the life of

women are political ends and nothing else; that the education of the

child, that the preservation of the purity of the home, that the care

for the insane and the idiot and the blind and the deaf and the ruined

and deserted, are not only political ends but are the chief political

ends for which this political body, the state, is created: and those

who desire the help of women in the administration of the state desire

it because of the ability which could write such a letter as that on

the wrong side, and because the qualities of heart and brain which God

has given to understand this class of political ends better than He

has given it to the masculine heart and brain are needed for their

administration.

I have no word of disrespect for Mrs. Leonard, but I say that, in

spite of herself and her letter, her life and her character are the

most abundant and ample refutation of the belief which she erroneously

thinks she entertains. Nobody invites these ladies to a contest of

bayonets; nobody who believes that government is a matter of mere

physical force asks the co-operation of woman in its administration.

It is because government is a conflict of such arguments as that

letter states on the one side, because the object of government is the

object to which this lady's own life is devoted, that the friends of

woman suffrage and of this amendment ask that it shall be adopted.

Mr. VEST. Mr. President, my great personal respect for the Senator

from Massachusetts has given me an interval of enforced silence, and I

have only to say that if I should print my desultory remarks I should

be compelled to omit his interruption for fear that the amendment

would be larger than the original bill. [Laughter.]

I fail to see that anything which has fallen from the distinguished

Senator has convicted Mrs. Clara Leonard of inconsistency or has added

anything to the argument upon his side of the question. I have

never said or intimated that there were women who were not credible

witnesses. I have never thought or intimated that there were not women

who were competent to administer the affairs of State or even to lead

armies. There have been such women, and I believe there will be to the

end of time, as there have been effeminate men who have been better

adapted to the distaff and the spindle than to the sword or to

statesmanship. But these are exceptions in either sex.

If this lady have, as she unquestionably has, the strength of

intellect conceded to her by the Senator from Massachusetts and

evidenced by her own production, her judgment of woman is worth that

of a continent of men. The best judge of any woman is a woman. The

poorest judge of any woman is a man. Let any woman with defect or flaw

go amongst a community of men and she will be a successful impostor.

Let her go amongst a community of women and in one instant the

instinct, the atmosphere circumambient, will tell her story.

Mrs. Leonard gives us the result of her opinion and of her experience

as to whether this right of suffrage should be conferred upon her

own sex. The Senator from Massachusetts speaks of her evidence in a

political campaign in Massachusetts and that her unaided and single

evidence crushed down the governor of that great State. I thank the

Senator for that statement. If Mrs. Leonard had been an office-holder

and a voter not a single township would have believed the truth of

what she uttered.

Mr. HOAR. She was an office-holder, and the governor tried to put her

out.

Mr. VEST. Ah! but what sort of an office-holder? She held the office

delegated to her by God himself, a ministering angel to the sick, the

afflicted, and the insane. What man in his senses would take from

woman this sphere? What man would close to her the charitable

institutions and eleemosynary establishments of the country? That is

part of her kingdom; that is part of her undisputed sway and realm. Is

that the office to which woman suffragists of this country ask us now

to admit them? Is it to be the director of a hospital? Is it to the

presidency of a board of visitors of an eleemosynary institution? Oh,

no; they want to be Presidents, to be Senators, and Members of the

House of Representatives, and, God save the mark, ministerial and

executive officers, sheriffs, constables, and marshals.

Of course, this lady is found in this board of directors. Where else

should a true woman be found? Where else has she always been found but

by the fevered brow, the palsied hand, the erring intellect, ay, God

bless them, from the cradle to the grave the guide and support of the

faltering steps of childhood and the weakening steps of old age!

Oh, no, Mr. President; this will not do. If we are to tear down all

the blessed traditions, if we are to desolate our homes and firesides,

if we are to unsex our mothers and wives and sisters and turn our

blessed temples of domestic peace into ward political-assembly rooms,

pass this joint resolution. But for one I thank God that I am so

old-fashioned that I would not give one memory of my grandmother or my

mother for all the arguments that could be piled, Pelion upon Ossa, in

favor of this political monstrosity.

I now propose to read from a pamphlet sent to me by a lady whom I

am not able to characterize as a resident of any State, although I

believe she resides in the State of Maine. I do not know whether she

be wife or mother. She signs this pamphlet as Adeline D.T. Whitney. I

have read it twice, and read it to pure and gentle and intellectual

women. I say to-day it ought to be in every household in this broad

land. It ought to be the domestic gospel of every true, gentle,

loving, virtuous woman upon all this continent. There is not one line

or syllable in it that is not written in letters of gold. I shall not

read it, for my strength does not suffice, nor will the patience of

the Senate permit, but from beginning to end it breathes the womanly

sentiment which has made pure and great men and gentle and loving

women.

I will venture to say, in my great admiration and respect for this

woman, whether she be married or single, she ought to be a wife, and

ought to be a mother. Such a woman could only have brave and wise men

for sons and pure and virtuous women for daughters. Here is her advice

to her sex. I am only sorry that every word of it could not be read in

the Senate, but I have trespassed too long.

Mr. COCKRELL. Let it be printed in your remarks.

Mr. VEST. I shall ask that it be printed. I will undertake, however,

to read only a few sentences, not of exceptional superiority to the

rest, because every sentence is equal to every other. There is not one

impure unintellectual aspiration or thought throughout the whole of

it. Would to God that I knew her, that I could thank her on behalf of

the society and politics of the United States for this production.

After all--

She says to her own sex--

After all, men work for women; or, if they think they do not, it

would leave them but sorry satisfaction to abandon them to such

existence as they could arrange without us.

Oh, how true that is; how true!

In blessed homes, or in scattered dissipations of show, amusement, or

the worse which these shows and amusements are but terribly akin to,

women give purpose to and direct the results of all men's work. If

the false standards of living first urge them, until at length the

horrible intoxication of the game itself drives them on further and

deeper, are we less responsible for the last state of those men than

for the first?

Do you say, if good women refused these things and tried for a simpler

and truer living, there are plenty of bad ones who would take them

anyhow, and supply the motive to deeper and more unmitigated evil? Ah,

there come both answer and errand again. Raise the fallen--at

least, save the growing womanhood--stop the destruction that rushes

accelerating on, before you challenge new difficulty and danger with

an indiscriminate franchise. Are not these bad women the very "plenty"

that would out-balance you at the polls if you persist in trying the

"patch-and-plaster" remedy of suffrage and legislation.

Recognize the fact, the law, that your power, your high commission, is

inward, vital, formative and causal. Bring all questions of choice

or duty to this test; will it work at the heart of things, among the

realities and forces? Try your own life by this; remember that mere

external is falsehood and death. The letter killeth. Give up all that

is only of the appearance, or even chiefly so, in conscious

delight and motive--in person, surrounding, pursuit. Let your

self-presentation, your home-making and adorning, your social effort

and interest, your occupation and use of talent, all shape and issue

for the things that are essentially and integrally good, and that the

world needs to have prevail. Until you can do this, and induce such

doing, it is of little use to clamor for mere outward right or to

contend that it would be rightly applied.

This whole pamphlet is a magnificent illustration of that stupendous

and vital truth that the mission and sphere of woman is in the inward

life of man; that she must be the building up and governing power that

comes from those better impulses, those inward secrets of the heart

and sentiment that govern men to do all that is good and pure and holy

and keep them from all that is evil.

Mr. President, the emotions of women govern. What would be the result

of woman suffrage if applied to the large cities of this country is a

matter of speculation. What women have done in times of turbulence and

excitement in large cities in the past we know. Open that terrible

page of the French Revolution and the days of terror, when the click

of the guillotine and the rush of blood through the streets of Paris

demonstrated to what extremities the ferocity of human nature can be

driven by political passion. Who led those blood-thirsty mobs? Who

shrieked loudest in that hurricane of passion? Woman. Her picture upon

the pages of history to-day is indelible. In the city of Paris in

those ferocious mobs the controlling agency, nay, not agency, but the

controlling and principal power, came from those whom God has intended

to be the soft and gentle angels of mercy throughout the world. But I

have said more than I intended. I ask that this pamphlet be printed in

my remarks.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. If there be no objection, the pamphlet will be

printed in the RECORD as requested by the Senator from Missouri. The

Chair hears no objection.

The pamphlet is as follows:

THE LAW OF WOMAN-LIFE.

The external arguments on both sides the modern woman question

have been pretty thoroughly presented and well argued. It seems

needless to repeat or recombine them; but in one relation they

have scarcely been handled with any direct purpose. Justice and

expediency have been the points insisted on or contested; these

have not gone back far enough; they have not touched the central

fact, to set it forth in its force and finality. The fact is

original and inherent, behind and at the root of the entire

matter, with all its complication and circumstance. We have to ask

a question to which it is the answer, and whose answer is that of

the whole doubt and dispute.

What is the law of woman-life?

What was she made woman for, and not man?

Shall we look back to that old third chapter of Genesis?

When mankind had taken the knowledge and power of good and evil

into their own hands through the mere earthly wisdom of the

serpent; when the woman had had her hasty outside way and lead,

according to the story, and woe had come of it, what was the

sentence? And was it a penance, or a setting right, or a promise,

or all three?

The serpent was first dealt with. The narrow policy, the keen

cunning, the little, immediate outlook, the expedient motive; all

that was impersonated of temporary shift and outward prudence

in mortal affairs, regardless of, or blind to, the everlasting

issues; all, in short, that represented material and temporal

interest as a rule and order--and is not man's external

administration upon the earth largely forced to be a legislation

upon these principles and economies?--was disposed of with the few

words, "I will put enmity between thee and the woman."

Was this punishment--as reflected upon the woman--or the power of

a grand retrieval for her? Not to man, who had been led, and who

would be led again, by the woman, was the commission of holy

revenge intrusted; but henceforth, "I will set the woman against

thee." Against the very principle and live prompting of evil, or

of mere earthly purpose and motive. "Between thy seed and her

seed." Your struggle with her shall be in and for the very life of

the race. "It," her life brought forth, "shall bruise thy head,"

thy whole power, and plan, and insidious cunning; "and thou shall

bruise," shalt sting, torment, hinder, and trouble in the way

and daily going, "his heel," his footstep. Thou, the subtle and

creeping thing of the ground, shalt lurk after and threaten with

crookedness and poison the ways of the men-children in their

earth-toiling; the woman, the mother, shall turn upon thee for and

in them and shall beat thee down!

Unto the woman He said, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and

thy conception." The burden and the glory are set in one. The

pain of the world shall be in your heart; the trouble, the

contradiction of it, shall be against your love and insight. But

your pain shall be your power; you shall be the life-bearer;

you shall hold the motive; yours shall be the desire, and your

husband's the dominion. Therefore shall you bring your aspiration

to him, that he may fulfill it for you. "Your desire shall be unto

him, and he shall rule."

And unto Adam He said, "Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice

of thy wife"--yes, and because thou wilt hearken--"thy sorrow

shall be in the labor of the earth; the ground shall be cursed;"

in all material things shall be cross and trouble, not against

you, but "for your sake." "In your sorrow you shall eat of it

all the days of your life." Your need and struggle shall be with

external things, and with the ruling of them. "For your sake,"

that you may learn your mastery, inherit your true power, carry

out with ease and understanding the desire and need of the race,

which woman represents, discerns afar, and pleads to you.

And Adam bowed before the Lord's judgment; we are not told that he

answered anything to that; but he turned to his wife, and in that

moment "called her name Eve, because she was the mother of all

living." Then and there was the division made; and to which, can

we say, was the empire given? Both were set in conditions, hemmed

in to divine and special work: man, by the stress and sorrow of

the ground; woman, by the stress and sorrow of her maternity, and

of her spiritual conception, making her truly the "mother of all

the living."

At the beginning of human history, or tradition, then, we get

the answer to our question: the law of woman-life is central,

interior, and from the heart of things; the law of the man's life

is circumferential, enfolding, shaping, bearing on and around,

outwardly; wheel within wheel is the constitution of human power.

It will be an evil day for the world when the nave shall leave its

place and contend for that of the felloe. Iron-rimmed for its busy

revolution and outward contact is the life and strength of man;

but the tempered steel is at the heart and within the soul of the

woman, that she may bear the silent pressure of the axle, and

quietly and invisibly originate and support the entire onward

movement. "The spirit of the living creature is in the wheels,"

and they can move no otherwise. "When the living creatures went,

the wheels went by them; and when the living creatures were lifted

up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up." That was what

Ezekiel saw in his vision.

There can he no going forward without a life and presence and

impulse at the center; and in the organization of humanity there

is where the place and power of woman have been put. For good or

for evil, for the serpent or for the redeeming Christ, she must

move, must influence, must achieve beforehand, and at the heart;

she must be the mother of the race; she must be the mother of the

Messiah. Not woman in her own person, but "one born of woman," is

the Saviour. For everything that is formed of the Creator, from

the unorganized stone to the thought of righteousness in the heart

of the race, there must be a matrix; in the creation and in the

recreation of His human child God makes woman and the soul of

woman His blessed organ and instrument. When woman clears herself

of her own perversions, her self-imposed limitations, returns to

her spiritual power and place, and cries, "Behold the handmaid of

the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy word," then shall the

spirit descend unto her; then shall come the redemption.

Take this for the starting-point; it is the key.

Within, behind, antecedent to all result in action, are the

place and office of the woman--by the law of woman-life. And all

question of her deed and duty should be brought to this test. Is

it of her own, interior, natural relation, putting her at her true

advantage, harmonious with the key to which her life is set? I

think this suffrage question must settle itself precisely upon

this ground-principle, and that all argument should range

conclusively around it. Judging so, we should find, I think, that

not at the polls, where the last utterance of a people's voice

is given--where the results of character, and conscience, and

intelligence are shown--is her best and rightful work: on the

contrary, that it is useless here, unless first done elsewhere.

But where little children learn to think and speak--where men love

and listen, and the word is forming--is the office she has to

fill, the errand she has to do. The question is, can she do both?

Is there need that she should do both? Does not the former and

greater include the latter and less?

Hers are indeed the primary meetings: in her nursery, her home,

and social circles; with other women, with young men, upon whose

tone and character in her maturity her womanhood and motherhood

join their beautiful and mighty influence; above all, among young

girls--the "little women," to whom the ensign and commission are

descending--is her undisputed power. Purify politics? Purify the

sewers? But what if, first, the springs, and reservoirs, and

conduits could be watched, guarded, filtered, and then the using

be made clean and careful all through the homes; a better system

devised and carried out for separating, neutralizing, destroying

hurtful refuse? Then the poisonous gases might not be creeping

back upon us through our enforced economies, our makeshifts and

stop-gaps of outside legislation. For legislation is, after all,

but cut-off, curb, and patch; an external, troublesome, partial,

uncertain application of hindrance and remedy. What physician will

work with lotion and plaster when he can touch, and control, and

heal at the very seat of the disease?

It is the beginning of the fulfillment that women have waked to

the consciousness that they have not as yet filled their full

place in human life and affairs. Only has not the mistake been

made of contending with and grappling results, when causes were in

their hands? Have they not let go the mainsprings to run after

and effectually push with pins the refractory cogs upon the

wheel-rims?

Woman always deserts herself when she puts her life and motive

and influence in mere outsides. Outsides of fashion and place,

outsides of charm and apparel, outsides of work and ambition--she

must learn that these are not her true showing; she must go hack

and put herself where God has called her to be with Himself, at

the silent, holy inmost; then we shall feel, if not at once, yet

surely soon or some time, a new order beginning. He, the Father

of all, gives it to us to be the motherhood. That is the great

solving and upraising word; not limited to mere parentage, but the

law of woman-life. For good or for evil she mothers the world.

Not all are called to motherhood in the literal sense, but all

are called to the great, true motherhood in some of its manifold

trusts and obligations. "_Noblesse oblige_;" you can not lay it

down. "More are the children of the desolate than of her who hath

a husband." All the little children that are born must look to

womanhood somewhere for mothering. Do they all get it? All the

works and policies of men look back somewhere for a true "desire"

toward and by which only they can rule. Is the desire of the

woman--of the home, the mother-motive of the world and human

living--kept in the integrity and beauty for which it was

intrusted to her, that it might move the power of man to noble

ends?

Do you ask the governing of the nation? You have the making of

the nation. Would you choose your statesmen? First make your

statesmen.

Indeed the whole cause on trial may be summarily ended by the

proving of an alibi, an elsewhere of demand. Is woman needed at

the caucuses, conventions, polls? She is needed, at the same time,

elsewhere. Two years of time and strength, of thought and love,

from some woman, are essential for every little human being, that

he may even begin a life. When you remember that every man is once

a little child, born of a woman, trained--or needing training--at

a woman's hands; that of the little men, every one of whom takes

and shapes his life so, come at length the hand for the helm, the

voice for the law, and the arm to enforce law--what do you want

more for a woman's opportunity and control?

Which would you choose as a force, an advantage, in settling

any question of public moment, or as touching your own private

interest through the general management--the right to go upon

election day and cast one vote, or a hold beforehand upon the

individual ear and attention of each voter now qualified? The

ability to present to him your argument, to show him the real

point at issue, to convince and persuade him of the right and

lasting, instead of the weak and briefly politic way? This initial

privilege is in the hands of woman; assuming that she can be

brought to feel and act as a unit, which appears to be what is

claimed for her in the argument for her regeneration of the outer

political word.

But already and separately, if every intelligent, conscientious

woman can but reach one man, and influence him from the principle

involved--from her interior perception of it, kept pure on purpose

from bias and temptation that assail him in the outside mix and

jostle--will she not have done her work without the casting of a

ballot? And what becomes of "taxation without representation,"

when, from Eden down, Eve can always plead with Adam, can have the

first word instead of the last--if she knows what that first word

is, in herself and thence in its power with him--can beguile him

to his good instead of to his harm, as indeed she only meant to do

in that first ignorant experiment? Would it be any less easy to

qualify for and accomplish this than to convince and outnumber in

public gathering not only bodies of men but the mass of women that

will also have to be confronted and convinced or overborne?

Preconceived opinions, minds made up, men not so easily beguiled

to the pure good, you say? Woman quite as apt to make mistakes out

of Paradise as in? That only returns us to the primal need and

opportunity. Get the man to listen to you before his mind is made

up--before his manhood is made up; while it is in the making. That

is just the power and place that belong to you, and you must seize

and fill. It is your natural right; God gave it to you. "The seed

of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head."

We can not do all in one day, and in such a day of the world as

this. We plant trees for posterity where forests have been laid

waste and the beautiful work of life is to be done over again; we

can not expect to see our fruit in souls and in the nation at less

cost of faith and time. Take care, then, of the little children:

the men children, to make men of them; the women children--oh,

yes, even above all--to make ready for future mothering--to snatch

from the evil that works over against pure womanliness. Until you

have done this let men fend for themselves in rough outsides a

little longer; except, perhaps, as wise, able women whom the

trying transition time calls forth may find fit way and place for

effort and protest--there is always room for that, and noble work

has been and is being done; but do not rear a new generation of

women to expect and desire charges and responsibilities reversive

of their own life-law, through whose perfect fulfillment alone may

the future clean place be made for all to work in.

Is there excess of female population? Can not all expect the

direct rule of a home? Is not this exactly, perhaps, just now,

for the more universal remedial mothering that in this age is the

thing immediately needed? Let her who has no child seek where she

can help the burdened mother of many; how she can best reach with

influence, and wisdom, and cherishing, the greatest number--or

most efficiently a few--of these dear, helpless, terrible little

souls, who are to make, in a few years, a new social condition; a

better and higher, happier and safer, or a lower, worse, bitterer,

more desperately complicated and distressful one.

"Desire earnestly the best gifts," said Saint Paul, after

enumerating the gifts of teaching and prophecy and authority; "and

I show you," he goes on, "a yet more excellent way." Charity--not

mere alms, or toleration, or general benignity, out of a safe

self-provision; but _caritas_--nearness, and caring, and

loving,--the very essence of mothering; the way to and hold of

the heart of it all, the heart of the life of humanity. "Keep thy

heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life."

That is the first word; it charges womanhood itself, which must be

set utterly right before it can take hold to right the world. Here

are at once task and mission and rewarding sway.

Woman has got off the track; she must see that first, and replace

herself. We are mothering the world still; but we are mothering

it, in a fearfully wide measure, all wrong.

Sacrifice is the beginning of all redemption. We must give up. We

must even give up the wish and seeming to have a hand in things,

that we may work unseen in the elements, and make them fit and

healthful; that daily bread and daily life may be sweet again

in dear, old, homely ways, and plentiful with all truly blessed

opportunities. We are not to organize the world, or to conquer it,

or to queen it. We are just to take it again and mother it. If

woman would begin that, search out the cradles--of life and

character--and take care of the whole world of fifty years hence

in taking care of them, calling upon men and the state, when

needful, to authorize her action and furnish outward means for

it--I wonder what might come, as earnest of good, even in this our

day, in which we know not our visitation?

And here again come allowance and exception for what women can

always do when this world-mothering forces an appeal to the

strength and authority of man. Women have never been prevented

from doing their real errands in the world, even outside the

domestic boundary. They have defended their husbands' castles in

the old chivalrous times, when the male chivalry was away at the

crusades. They have headed armies when Heaven called them; only

Heaven never called all the women at once; but when the king was

crowned, the mission done, they have turned back with desire to

their sheltered, gentle, unobtrusive life again. There has no

business to be a standing army of women; not even a standing

political army. Women have navigated and brought home ships when

commanders have died or been stricken helpless upon the ocean;

they have done true, intelligent, patient work for science, art,

religion; and those have done the most who have never stopped to

contend first, whether a woman, as such, may do it or not.

Look at what Dorothea Dix has done, single-handed, single-mouthed,

in asylums and before legislatures. Women have sat on thrones, and

governed kingdoms well, when that was the station in life to which

God called them. If Victoria of England has been anything, she has

been the mother of her land; she has been queen and protecting

genius of its womanhood and homes. And when a woman does these

things, as called of God--not talks of them, as to whether she may

make claim to do them--she carries a weight from the very sanctity

out of which she steps, as woman, that moves men unlike the moving

of any other power. Shall she resign the chance of doing really

great things, of meeting grand crises, by making herself common in

ward-rooms and at street-corners, and abolishing the perfect idea

of home by no longer consecrating herself to it?

If individual woman, as has been said, may gain and influence

individual man, and so the man-power in affairs--a body of women,

purely as such, with cause, and plea, and reason, can always have

the ear and attention of bodies of men; but to do this they must

come straight from their home sanctities, as representing them--as

able to represent them otherwise than men, because of their

hearth-priestesshood; not as politicians, bred and hardened in the

public arenas.

That the family is the heart of the state, and that the state

is but the widened family, is the fact which the old vestal

consecration, power, and honor set forth and kept in mind.

The voice which has of late been so generally conceded to women in

town, decisions as regarding public schools, is an instance of the

fittingness of relegating to them certain interests of which they

should know more than men, because--applying the key-test with

which we have started--it has direct relation to and springs from

their motherhood. But can one help suggesting that if the movement

had been to place women, merely and directly, upon the committees,

by votes of men who saw that this work might be in great part best

done by them; if women had asked and offered for the place without

the jostle of the town-meeting, or putting in that wedge for

the ballot--the thing might have been as readily done, and the

objection, or political precedent, avoided.

It is not the real opportunity, when that arises or shows itself

in the line of her life-law, that is to be refused for woman. It

is the taking from internal power to add to external complication

of machinery and to the friction of strife. Let us just touch

upon some of the current arguments concerning these external

impositions which one set is demanding and the other entreating

against.

If voting is to be the chief power in woman's hands, or even a

power of half the moment that is contended for it, it will grow to

be the motive and end, the all-absorbing object, with women that

it is with men.

The gubernatorial canvass, the presidential year, these will

interrupt and clog all home business, suspend decisions, paralyze

plans, as they do with men, or else we shall not be much, as

thorough politicians, after all. And if we talk of mending all

that, of putting politics in their right place, and governing

by pure principle instead of party trick, and stumping and

electioneering, we go back in effect to the acknowledgment that

only in the interior work, and behind politics, can women do

better things at all; which, precisely, was to be demonstrated.

Think, simply, of election day for women.

Would it be so invariably easy a thing for a home-keeper to do,

at the one opportunity of the year, or the four years, on a

particular day, her duty in this matter? It is easy to say that it

takes no more time than a hundred other things that some do; but

setting apart all the argument that previous time and strength

must have been spent in properly qualifying, how many of

the hundred other things are done now without interruption,

postponement, hindrance, through domestic contingencies? or are

there a hundred other things done when the home contingencies are

really met by a woman? A woman's life is not like a man's. That

a man's life may be--that he may transact his out-door business;

keep his hours and appointments; may cast his vote on election

day; may represent wife and children in all wherein the community

cares for, or might injure him and them--the woman, some woman,

must be at the home post, that the home order may go on, from

which he derives that command of time, and freedom from hindering

necessities, which leave him to his work. And so, as the old

proverb says, while man's work is from sun to sun--made definite,

a matter to which he can go forth, and from which he can come

in--a woman's work, of keeping the place of the forthgoing and

incoming, is never done, from the very nature and ceaseless

importance of it.

Must she go to the polls, sick or well, baby or no baby, servant

or no servant, strength or no strength, desire or no desire? If

she have cook and housemaid they are to go also, and number her

two to one, anyway; probably on election day, which they would

make a holiday, they would--as at other crises, of birth,

sickness, death, house-cleaning, which should occur in no

first-class families--come down upon her with their appropriate

_coup d'état_, and "leave;" making the State-stroke, in this

instance, of scoring three votes, two dropped and one lost, for

the irrepressible side.

How will it be when Norah, and Maggie, and Katie have not only

their mass and confession, their Fourth-of-July and Christmas,

their mission-weeks, their social engagements and family plans,

and their appointments with their dress-makers, to curtail your

claims upon their bargained time and service, but their share in

the primary meetings and caucuses, committees, and torch-light

processions, and mass meetings? For what shall prevent the

excitements, the pleasurings, the runnings hither and thither,

that men delight in from following in the train of politics and

parties with the common woman? Perhaps it may even be discovered,

to the still further detriment of our already painfully hampered

and perplexed domestic system, that the pursuit of fun, votes,

offices, is more remunerative, as well as gentlewomanly--as

Micawber might express it--than the cleansing of pots and pans,

the weekly wash, or the watching of the roast. Perhaps in that

enfranchised day there will be no Katies and Maggies' and the

Norahs will know their place no more. Then the enlightened

womanhood may have to begin at the foundation and glorify the

kitchen again. And good enough for her, in the wide as well as

primitive sense of the phrase, and a grand turn in the history

that repeats itself toward the old, forgotten, peaceful side of

the cycle it may be!

But the argument does not rest upon any such points as these. It

rests upon the inside nature of a woman's work; upon the need

there is to begin again to-day at the heart of things and make

that right; upon the evident fact that this can be done none too

soon or earnestly, if the community and the country are not to

keep on in the broad way to a threatened destruction; and upon the

certainty that it can never be done unless it is done by woman,

and with all of woman's might. Not by struggles for new and

different place, but by the better, more loving, more intelligent,

deep-seeing, and deep-feeling filling of her own place, that none

will dispute and none can take from her. We are not where woman

was in the old brutal days that are so often quoted; and we shall

not, need not, return to that. Christianity has disposed of that

sort of argument. We are on a vantage ground for the doing of our

real, essential work better than it has been done ever before in

the history of the world; and we are madly leaving our work and

our vantage together.

The great step made by woman was in the generation preceding this

one of restlessness--the restlessness that has come through the

first feeling of great power. It was made in the time when women

learned physiology, that they might rear and nurse their families

and help their neighborhoods understandingly; science, that they

might teach and answer little children, and share the joy of

knowledge that was spreading swiftly in the earth; political

history and economy, that they might listen and talk to their

brothers and husbands and sons, and leaven the life of the age as

the bread in the mixing; business figures, rules, and principles,

that they might sympathize, counsel, help, and prudentially work

with and honestly strengthen the bread-winners. The good work was

begun in the schools where girls were first told, as George B.

Emerson used to tell us Boston girls, that we were learning

everything he could teach us, in order to be women: wives,

mothers, friends, social influencers, in the best and largest way

possible. Women grew strong and capable under such instruction and

motive. Are their daughters and grand-daughters about to leap

the fence, leave their own realm little cared for--or doomed to

be--undertake the whole scheme of outside creation, or contest

it with the men? Then God help the men! God save the Commonwealth!

We are past the point already where homes are suffering, or liable

to suffer, neglect or injury; they are already left unmade. Shall

this go on? Between frivolities and ambitions, between social

vanities, and shows, and public meddling's and mixings--for where

one woman is needed and doing really brave, true work, there are

a hundred rushing forth for the mere sake of rushing--is the

primitive home, the power of heaven upon earth to slip away from

among us? Let us not build outsides which have no insides, let us

not put a face upon things which has no reality behind it. Beware

lest we make the confusion that we need the suffrage to help us

unmake; lest we tear to pieces that we may patch again. Crazy

patchwork that would be, indeed!

Are women's votes required because men will not legislate away

evils that they do not heartily wish away? Is government

corrupted because men desire shield and opportunity for dishonest

speculation; authority and countenance for nefarious combinations?

The more need to go to work at the beginning rather than to plunge

into the pitch and be defiled; more need to make haste and educate

a better generation of men, if it be so we can not, except _vi et

armis_, influence the generation that is. But do you think that if

women are in earnest--enough in earnest to give up, as they seem

to be to demand--they might not bring their real power to bear

even upon these evil things, in their root and inception, and even

now? Suppose women would not live in houses, or wear jewels and

gowns, that are bought for them out of wicked millions made upon

the stock exchange?

Suppose they would stop decorating their dwellings to an agony,

crowding them hurriedly with this and that of the last and newest,

just because it is last and new, making a show and rivalry of

what is not a true-grown beauty of a home at all, but a mere

meretriciousness; suppose they would so set to work and change

society that displays and feastings, which use up at every

separate one a year's comfortable support for a quiet, modest

family, should be given up as vulgarities; that people should care

for, and be ready for, a true interchange of life and thought, and

simple, uncrowded opportunities for these; suppose women would

say, "No; I will not blaze at Newport, or run through Europe

dropping American eagles or English sovereigns after me like the

trail of a comet, or the crumbs that Hop-'o-my-thumb let fall from

his pocket that the people at home might track the way he had

gone; because if I have money, there is better work to be done

with it; and I will not have the money that is made by gambling

manipulations and cheats."

Do you think this would have no influence? More than that, and

further back, and lowlier down, suppose they should say, every

one, "I will not have the new, convenient house, the fresh

carpetings, the pretty curtains, or even the least, most fitting

freshness, until I know the means are earned for me with honest

service to the world, and by no lucky turn of even a small

speculation." Further back yet, suppose them to declare, "I will

not have the home at all, nor my own happiness, unless it can be

based and builded on the kind of life-work that helps to make a

real prosperity; that really goes to the building and safe-keeping

of a whole nation of such homes." Would there be no power in

that? Would it not be a kind of woman-suffrage to settle the very

initials of all that ever bears upon the public question? And to

bring that sort of woman on the stage, and to the front, is there

not enough work to do, and enough "higher education" to insist on

and secure?

After all, men work for women; or, if they think they do not, it

would leave them but sorry satisfaction to abandon them to such

existence as they could arrange without us. In blessed homes, or

in scattered dissipations of show, amusement, or the worse which

these shows and amusements are but terribly akin to, women give

purpose to and direct the results of all men's work. If the false

standards of living first urge them, until at length the horrible

intoxication of the game itself drives them on further and deeper,

are we less responsible for the last state of those men than for

the first?

Do you say, if good women refused these things and tried for a

simpler and truer living, there are plenty of bad ones who would

take them anyhow, and supply the motive to deeper and more

unmitigated evil? Ah, there come both answer and errand again.

Raise the fallen--at least save the growing womanhood--stop the

destruction that rushes accelerating on, before you challenge new

difficulty and danger with an indiscriminate franchise. Are not

these bad women the very "plenty" that would out-balance you at

the polls, if you persist in trying the "patch-and-plaster" remedy

of suffrage and legislation?

Recognize the fact, the law, that your power, your high

commission, is inward--vital--formative, and casual. Bring all

questions of choice or duty to this test, will it work at the

heart of things, among the realities and forces? Try your own life

by this; remember that mere external is falsehood and death. The

letter killeth. Give up all that is only of the appearance--or

even chiefly so, in conscious delight and motive--in person,

surrounding pursuit. Let your self-presentation, your home-making

and adorning, your social effort and interest, your occupation

and use of talent, all shape and issue for the things that are

essentially and integrally good, and that the world needs to have

prevail. Until you can do this, and induce such doing, it is of

little use to clamor for mere outward right, or to contend that it

would be rightly applied.

Work as you will, and widely as you can, for schools, in

associations, in everything whose end is to teach, enlighten,

enlarge women, and so the world. Help and protect the industries

of women; but keep those industries within the guiding law of

woman-life. Do not throw down barriers that take down safeguards

with them; that make threatening breaches in the very social

structure. If women must serve in shops, demand and care for it

that it shall be in a less mixed, a more shielded way than now.

The great caravansaries of trade are perilous by their throng,

publicity, and weariness. There used to be women's shops; choice

places, where a woman's care and taste had ruled before the

counters were spread; where women could quietly purchase things

that were sure to be beautiful or of good service; there were not

the tumult and ransacking that kill both shop-girl and shopper

now.

This is one instance, and but one, of the rescuing that ought

to be attempted. There ought at least to be distinct women's

departments, presided over by women of good, motherly tone and

character, in the places of business which women so frequent, and

where the thoughtful are aware of much that makes them tremble.

And surely a great many of the girls and women who choose

shop-work, because they like its excitement, ought rather to be in

homes, rendering womanly service, and preparing to serve in homes

of their own--leaving their present places to young men who might

perhaps begin so to earn the homes to offer them. Will not this

apply all the way up, into the arts and the professions even?

There must needs be exceptional women perhaps; there are, and will

be, time and errand and place for them; but Heaven forbid that

they should all become exceptional.

Once more, work for these things that are behind, and underlie;

believing that woman's place is behind and within, not of

repression, but of power; and that if she do not fill this place

it will be empty; there will be no main spring. Meanwhile she will

get her rights as she rises to them, and her defenses where she

needs them; everything that helps, defends, uplifts the woman

uplifts man and the whole fabric, and man has begun to find it

out. If he "will give the suffrage if women want it," as is said,

why shall he not as well give them the things that they want

suffrage for and that they are capable of representing? Believe

me, this work, and the representation which grows out of it,

can no longer be done if we attempt the handling of political

machinery--the making of platforms, the judging of candidates, the

measuring and disputation of party plans and issues, and all the

tortuous following up of public and personal political history.

Do you say, men have their individual work in the world, and all

this beside and of it, and that therefore we may? Exactly here

comes in again the law of the interior. Their work is "of

it"--falls in the way. They rub against it as they go along. Men

meet each other in the business thoroughfares, at the offices and

the street corners; we are in the dear depths of home. We are with

the little ones, of whom is not this kingdom, but the kingdom of

heaven, which we, through them, may help to come. This is just

where we must abandon our work, if we attempt the doing of theirs.

And here is where our prestige will desert us, whenever great

cause calls us to speak from out our seclusions, and show men,

from our insights and our place, the occasion and desire that look

unto their rule. They will not listen then; they will remand us to

the ballot-box.

"Inside politics" is a good word. That is just where woman ought

to be, as she ought to be inside everything, insisting upon and

implanting the truth and right that are to conquer. And she can

not be inside and outside both. She can not do the mothering

and the home-making, the watching and ministry, the earning and

maintaining hold and privilege and motive influence behind and

through the acts of men--and all the world-wide execution of act

beside. Therefore, we say, do not give up the substance which you

might seize, for the shadow which you could not hold fast if you

were to seem to grasp it. Work on at the foundations. Insist on

truth and right; put them into all your own life, taking all the

beam out of your own eye before demanding--well, we will say the

mote, for generosity's sake, and for the holy authority of the

word--out of the brother's eyes.

Establish pure, honest, lovely things--things of good report--in

the nurseries, the schools, the social circles where you reign,

and the outside world and issue will take form and heed for

themselves. The nation, of which the family is the root, will be

made, and built, and saved accordingly. Every seed hath its own

body. The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent-head of

evil, and shall rise triumphant to become the ennobled, recreated

commonwealth. Then shall pour forth the double paean that thrills

through the glorious final chorus of Schumann's Faust--men and

women answering in antiphons--

"The indescribable,

Here it is done;

The ever-womanly

Beckons us on!"

Then shall Mary--the fulfilled, ennobled womanhood--sing her

Magnificat; standing to receive from the Lord, and to give the

living word to the nations:

"My soul doth magnify the Lord,

And my spirit hath rejoiced in God, my Saviour.

For He hath looked upon the low estate of His handmaiden;

For behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed,

For He that is mighty hath done to me great things;

And holy is His name.

And His mercy is unto generations and generations."

The coming new version of the Old Testament gives us, we are told,

among other more perfect renderings, this one, which fitly utters

charge and promise:

"The Lord gave the word;

Great was the company

Of those

That published it."

"The Lord giveth the word;

And the women that bring

Glad tidings

Are a great host."

ADELINE D.T. WHITNEY.

Mr. BLAIR. Mr. President, before the vote is taken I desire to say but

a word. Early in the session I had the opportunity of addressing the

Senate upon the general merits of the question. I said then all that I

cared to say; but I wish to remind the Senate before the vote is taken

that the question to be decided is not whether upon the whole the

suffrage should be extended to women, but whether in the proper arena

for the amendment of the Constitution ordained by the Constitution

itself one-third of the American people shall have the opportunity to

be heard in the discussion of such a proposed amendment--whether they

shall have the opportunity of the exercise of the first right of

republican government and of the American and of any free citizen,

the submission to the popular tribunal, which has alone the power to

decide the question whether on the whole, upon a comparison of the

arguments pro and con bearing one way and the other upon this great

subject, the American people will extend the suffrage to those who are

now deprived of it.

That is the real question for the Senate to consider. It is not

whether the Senate would, itself, extend the suffrage to women, but

whether those men who believe that women should have the suffrage

shall be heard, so that there may be a decision and an end made of

this great subject, which has now been under discussion more than

a quarter of a century, and to-day for the first time even in the

legislative body which is to submit the proposition to the country for

consideration has there been a prospect of reaching a vote.

I appeal to Senators not to decide this question upon the arguments

which have been offered here to-day for or against the merits of the

proposition. I appeal to them to decide this question upon that other

principle to which I have adverted, whether one-third of the American

people shall be permitted to go into the arena of public discussion

of the States, among the people of the States, and before the

Legislatures of the States, and be heard upon the issue, shall

the general Constitution be so amended as to extend this right of

suffrage? If, with this opportunity, those who believe in woman

suffrage fail, they must be content; for I agree with the Senators

upon the opposite side of the Chamber and with all who hold that if

the suffrage is to be extended at all, it must be extended by the

operation of existing law. I believe it to be an innate right; yet an

innate right must be exercised only by the consent of the controling

forces of the State. That is all that woman asks. That is all that any

one asks who believes in this right belonging to her sex.

As bearing simply upon the question whether there is a demand by a

respectable number of people to be heard on this issue, I desire

to read one or two documents in my possession. I offer in this

connection, in addition to the innumerable petitions which have been

placed before the Senate and before the other House, the petition of

the Women's Christian Temperance Union. I take it that no Senator will

raise the question whether this organization be or be not composed

of the very _élite_ of the women of America. At least two hundred

thousand of the Christian women of this country are represented in

this organization. It is national in its character and scope; it is

international, and it exists in every State and in every Territory of

the Union. By their officers, Miss Frances E. Willard, the president;

Mrs. Caroline B. Buell, corresponding secretary; Mrs. Mary A.

Woodbridge, recording secretary; Mrs. L.M.N. Stevens, assistant

recording secretary; Miss Esther Pugh, treasurer; Mrs. Zerelda G.

Wallace, superintendent of department of franchise, and Mrs. Henrietta

B. Wall, secretary of department of franchise, they bring this

petition to the Senate. It has been indorsed by the action of the body

at large. They say:

Believing that governments can be just only when deriving their

powers from the consent of the governed, and that in a government

professing to be a government of the people, all the people of a

mature age should have a voice, and that all class-legislation and

unjust discrimination against the rights and privileges of any

citizen is fraught with danger to the republic, and inasmuch as

the ballot in popular governments is a most potent element in all

moral and social reforms:

We, therefore, on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of Christian

women engaged in philanthropic effort, pray you to use your

influence, and vote for the passage of a sixteenth amendment

to the Constitution of the United States, prohibiting the

disfranchisement of any citizen on the ground of sex.

I have also just received, in addition to other matter before the

Senate, the petition of the Indianapolis Suffrage Association, or of

that department of the Women's Christian Temperance Union which has

the control of the discussion and management of the operations of the

union with reference to the suffrage. I shall not take the time of the

Senate to read it. The letter transmitting the petition is as follows:

INDIANAPOLIS, IND., _January_ 12, 1886.

DEAR SIR: I have sent the inclosed petitions and arguments to

every member on the Committee on Woman Suffrage, hoping if they

are read they may have some influence in securing a favorable

report for the passage of a sixteenth amendment, giving the ballot

to women.

Will you urge upon the members of the committee the importance of

their perusal?

Respectfully,

MRS. Z.G. WALLACE, _Sup't Dep't for Franchise of N.W.C.T.U._

Hon. H.W. BLAIR.

I will add in this connection a letter lately received by myself,

written by a lady who may not be so distinguished in the annals of the

country, yet, at the same time, she has attained to such a position in

the society where she lives that she holds the office of postmaster by

the sanction of the Government, and has held it for many years. She

seems, as other ladies have seemed, to possess the capacity to perform

the duties of this governmental office, so far as I know, to universal

satisfaction. At all events, it is the truth that no woman, so far as

I have ever heard, holding the office of postmaster, and no woman who

has ever held the position of clerk under the Government, or who has

ever discharged in State or in Nation any executive or administrative

function, has as yet been a defaulter, or been guilty of any

misconduct or malversation in office, or contributed anything by her

own conduct to the disgrace of the appointing or creating official

power. This woman says:

NEW LONDON, WIS., _January 18, 1887_.

Hon. H.W. BLAIR, _Washington, D.C._:

DEAR SIR: Thank you for the address you sent; also for your

kindness in remembering us poor mortals who can scarcely get a

hearing in such an august body as the Senate of these United

States, though I have reason to believe we furnished the men to

fill those seats.

There is something supremely ridiculous in the attitude of a man

who tells you women are angelic in their nature; that it is his

veneration for the high and lofty position they occupy which hopes

to keep them forever from the dirty vortex of politics, and then

to see him glower at her because she wishes politics were not so

dirty, and believes the mother element, by all that makes humanity

to her doubly sacred, is just what is needed for its purification.

We have become tired of hearing and reiterating the same old

theories and are pleased that you branched out in a new direction,

and your argument contains so much which is new and fresh.

We do care for this inestimable boon which one-half the people of

this Republic have seized, and are claiming that God gave it to

them and are working very zealously to help God keep it for them.

(We will remember the Joshua who leads us out of bondage.)

I used to think the Prohibition party would be our Moses, but that

has only gone so far as to say, "You boost us upon a high and

mighty pedestal, and when we see our way clear to pull you after

us we will venture to do so; but you can not expect it while we

run any risk of becoming unpopular thereby."

Liberty stands a goddess upon the very dome of our Capitol,

Liberty's lamp shines far out into the darkness, a beacon to the

oppressed, a dazzling ray of hope to serf and bondsmen of other

climes, yet here a sword unforbidden is piercing the heart of the

mother whose son believes God has made us to differ so that he can

go astray and return. But, alas, he does not return.

Help us to stand upon the same political footing with our brother;

this will open both his and our eyes and compel him to stand upon

the same moral footing with us. Only this can usher in millenium's

dawn.

This letter is signed, by Hannah E. Patchin, postmaster at New London,

Wis.

As bearing upon the extent of this agitation, I have many other

letters of the same character and numerous arguments by women upon

this subject, but I can not ask the attention of the Senate to them,

for what I most of all want is a vote. I desire a record upon this

question. However, I ought to read this letter, which is dated Salina,

Kans., December 13, 1886. The writer is Mrs. Laura M. Johns. She is

connected with the suffrage movement in that State, and as bearing

upon the extent of this movement and as illustrative not only of the

condition of the question in Kansas, but very largely throughout the

country, perhaps, especially throughout the northern part of the

country, I read this and leave others of like character, as they are,

because we have not the time:

I am deeply interested in the fate of the now pending resolution

proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States,

conferring upon women the exercise of the suffrage. The right is

theirs now.

I see, in speaking to that resolution on December 8 in the Senate,

that you refer to Miss Anthony's experiences in the October

campaign in Kansas as evidence in part of the growth of interest

in this movement, and of sentiment favorable to it, and I am

writing now just to tell you about it.

When I planned and arranged for those eleven conventions in eleven

fine cities of this State, I thought I knew that the people of

Kansas felt a strong interest in the question of woman suffrage;

but when with Miss Anthony and others I saw immense audiences

of Kansas people receive the gospel of equal suffrage with

enthusiasm, saw them sitting uncomfortably crowded, or standing to

listen for hours to arguments in favor of suffrage for women: saw

the organization of strong and ably officered local, county, and

district associations of the best and "brainiest" men and women in

our first cities for the perpetuation of woman suffrage teachings;

saw people of the highest social, professional, and business

position give time, money and influence, to this cause; saw

Miss Anthony's life work honored and her fêted and most highly

commended, I concluded that I had before known but half of the

interest and favorable sentiment in Kansas on this question. These

meetings were very largely attended, and by all classes, and

by people of all shades of religious and political belief. The

representative people of the labor party were there, ministers,

lawyers, all professions, and all trades.

No audiences could have been more thoroughly representative of

the people; and as we held one (and more) convention in each

Congressional district in the State, we certainly had, from the

votes of those audiences in eleven cities, a truthful expression

of the feeling of the people of the State of Kansas on this

question. Many of the friends of the cause here are very willing

to risk our fate to the popular vote.

In our conventions Miss Anthony was in the habit of putting the

following questions to vote:

"Are you in favor of equal suffrage for women?"

"Do you desire that your Senators, INGALLS and PLUMB, and your

seven Congressmen shall vote for the sixteenth amendment to the

Federal Constitution?" and

"Do you desire your Legislature to extend municipal suffrage to

women?"

In response there always came a rousing "yes," except when the

vote was a rising one, and then the house rose in a solid body.

Miss Anthony's call for the negative vote was answered by silence.

Petitions for municipal suffrage in Kansas are rolling up

enormously. People sign them now who refused to do so last year. I

tell you it is catching. Many people here are disgusted with our

asking for such a modicum as municipal suffrage, and say they

would rather sign a petition asking for the submission of an

amendment to our State constitution giving us State suffrage. We

have speakers now at work all over the State, their audiences and

reception are enthusiastic, and their most radical utterances in

favor of woman are the most kindly received and gain them the most

applause.

And further to the same effect. I shall offer nothing more of that

kind, but I have come in possession of some data bearing upon the

question of the intellect of woman. The real objection seems to me

to he that she does not know enough to vote; that it is the ignorant

ballot that is dangerous; but that is a subject which of course I have

no time to go into. However, I have some data collected very recently,

and at my request, by a most intelligent gentleman of the State of

Maine. Either of the Senators from that State will bear witness as to

the high character of this gentleman, Mr. Jordan. He sent the data to

me a few days ago. They show the relative standing of the two sexes in

the high schools in the State of Maine where they are being educated

together, and in one of the colleges of that State:

_High school No_. 1.--Average rank on scale of 100.--1882: boys

88.7, girls 91; 1883: boys 88.2, girls 91.3; 1884: boys 88.8,

girls 91.9 (of the graduating class 7 girls and 1 boy were the

eight highest in rank for the four years' course); 1885: boys

88.6, girls 91.4 (eight highest in rank for four years' course,

4 boys and 4 girls); 1886: boys 88.2, girls 91 (eight highest in

rank for four years' course, 7 girls and I boy).

_High school No_. 2.--Average rank on scale of 100.--1886: boys

90, girls 98 (six highest in rank for four years' course, 6

girls).

_College_.--Average rank for fall term of the junior year on the

scale of 40.--1882: boys 37.75, girls 37.93; 1883: boys 38.03,

girls 38.70; 1884: boys 38.18, girls 88.59; 1885; boys 38.33,

girls 38.13.

With only this last exception the average of the girls and young

ladies in the high schools and at this institution of liberal training

is substantially higher than that of the boys. I simply give that fact

in passing, and there leave the matter.

I desire in closing simply to call for the reading of the joint

resolution. I could say nothing to quicken the sense of the Senate on

the importance of the question about to be taken. It concerns one-half

of our countrymen, one-half of the citizens of the United States, but

it is more than that, Mr. President. This question is radical, and it

concerns the condition of the whole human race. I believe that in the

agitation of this question lies the fate of republican government, and

in that of republican government lies the fate of mankind. I ask for

the reading of the joint resolution.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution is before the Senate as in

Committee of the Whole. It has been read. Does the Senator desire to

have it read again?

Mr. BLAIR. Has it been read this afternoon?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. It has been.

Mr. BLAIR. That is all then. Now, I wish to have printed in the

RECORD, by reason of the printed matter that has gone into the RECORD

upon the other side, the arguments of Miss Anthony and her associates

before the Senate committee, which is out of print as a document.

These arguments are very terse and brief. I think it only just that

woman, who is most interested, should be heard, at least under the

circumstances when she has herself been heard on the other side

through printed matter. It will not be burdensome to the RECORD, and I

ask that this be done.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair hears no objection to the suggestion.

The document will be printed in the RECORD.

The document is as follows:

ARGUMENTS BEFORE THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON WOMAN SUFFRAGE, UNITED

STATES SENATE, MARCH 7, 1884.

By a committee of the Sixteenth Annual Washington Convention of

the National Woman Suffrage Association, in favor of a sixteenth

amendment to the Constitution of the United States, that shall

protect the right of women citizens to vote in the several States

of the Union.

_Order of proceeding_.

The CHAIRMAN (Senator COCKRELL). We have allotted the time to be

divided as the speakers may desire among themselves. We are now

ready to hear the ladies.

Miss SUSAN B. ANTHONY. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the select

committee: This is the sixteenth time that we have come before

Congress in person, and the nineteenth annually by petitions. Ever

since the war, from the winter of 1865-'66, we have regularly sent

up petitions asking for the national protection of the citizen's

right to vote when the citizen happens to be a woman. We are here

again for the same purpose. I do not propose to speak now, but to

introduce the other speakers, and at the close perhaps will state

to the committee the reasons why we come to Congress. The other

speakers will give their thought from the standpoint of their

respective States. I will first introduce to the committee Mrs.

Harriet R. Shattuck, of Boston, Mass.

REMARKS BY MRS. HARRIET R. SHATTUCK.

Mrs. SHATTUCK. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen: It seems as if it were

almost unnecessary for us to come here at this meeting, because I

feel that all we have to say and all we have to claim is known to

you, and we can not add anything to what has been said in the past

sixteen years.

But I should like to say one thing, and that is, that in my work

it has seemed that if we could convince everybody of the motives

of the suffragists we would go far toward removing prejudices. I

know that those motives are very much misunderstood. Persons think

of us as ambitious women, who are desirous for fame, and who

merely come forward to make speeches and get before the public, or

else they think that we are unfortunate beings with no homes, or

unhappy wives, who are getting our livelihood in this sort of way.

If we could convince every man who has a vote in this Republic

that this is not the case, I believe we could go far toward

removing the prejudice against us. If we could make them see that

we are working here merely because we know that the cause is

right, and we feel that we must work for it, that there is a power

outside of ourselves which impels us onward, which says to us:

go forward and speak to the people and try to bring them up to a

sense of their duty and of our right. This is the belief that I

have in regard to our position on this question. It is a matter of

duty with us, and that is all.

In Massachusetts I represent a very much larger number of women

than is supposed. It has always been said that very few women wish

to vote. Believing that this objection, although it has nothing to

do with the rights of the cause, ought to be met, the association

of which I am president inaugurated last year a sort of canvass,

which I believe never had been attempted before, whereby we

obtained the proportion of women in favor and opposed to suffrage

in different localities of our State. We took four localities in

the city of Boston, two in smaller cities, and two in the country

districts, and one also of school teachers in nine schools of one

town. Those school teachers were unanimously in favor of suffrage,

and in the nine localities we found that the proportion of women

in favor was very large as against those opposed. The total of

women canvassed was 814. Those in favor were 405; those opposed,

44; indifferent, 166; refused to sign, 160; not seen, 39. This,

you see, is a very large proportion in favor. Those indifferent,

and those who were not seen, were not included, because we claim

that nobody can yet say that they are opposed or in favor until

they declare themselves; but the 405 in favor against the 44

opposed were as 9 to 1. These canvasses were made by women who

were of perfect respectability and responsibility, and they swore

before a justice of the peace as to the truth of their statements.

So we have in Massachusetts this reliable canvass of the number of

women in favor as to those opposed, and we find that it is 9 to 1.

These women, then, are the class whom I represent here, and they

are women who can not come here themselves. Very few women in the

country can come here and do this work, or do the work in their

States, because they are in their homes attending to their duties,

but none the less are they believers in this cause. We would not

any more than any man in the country ask a woman to leave her home

duties to go into this work, but a few of us are so situated that

we can do it, and we come here and we go to the State Legislatures

representing all the women of the country in this work.

What we ask is, not that we may have the ballot to obtain any

particular thing, although we know that better things will come

about from it, but merely because it is our right, and as a matter

of justice we claim it as human beings and as citizens, and as

moral, responsible, and spiritual beings, whose voice ought to be

heard in the Government, and who ought to take hand with men and

help the world to become better.

Gentlemen, you have kept women just a little step below you. It

is only a short step. You shower down favors upon us it is true,

still we remain below you, the recipients of favors without the

right to take what is our own. We ask that this shall be changed;

that you shall take us by the hand and lift us up to the same

political level with you, where we shall have rights with you, and

stand equal with you before the law.

REMARKS BY MRS. MAY WRIGHT SEWALL.

Miss ANTHONY. I will now introduce to the committee Mrs. May

Wright Sewall, of Indianapolis, who is the chairman of our

executive committee.

Mrs. SEWALL. Gentlemen of the committee: Gentlemen, I believe,

differ somewhat in their political opinions. It will not then

be surprising, I suppose, that I should differ somewhat from my

friend in regard to the knowledge that you probably possess upon

our question. I do not believe that you know all that we know

about the women of this country, for I believe that if you did

know even all that I know, and my knowledge is much more limited

than that of many of my sisters, long ago the sixteenth amendment,

for which we ask, would have been passed through your influence.