I remember that when I was here two years ago and had the honor of

appearing before the committee, who granted us, on that occasion,

what you are so kind and courteous to grant on this occasion, an

opportunity to speak before you, I told you that I represented at

least seventy thousand women who had asked for the ballot in my

State, and I tried then to remind the members of the committee

that had seventy thousand Indiana men asked for any measure from

the Congress that then occupied this Capitol, that measure would

have secured the most deliberate consideration from their hands,

and, in all probability, its passage by the Congress. Of that

there can be no doubt.

I do not wish to exaggerate my constituency, but during the last

two years, and since I had the honor of addressing the committee,

the work of woman suffrage has progressed very rapidly in

my State. The number of women who have found themselves in

circumstances to work openly, and whose spirit has been drawn into

it, has largely increased, and as the workers have multiplied

the results have increased. While we have not taken the careful

canvass that has been so wisely and judiciously taken in

Massachusetts, so that I can present to you the exact number of

women who would to-day appeal for suffrage, I know that I can,

far within the bounds of possible truth, state that while I

represented seventy thousand women in my State two years ago,

who desired the adoption of the sixteenth amendment, I represent

to-day twice that number.

Should any one come up from Indiana, pivotal State as it has been

long called in national elections, saying that he represented the

wish of one hundred and forty thousand Indiana men, gentlemen,

would you scorn his appeal? Would you treat it lightly? Not at

all. You know that it would receive the most candid consideration.

You know that it would receive not merely respectful

consideration, but immediate and prompt and just action upon your

part.

I have been told since I have reached Washington that of all women

in the country Indiana women have the least to complain of, and

the least reason for coming to the United States Capitol with

their petitions and the statement of their needs, because we have

received from our own Legislature such amendments and amelioration

of the old unjust laws. In one sense it is true that we are the

recipients in our own State of many civil rights and of a very

large degree of civil equality. It is true that as respects

property rights, and as respects industrial rights, the women of

my own State may perhaps be the envy of all other women in the

land, but, gentlemen, you have always told men that the greater

their rights and the more numerous their privileges the greater

their responsibilities. That is equally true of woman, and simply

because our property rights are enlarged, because our industrial

field is enlarged, because we have more women who are producers

in the industrial world, recognized as such, who own property in

their own names, and consequently pay taxes upon that property,

and thereby have greater financial and larger social, as well

as industrial and business interests at stake in our own

commonwealth, and in the manner in which the administration of

national affairs is conducted--because of all these privileges we

the more need the power which shall emphasize our influence upon

political action.

You know that industrial and property rights are in the hands of

the law-makers and the executors of the laws. Therefore, because

of our advanced position in that matter, we the more need the

recognition of our political equality. I say the recognition of

our political equality, because I believe the equality already

exists. I believe it waits simply for your recognition; that were

the Constitution now justly construed, and the word "citizens," as

used in your Constitution, justly applied it would include us, the

women of this country. So I ask for the recognition of an equality

that we already possess.

Further, because of what we have we ask for more. Because of the

duties that we are commanded to do, we ask for more. My friend has

said, and it is true in some respects, that men have always kept

us just a little below them where they could shower upon us

favors, and they have always done that generously. So they have,

but, gentlemen, has your sex been more generous in its favors

to women than women have been generous toward your sex in their

favors? Neither one can do without the other: neither can dispense

with the service of the other; neither can dispense with the

reverence of the other, with the aid of the other in domestic

life, in social life. The men of this nation are rapidly finding

that they can not dispense with the service of women in business

life. I know that they are also feeling the need of what they call

the moral support of women in their public life, and in their

political life.

I always feel that it is not for women alone that I appeal. As men

have long represented me, or assumed to do so, and as the men of

my own family always have done so justly and most chivalrously, I

feel that in my appeal for political recognition I represent them;

that I represent my husband and my brother and the interest of the

sex to which they belong, for you, gentlemen, by lifting the women

of the nation into political equality would simply place us where

we could lift you where you never yet have stood, upon a moral

equality with us. Gentlemen, that is true. You know it as well as

I. I do not speak to you as individuals; I speak to you as the

representatives of your sex, as I stand here the representative

of mine; and never until we are your equals politically will the

moral standard for men be what it now is for women, and it is

none too high. Let it grow the more elevated by our growth in

spirituality, by every aspiration which we receive from the God

whence we draw our life and whence we draw our impulses of life.

Let our standard remain where it is and be more elevated. Yours

must come up to match it, and never will it until we are your

equals politically. So it is for men, as well as for women, that I

make my appeal.

I know that there are some gentlemen upon this committee who, when

we were here two years ago, had something to say about the rights

of the States and of their disinclination to interfere with the

rights of the States in this matter. I have great sympathy with

the gentlemen from the South, who, I hope, do not forget that they

are representing the women of the South in their work here at the

national capital. Already some Northern States are making rapid

strides towards the enfranchisement of their women. The men of

some of the Northern States see that they can no longer accomplish

the purposes politically which they desire to accomplish without

the aid of the women of their respective States. Washington is

the third Territory that has added women to its voting force, and

consequently to its political power at the national capital

as well as its own capital. Oregon will undoubtedly, as her

representative will tell you to-day, soon add its women to its

voting force. The men who believe, that each State must be left

to do this for itself will soon find that the balance of power

between the North and South is destroyed, unless the women of the

South are brought forward to add to the political force of the

South as the women of the North are being brought forward to add

to the political force of the North.

This should not be acted upon as a partisan measure. We do not

appeal to you as Republicans or as Democrats. We have among us

Republicans and Democrats; we have our party affiliations. We, of

course, were reared with our brothers under the political belief

and faith of our fathers, and probably as much influenced by that

rearing as our brothers were. We shall go to strengthen both the

political parties, neither one nor the other the more, probably.

So that it is not as a partisan measure; it is as a just measure,

which is our due, not because of what we are, gentlemen, but

because of what you are, and because of what we are through you,

of what you shall be through us; of what we, men and women, both

are by virtue of our heritage and our one Father, our one mother

eternal, the spirit created and progressive, that has thus far

sustained us, and that will carry us and you forward to the action

which we demand of you to take, and to the results which we

anticipate will attend upon that action.

REMARKS BY MRS. HELEN M. GOUGAR.

Miss Anthony. I think I will call upon the other representative

of the State of Indiana to speak now, Mrs. Helen M. Gougar, of

Lafayette, Ind.

Mrs. Gougar. Gentlemen, we are here on behalf of the women

citizens of this Republic, asking for political freedom. I

maintain that there is no political question paramount to that

of woman suffrage before the people of America to-day. Political

parties would fain have us believe that tariff is the great

question of the hour. Political parties know better. It is an

insult to the intelligence of the present hour to say that when

one-half of the citizens of this Republic are denied a direct

voice in making the laws under which they shall live, that tariff,

or that the civil rights of the negro, or any other question that

can be brought up, is equal to the one of giving political freedom

to women. So I come to ask you, as representative men, making laws

to govern the women the same as the men of this country (and there

is not a law that you make in the United States Congress in which

woman has not an equal interest with man), to take the word "male"

out of the constitutions of the United States and the several

States, as you have taken the word "white" out, and give to us

women a voice in the laws under which we live.

You ask me why I am inclined to be practical in my view of this

question. In the first place, speaking from my own standpoint, I

ask you to let me have a voice in the laws under which I shall

live because the older empires of the earth are sending in upon

our American shores a population drawing very largely from

the asylums, yes, from the penitentiaries, the jails, and the

poor-houses of the Old World. They are emptying those men upon

our shores, and within a few months they are intrusted with the

ballot, the law-making power in this Republic, and they and their

representatives are seated in official and legislative positions.

I, as an American-born woman, to-day enter my protest at being

compelled to live under laws made by this class of men very

largely, and myself being rendered utterly incapable of the

protection that can only come from the ballot. While I would not

have you take this right or privilege from those men whom we

invite to our shores, I do ask you, in the face of this immense

foreign immigration, to enfranchise the tax-paying, intelligent,

moral, native-born women of America.

Miss Anthony. And foreign women, too.

Mrs. Gougar. Miss Anthony suggests an amendment, and I indorse it

most heartily, and foreign women too, because if we let a foreign

man vote I say let the foreign woman vote. I am in favor of

universal suffrage.

Gentlemen, I ask this as a matter of justice; I ask it because it

is an insult to the intelligence of the present to draw the sex

line upon any right whatever. I know there are many objections

urged, and I am sure that you have considered this question; but

I only make the demand from the standpoint, not of sex, but of

humanity.

As a Northern woman, as a woman from Indiana, I know that we have

the intelligent, thinking, cultured, pure, patriotic men and

women with us. We have the women who are engaged in philanthropic

enterprises. We have in our own State the signatures of over 5,000

of the school teachers asking for woman's ballot. I ask you if the

United States Government does not need the voice of those 5,000

educated school teachers as much as it needs the voice of the

240 male criminals who are, on an average, sent out of the

penitentiary of Indiana every year, who go to the ballot-box upon

every question whatever, and make laws under which those school

teachers must live, and under which the mothers of our State must

keep their homes and rear their children?

On behalf of the mothers of this country I demand that their hands

shall be loosened before the ballot-box, and that they shall have

the privilege of throwing the mother heart into the laws that

shall follow their sons not only to the age of majority that only

has been made legal, but is never recognized, and so I ask you to

let the mothers carry their influence in protecting laws around

the footsteps of those boys, even after their hair has turned gray

and they have seats in the United States Congress. I ask you to

give them the power to throw protecting laws around those boys to

the very confines of eternity. This can be done in no indirect

way; it can not be done by the silent influence; it can not be

done by prayer. While I do not underestimate the power of prayer,

I say give me my ballot on election day that shall send pure

men, good men, intelligent men, statesmen, instead of the modern

politician, into our legislative halls. I would rather have that

ballot on election day than the prayers of all the disfranchised

women in the universe.

So I ask you to loosen our hands. I ask you to let us join with

you in developing this science of human government. What is

politics after all but the science of government? We are

interested in these questions, and we are investigating them

already. We have our opinions. Recently an able man has said that

we have been grandly developed physically and mentally, but as a

nation we are a political infant. So we are, gentlemen; we are

to-day in America politically simply an infant. Why is it? It

is because we have not recognized God's family plan in

government--man and woman together. He created the male and

female, and gave them dominion together. We have dominion in every

other interest in society, and why shall we not stand shoulder

to shoulder and have dominion, in the science in government, in

making the laws under which we shall live?

We are taxed to support this Government--this immense Capitol

building is built largely from the industries of the tax-paying

women of this country--and yet we are denied the slightest voice

in distributing our taxes. Our foreparents did not object to

taxation, but they did object to taxation without representation,

and we, as thinking, industrious, active American women, object to

taxation without representation. We are willing to contribute our

share to the support of this Government, as we always have done,

but we have a right to ask for our little yes and no in the

form of the ballot so that we shall have a direct influence in

distributing the taxes.

Gentlemen, I am amenable to the gallows and the penitentiary, and

it is no more than right that I shall have a voice in framing the

laws under which I shall he rewarded or punished. Am I asking too

much of you as representative men of this great Government when I

ask you to let me have a voice in making the laws under which I

shall be rewarded or punished? It is written in the law of every

State in this Union that a person in the courts shall have a jury

of his peers, yet so long as the word "male" stands as it does in

the Constitutions of the United States and the States no woman in

any State of this Union can have a jury of her peers, I protest in

the name of justice against going into the court-room and

being compelled to run the gauntlet of the gutter and of the

saloon--yes, even of the police court and of the jail--as we are

compelled to do to select a male jury to try the interests of

women, whether relating to life, property, or reputation. So long

as the word "male" is in our constitutions just so long we can not

have a jury of our peers in any State in the Union.

I ask that the women shall have the right of the ballot that

they may go into our legislative halls and there provide for the

prevention rather than the cure of crime. I ask you on behalf of

the twelve hundred children under twelve years of age who are

in the poor-houses of Indiana, of the sixteen hundred in the

poor-houses of Illinois, and on that average in every State in

the Union, that you shall take the word "male" out of the

constitutions and allow the women of this country to sit in

legislative halls and provide homes for and look after the little

waifs of society. There are hundreds of moral questions to-day

requiring the assistance of the moral element of womanhood to help

make the laws under which we shall live.

Gentlemen, the political party that lives in the future must fight

the moral battles of humanity. The day of blood is passed; the

day of brain and heart is upon us; and I ask you to let the moral

constituency that resides in woman's nature be represented. Let

me say right here that I do not believe that there is morality in

sex, but the social customs have been such that woman has been

held to a higher standard. May the day hasten when the social

custom shall hold man to as high a moral standard as it to-day

holds woman.

This is the condition of things. The political party that presumes

to fight the moral battles of the future must have the women in

its ranks. We are non-partisan, as has been well said by my friend

from Indiana [Mrs. Sewall.] We come Democrats, Republicans, and

Greenbackers, and I expect if there were a half dozen other

political parties some of us would belong to them. We ask this

beneficent action upon your part because we believe that the

intelligence and the justice of the hour is demanding it. We

do not want a political party action. We want you to keep this

question out of the canvass. We ask you in the name of justice and

humanity alone, and not on the part of party.

I hold in my hand a petition sent from one district in the State

of Illinois with the request that I bear it to you. Out of three

hundred electors the names of two hundred stand in this petition

that I shall leave in your hands. In this list stand not the

wife-whippers, not the drunkards, not the dissolute, but

every minister in that town, every editor in that town, every

professional man in that town, every banker, and every prominent

business man in that town of three hundred electors. I believe

that petitions could be rolled up in this way in every town in the

Northern and in many of the Southern States. I leave this petition

with you for your consideration.

Upon no question whatever has such a large number of petitions

been sent as upon this demand for woman suffrage. You have the

petitions in your hands, and I ask you in the name of justice and

humanity not to let this Congress adjourn without action.

You ask us if we are impatient. Yes; we are impatient. Some of

us may die, and I want our grand old standard-bearer, Susan B.

Anthony, whose name will go down to history beside that of George

Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Wendell Phillips--I want that

woman to go to heaven a free angel from this Republic. The power

lies in your hands to make us all free. May the blessing of God be

upon the hearts of every one of you, gentlemen; may the scales

of prejudice fall from your eyes, and may you, representing the

Senate of the United States, have the grand honor of telegraphing

to us, to the millions of waiting women from one end of this

country to the other, that the sixteenth amendment has been

submitted to the ratification of the several legislatures of our

States striking the word "male" out of the constitutions; and that

this shall be, as we promise it to be, a government of the people,

for the people, and by the people.

REMARKS BY MRS. ABIGAIL SCOTT DUNIWAY.

Miss Anthony. I now, gentlemen of the committee, introduce to you

Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway, from the extreme Northwest; and before

she speaks I wish to say that she has been the one canvasser in

the great State of Oregon and Washington Territory, and that it is

to Mrs. Duniway that the women of Washington Territory are more

indebted than to all other influences for their enfranchisement.

Mrs. Duniway. Gentlemen of the committee, do you think it possible

that an agitation like this can go on and on forever without a

victory? Do you not see that the golden moment has come for this

grand committee to achieve immortality upon the grandest idea that

has ever stirred the heart-beats of American citizens, and will

you not in the magnanimity of noble purposes rise to meet the

situation and, accede to our demand, which in your hearts you must

know is just?

I do not come before you, gentlemen, with the expectation to

instruct you in regard to the laws of our country. The women

around us are law-abiding women. They are the mothers, many of

them, of true and noble men, the wives, many of them, of grand,

free husbands, who are listening, watching, waiting eagerly for

successful tidings of this great experiment.

There never was a grander theory of government than that of these

United States. Never were grander principles enunciated upon any

platform, never so grand before and never can be grander again,

than the declaration that "all men," including of course all

women, since women are amenable to the laws, "are created equal;

that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable

rights * * * that to secure these rights governments are

instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent

of the governed."

Gentlemen, are we allowed the opportunity of consent? These women

who are here from Maine to Oregon, from the Straits of Fuca to the

reefs of Florida, who in their representative capacity have come

up here so often, augmented in their numbers year by year, looking

with eyes of hope and hearts of faith, but oftentimes with hopes

deferred, upon the final solution of this great problem, which it

is so much in your hands to hasten in its solution--these women

are in earnest. My State is far away beyond the confines of the

Rocky Mountains, away over beside the singing Pacific sea, but the

spirit of liberty is among us there, and the public heart has been

stirred. The hearts of our men have been moved to listen to our

demands, and in Washington Territory, as one speaker has informed

you, women to-day are endowed with full and free enfranchisement,

and the rejoicing throughout that Territory is universal.

In Oregon men have also listened to our demand, and the

Legislature has in two successive sessions agreed upon a

proposition to amend our State constitution, a proposition which

will be submitted for ratification to our voters at the coming

June election. It is simply a proposition declaring that the right

of suffrage shall not hereafter be prohibited in the State of

Oregon on account of sex. Your action in the Senate of the United

States will greatly determine the action of the voters of Oregon

on our, or rather on their, election day, for we stand before the

public in the anomaly of petitioners upon a great question in

which we, in its final decision, are allowed no voice, and we can

only stand with expectant hearts and almost bated breath awaiting

the action of men who are to make this decision.

We have great hope for our victory, because the men of the broad,

free West are grand, and chivalrous, and free. They have gone

across the mighty continent with free steps; they have raised the

standard of a new Pacific empire; they have imbibed the spirit of

liberty with their very breath, and they have listened to us far

in advance of many of the men of the older States who have not

had their opportunity among the grand free wilds of nature for

expansion.

So all of our leaders are with us to-day. You may go to either

member of the Senate of the United States from Oregon, and while I

can not speak so positively for the senior member, as he came over

here some years ago before the public were so well educated as

now, I can and do proudly vouch for the late Senator-elect DOLPH,

who now has a seat upon the floor of the Senate, who is heart and

soul and hand and purse in sympathy with this great movement for

the enfranchisement of the women of Oregon. I would also be unjust

to our worthy representative in the lower house, Hon. M.C. George,

did I not proudly speak his name in this great connection. Men of

this class are with us, and without regard to party affiliations

we know that they are upon our side. Our governor, our associate

supreme judge for the district of the Pacific, all of these men,

are leading in the grand free way that characterizes the men of

the West in assisting in this work. But we have--alas, that I

should be compelled to say it--a great many men who pay no heed

whatever to this question. Men will be entitled to a voice in this

decision who are not, like members of Congress, the picked men of

the nation or the State, but men, many of whom can not read, who

will have an opportunity to decide this question as far as their

ballots can go. These are they to whom the enlightened, educated

motherhood of the State of Oregon must look largely for the

decision.

This brings me to the grand point of our coming to Congress. Some

of you say to us, "Why not leave this matter for settlement in

the different States?" When we leave it for settlement in the

different States we leave it just as I have told you, because of

the constitutional provisions of our organic law we can not

do otherwise; but if the question were to be settled by the

Legislature of Oregon alone it would be settled now; and I, as a

representative of that State only, would have no need of coming

here; it would be settled just as it has been settled in

Washington Territory; but when we come here to Congress it is

the great nation asking you to take such legislative action in

submitting an amendment to the Constitution of the United States

as shall recognize the equality of these women who are here; these

women who have come here from all parts of the country, whose

constituents are looking on while we are here before you. As we

reflect that our feeblest words uttered before this committee will

go to the confines of this nation and be cabled across the great

Atlantic and around the globe, we realize that more and more

prominently our cause is growing into public favor, and the time

is just upon us when some decision must be made.

Gentlemen of the committee, will you not recognize the importance

of the movement? Who among you will be our standard-bearer? Who

among you will achieve immortality by standing up in these halls

in which we are forbidden to speak, and in the magnanimity of your

own free wills and noble hearts champion the woman's cause and

make us before the law, as we of right ought now to be, free and

independent?

REMARKS BY MRS. CAROLINE GILKEY ROGERS.

Miss ANTHONY. I now call upon Mrs. Caroline Gilkey Rogers, of

Lansingburg, N.Y., to address the committee.

Mrs. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, in our

efforts to secure the right of citizenship we appeal only to your

sense of justice and love of fair dealing.

We ask for the ballot because it is the symbol of equality. There

is no other recognized symbol of equality in this country. We ask

for the ballot that we may be equal to man before the law. We urge

a twofold right--our right to the Republic, the Republic's right

to us. We believe the interests of the country are identical with

the interests of all its citizens, including women, and that the

Government can no longer afford to shut women out from the affairs

of the State and nation, and wise men are beginning to know that

they are needed in the Government; that they are needed where our

laws are made as well as where they are violated.

Many admit the justice of our claim, but will say, Is it safe? Is

it expedient? It is always safe to do right; is always expedient

to be just. Justice can never bring evil in its train.

The question is asked how and what would the women do in the State

and nation? We do not pledge ourselves to anything. I claim that

we can not have a better government than that of the people. The

present Government is of only a part of the people. We have not

yet entered upon the system of higher arbitration, because the

Government is of man only. If we had been marching along with you

all this time I trust we should have reached a higher plane of

civilization.

We believe that all the virtue of the world can take care of

all the evil, and all the intelligence can take care of all the

ignorance. Let us have all the virtue confront all the vice.

There is no need to do battle in this matter. In all kindness and

gentleness we urge our claims. There is no need to declare war

upon men, for the best of men in this country are with us heart

and soul.

It is a common remark that unless some new element is infused into

our political life our nation is doomed to destruction. What more

fitting element than the noble type of American womanhood,

who have taught our Presidents, Senators, and Congressmen the

rudiments of all they know.

Think of all the foreigners and all our own native-born ignorant

men who can not write their own names or read the Declaration of

Independence making laws for such women as Elizabeth Cady Stanton

and Susan B. Anthony. Think of jurors drawn from these ranks to

watch and try young girls for crimes often committed against them

when the male criminal goes free. Think of a single one of these

votes on election day outweighing all the women in the country. Is

it not humiliating for me to sit, a political cipher, and see the

colored man in my employ, to whom I have taught the alphabet, go

out on election day and say by his vote what shall be done with my

tax money. How would you like it?

When we think of the wives trampled on by husbands whom the law

has taught them to regard as inferior beings, and of the mothers

whose children are torn from their arms by the direct behest of

the law at the bidding of a dead or living father, when we think

of these things, our hearts ache with pity and indignation.

If mothers could only realize how the laws which they have no

voice in making and no power to change affect them at every point,

how they enter every door, whether palace or hovel, touch, limit,

and bind, every article and inmate from the smallest child up, no

woman, however shrinking and delicate, can escape it, they would

get beyond the meaningless cry, "I have all the rights I want."

Do these women know that in most States in the Union the shameful

fact that no woman has any legal rights to her own child, except

it is born out of wedlock! In these States there is not a line

of positive law to protect the mother; the father is the legal

protector and guardian of the children.

Under the laws of most of the States to-day a husband may by his

last will bequeath his child away from its mother, so that she

might, if the guardian chose, never see it again.

The husband may have been a very bad man, and in a moment of

anger made the will. The guardian he has appointed may turn out a

malicious man, and take pleasure in tormenting the mother, or he

may bring up the children in a way that the mother thinks ruinous

to them, and she has no redress in law. Why do not all the

fortunate mothers in the land cry out against such a law? Why do

not all women say, "Inasmuch as the law has done this wrong unto

the least of these my sisters it has done it unto me." It is true

that men are almost always better than their laws, but while a bad

law remains on the statute-books it gives to an unscrupulous man a

right to be as bad as the law.

It is often said to us when all the women ask for the ballot

it will be granted. Did all the married women petition the

Legislatures of their States to secure to them the right to hold

in their own name the property that belonged to them? To secure to

the poor forsaken wife the right to her earnings?

All the women did not ask for these rights, but all accepted them

with joy and gladness when they were obtained, and so it will be

with the franchise. But woman's right to self-government does not

depend upon the numbers that demand it, but upon precisely the

same principles that man claims it for himself.

Where did man get the authority that he now claims to govern

one-half of humanity, from what power the right to place woman,

his helpmeet in life, in an inferior position? Came it from

nature? Nature made woman his superior when she made her his

mother--his equal when she fitted her to hold the sacred position

of wife. Did women meet in council and voluntarily give up all

their claim to be their own law-makers?

The power of the strong over the weak makes man the master. Yes,

then, and then only, does he gain the authority.

It is all very well to say "convert the women." While we most

heartily wish they could all feel as we do, yet when it comes to

the decision of this great question they are mere ciphers, for

if this question is settled by the States it will be left to the

voters, not to the women to decide. Or if suffrage comes to women

through a sixteenth amendment of the national Constitution, it

will be decided by Legislatures elected by men. In neither case

will women have an opportunity of passing; upon the question. So

reason tells us we must devote our best efforts to converting

those to whom we must look for the removal of our disabilities,

which now prevent our exercising the right of suffrage.

The arguments in favor of the enfranchisement of women are truths

strong and unanswerable, and as old as the free institutions of

our Government. The principle of "taxation without representation

is tyranny" applies to women as well as men, and is as true to-day

as it was a hundred years ago.

Our demand for the ballot is the great onward step of the century,

and not, as some claim, the idiosyncracies of a few unbalanced

minds.

Every argument that has been urged against this question of

woman's suffrage has been urged against every reform. Yet the

reforms have fought their way onward and become a part of the

glorious history of humanity.

So it will be with suffrage. "You can stop the crowing of the

cock, but you can not stop the dawn of the morning." And now,

gentlemen, you are responsible, not for the laws you find on the

statute books, but for those you leave there.

REMARKS BY MRS. MARY SEYMOUR HOWELL.

Miss ANTHONY. I now introduce to the committee Mrs. Mary Seymour

Howell, the president of the Albany, N.Y., State society.

Mrs. HOWELL. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee: Miss

Anthony gives me five minutes. I shall have to talk very rapidly.

I ask you for the ballot because of the very first principle that

is often repeated to you, that "taxation without representation is

tyranny." I come from the city of Albany, where many of my sisters

are taxed for millions of dollars. There are three or four women

in the city of Albany who are worth their millions, and yet they

have no voice in the laws that govern and control them. One of our

great State senators has said that you can not argue five minutes

against woman suffrage without repudiating every principle that

this great Republic is founded upon.

I ask you also for the ballot for the large class of women who are

not taxed. They need it more than the women who are taxed, I have

found in every work that I have conducted that because I am a

woman I am not paid for that work as a man is paid for similar

work.

You have heard, and perhaps some of you are thinking--I hope

not--that women should be at home. I wish to say to you that there

are millions of women in the United States who have no homes.

There are millions of women who are trying to earn their bread and

hold their purity sacred. For that class of women I appeal to you.

In the city of Albany there are hundreds of women in our factories

making the shirts that you can buy for $1.50 and $2, and all those

women are paid for making the shirts is 4 cents apiece. There are

in the State of New York 18,000 teachers. When I was a teacher

and taught with gentlemen in our academies, I received about

one-fourth of the pay because I happened to be a woman. I consider

it an insult that forever burns in my soul, that I am to be handed

a mere pittance in comparison with what man receives for same

quality of work. When I was sent out by our superintendent of

public instruction to hold conventions of teachers, as I have

often done in our State of New York, and when I did one-third more

work than the men teachers so sent out, but because I was a woman

and had not the ballot, I was only paid about half as much as

the man; and saying that once to our superintendent of public

instruction in Albany, he said, "Mrs. Howell, just as soon as you

get the ballot and have a political influence in the work you will

have the same pay as a man."

We ask for the ballot for that great army of fallen women who walk

our streets and who break up our homes and ruin our husbands and

our dear boys. We ask it for those women. The ballot will lift

them up. Hundreds and thousands of women give up their purity for

the sake of starving children and families. There is many a woman

who goes to a life of degradation and pollution shedding burning

tears over her 4-cent shirts.

We ask for the ballot for the good of the race, Huxley says,

"admitting for the sake of argument that woman is the weaker,

mentally and physically, for that reason she should have the

ballot and should have every help that the world can give her."

When you debar from your councils and legislative halls the

purity, the spirituality, and the love of woman then those

legislative halls and those councils are apt to become coarse and

brutal, God gave us to you to help you in this little journey to a

better land, and by our love and our intellect to help to make our

country pure and noble, and if you would have statesmen you must

have states we men to bear them.

I ask you also for the ballot that I may decide what I am. I

stand before you, but I do not know to-day whether I am legally a

"person" according to the law. It has been decided in some States

that we are not "persons." In the State of New York, in one

village, it was decided that women are not inhabitants. So I

should like to know whether I am a person, whether I am an

inhabitant, and above all I ask you for the ballot that I may

become a citizen of this great Republic.

Gentlemen, you see before you this great convention of women from

the Atlantic slopes to the Pacific Ocean, from the North to the

South. We are in dead earnest. A reform never goes backward. This

is a question that is before the American nation. Will you do your

duty and give us our liberty, or will you leave it for braver

hearts to do what must be done? For, like our forefathers, we will

ask until we have gained it.

Ever the world goes round and round; Ever the truth comes

uppermost; and ever is justice done.

REMARKS BY MRS. LILLIE DEVEREUX BLAKE.

Miss ANTHONY. I now have the pleasure of introducing to the

committee Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake, of New York. New York is

a great State, and therefore it has three representatives here

to-day.

Mrs. BLAKE. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee: A recent

writer in an English magazine, in speaking of the great advantage

which to-day flows to the laboring classes of that nation from

having received the right of suffrage, made the statement that

disfranchised classes are oppressed, not because there is any

desire whatever to do injustice to them, but because they are

forgotten. We have year after year and session after session of

our legislatures and of our Congresses proved the correctness

of this statement. While we have nothing to complain of in the

courtesy which we receive in private life, still when we see

masses of men assembled together for political action, whether

it be of the nation or of the State, we find that the women are

totally forgotten.

In the limited time that is mine I cannot go into any lengthy

exposition upon this point. I will simply call your attention to

the total forgetfulness of the Congress of the United States to

the debt owed to the women of this nation during the war. You

have passed a pension bill upon which there has been much comment

throughout the nation, and yet, when an old army nurse applies

for a pension, a woman who is broken down by her devotion to the

nation in hospitals and upon the battle-field, she is met at the

door of the Pension Bureau by this statement, "the Government has

made no appropriation for the services of women in the war." One

of these women is an old nurse whom some of you may remember,

Mother Bickerdyke, who went out onto many a battle-field when she

was in the prime of life, twenty years ago, and at the risk of her

life lifted men, who were wounded, in her arms, and carried them

to a place of safety. She is an old woman now, and where is she?

What reward the nation bestowed to her faithful services? The

nation has a pension for every man who has served this nation,

even down to the boy recruit who was out but three months; but

Mother Bickerdyke, though her health has never been good since her

service then, is earning her living at the wash-tub, a monument to

the ingratitude of a Republic as great as was that when Belisarius

begged in the streets of Rome.

I bring up this illustration alone out of innumerable others

that are possible, to try to impress upon your minds that we are

forgotten. It is not from any unkindness on your part. Who would

think for one moment, looking upon the kindly faces of this

committee, that any man on it would do an injustice to women,

especially if she were old and feeble? But because we have no

right to vote, as I said, our interests are overlooked and

forgotten.

It is often said that we have too many voters; that the aggregate

of vice and ignorance among us should not be increased by giving

women the right of suffrage. I wish to remind you of the fact that

in the enormous immigration that pours to our shores every year,

numbering somewhere in the neighborhood of half a million, there

come, twice as many men as women. The figures for the last year

were two hundred and twenty-three thousand men, and one hundred

and thirteen thousand women.

What does this mean? It means a steady influx of this foreign

element; it means a constant preponderance of the masculine over

the feminine; and it means also, of course, a preponderance of the

voting power of the foreigner as compared to the native born. To

those who fear that our American institutions are threatened by

this gigantic inroad of foreigners I commend the reflection that

the best safeguard against any such preponderance of foreign

nations or of foreign influence is to put the ballot in the hands

of the American-born women, And of all other women also, so that

if the foreign-born man overbalances us in numbers we shall be

always in a preponderance on the side of the liberty which is

secured by our institutions.

It is because, as many of my predecessors have said, of the

different elements represented by the two sexes, that we are

asking for this liberty. When I was recently in the capitol of my

own State of New York, I was reminded there of the difference of

temperament between the sexes by seeing how children act when

coming to the doors of the capitol, which have been constructed so

that they are very hard to open. Whether that is because they want

to keep us women out or not I am not able to say; but for some

reason the doors are so constructed that it is nearly impossible

to open them. I saw a number of little girls coming in through

those doors--every child held the door for those who were to

follow. A number of little boys followed just after, and every boy

rushed through and let the door shut in the face of the one

who was coming behind him. That is a good illustration of the

different qualities of the sexes. Those boys were not unkind, they

simply represented that onward push which is one of the grandest

characteristics of your sex; and the little girls, on the other

hand, represented that gentleness and thoughtfulness of others

which is eminently a characteristic of women.

This woman element is needed in every branch of the Government.

Look at the wholesale destruction of the forests throughout our

nation, which has gone on until it brings direct destruction

to the land on the lines of the great rivers of the West, and

threatens us even in New York with destroying at once the beauty

and usefulness of our far-famed Hudson. If women were in the

Government do you not think they would protect the economic

interests of the nation? They are the born and trained economists

of the world, and when you call them to your assistance you will

find an element that has not heretofore been felt with the weight

which it deserves.

As we walk through the Capitol we are struck with the significance

of the symbolism on every side; we view the adornments in the

beautiful room, and we find here everywhere emblematically woman's

figure. Here is woman representing even war, and there are women

representing grace and loveliness and the fullness of the harvest;

and, above all, they are extending their protecting arms over the

little children. Gentlemen, I leave you under this symbolism,

hoping that you will see in it the type of a coming day when we

shall have women and men united together in the national councils

in this great building.

REMARKS BY DR. CLEMENCE S. LOZIER.

Miss ANTHONY. I meant to have said, as I introduced Mrs. Blake,

that sitting on the sofa is Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, who declines

to speak, but I want her to stand up, because she represents New

York city.

Dr. LOZIER. I thank you, I am very happy to be here, but I am not

a fluent speaker. I feel in my heart that I know what justice

means; that I know what mercy means, and in all my rounds of duty

in my profession I am happy to extend not only food but shelter to

many poor ones. The need of the ballot for working-girls and those

who pay no taxes is not understood. The Saviour said, seeing the

poor widow cast her two mites, which make a farthing, into the

public treasury, "This poor widow hath cast more in than all they

which have cast into the treasury." I see this among the poor

working-girls of the city of New York; sick, in a little garret

bedroom, perhaps, and although needing medical care and needing

food, they will say to me, "above all things else, if I could

only pay the rent." The rent of their little rooms goes into the

coffers of their landlords and pays taxes. The poor women of the

city of New York and everywhere are the grandest upholders of this

Government. I believe they pay indirectly more taxes than the

monopoly kings of our country. It is for them that I want the

ballot.

REMARKS BY MRS. ELIZABETH BOYNTON HARBERT.

Miss ANTHONY. I now introduce to the committee Mrs. Elizabeth

Boynton Harbert, of Illinois, and before Mrs. Harbert speaks

I wish to say that for the last six years she has edited a

department of the Chicago Inter-Ocean called the "Women's

Kingdom."

Mrs. HARBERT. Mr. Chairman and honorable gentlemen of the

committee, after the eloquent rhetoric to which you have listened

I merely come in these five minutes with a plain statement of

facts. Some friends have said, "Here is the same company of women

that year after year besiege you with their petitions." We are

here to-day in a representative capacity. From the great State of

Illinois I come, representing 200,000 men and women of that State

who have recorded their written petitions for woman's ballot,

90,000 of these being citizens under the law--male voters; those

90,000 having signed petitions for the right of women to vote on

the temperance question; 90,000 women also signed those petitions;

50,000 men and women signed the petitions for the school vote,

and nearly 60,000 more have signed petitions that the right of

suffrage might be accorded to woman.

This growth of public sentiment has been occasioned by the needs

of the children and the working-women of that great State. I

come here to ask you to make a niche in the statesmanship and

legislation of the nation for the domestic interests of the

people. You recognize that the masculine thought is more often

turned to the material and political interests of the nation. I

claim that the mother thought, the woman element needed, is

to supplement the concurrent statesmanship of American men on

political and industrial affairs with the domestic legislation of

the nation.

There are good men and women who believe that women should use

their influence merely through their social sphere. I believe both

of the great parties are represented by us. You remember that a

few weeks ago when there came across the country the news of

the decision of the Supreme Court as regards the negro race the

politicians sprang to the platform, and our editors hastened

to their sanctums, to proclaim to the people that that did not

interfere with the civil rights of the negro; that only their

social rights were affected, and that the civil rights of man,

those rights worth dying for, were not affected. Gentlemen, we who

are trying to help the men in our municipal governments, who are

trying to save the children from our poor-houses, begin to realize

that whatever is good and essential for the liberty of the black

man is good for the white woman and for all women. We are here to

claim that whatever liberty has done for you it should be allowed

to do for us. Take a single glance through the past; recognize the

position of American manhood before the world to-day, and whatever

liberty has done for you, liberty will surely do for the mothers

of the race.

MRS. SARAH E. WALL.

Miss ANTHONY. Gentlemen of the committee, here is another woman I

wish to show you, Sarah E. Wall, of Worcester, Mass., who, for the

last twenty-five years, has resisted the tax gatherer when he came

around. I want you to look at her. She looks very harmless, but

she will not pay a dollar of tax. She says when the Commonwealth

of Massachusetts will give her the right of representation she

will pay her taxes. I do not know exactly how it is now, but the

assessor has left her name off the tax-list, and passed her by

rather than have a lawsuit with her.

REMARKS BY MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

Miss ANTHONY. I wish I could state the avocations and professions

of the various women who have spoken in our convention during the

last three days. I do not wish to speak disparagingly in regard to

the men in Congress, but I doubt if a man on the floor of either

House could have made a better speech than some of those which

have been made by women during this convention. Twenty-six States

and Territories are represented with live women, traveling all the

way from Kansas, Arkansas, Oregon, and Washington Territory. It

does seem to me that after all these years of coming up to this

Capitol an impression should be made upon the minds of legislators

that we are never to be silenced until we gain the demand. We

have never had in the whole thirty years of our agitation so many

States represented in any convention as we had this year.

This fact shows the growth of public sentiment. Mrs. Duniway is

here all the way from Oregon, and you say, when Mrs. Duniway is

doing so well up there, and is so hopeful of carrying the State

of Oregon, why do not you all rest satisfied with that plan of

gaining the suffrage? My answer is that I do not wish to see the

women of the thirty-eight States of this Union compelled to leave

their homes and canvass each State, school district by school

district. It is asking too much of a moneyless class of people,

disfranchised by the constitution of every State in the Union. The

joint earnings of the marriage copartnership in all the States

belong legally to the husband. If the wife goes outside the home

to work, the law in most of the States permits her to own and

control the money thus earned. We have not a single State in the

Union where the wife's earnings inside the marriage copartnership

are owned by her. Therefore, to ask the vast majority of women who

are thus situated, without an independent dollar of their own, to

make a canvass of the States is asking to much.

Mrs. GOUGAR. Why did they not ask the negro to do that?

Miss ANTHONY. Of course the negro was not asked to go begging

the white man from school district to school district to get his

ballot. If it was known that we could be driven to the ballot-box:

like a flock of sheep, and all vote for one party, there would

be a bid made for us; but that is not done, because we can not

promise you any such thing; because we stand before you and

honestly tell you that the women of this nation are educated

equally with the men, and that they, too, have political opinions.

There is not a woman on our platform, there is scarcely a woman

in this city of Washington, whether the wife of a Senator or a

Congressman--I do not believe you can find a score of women in the

whole nation--who have not opinions on the pending Presidential

election. We all have opinions; we all have parties. Some of us

like one party and one candidate and some another.

Therefore we can not promise you that women will vote as a unit

when they are enfranchised. Suppose the Democrats shall put a

woman suffrage plank in their platform in their Presidential

convention, and nominate an open and avowed friend of woman

suffrage to stand upon that platform; we can not pledge you that

all the women of this nation will work for the success of that

party, nor can I pledge you that they will all vote for the

Republican party if it should be the one to take the lead in their

enfranchisement. Our women will not toe a mark anywhere; they will

think and act for themselves, and when they are enfranchised they

will divide upon all political questions, as do intelligent,

educated men.

I have tried the experiment of canvassing four States prior to

Oregon, and in each State with the best canvass that it was

possible for us to make we obtained a vote of one-third. One man

out of every three men voted for the enfranchisement of the women

of their households, while two voted against it. But we are proud

to say that our splendid minority is always composed of the very

best men of the State, and I think Senator PALMER will agree with

me that the forty thousand men of Michigan who voted for the

enfranchisement of the women of his State were really the picked

men in intelligence, in culture, in morals, in standing, and in

every direction.

It is too much to say that the majority of the voters in any State

are superior, educated, and capable, or that they investigate

every question thoroughly, and cast the ballot thereon

intelligently. We all know that the majority of the voters of any

State are not of that stamp. The vast masses of the people, the

laboring classes, have all they can do in their struggle to get

food and shelter for their families. They have very little time or

opportunity to study great questions of constitutional law.

Because of this impossibility for women to canvass the States over

and over to educate the rank and file of the voters we come to

you to ask you to make it possible for the Legislatures of the

thirty-eight States to settle the question, where we shall have

a few representative men assembled before whom we can make our

appeals and arguments.

This method of settling the question by the Legislatures is just

as much in the line of States' rights as is that of the popular

vote. The one question before you is, will you insist that a

majority of the individual voters of every State must be converted

before its women shall have the right to vote, or will you

allow the matter to be settled by the representative men in the

Legislatures of the several States? You need not fear that we

shall get suffrage too quickly if Congress shall submit the

proposition, for even then we shall have a hard time in going

from Legislature to Legislature to secure the two-thirds votes of

three-fourths of the States necessary to ratify the amendment. It

may take twenty years after Congress has taken the initiative step

to make action by the State Legislatures possible.

I pray you, gentlemen, that you will make your report to the

Senate speedily. I know you are ready to make a favorable one.

Some of our speakers may not have known this as well as I. I ask

you to make a report and to bring it to a discussion and a vote on

the floor of the Senate.

You ask me if we want to press this question to a vote provided

there is not a majority to carry it. I say yes, because we want

the reflex influence of the discussion and of the opinions of

Senators to go back into the States to help us to educate the

people of the States.

Senator LAPHAM. It would require a two-thirds vote in both,

the House and the Senate to submit the amendment to the State

Legislatures for ratification.

Miss ANTHONY. I know that it requires a two-thirds vote of

both Houses. But still, I repeat, even if you can not get the

two-thirds vote, we ask you to report the bill and bring it to a

discussion and a vote at the earliest day possible. We feel that

this question should be brought before Congress at every session.

We ask this little attention from Congressmen whose salaries are

paid from the taxes; women do their share for the support of this

great Government, We think we are entitled to two or three days of

each session of Congress in both the Senate and House. Therefore I

ask of you to help us to a discussion in the Senate this session.

There is no reason why the Senate, composed of seventy-six of the

most intelligent and liberty-loving men of the nation, shall not

pass the resolution by a two-thirds vote, I really believe it will

do so if the friends on this committee and on the floor of the

Senate will champion the measure as earnestly as if it were to

benefit themselves instead of their mothers and sisters.

Gentlemen, I thank you for this hearing granted, and I hope the

telegraph wires will soon tell us that your report is presented,

and that a discussion is inaugurated on the floor of the Senate.

ARGUMENTS OF THE WOMAN-SUFFRAGE DELEGATES BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON

THE JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES SENATE, JANUARY 23, 1880.

THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, UNITED STATES SENATE, _Friday,

January 23, 1880._

The committee assembled at half-past 10 o'clock a.m.

Present: Mr. Thurman, chairman; Mr. McDonald, Mr. Bayard, Mr.

Davis, of Illinois; Mr. Edmunds.

Also Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace, of Indiana; Mrs. Elizabeth L. Saxon,

of Louisiana; Mrs. Mary A. Stewart, of Delaware; Mrs. Lucinda

B. Chandler, of Pennsylvania; Mrs. Julia Smith Parker, of

Glastonbury, Conn.; Mrs. Nancy R. Allen, of Iowa; Miss Susan

B. Anthony, of New York; Mrs. Sara A. Spencer, of the city of

Washington, and others, delegates to the twelfth Washington

convention of the National Woman-Suffrage Association, held

January 2l and 22, 1880.

The CHAIRMAN. Several members of the committee are unable to

be here. Mr. Lamar is detained at his home in Mississippi by

sickness; Mr. Carpenter is confined to his room by sickness; Mr.

Conkling has been unwell; I do not know how he is this morning;

and Mr. Garland is chairman of the Committee on Territories, which

has a meeting this morning that he could not omit to attend. I do

not think we are likely to have any more members of the committee

than are here now, and we will hear you, ladies.

REMARKS BY MRS. ZERELDA G. WALLACE, OF INDIANA.

Mrs. WALLACE. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, it is

scarcely necessary to recite that there is not an effect without a

cause. Therefore it would be well for the statesmen of this nation

to ask themselves the question, what has brought the women from

all parts of this nation to the capital at this time: the wives

and mothers, and sisters; the home-loving, law-abiding women? What

has been the strong motive that has taken us away from the quiet

and comfort of our own homes and brought us before you to-day? As

an answer partly to that question, I will read an extract from a

speech made by one of Indiana's statesmen, and probably if I tell

you his name his sentiments may have some weight with you. He

found out by experience and gave us the benefit of his experience,

and it is what we are rapidly learning:

"You can go to meetings; you can vote resolutions; you can attend

great demonstrations on the street; but, after all, the only

occasion where the American citizen expresses his acts, his

opinion, and his power is at the ballot-box; and that little

ballot that he drops in there is the written sentiment of the

times, and it is the power that he has as a citizen of this great

Republic."

That is the reason why we are here; that is the reason why we want

to vote. We are no seditious women, clamoring for any peculiar

rights, but we are patient women. It is not the woman question

that brings us before you to-day; it is the human question that

underlies this movement among the women of this nation; it is

for God, and home, and native land. We love and appreciate our

country; we value the institutions of our country. We realize that

we owe great obligations to the men of this nation for what

they have done. We realize that to their strength we owe the

subjugation of all the material forces of the universe which give

us comfort and luxury in our homes. We realize that to their

brains we owe the machinery that gives us leisure for intellectual

culture and achievement. We realize that it is to their education

we owe the opening of our colleges and the establishment of our

public schools, which give us these great and glorious privileges.

This movement is the legitimate result of this development, of

this enlightenment, and of the suffering that woman has undergone

in the ages past. We find ourselves hedged in at every effort

we make as mothers for the amelioration of society, as

philanthropists, as Christians.

A short time ago I went before the Legislature of Indiana with a

petition signed by 25,000 women, the best women in the State. I

appeal to the memory of Judge McDonald to substantiate the truth

of what I say. Judge McDonald knows that I am a home-loving,

law-abiding, tax-paying woman of Indiana, and have been for 50

years. When I went before our Legislature and found that 100 of

the vilest men in our State, merely by the possession of the

ballot, had more influence with the law-makers of our land than

the wives and mothers of the nation, it was a revelation that was

perfectly startling.

You must admit that in popular government the ballot is the most

potent means of all moral and social reforms. As members of

society, as those who are deeply interested in the promotion of

good morals, of virtue, and of the proper protection of men from

the consequences of their own vices, and of the protection of

women, too, we are deeply interested in all the social problems

with which you have grappled so long unsuccessfully. We do not

intend to depreciate your efforts, but you have attempted to do

an impossible thing. You have attempted to represent the whole by

one-half; and we come to you to day for a recognition of the fact

that humanity is not a unit; that it is a unity; and because we

are one-half that go to make up that grand unity we come before

you to-day and ask you to recognize our rights as citizens of this

Republic.

We know that many of us lay ourselves liable to contumely and

ridicule. We have to meet sneers; but we are determined that in

the defense of right we will ignore everything but what we feel to

be our duty.

We do not come here as agitators, or aimless, dissatisfied,

unhappy women by any means; but we come as human beings,

recognizing our responsibility to God for the advantages that have

come to us in the development of the ages. We wish to discharge

that responsibility faithfully, effectually, and conscientiously,

and we can not do it under our form of government, hedged in as we

are by the lack of a power which is such a mighty engine in our

form of government for every means of work.

I say to you, then, we come as one-half of the great whole. There

is an essential difference in the sexes. Mr. Parkman labored very

hard to prove what no one would deny--that there is an essential

difference in the sexes, and it is because of that very

differentiation, the union of which in home, the recognition of

which in society, brings the greatest happiness, the recognition

of which in the church brings the greatest power and influence for

good, and the recognition of which in the Government would enable

us finally, as near as it is possible for humanity, to perfect our

form of government. Probably we can never have a perfect form of

government, but the nearer we approximate to the divine the nearer

will we attain to perfection; and the divine government recognizes

neither caste, class, sex, nor nationality. The nearer we approach

to that divine ideal the nearer we will come to realizing our

hopes of finally securing at least the most perfect form of human

government that it is possible for us to secure.

I do not wish to trespass upon your time, but I have felt that

this movement is not understood by a great majority of people.

They think that we are unhappy, that we are dissatisfied, that

we are restive. That is not the case. When we look over the

statistics of our State and find that 60 per cent. of all the

crime is the result of drunkenness; when we find that 60 per cent.

of the orphan children that fill our pauper homes are the children

of drunken parents; when we find that after a certain age the

daughters of those fathers who were made paupers and drunkards by

the approbation and sanction and under the seal of the Government,

go to supply our houses of prostitution, and when we find that

the sons of these fathers go to fill up our jails and our

penitentiaries, and that the sober, law-abiding men, the

pains-taking, economical, and many of them widowed wives of this

nation have to pay taxes and bear the expenses incurred by such

legislation, do you wonder, gentlemen, that we at least want to

try our hand and see what we can do?

We may not be able to bring about that Utopian form of government

which we all desire, but we can at least make an effort. Under our

form of government the ballot is our right; it is just and proper.

When you debate about the expediency of any matter you have no

right to say that it is inexpedient to do right. Do right and

leave the result to God. You will have to decide between one

of two things: either you have no claim under our form of

Constitution for the privileges which you enjoy, or you will have

to say that we are neither citizens nor persons.

Realizing this fact, and the deep interest that we take in the

successful issue of this experiment that humanity is making for

self-government, and realizing the fact that the ballot never can

be given to us under more favorable circumstances, and believing

that here on this continent is to be wrought out the great problem

of man's ability to govern himself--and when I say man I use the

word in the generic sense--that humanity here is to work out

the great problems of self-government and development, and

recognizing, as I said a few minutes ago, that we are one-half of

the great whole, we feel that we ought to be heard when we come

before you and make the plea that we make to-day.

REMARKS BY MRS. JULIA SMITH PARKER, OF GLASTONBURY, CONN.

Mrs. PARKER. Gentlemen: You may be surprised, and not so much

surprised as I am, to see a woman of over four-score years of

age appear before you at this time. She came into the world and

reached years of maturity and discretion before any person in this

room was born. She now comes before you to plead that she can vote

and have all the privileges that men have. She has suffered so

much individually that she thought when she was young she had no

right to speak before the men; but still she had courage to get an

education equal to that of any man at the college, and she had

to suffer a great deal on that account. She went to New Haven to

school, and it was noised that she had studied the languages. It

was such an astonishing thing for girls at that time to have the

advantages of education that I had absolutely to go to cotillon

parties to let people see that I had common sense. [Laughter.]

She has suffered; she had to pay money. She has had to pay $200 a

year in taxes without the least privilege of knowing what becomes

of it. She does not know but that it goes to support grog-shops.

She knows nothing about it. She has had to suffer her cows to be

sold at the sign-post six times. She suffered her meadow land to

be sold, worth $2,000, for a tax of less than $50. If she could

vote as the men do she would not have suffered this insult; and so

much would not have been said against her as has been said if men

did not have the whole power. I was told that they had the power

to take any thing that I owned if I would not exert myself to

pay the money. I felt that fought to have some little voice in

determining what should be done with what I paid. I felt that I

ought to own my own property; that it ought not to be in these

men's hands; and I now come to plead that I may have the same

privileges before the law that men have. I have seen what a

difference there is, when I have had my cows sold, by having a

voter to take my part.

I have come from an obscure town (I can not say that it is obscure

exactly) on the banks of the Connecticut, where I was born. I

was brought up on a farm. I never had an idea that it could be

possible that I should ever come all the way to Washington to

speak before those who had not come into existence when I was

born. Now, I plead that there may be a sixteenth amendment, and

that women may be allowed the privilege of owning their own

property. That is what I have taken pains to accomplish. I have

suffered so much myself that I felt it might have some effect to

plead before this honorable committee. I thank you, gentlemen, for

hearing me so kindly.

REMARKS BY MRS. ELIZABETH L. SAXON, OF LOUISIANA,

Mrs. SAXON. Gentleman, I almost feel that after Mrs. Wallace's

plea there is scarcely a necessity for me to say anything; she

echoed my own feelings so entirely. I come from the extreme South,

she from the West. In this delegation, and in the convention which

has just been held in this city, women have come together who

never met before. People have asked me why I came.

I care nothing for suffrage so far as to stand beside men, or rush

to the polls, or take any privilege outside of my home, only, as

Mrs. Wallace says, for humanity. Years ago, when a little child,

I lost my mother, and I was brought up by a man. If I have not a

man's brain I had at least a man's instruction. He taught me that

to work in the cause of reform for women was just as great as to

work in the cause of reform for men. But in every effort I made in

the cause of reform I was combated in one direction or another.

I never took part with the suffragists. I never realized the

importance of their cause until we were beaten back on every aide

in the work of reform. If we attempted to put women in charge of

prisons, believing that wherever woman sins and suffers women

should be there to teach, help, and guide, every place was in the

hands of men. If we made an effort to get women on the school

boards we were combated and could do nothing. Everyplace seemed to

be changed, when there were good men in those places, by changes

of politics; and the mothers of the land, having had to prostrate

themselves as beggars, if not in fact, really in sentiment and

feeling, have become at last almost desperate.

In the State of Texas I had a niece living whose father was an

inmate of a lunatic asylum. She exerted as wide an influence in

the State of Texas as any woman there. I allude to Miss Mollie

Moore, who was the ward of Mr. Gushing. I give this illustration

as a reason why Southern women are taking part in this movement,

Mr. Wallace had charge of that lunatic asylum for years. He was a

good, honorable, able man. Every one was endeared to him; every

one appreciated him; the State appreciated him as superintendent

of this asylum.

When a political change was made and Governor Robinson came in,

Dr. Wallace was ousted for political purposes. It almost broke the

hearts of some of the women who had sons, daughters, or husbands

there. They determined at once to try to seek some redress and

have him reinstated. It was impossible. He was out, and what could

we do? I do not know that we could reach a case like that; but

such cases have stirred the women of the whole land, for the

reason that when they try to do good, or want to help in the cause

of humanity, they are combated so bitterly and persistently.

I leave it to older and abler women, who have labored in this

cause so long, to prove whether it is or is not constitutional to

give the ballot to women.

A gentleman said to me a few days ago, "These women want to

marry." I am married; I am a mother; and in our home the sons and

brothers are all standing like a wall of steel at my back. I have

cast aside every prejudice of the past. They lie like rotted hulks

behind me.

After the fever of 1878, when our constitutional convention was

going to convene, broke the agony and grief of my own heart, for

one of my children died, and took part in the suffrage movement in

Louisiana, with the wife of Chief-Justice Merrick, Mrs. Sarah A.

Dorsey, and Mrs. Harriet Keatinge, of New York, the niece of Mr.

Lozier. These three ladies aided me faithfully and ably. When they

found we would be received, I went before the convention. I went

to Lieutenant-Governor Wiltz, and asked him if he would present or

consider a petition which I wished to bring before the convention.

He read the petition. One clause of our State law is that no woman

can sign a will. We will have that question decided before the

meeting of the next Legislature. Some ladies donated property to

an asylum. They wrote the will and signed it themselves, and

it was null and void, because the signers were women. They not

knowing the law, believed that they were human beings, and signed

it. That clause, perhaps, will be wiped out. Many gentlemen signed

the petition on that account. I took the paper around myself.

Governor Wiltz, then lieutenant-governor, told me he would present

the petition. He was elected president of the convention. I

presented my first petition, signed by the best names in the city

of New Orleans and in the State.

I had the names of seven of the most prominent physicians there,

leading with the name of Dr. Logan, and many men, seeing the name

of Dr. Samuel Logan, also signed it. I went to all the different

physicians and ministers. Three prominent ministers signed it for

moral purposes alone. When Mrs. Horsey was on her dying bed the

last time she ever signed her name was to a letter to go before

that convention. No one believed she would die. Mrs. Merrick

and myself went before the convention. I was invited before the

committee on the judiciary. I made an impression favorable enough

there to be invited before the convention with these ladies. I

addressed the convention. We made the petition then that we make

here; that we, the mothers of the land, are barred on every side

in the cause of reform. I have strived hard in the work of reform

for women. I pledged my father on his dying bed that I would never

cease that work until woman stood with man equal before the law,

so far as my efforts could accomplish it. Finding myself baffled

in that work, I could only take the course which we have adopted,

and urge the proposition of the sixteenth amendment.

I beg of you, gentlemen, to consider this question apart from the

manner in which it was formerly considered. We, as the women of

the nation, as the mothers, as the wives, have a right to be

heard, it seems to me, before the nation. We represent precisely

the position of the colonies when they plead, and, in the words of

Patrick Henry, they were "spurned with contempt from the foot of

the throne." We have been jeered and laughed at and ridiculed; but

this question has passed out of the region of ridicule.

The moral force inheres in woman and in man alike, and unless we

use all the moral power of the Government we certainly can not

exist as a Government.

We talk of centralization, we talk of division; we have the seeds

of decay in our Government, and unless right soon we use the moral

force and bring it forward in all its strength and bearing, we

certainly cannot exist as a happy nation. We do not exist as a

happy nation now. This clamor for woman's suffrage, for woman's

rights, for equal representation, is extending all over the land.

I plead because my work has been combatted in the cause of reform

everywhere that I have tried to accomplish anything. The children

that fill the houses of prostitution are not of foreign blood and

race. They come from sweet American homes, and for every woman

that went down some mother's heart broke. I plead by the power of

the ballot to be allowed to help reform women and benefit mankind.

REMARKS OF MRS. MARY A. STEWART, OF DELAWARE.

Mrs. STEWART. I come from a small State, but one that is

represented in this Congress, I consider, by some of the ablest

men in the land. Our State, though small, has heretofore possessed

and to-day possesses brains. Our sons have no more right to brains

than our daughters, yet we are tied down by every chain that could

bind the Georgian slave before the war. Aye, we are worse slaves,

because the Georgian slave could go to the sale block and there be

sold. The woman of Delaware must submit to her chains, as there is

no sale for her; she is of no account.

Woman from all time has occupied the highest positions in the

world. She is just as competent to-day as she was hundreds of

years ago. We are taxed without representation; there is no

mistake about that. The colonies screamed that to England;

Parliament screamed back, "Be still; long live the king, and we

will help you." Did the colonies submit? They did not. Will the

women of this country submit? They will not. Mark me, we are the

sisters of those fighting Revolutionary men; we are the daughters

of the fathers who sang back to England that they would not

submit. Then, if the same blood courses in our veins that courses

in yours, dare you expect us to submit?

The white men of this country have thrown out upon us, the women,

a race inferior, you must admit, to your daughters, and yet that

race has the ballot, and why? He has a right to it; he earned and

paid for it with his blood. Whose blood paid for yours? Not your

blood; it was the blood of your forefathers; and were they not our

forefathers? Does a man earn a hundred thousand dollars and lie

down and die, saying, "It is all my boys'?" Not a bit of it. He

dies saying, "Let my children, be they cripples, be they idiots,

be they boys, or be they girls, inherit all my property alike."

Then let us inherit the sweet boon of the ballot alike.

When our fathers were driving the great ship of state we were

willing to ride as deck or cabin passengers, just as we felt

disposed; we had nothing to say; but to-day the boys are about to

run the ship aground, and it is high time that the mothers should

be asking, "What do you mean to do?" It is high time that the

mothers should be demanding what they should long since have had.

In our own little State the laws have been very much modified in

regard to women. My father was the first man to blot out the old

English law allowing the eldest son the right of inheritance to

the real estate. He took the first step, and like all those who

take first steps in improvement and reform he received a mountain

of curses from the oldest male heirs; but it did not matter to

him.

Since 1868 I have, by my own individual efforts, by the use of

hard-earned money, gone to our Legislature time after time and

have had this law and that law passed for the benefit of the

women; and the same little ship of state has sailed on. To-day our

men are just as well satisfied with the laws of our State for the

benefit of women in force as they were years ago. In our State a

woman has a right to make a will. In our State she can hold bonds

and mortgages as her own. In our State she has a right to her

own property. She can not sell it, though, if it is real estate,

simply because the moment she marries her husband has a life-time

right. The woman does not grumble at that; but still when he dies

owning real estate, she gets only the rental value of one-third,

which is called the widow's dower. Now I think the man ought to

have the rental value of one-third of the woman's maiden property

or real estate, and it ought to be called the widower's dower. It

would be just as fair for one as for the other. All that I want is

equality.

The women of our State, as I said before, are taxed without

representation. The tax-gatherer comes every year and demands

taxes. For twenty years have I paid tax under protest, and if I

live twenty years longer I shall pay it under protest every time.

The tax-gatherer came to my place not long since. "Well," said I,

"good morning, sir." Said he, "Good morning." He smiled and said,

"I have come bothering you." Said I, "I know your face well. You

have come to get a right nice little woman's tongue-lashing."

Said he, "I suppose so, but if you will just pay your tax I will

leave." I paid the tax, "But," said I, "remember I pay it under

protest, and if I ever pay another tax I intend to have the

protest written and make the tax-gatherer sign it before I pay the

tax, and if he will not sign that protest then I shall not pay the

tax, and there will be a fight at once." Said he, "Why do you keep

all the time protesting against paying this small tax?" Said I,

"Why do you pay your tax?" "Well," said he, "I would not pay it

if I did not vote." Said I, "That is the very reason why I do not

want to pay it. I can not vote and I do not want to pay it." Now

the women have no right when election day comes around. Who stay

at home from the election? The women and the black and white men

who have been to the whipping-post. Nice company to put your wives

and daughters in.

It is said that the women do not want to vote. Here is an array

of women. Every woman sitting here wants to vote, and must we be

debarred the privilege of voting because some luxurious woman,

rolling around in her carriage and pair in her little downy nest

that some good, benevolent man has provided for her, does not want

to vote?

There was a society that existed up in the State of New York

called the Covenanters that never voted. A man who belonged to

that sect or society, a man whiter-haired than any of you, said to

me, "I never voted. I never intended to vote, I never felt that

I could conscientiously support a Government that had its

Constitution blotted and blackened with the word 'slave,' and I

never did vote until after the abolition of slavery." Now, were

all you men disfranchised because that class or sect up in New

York would not vote? Did you all pay your taxes and stay at home

and refrain from voting because the Covenanters did not vote? Not

a bit of it. You went to the election and told them to stay at

home if they wanted to, but that you, as citizens, were going to

take care of yourselves. That was right. We, as citizens, want to

take care of ourselves.

One more thought and I will be through. The fourteenth and

fifteenth amendments give the right of suffrage to women, so

far as I know, although you learned men perhaps see a little

differently. I see through the glass dimly; you may see through it

after it is polished up. The fourteenth and fifteenth amendments,

in my opinion, and in the opinion of a great many smart men in the

country, and smart women, too, give the right to women to vote

without, any "ifs" or "ands" about it, and the United States

protects us in it; but there are a few who construe the law to

suit themselves, and say that those amendments do not mean that,

because the Congress that passed the fourteenth and fifteenth

amendments did not mean to do that. Well, the Congress that passed

them were mean enough for anything if they did not mean to do

that. Let the wise Congress of to-day take the eighth chapter and

the fourth verse of the Psalms, which says, "What is man, that

Thou art mindful of him?" and amend it by adding, "What is woman,

that they never thought of her?"

REMARKS BY MRS. LUCINDA B. CHANDLER, OF PENNSYLVANIA.

Mrs. CHANDLER. Gentlemen, it will be conceded that the progress of

civilization, all that lifts humanity above a groveling, sensual,

depraved state, is marked by the position, intelligence, and

culture of women. Perhaps you think that American women have no

rightful claim to present; but American women and mothers do claim

that they should have the power to protect their children, not

only at the hearthstone, but to supervise their education. It is

neither presuming nor unwomanly for the mothers and women of the

land to claim that they are competent and best fitted, and that

it rightfully belongs to them to take part in the management and

control of the schools, and the instruction, both intellectual

and moral, of their children, and that in penal, eleemosynary, or

reformatory institutions women should have positions as inspectors

of prisons, physicians, directors, and superintendents.

I have here a brief report from an association which sent me as a

delegate to the National Woman Suffrage Convention, in which it is

stated that women in Pennsylvania can be elected as directors on

school boards or superintendents of schools, but can not help to

elect those officers. It must very readily occur to your minds

that when women take such interest in the schools as mothers must

needs take they must feel many a wish to control the election of

the officers, superintendents, and managers of the schools. The

ladies here from New York city could, if they had time, give you

much testimony in regard to the management of schools in New York

city, and the need there of woman's love and woman's power in the

schools and on the school boards. I am also authorized by

the association which sent me here to report that the

woman-suffragists and some other woman organizations of the city

of Philadelphia, have condemned in resolution the action of the

governor a year ago, I think, in vetoing a bill which passed

largely both houses of the Legislature to appoint women inspectors

of prisons. On such questions woman feels the need of the ballot.

The mothers of this land, having breathed the air of freedom and

received the benefits of education, have come to see the necessity

of better conditions to fulfill their divinely appointed and

universally recognized office. The mothers of this land claim that

they have a right to assist in making the laws which control the

social relations. We are under the laws inherited from barbarism.

They are not the conditions suited to the best exercise of the

office of woman, and the women desire the ballot to purge society

of the vices that are sure to disintegrate the home, the State,

the nation.

I shall not occupy your time further this morning. I only present

briefly the mother's claim, as it is so universally conceded. We

now have in our schools a very large majority of women teachers,

and it seems to me no one can but recognize the fact that mothers,

through their experience in the family, mothers who are at all

competent and fit to fulfill their position as mothers in the

family, are best fitted to understand the needs and at least

should have an equal voice in directing the management of the

schools, and also the management of penal and reformatory

institutions.

I was in hopes that Mrs. Wallace would give you the testimony she

gave us in the convention of the wonderful, amazing good that was

accomplished in a reformatory institution where an incorrigible

woman was taken from the men's prison and became not only very

tractable, but very helpful in an institution under the influence

and management of women. That reformatory institution is managed

wholly by women. There is not a man, Mrs. Wallace says, in the

building, except the engineer who controls the fire department.

Under a management wholly by women, the institution is a very

great success. We feel sure that in many ways the influence and

power that the mothers bring would tend to convert many conditions

that are now tending to destruction through vices, would tend

to elevate us morally, purify us, bring us still higher in the

standard of humanity, and make us what we ought to be, a holy as

well as a happy nation.

REMARKS BY MRS. SARA A. SPENCER, OF WASHINGTON.

Mrs. SPENCER. Miss Susan B. Anthony was chosen to present the

constitutional argument in our case before the committee. Unless

there is more important business for the individual members of the

committee than the protection of one-half of our population, I

trust that the limit fixed for our hearing will be extended.

The CHAIRMAN. Miss Anthony is entitled to an hour.

Mrs. SPENCER. Good. Miss Anthony is from the United States; the

whole United States claim her.

Mrs. ALLEN. I have made arrangements with Miss Anthony to say all

that I feel it necessary for me to say at this time.

Mrs. SPENCER. I have been so informed.

REMARKS BY MRS. NANCY B. ALLEN, OF IOWA.

Mrs. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the Judiciary Committee:

I am not a State representative, but I am a representative of a

large class of women, citizens of Iowa, who are heavy tax-payers.

That is a subject which we are very seriously contemplating at

this time. There is now a petition being circulated throughout our

State, to be presented to the legislature, praying that women

be exempted from taxation until they have some voice in the

management of local affairs of the State. You may ask, "Do not

your husbands protect you? Are not all the men protecting you?" We

answer that our husbands are grand, noble men, who are willing to

do all they can for us, but there are many who have no husbands,

and who own a great deal of property in the State of Iowa.

Particularly in great moral reforms the women there feel the need

of the ballot. By presenting long petitions to the Legislature

they have succeeded in having better temperance laws enacted, but

the men have failed to elect officials who will enforce those

laws. Consequently they have become as dead letters upon the

statute-books.

I would refer again to taxes. I have a list showing that in my

city three women pay more taxes than all the city officials

included. Those women are good temperance women. Our city council

is composed almost entirely of saloon men and those who visit

saloons and brewery men. There are some good men, but the good men

being in the minority, the voices of these women are but little

regarded. All these officials are paid, and we have to help

support them. All that we ask is an equality of rights. As Sumner

said, "Equality of rights is the first of rights." If we can only

be equal with man under the law it is all that we ask. We do not

propose to relinquish our domestic circles; in fact, they are too

dear to us for that; they are dear to us as life itself, but we

do ask that we may be permitted to be represented. Equality of

taxation without representation is tyranny.

REMARKS BY MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY, OF NEW YORK.

Miss ANTHONY: Mr. Chairman and gentlemen: Mrs. Spencer said that I

would make an argument. I do not propose to do so, because I take

it for granted that the members of this committee understand that

we have all the argument on our side, and such an argument would

be simply a series of platitudes and maxims of government. The

theory of this Government from the beginning has been perfect

equality to all the people. That is shown by every one of the

fundamental principles, which I need not stop to repeat. Such

being the theory, the application would be, of course, that all

persons not having forfeited their right to representation in the

Government should be possessed of it at the age of twenty-one. But

instead of adopting a practice in conformity with the theory of

our Government, we began first by saying that all men of property

were the people of the nation upon whom the Constitution conferred

equality of rights. The next step was that all white men were

the people to whom should be practically applied the fundamental

theories. There we halt to-day and stand at a deadlock, so far as

the application of our theory may go. We women have been standing

before the American republic for thirty years, asking the men to

take yet one step further and extend the practical application of

the theory of equality of rights to all the people to the other

half of the people--the women. That is all that I stand here

to-day to attempt to demand.

Of course, I take it for granted that the committee are in

sympathy at least with the reports of the Judiciary Committees

presented both in the Senate and the House. I remember that after

the adoption of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments Senator

EDMUNDS reported on the petition of the ten thousand foreign-born

citizens of Rhode Island who were denied equality of rights in

Rhode Island simply because of their foreign birth; and in that

report held that the amendments were enacted and attached to the

Constitution simply for men of color, and therefore that their

provisions could not be so construed as to bring within their

purview the men of foreign birth in Rhode Island. Then the House

Committee on the Judiciary, with Judge Bingham, of Ohio, at its

head, made a similar report upon our petitions, holding that

because those amendments were made essentially with the black men

in view, therefore their provisions could not be extended to the

women citizens of this country or to any class except men citizens

of color.

I voted in the State of New York in 1872 under the construction

of those amendments, which we felt to be the true one, that all

persons born in the United States, or any State thereof, and under

the jurisdiction of the United States, were citizens, and entitled

to equality of rights, and that no State could deprive them of

their equality of rights. I found three young men, inspectors of

election, who were simple enough to read the Constitution and

understand it in accordance with what was the letter and what

should have been its spirit. Then, as you will remember, I was

prosecuted by the officers of the Federal court, And the cause was

carried through the different courts in the State of New York,

in the northern district, and at last I was brought to trial at

Canandaigua.

When Mr. Justice Hunt was brought from the supreme bench to sit

upon that trial, he wrested my case from the hands of the jury

altogether, after having listened three days to testimony, and

brought in a verdict himself of guilty, denying to my counsel even

the poor privilege of having the jury polled. Through all that

trial when I, as a citizen of the United States, as a citizen of

the State of New York and city of Rochester, as a person who had

done something at least that might have entitled her to a voice in

speaking for herself and for her class, in all that trial I not

only was denied my right to testify as to whether I voted or not,

but there was not one single woman's voice to be heard nor to be

considered, except as witnesses, save when it came to the judge

asking, "Has the prisoner any thing to say why sentence shall not

be pronounced?" Neither as judge, nor as attorney, nor as jury was

I allowed any person who could be legitimately called my peer to

speak for me.

Then, as you will remember, Mr. Justice Hunt not only pronounced

the verdict of guilty, but a sentence of $100 fine and costs of

prosecution. I said to him, "May it please your honor, I do not

propose to pay it;" and I never have paid it, and I never shall. I

asked your honorable bodies of Congress the next year--in 1874--to

pass a resolution to remit that fine. Both Houses refused it; the

committees reported against it; though through Benjamin F. Butler,

in the House, and a member of your committee, and Matthew H.

Carpenter, in the Senate, there were plenty of precedents brought

forward to show that in the cases of multitudes of men fines had

been remitted. I state this merely to show the need of woman to

speak for herself, to be as judge, to be as juror.

Mr. Justice Hunt in his opinion stated that suffrage was a

fundamental right, and therefore a right that belonged to the

State. It seemed to me that was just as much of a retroversion

of the theory of what is right in our Government as there could

possibly be. Then, after the decision in my case came that of Mrs.

Minor, of Missouri. She prosecuted the officers there for denying

her the right to vote. She carried her case up to your Supreme

Court, and the Supreme Court answered her the same way; that the

amendments were made for black men; that their provisions could

not protect women; that the Constitution of the United States has

no voters of its own.

Mrs. SPENCER. And you remember Judge Cartier's decision in my

case.

Miss ANTHONY. Mr. Cartier said that women are citizens and may be

qualified, &c., but that it requires some sort of legislation to

give them the right to vote.

The Congress of the United States notwithstanding, and the Supreme

Court of the United States notwithstanding, with all deference and

respect, I differ with them all, and know that I am right and that

they are wrong. The Constitution of the United States as it

is protects me. If I could get a practical application of the

Constitution it would protect me and all women in the enjoyment

of perfect equality of rights everywhere under the shadow of the

American flag.

I do not come to you to petition for special legislation, or for

any more amendments to the Constitution, because I think they are

unnecessary, but because you say there is not in the Constitution

enough to protect me. Therefore I ask that you, true to your own

theory and assertion, should go forward to make more constitution.

Let me remind you that in the case of all other classes of

citizens under the shadow of our flag you have been true to the

theory that taxation and representation are inseparable. Indians

not taxed are not counted in the basis of representation, and are

not allowed to vote; but the minute that your Indians are counted

in the basis of representation and are allowed to vote they are

taxed; never before. In my State of New York, and in nearly

all the States, the members of the State militia, hundreds and

thousands of men, are exempted from taxation on property; in my

State to the value of $800, and in most of the States to a value

in that neighborhood. While such a member of the militia lives,

receives his salary, and is able to earn money, he is exempted;

but when he dies the assessor puts his widow's name down upon the

assessor's list, and the tax-collector never fails to call upon

the widow and make her pay the full tax upon her property. In most

of the States clergymen are exempted. In my State of New York they

are exempted on property to the value of $1,500. As long as the

clergyman lives and receives his fat salary, or his lean one, as

the case may be, he is exempted on that amount of property; but

when the breath leaves the body of the clergyman, and the widow

is left without any income, or without any means of support, the

State comes in and taxes the widow.

So it is with regard to all black men. In the State of New York up

to the day of the passage of the fifteenth amendment, black men

who were willing to remain without reporting themselves worth as

much as $250, and thereby to remain without exercising the right

to vote, never had their names put on the assessor's list; they

were passed by, while, if the poorest colored woman owned 50 feet

of real estate, a little cabin anywhere, that colored woman's name

was always on the assessor's list, and she was compelled to pay

her tax. While Frederick Douglas lived in my State he was never

allowed to vote until he could show himself worth the requisite

$250; and when he did vote in New York, he voted not because he

was a man, not because he was a citizen of the United States, nor

yet because he was a citizen of the State, but simply because he

was worth the requisite amount of money. In Connecticut both black

men and black women were exempted from taxation prior to the

adoption of the fifteenth amendment.

The law was amended in 1848, by which black men were thus

exempted, and black women followed the same rule in that State.

That, I believe, is the only State where black women were exempted

from taxation under the law. When the fourteenth and fifteenth

amendments were attached to the Constitution they carried to the

black man of Connecticut the boon of the ballot as well as the

burden of taxation, whereas they carried to the black woman of

Connecticut the burden of taxation, but no ballot by which to

protect her property. I know a colored woman in New Haven, Conn.,

worth $50,000, and she never paid a penny of taxation until the

ratification of the fifteenth amendment. From that day on she is

compelled to pay a heavy tax on that amount of property.

Mrs. SPENCER. Is it because she is a citizen? Please explain.

Miss ANTHONY. Because she is black.

Mrs. SPENCER. Is it because the fourteenth and fifteenth

amendments made women citizens?

Miss ANTHONY. Certainly; because it declared the black people

citizens.

Gentlemen, you have before you various propositions of amendment

to the Federal Constitution. One is for the election of President

by the vote of the people direct. Of course women are not people.

Senator EDMUNDS. Angels.

Miss ANTHONY. Yes; angels up in heaven or else devils down there.

Senator EDMUNDS. I have never known any of that kind.

Miss ANTHONY. I wish you, gentlemen, would look down there and see

the myriads that are there. We want to help them and lift them up.

That is exactly the trouble with you, gentlemen; you are forever

looking at your own wives, your own mothers, your own sisters, and

your own daughters, and they are well cared for and protected; but

only look down to the struggling masses of women who have no one

to protect them, neither husband, father, brother, son, with no

mortal in all the land to protect them. If you would look down

there the question would be solved; but the difficulty is that you

think only of those who are doing well. We are not speaking for

ourselves, but for those who can not speak for themselves. We are

speaking for the doomed as much as you, Senator EDMUNDS, used to

speak for the doomed on the plantations of the South.

Amendments have been proposed to put God in the Constitution and

to keep God out of the Constitution. All sorts of propositions to

amend the Constitution have been made; but I ask that you allow no

other amendment to be called the sixteenth but that which shall

put into the hands of one-half of the entire people of the nation

the right to express their opinions as to how the Constitution

shall be amended henceforth. Women have the right to say whether

we shall have God in the Constitution as well as men. Women have a

right to say whether we shall have a national law or an amendment

to the Constitution prohibiting the importation or manufacture of

alcoholic liquors. We have a right to have our opinions counted on

every possible question concerning the public welfare.

You ask us why we do not get this right to vote first in the

school districts, and on school questions, or the questions

of liquor license. It has been shown very clearly why we need

something more than that. You have good enough laws to-day in

every State in this Union for the suppression of what are termed

the social vices; for the suppression of the grog-shops, the

gambling houses, the brothels, the obscene shows. There is plenty

of legislation in every State in this Union for their suppression

if it could be executed. Why is the Government, why are the States

and the cities, unable to execute those laws? Simply because there

is a large balance of power in every city that does not want those

laws executed. Consequently both parties must alike cater to that

balance of political power. The party that puts a plank in its

platform that the laws against the grog-shops and all the other

sinks of iniquity must be executed, is the party that will not get

this balance of power to vote for it, and, consequently, the party

that can not get into power.

What we ask of you is that you will make of the women of the

cities a balance of political power, so that when a mayor, a

member of the common council, a supervisory justice of the peace,

a district attorney, a judge on the bench even, shall go before

the people of that city as a candidate for the suffrages of the

people he shall not only be compelled to look to the men who

frequent the grog-shops, the brothels, and the gambling houses,

who will vote for him if he is not in favor of executing the law,

but that he shall have to look to the mothers, the sisters, the

wives, the daughters of those deluded men to see what they will do

if he does not execute the law.

We want to make of ourselves a balance of political power. What we

need is the power to execute the laws. We have got laws enough.

Let me give you one little fact in regard to my own city of

Rochester. You all know how that wonderful whip called the

temperance crusade roused the whisky ring. It caused the whisky

force to concentrate itself more strongly at the ballot-box than

ever before, so that when the report of the elections in the

spring of 1874 went over the country the result was that the

whisky ring was triumphant, and that the whisky ticket was elected

more largely than ever before. Senator Thurman will remember

how it was in his own State of Ohio. Everybody knows that if my

friends, Mrs. ex-Governor Wallace, Mrs. Allen, and all the women

of the great West could have gone to the ballot-box at those

municipal elections and voted for candidates, no such result would

have occurred; while you refused by the laws of the State to the

women the right to have their opinions counted, every rumseller,

every drunkard, every pauper even from the poor-house, and every

criminal outside of the State's prison came out on election day to

express his opinion and have it counted.

The next result of that political event was that the ring demanded

new legislation to protect the whisky traffic everywhere. In my

city the women did not crusade the streets, but they said they

would help the men to execute the law. They held meetings, sent

out committees, and had testimony secured against every man who

had violated the law, and when the board of excise held its

meeting those women assembled, three or four hundred, in the

church one morning, and marched in a solid body to the common

council chamber where the board of excise was sitting. As one

rum-seller after another brought in his petition for a renewal

of license who had violated the law, those women presented the

testimony against him. The law of the State of New York is that no

man shall have a renewal who has violated the law. But in not one

case did that board refuse to grant a renewal of license because

of the testimony which those women presented, and at the close of

the sitting it was found that twelve hundred more licenses had

been granted than ever before in the history of the State. Then

the defeated women said they would have those men punished

according to law.

Again they retained an attorney and appointed committees to

investigate all over the city. They got the proper officer to

prosecute every rum-seller. I was at their meeting. One woman

reported that the officer in every city refused to prosecute the

liquor dealer who had violated the law. Why? Because if he should

do so he would lose the votes of all the employés of certain shops

on that street, if another he would lose the votes of the railroad

employés, and if another he would lose the German vote, if another

the Irish vote, and so on. I said to those women what I say to

you, and what I know to be true to-day, that if the women of the

city of Rochester had held the power of the ballot in their hands

they would have been a great political balance of power.

The last report was from District Attorney Raines. The women

complained of a certain lager-beer-garden keeper. Said the

district attorney, "Ladies, you are right, this man is violating

the law, everybody knows it, but if I should prosecute him I would

lose the entire German vote." Said I, "Ladies, do you not see

that if the women of the city of Rochester had the right to vote

District Attorney Raines would have been compelled to have stopped

and counted, weighed and measured. He would have said, 'If I

prosecute that lager-beer German I shall lose the 5,000 German

votes of this city, but if I fail to prosecute him and execute the

laws I shall lose the votes of 20,000 women.'"

Do you not see, gentlemen, that so long as you put this power of

the ballot in the hands of every possible man, rich, poor, drunk,

sober, educated, ignorant, outside of the State's prison, to make

and unmake, not only every law and law-maker, but every office

holder who has to do with the executing of the law, and take the

power from the hands of the women of the nation, the mothers, you

put the long arm of the lever, as we call it in mechanics, in

the hands of the whisky power and make it utterly impossible for

regulation of sobriety to be maintained in our community? The

first step towards social regulation and good society in towns,

cities, and villages is the ballot in the hands of the mothers of

those places. I appeal to you especially in this matter, I do not

know what you think about the proper sphere of women.

It matters little what any of us think about it. We shall each and

every individual find our own proper sphere if we are left to

act in freedom; but my opinion is that when the whole arena of

politics and government is thrown open to women they will endeavor

to do very much as they do in their homes; that the men will look

after the greenback theory or the hard-money theory, that you will

look after free-trade or tariff, and the women will do the home

housekeeping of the government, which is to take care of the moral

government and the social regulation of our home department.

It seems to me that we have the power of government outside to

shape and control circumstances, but that the inside power, the

government housekeeping, is powerless, and is compelled to accept

whatever conditions or circumstances shall be granted.

Therefore I do not ask for liquor suffrage alone, nor for school

suffrage alone, because that would amount to nothing. We must be

able to have a voice in the election not only of every law-maker,

but of every one who has to do either with the making or the

executing of the laws.

Then you ask why we do not get suffrage by the popular-vote

method, State by State? I answer, because there is no reason why

I, for instance, should desire the women of one State of this

nation to vote any more than the women of another State. I have

no more interest as regards the women of New York than I

as regards the women of Indiana, Iowa, or any of the States

represented by the women who have come up here. The reason why I

do not wish to get this right by what you call the popular-vote

method, the State vote, is because I believe there is a United

States citizenship. I believe that this is a nation, and to be a

citizen of this nation should be a guaranty to every citizen of

the right to a voice in the Government, and should give to me

my right to express my opinion. You deny to me my liberty, my

freedom, if you say that I shall have no voice whatever in making,

shaping, or controlling the conditions of society in which I live.

I differ from Judge Hunt, and I hope I am respectful when I say

that I think he made a very funny mistake when he said that

fundamental rights belong to the States and only surface rights to

the National Government. I hope you will agree with me that the

fundamental right of citizenship, the right to voice in the

Government, is a national right.

The National Government may concede to the States the right to

decide by a majority as to what banks they shall have, what

laws they shall enact with regard to insurance, with regard to

property, and any other question; but I insist upon it that the

National Government should not leave it a question with the States

that a majority in any State may disfranchise the minority under

any circumstances whatsoever. The franchise to you men is not

secure. You hold it to-day, to be sure, by the common consent of

white men, but if at any time, on your principle of government,

the majority of any of the States should choose to amend the State

constitution so as to disfranchise this or that portion of the

white men by making this or that condition, by all the decisions

of the Supreme Court and by the legislation thus far there is

nothing to hinder them.

Therefore the women demand a sixteenth amendment to bring to women

the right to vote, or if you please to confer upon women their

right to vote, to protect them in it, and to secure men in their

right, because you are not secure.

I would let the States act upon almost every other question by

majorities, except the power to say whether my opinion shall

be counted. I insist upon it that no State shall decide that

question.

Then the popular-vote method is an impracticable thing. We tried

to get negro suffrage by the popular vote, as you will remember.

Senator Thurman will remember that in Ohio the Republicans

submitted the question in 1867, and with all the prestige of the

national Republican party and of the State party, when every

influence that could be brought by the power and the patronage of

the party in power was brought to bear, yet negro suffrage ran

behind the regular Republican ticket 40,000.

It was tried in Kansas, it was tried in New York, and everywhere

that it was submitted the question was voted down overwhelmingly.

Just so we tried to get women suffrage by the popular-vote method

in Kansas in 1867, in Michigan in 1874, in Colorado in 1877, and

in each case the result was precisely the same, the ratio of the

vote standing one-third for women suffrage and two-thirds against

women suffrage. If we were to canvass State after State we should

get no better vote than that. Why? Because the question of the

enfranchisement of women is a question of government, a question

of philosophy, of understanding, of great fundamental principle,

and the masses of the hard-working people of this nation, men and

women, do not think upon principles. They can only think on the

one eternal struggle wherewithal to be fed, to be clothed, and to

be sheltered. Therefore I ask you not to compel us to have this

question settled by what you term the popular-vote method.

Let me illustrate by Colorado, the most recent State, in the

election of 1877. I am happy to say to you that I have canvassed

three States for this question. If Senator Chandler were alive,

or if Senator Ferry were in this room, they would remember that I

followed in their train in Michigan, with larger audiences than

either of those Senators throughout the whole canvass. I want to

say, too, that although those Senators may have believed in woman

suffrage, they did not say much about it. They did not help us

much. The Greenback movement was quite popular in Michigan at that

time. The Republicans and Greenbackers made a most humble bow

to the grangers, but woman suffrage did not get much help. In

Colorado, at the close of the canvass, 6,666 men voted "Yes."

Now I am going to describe the men who voted "Yes." They were

native-born white men, temperance men, cultivated, broad,

generous, just men, men who think. On the other hand, 16,007 voted

"No."

Now I am going to describe that class of voters. In the southern

part of that State there are Mexicans, who speak the Spanish

language. They put their wheat in circles on the ground with

the heads out, and drive a mule around to thrash it. The vast

population of Colorado is made up of that class of people. I was

sent out to speak in a voting precinct having 200 voters; 150

of those voters were Mexican greasers, 40 of them foreign-born

citizens, and just 10 of them were born in this country; and I was

supposed to be competent to convert those men to let me have as

much right in this Government as they had, when, unfortunately,

the great majority of them could not understand a word that I

said. Fifty or sixty Mexican greasers stood against the wall with

their hats down over their faces. The Germans put seats in a

lager-beer saloon, and would not attend unless I made a speech

there; so I had a small audience.

MRS. ARCHIBALD. There is one circumstance that I should like to

relate. In the county of Las Animas, a county where there is a

large population of Mexicans, and where they always have a large

majority over the native population, they do not know our language

at all. Consequently a number of tickets must be printed for those

people in Spanish. The gentleman in our little town of Trinidad

who had the charge of the printing of those tickets, being adverse

to us, had every ticket printed against woman suffrage. The

samples that were sent to us from Denver were "for" or "against,"

but the tickets that were printed only had the word "against" on

them, so that our friends had to scratch their tickets, and all

those Mexican people who could not understand this trick and did

not know the facts of the case, voted against woman suffrage; so

that we lost a great many votes. This was man's generosity.

MISS ANTHONY. Special legislation for the benefit of woman! I will

admit you that on the floor of the constitutional convention was a

representative Mexican, intelligent, cultivated, chairman of the

committee on suffrage, who signed the petition, and was the first

to speak in favor of woman suffrage. Then they have in Denver

about four hundred negroes. Governor Routt said to me, "The

four hundred Denver negroes are going to vote solid for woman

suffrage." I said, "I do not know much about the Denver negroes,

but I know certainly what all negroes were educated in, and

slavery never educated master or negro into a comprehension, of

the great principles of human freedom of our nation; it is not

possible, and I do not believe they are going to vote for us."

Just ten of those Denver negroes voted for woman suffrage. Then,

in all the mines of Colorado the vast majority of the wage

laborers, as you know, are foreigners.

There may be intelligent foreigners in this country, and I know

there are, who are in favor of the enfranchisement of woman, but

that one does not happen to be Carl Schurz, I am ashamed to say.

And I want to say to you of Carl Schurz, that side by side with

that man on the battlefield of Germany was Madame Anneke, as noble

a woman as ever trod the American soil. She rode by the side of

her husband, who was an officer, on the battlefield; she slept in

battlefield tents, and she fled from Germany to this country, for

her life and property, side by side with Carl Schurz. Now, what is

it for Carl Schurz, stepping up to the very door of the Presidency

and looking back to Madame Anneke, who fought for liberty as

well as he, to say, "You be subject in this Republic; I will be

sovereign." If it is an insult for Carl Schurz to say that to

a foreign-born woman, what is it for him to say it to Mrs.

Ex-Governor Wallace, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott--to the

native-born, educated, tax-paying women of this Republic? I can

forgive an ignorant foreigner; I can forgive an ignorant negro;

but I can not forgive Carl Schurz.

Right in the file of the foreigners opposed to woman suffrage,

educated under monarchical governments that do not comprehend our

principles, whom I have seen traveling through the prairies of

Iowa or the prairies of Minnesota, are the Bohemians, Swedes,

Norwegians, Germans, Irishmen, Mennonites; I have seen them riding

on those magnificent loads of wheat with those magnificent Saxon

horses, shining like glass on a sunny morning, every one of them

going to vote "no" against woman suffrage. You can not convert

them; it is impossible. Now and then there is a whisky

manufacturer, drunkard, inebriate, libertine, and what we call

a fast man, and a colored man, broad and generous enough to be

willing to let women vote, to let his mother have her opinion

counted as to whether there shall be license or no license, but

the rank and file of all classes, who wish to enjoy full license

in what are termed the petty vices of men are pitted solid against

the enfranchisement of women.

Then, in addition to all these, there are, as you know, a few

religious bigots left in the world who really believe that somehow

or other if women are allowed to vote St. Paul would feel badly

about it. I do not know but that some of the gentlemen present

belong to that class. [Laughter.] So, when you put those best men

of the nation, having religion about everything except on this one

question, whose prejudices control them, with all this vast mass

of ignorant, uneducated, degraded population in this country,

you make an overwhelming and insurmountable majority against the

enfranchisement of women.

It is because of this fact that I ask you not to remand us back

to the States, but to submit to the States the proposition of a

sixteenth amendment. The popular-vote method is not only of itself

an impossibility, but it is too humiliating a process to compel

the women of this nation to submit to any longer.

I am going to give you an illustration, not because I have any

disrespect for the person, because on many other questions he was

really a good deal better than a good many other men who had not

so bad a name in this nation. When, under the old _régime_, John

Morrissey, of my State, the king of gamblers, was a Representative

on the floor of Congress, it was humiliating enough for Lucretia

Mott, for Elizabeth Cady Stanton, for all of us to come down here

to Washington and beg at the feet of John Morrissey that he would

let intelligent, native-born women vote, and let us have as much

right in this Government and in the government of the city of New

York as he had. When John Morrissey was a member of the New York

State Legislature it would have been humiliating enough for us to

go to the New York State Legislature and pray of John Morrissey to

vote to ratify the sixteenth amendment, giving to us a right to

vote; but if instead of a sixteenth amendment you tell us to go

back to the popular-vote method, the old-time method, and go down

into John Morrissey's seventh Congressional district in the city

of New York, and there, in the sloughs and slums of that great

Sodom, in the grog-shops, the gambling-houses, and the brothels,

beg at the feet of each individual fisticuff of his constituency

to give the noble, educated, native-born, tax-paying women of

the State of New York as much right as he has, that would be too

bitter a pill for a native-born woman to swallow any longer.

I beg you, gentlemen, to save us from the mortification and the

humiliation of appealing to the rabble. We already have on our

side the vast majority of the better educated--the best classes of

men. You will remember that Senator Christiancy, of Michigan, two

years ago, said on the floor of the Senate that of the 40,000 men

who voted for woman suffrage in Michigan it was said that there

was not a drunkard, not a libertine, not a gambler, not a

depraved, low man among them. Is not that something that tells

for us, and for our right? It is the fact, in every State of the

Union, that we have the intelligent lawyers and the most liberal

ministers of all the sects, not excepting the Roman Catholics. A

Roman Catholic priest preached a sermon the other day, in which he

said, "God grant that there were a thousand Susan B. Anthonys in

this city to vote and work for temperance." When a Catholic priest

says that there is a great moral necessity pressing down upon this

nation demanding the enfranchisement of women. I ask you that you

shall not drive us back to beg our rights at the feet of the

most ignorant and depraved men of the nation, but that you, the

representative men of the nation, will hold the question in the

hollow of your hands. We ask you to lift this question out of the

hands of the rabble.

You who are here upon the floor of Congress in both Houses are the

picked men of the nation. You may say what you please about John

Morrissey, the gambler, &c.; he was head and shoulders above the

rank and file of his constituency. The world may gabble ever so

much about members of Congress being corrupt and being bought

and sold; they are as a rule head and shoulders among the great

majority who compose their State governments. There is no doubt

about it. Therefore I ask of you, as representative men, as men

who think, as men who study, as men who philosophize, as men who

know, that you will not drive us back to the States any more, but

that you will carry out this method of procedure which has been

practiced from the beginning of the Government; that is, that you

will put a prohibitory amendment in the Constitution and submit

the proposition to the several State legislatures. The amendment

which has been presented before you reads:

ARTICLE XVI.