But I suppose whoever clamors for action here finds a warrant for it in the clamor outside, and it is not necessary to look to the Constitution for it; it is not necessary to regard the interests of civilization and the experience of ages in determining our social as well as our political policy; but we will arrange it so that there shall be no one to nurse the babies, no one to superintend the household, but all shall go into the political scramble, and we shall go back as rapidly as we can march into barbarism. That is the effect of such doings as this, disregarding the social interests of society for a clamor that never ought to have been made.

Mr. Reagan then rambled into a long discussion of the rights allowed under the Constitution, although no action had been proposed except the mere appointment of a Select Committee, to whom all questions relating to woman suffrage might be referred, such as already existed in the Senate.

James B. Belford of Colorado in an able reply said:

I have no doubt that this House will be gratified with the profound respect which the gentleman from Texas has expressed for the Constitution of the country. The last distinguished act with which he was connected was its attempted overthrow; and a man who was engaged in an enterprise of that kind can fight a class to whom his mother belonged. I desire to know whether a woman is a citizen of the United States or an outcast without any political rights whatever....

What is the proposition presented by the gentleman from Ohio? That we will constitute a committee to whom shall be referred all petitions presented by women. Is not the right of petition a constitutional right? Has not woman, in this country at least, risen above the horizon of servitude, discredit and disgrace, and has she not a right, representing as she does in many instances great questions of property, to present her appeals to this National Council and have them judiciously considered? I think it is due to our wives, daughters, mothers and sisters to afford them an avenue through which they can legitimately and judicially reach the ear of this great nation.

Moved by Mr. Reagan's attacks, Mr. Keifer made a strong plea for the rights of women, which deserves a place in history, saying in part:

We must remember that we stand here committed in a large sense to the matter of woman suffrage. In the Territories of Wyoming and Utah for fifteen years past women have had the right to vote on all questions which men can vote upon; and the Congress of the United States has stood by without disapproving the legislative acts of those Territories. And we now have before us a law passed at the last session of the Legislature of Washington, giving to its women the right to vote. We have not passed upon the question one way or the other, but we have the right to pass upon it. This, I think, seems to dispose sufficiently of the question of constitutional legislative power without trampling upon the toes of any State-rights man.

The right of petition belongs to all persons within the limits of our republic, and with the right of petition goes the right on the part of the Congress through constitutional means to grant relief. Do gentlemen claim it is unconstitutional to amend the Constitution? I know that claim was made at one time on the floor of this House and on the floor of the Senate. When it was proposed to abolish slavery in the United States, distinguished gentlemen argued that it was unconstitutional to amend the Constitution so as to abolish slavery. But all that has passed away and we now find ourselves, in the light of the present, seeing clearly that we may amend the Constitution in any way we please, pursuing always the proper constitutional methods of doing so.

There are considerations due to the women of this country which ought not to be lightly thrust aside. For thirty-five years they have been petitioning and holding conventions and demanding that certain relief should be granted them, to the extent of allowing them to exercise the right of suffrage. In that thirty-five years we have seen great things accomplished. We have seen some of the subtleties of the Common Law, which were spread over this country, swept away. There is hardly anybody anywhere who now adheres to the doctrine that a married woman can not make a contract, and that she has no rights or liabilities except those which are centered in her husband. Even the old Common-Law maxim that "husband and wife are one, and that one the husband," has been largely modified under the influence of these patriotic, earnest ladies who have taken hold of this question and enlightened the world upon it. There are now in the vaults of this Capitol hundreds of thousands of petitions for relief, sent in here by women and by those who believed that women ought to have certain rights and privileges of citizenship granted to them. For sixteen years there has been held in this city, annually, a convention composed of representative women from all parts of the country. These conventions, as well as various State and local conventions, have been appealing for relief; and they ought not to be met by the statement that we will not even give them the poor privilege of a committee to whom their petitions and memorials may be referred.

We have made some progress. In 1871 there was a very strong minority report made in this House in favor of woman suffrage. Notwithstanding the notion that we must stand by all our old ideas, the Supreme Court of the United States, after deliberately considering the question, admitted a woman to practice at the bar of that Court.[21] A hundred years ago, in the darkness of which some gentlemen desire still to live, I suppose they would not have done this. Favorable reports on this subject were made by the Committee on Privileges and Elections in the Senate of the Forty-fifth Congress, and in the last Congress by a Select Committee of the Senate and of the House. The Legislatures of many of the States have expressed their judgment on the matter. There has been a great deal of progress in that direction. The Senate and the House of Representatives of the last Congress provided Select Committees to whom all matters relating to woman suffrage could be referred. Will this House take a step backward on this question?

I want especially to notify the gentleman from Texas that we are not standing still on this matter. Eleven States—New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, Michigan, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado and Oregon—have authorized women to vote for school trustees and members of school boards. Kentucky extends this right to widows who have children and pay taxes. Women are nominated and voted for not only in the eleven States and three Territories, but in nearly all the Northern and Western States. Pennsylvania, Illinois, Iowa and other States have large numbers of women county superintendents of public schools. And let me say, for the benefit of the Democratic party, that in the great, progressive western State of Kansas the Democracy rose so high as to nominate and vote for a woman for State Superintendent of Public Instruction at the last election. So there has been a little growing away from those old ideas and notions, even among the Democracy. We are permitting women to fill public offices. Why should they not participate in the election of officers who are to govern them? We require them to pay taxes and there are a great many burdens imposed upon them. Kansas, Michigan, Colorado and Nebraska have in recent years submitted the question of woman suffrage to a vote of the people and more than one-third of the electors of each voted in favor. Oregon has now a similar proposition pending.

By the laws of all the States women are required to pay taxes; but we are practically working on the theory that these women shall be taxed without the right of representation. Taxation without representation led to the separation of the colonies from the mother country. They were not so much opposed to being taxed as they were to being taxed without representation. The patriots of that day conceived the idea that there was a principle somewhere involved in the right of representation. So they evolved and formulated that Revolutionary maxim, "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute." The basis of that maxim was that they would not give to the payment of taxes without the right of representation. Revolution and war made representation and taxation correlative. But the States tax all women on their property. For illustration, 8,000 women of Boston and 34,000 in Massachusetts pay $2,000,000 of taxes, one-eleventh of the entire tax of that great and wealthy State. The same ratio will be found to prevail in all the other States.

Progress has gone on elsewhere than in the United States. England has been moving forward in this matter, and we should not stand behind her in anything....

I am one of those who do not believe that to give to women common rights and privileges will degrade them, but on the contrary I believe it will ennoble them; and I believe further that to put them on an equality in the matter of rights and privileges with men will enhance their charms and not lessen their beauty.

The vote resulted—yeas, 85; nays, 124; not voting, 112. Of the affirmative votes 72 were Republican, 13 Democratic; of the negative, 4 were Republican, 120 Democratic.

In January, 1884, after the return of the members from their holiday recess, Miss Anthony addressed letters to the 112 absentees, asking each how he would have voted had he been present. Fifty-two replies were received, 26 from Republicans, all of whom would have voted yes; 26 from Democrats, 10 of whom would have voted yes, 10, no, and 6 could not tell which way they would have voted.

In the hope that this respectable minority could be increased to a majority, the Hon. John D. White (Ky.) made a further attempt, Feb. 7, 1884, to secure the desired committee, saying in his speech upon this question:

It seems to me to be an anomalous state of affairs that in a great Nation like this one-half of the people should have no committee to which they could address their appeals.

Women consider they have the same political rights as men. I might read from such distinguished authority as Miss Susan B. Anthony, whose name has been jeered in her native State, and who has been prosecuted there for voting, but who stands before the American people to-day the peer of any woman in the nation, and the superior of half the men occupying a representative capacity. It does seem to me hard that when a woman like this comes to Congress, instructed by thousands and tens of thousands of her sex, in order to be heard she should be compelled to hang around the doors of the Judiciary Committee, or of some other committee, pre-eminently occupied with other matters. But we are told there is no room. Yet we have a room where lobbyists of every sort are provided for. And are we to be told that no room in this wing of the Capitol can be had where respectable women of the nation can present arguments for the calm consideration of their friends in this body? I ask simply for the opportunity to be afforded the representatives of the political rights of women to be heard in making respectful argument to the law-making power of the nation.

Byron M. Cutcheon (Mich.) also spoke in favor of the committee, saying:

Ever since the organization of this House I have received petitions from my constituents in regard to this matter of the political rights of women, but there seems to be no committee to which they could properly be referred. A few years since, when this question of woman suffrage was submitted to the people in my State, more than 40,000 electors were in favor of it. It seems to me, without committing ourselves on the question of the political rights of women, it is but respectful to a very large number of people in all our States that there should be a committee to receive and consider and report upon these petitions which come to us from time to time.

The House refused to allow a vote.

The Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage granted a hearing March 7, 1884, at 10:30 a. m., in the Senate reception room, to the speakers and delegates in attendance at the convention, the entire committee being present.[22] In introducing the speakers Miss Anthony said: "This is the sixteenth year that we have come before Congress in person, and the nineteenth by petitions, asking national protection for the citizen's right to vote, when the citizen happens to be a woman."

MRS. HARRIET R. SHATTUCK (Mass.): We canvassed four localities in the city of Boston, two in smaller cities, two in country districts and made one record also of school teachers in nine schools of one town. The teachers were unanimously in favor of woman suffrage, and in the nine localities we found that the proportion of women in favor was very much larger than of those opposed. The total of women canvassed was 814. Those in favor were 405, those opposed, 44; indifferent, 166; refused to sign, 160; not seen, 39. These canvasses were made by respectable, responsible women, and they swore before a Justice of the Peace as to the truth of their statements. Thus we have in Massachusetts this reliable canvass of women showing those in favor are to those opposed as nine to one....

MRS. MAY WRIGHT SEWALL (Ind.): ... My friend has said that men have always kept us just a little below them where they could shower upon us favors and they have done that generously. So they have, but, gentlemen, has your sex been more generous to women than they have been generous toward you in their favors? Neither can dispense with the service of the other, neither can dispense with the reverence of the other or with the aid of the other in social life. The men of this nation are rapidly finding that they can not dispense with the service of woman in business life. I know that they are also feeling the need of the moral support of woman in their political life.

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. I do not speak to you as individuals but 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 woman's standard be still more elevated, and let yours come up to match it.

We do not appeal to you as Republicans or as Democrats. We were reared with our brothers under the political belief and faith of our fathers, and probably as much influenced by that rearing as they were. We shall go to strengthen both the parties, neither the one nor the other the more, probably. So this is not a partisan measure; it is a just measure, which is our due, because of what we are, men and women both, by virtue of our heritage and our one Father, our one Mother eternal.

MRS. HELEN M. GOUGAR (Ind.): I maintain there is no political question paramount to that of woman suffrage before the people of America to-day. Political parties would have us believe that tariff is the great question of the hour. It is an insult to the intelligence of the present 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 the tariff, the civil rights of the negro, or any other question which can be brought up, is equal to the one of giving political freedom to women.

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 to the United States a population drawn very largely from their asylums, penitentiaries, jails and poor-houses. 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, enter my protest at being compelled to live under laws made by this class of men while I am denied the protection that can only come from the ballot. While I would not have you take this right 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.

....We have in our State the signatures of over 5,000 of the school teachers asking for woman's ballot. I ask you if the Government does not need the voice of those 5,000 educated teachers as much as it needs the voice of the 240 criminals who are, on an average, sent out of the penitentiary of Indiana each year, to go to the ballot-box upon every question, and make laws under which those 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 which shall follow their sons not only to the age of majority, but even after their hair has turned gray and they have seats in the United States Congress; yes, to the very confines of eternity. This can be done in no indirect way; it can not be done by silent influence; it can not be done by prayer. While I do not underestimate the power of prayer, I say give me my ballot with which to send statesmen instead of modern politicians into our legislative halls. I would rather have that ballot on election day than the prayers of all the disfranchised women in the universe!

....Our forefathers did not object to taxation, but they did object to taxation without representation, and we object to it. We are willing to contribute our share to the support of this Government, as we always have done; but we demand our little yes and no in the form of the ballot so that we shall have a direct influence in distributing the taxes.

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 be rewarded or punished. It is written in the law of every State in this Union that a person tried in the courts shall have a jury of his peers; yet so long as the word "male" stands as it does in the Constitution of the United States and the States, no woman 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 saloon—yes, even of the police court and of the jail—as is done in selecting a male jury to try the interests of woman, whether relating to life, property or reputation....

The political party that presumes to fight the moral battles of the future must have the women in its ranks. We are non-partisan. We come as Democrats, Republicans, Prohibitionists and Green-backers, and if there were half a dozen other political parties some of us would affiliate with them. We ask this beneficent action upon your part, because we believe the intelligence and justice of the hour demand it. We ask you in the name of equity and humanity alone, and not in that of any party....

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 those 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 all women free.

MRS. CAROLINE GILKEY ROGERS (N. Y.): It is often said to us that 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 which 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. Woman's right to self-government does not depend upon the numbers that demand it, but upon precisely the same principles on which man claims it for himself. Where did man get the authority which he now exercises 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 it made her his mother—his equal when it fitted her to hold the sacred position of wife. Did women meet in council and voluntarily give up all their right to be their own law-makers? The power of the strong over the weak makes man the master. Thus, and thus 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 it is settled by the States it will be left to the men, not to the women, to decide. Or if suffrage comes to women through a Sixteenth Amendment to the National Constitution, it will be decided by Legislatures elected by men only. 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 the barriers which now prevent our exercising the right of suffrage....

MRS. MARY SEYMOUR HOWELL (N. Y.): 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 very reason she should have the ballot and every help which 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 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 make our country pure and noble, and if you would have statesmen you must have stateswomen to bear them....

MRS. LILLIE DEVEREUX BLAKE (N. Y.): 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. In the enormous immigration which pours upon our shores every year, numbering nearly half a million, there come twice as many men as women. What does this mean? 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 foreign men as compared to the native born men. 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 influence is to put the ballot in the hands of the American born woman, and of all other women also, so that if the foreign born man overbalances us in numbers we shall be always in a majority on the side of the liberty which is secured by our institutions....

MRS. ELIZABETH BOYNTON HARBERT: 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 have signed petitions for the right of woman 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 60,000 more have signed petitions that the full 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 material and political interests. I claim that the mother-thought, the woman-element needed, is to supplement the statesmanship of American men on political and industrial affairs with domestic legislation.

In her closing address Miss Anthony took up the question of obtaining suffrage for women through the States instead of Congress and said:

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 to canvass each one of these, school district by school district. It is asking too much of a moneyless class. The joint earnings of the marriage co-partnership in all the States belong legally to the husband. It is only that wife who goes outside the home to work whom the law permits to own and control the money she earns. Therefore, to ask of women, the vast majority of whom are without an independent dollar of their own, to make a thorough canvass of their several States, is asking an impossibility.

We have already made the experiment of canvassing four States—Kansas in 1867, Michigan in 1874, Colorado in 1877, Nebraska in 1882—and in each, with the best campaign possible for us to make, we obtained a vote of only one-third. One man out of every three voted for the enfranchisement of the women of his household, while two out of every three voted against it....

We beg, therefore, that instead of insisting that a majority of the individual voters must be converted before women shall have the franchise, you will give us the more hopeful task of appealing to the representative men in the Legislatures of the several States. You need not fear that we shall get suffrage too quickly if Congress submits the proposition, for even then we shall have a long siege in going from Legislature to Legislature to secure the vote of three-fourths of the States necessary to ratify the amendment. It may require twenty years after Congress has taken the initiative step, to obtain action by the requisite number, but once submitted by Congress it always will stand until ratified by the States.

Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton's paper on Self-Government the Best Means of Self-Development was read to the committee. A few extracts will serve to show its broad scope:

The basic idea of a republic is the right of self-government, the right of every citizen to choose his own representatives and to have a voice in the laws under which he lives. As this right can be secured only by the exercise of the suffrage, the ballot in the hand of every qualified citizen constitutes the true political status of the people in a republic.

The right of suffrage is simply the right to govern one's self. Every human being is born into the world with this right, and the desire to exercise it comes naturally with the feeling of life's responsibilities. Those only who are capable of appreciating this dignity, can measure the extent to which women are defrauded, and they only can measure the loss to the councils of the nation of the wisdom of representative women. They who say that women do not desire the right of suffrage, that they prefer masculine domination to self-government, falsify every page of history, every fact in human experience.

It has taken the whole power of the civil and canon law to hold woman in the subordinate position which it is said she willingly accepts. If woman naturally has no will, no self-assertion, no opinions of her own, what means the terrible persecution of the sex under all forms of religious fanaticism, culminating in witchcraft in which scarce one wizard to a thousand witches was sacrificed? So powerful and merciless has been the struggle to dominate the feminine element in humanity, that we may well wonder at the steady, determined resistance maintained by woman through the centuries. To every step of progress which she has made from slavery to the partial freedom she now enjoys, the Church and the State alike have made the most cruel opposition, and yet, under all circumstances she has shown her love of individual freedom, her desire for self-government, while her achievements in practical affairs and her courage in the great emergencies of life have vindicated her capacity to exercise this right....

The right of suffrage in a republic means self-government, and self-government means education, development, self-reliance, independence, courage in the hour of danger. That women may attain these virtues we demand the exercise of this right. Not that we suppose we should at once be transformed into a higher order of beings with all the elements of sovereignty, wisdom, goodness and power full-fledged, but because the exercise of the suffrage is the primary school in which the citizen learns how to use the ballot as a weapon of defense; it is the open sesame to the land of freedom and equality. The ballot is the scepter of power in the hand of every citizen. Woman can never have an equal chance with man in the struggle of life until she too wields this power. So long as women have no voice in the Government under which they live they will be an ostracised class, and invidious distinctions will be made against them in the world of work. Thrown on their own resources they have all the hardships that men have to encounter in earning their daily bread, with the added disabilities which grow out of disfranchisement. Men of the republic, why make life harder for your daughters by these artificial distinctions? Surely, if governments were made to protect the weak against the strong, they are in greater need than your stalwart sons of every political right which can give them protection, dignity and power....

The disfranchisement of one-half the people places a dangerous power in the hands of the other half. All history shows that one class never did legislate with justice for another, and all philosophy shows they never can, as the relations of class grow out of either natural or artificial advantages which one has over the other and which it will maintain if possible. It is folly to say that women are not a class, so long as there is any difference in the code of laws for men and women, any discrimination in the customs of society, giving advantages to men over women; so long as in all our State constitutions women are ranked with lunatics, idiots, paupers and criminals. When you say that one-half the people shall be governed by the other half, surely the class distinction is about as broad as it can be....

The disfranchisement of one-half the people deprives the State of the united wisdom of man and woman—that "consensus of the competent" so necessary in national affairs—making our Government an oligarchy of males, instead of a republic of the people, thus perpetuating with all its evils a dominant masculine civilization. But in answer to this it is said that although women do not vote, yet they have an indirect influence in Government through their husbands and brothers. Yes, an "irresponsible power," of all kinds of influence the most dangerous....

The dogged, unreasonable persecutions of sex in all ages, the evident determination to eliminate, as far as possible, the feminine element in humanity, has been the most fruitful cause of the moral chaos the race has suffered, under every form of government and religion.... The loss to women themselves of the highest development of which they are capable is sad, but when this involves a lower type of manhood and danger to our free institutions, it is still more sad. The primal work in every country, for its own safety, should be the education and freedom of woman.

The arguments before the Judiciary Committee of the House were given the next morning, March 8, twelve of the fifteen members being present.[23] Miss Anthony opened the hearing with an earnest address in which she referred to the hundreds of thousands of petitions which had been sent to Congress for woman suffrage—far more than for any other measure—and continued:

Negro suffrage was again and again overwhelmingly voted down in various States—New York, Connecticut, Ohio, etc.—and you know, gentlemen, that if the negro had never had the right to vote until the majority of the rank and file of white men, particularly foreign-born men, had voted "Yes," he would have gone without it till the crack of doom. It was because of the prejudice of the unthinking majority that Congress submitted the question of the negro's enfranchisement to the Legislatures of the several States, to be adjudicated by the educated, broadened representatives of the people. We now appeal to you to lift the decision of woman suffrage from the vote of the populace to that of the Legislatures, that you may thereby be as considerate, as just, to the women of this nation as you were to the male ex-slaves.

Every new privilege granted to women has been by the Legislatures. The liberal laws for married women, the right of the wife to own and control her inherited property and separate earnings, the right of women to vote at school elections in a dozen States, the right to vote on all questions in three Territories, have all been gained through the Legislatures. Had any one of these beneficent propositions been submitted to the masses, do you believe a majority would have placed their sanction upon them? I do not.

It takes all too many of us women, and too much of our hard earnings, from our homes and from the works of charity and education of our respective localities, even to come to Washington, session after session, until Congress shall have submitted the proposition, and then to go from Legislature to Legislature, urging its adoption; but when you insist that we shall beg at the feet of each and every individual voter of each and every one of the thirty-eight States, native and foreign, white and black, educated and ignorant, you doom us to incalculable hardships and sacrifices and to most exasperating insults and humiliations. I pray you, therefore, save us from the fate of working and waiting for our freedom until we shall have educated the masses of men to consent to give their wives and sisters equality of rights with themselves. You surely will not compel us to wait the enlightenment of all the freedmen of this nation and all the newly-made voters from the monarchial governments of the Old World!

Liberty for one's self is a natural instinct possessed alike by all, but to be willing to accord liberty to another is the result of education, of self-discipline, of the practice of the golden rule—"Do unto others as you would that others should do unto you." Therefore we ask that the question of equality of rights to women shall be arbitrated upon by the picked men of the nation in Congress, and the picked men of the several States in their respective Legislatures.

THE REV. FLORENCE KILLOCK (Ills.): ... Called as I am into the homes of the people through the requirements of my office, I know whereof I speak when I say that I am as faithfully fulfilling its sacred duties when I come before you urging this claim, as when, on my bended knees, I plead at the throne of God for the salvation of souls.

I know too well the suffering that might be alleviated, the terrible wrongs that might be righted, the sins that might be punished, could the moral power of the women of our land be utilized—could it be brought to bear on those great questions which affect so vitally the welfare of society. The gigantic evil of intemperance is prostrating the finest powers of our country and threatening the life of social purity; it is in truth the fell destroyer of peace, virtue and domestic and national safety, and upon the unoffending the blow falls with the greatest weight. Why should not they who suffer the most deeply through this evil, be authorized before the law of the land to protect themselves and their loved ones from its fearful ravages? Is it other than simple justice which I ask for them? I have listened to too many sad stories from heart-broken wives and mothers not to know that the demand which the women of the land make in this matter comes not from love of power, is not prompted by false ambition, springs not from unwomanly aspirations, but does come from a direful need of self-protection and an earnest desire to protect those dearer than life itself.

Gentlemen of the Judiciary Committee, in the same spirit in which I seek the aid of Heaven in my endeavor to promote the spiritual welfare of mankind, I now and here seek your aid in promoting the highest moral welfare of every man, woman and child. This you will do in giving your vote and influence for the equality of women before the law, and as you thus confer this new power upon the women of our land, like the bread cast upon the waters, it shall come to you in a higher, nobler type of womanhood, in sweeter homes, in purer social life, in all that contributes to the welfare of the individual and the state.

MRS. MARY B. CLAY (Ky.): We do not come here to plead as individual women with individual men, but as a subject class with a ruling class; nor do we come as suffering individuals—though God knows some of us might do that with propriety—but as the suffering millions whom we represent....

We are born of the same parents as men and raised in the same family. We are possessed of the same loves and animosities as our brothers, and we inherit equally with them the substance of our fathers. So long as we are minors the Government treats us as equals, but when we come of age, when we are capable of feeling and knowing the difference, the boy becomes a free human being, while the girl remains a slave, a subject, and no moral heroism, no self-sacrificing patriotism, ever entitles her to her freedom. Is this just? Is it not, indeed, barbarous?

If American men intend always to keep women slaves, political and civil, they make a great mistake when they let the girl, with the boy, learn the alphabet, for no educated class will long remain in subjection. We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket-handkerchief?

Each one of you is responsible for these laws continuing as they are, and you can not avoid responsibility by saying that you did not help to make them. Great injustice is done us in the fact that we are not tried by a jury of our peers. Great injustice is done us everywhere by our not having a vote. Human nature is naturally selfish, and, as woman is deprived of the ballot, and powerless either to punish or reward, man, loving his bread and butter more than justice, will ever thrust her aside for the benefit of those who can help him, those with ballots in their hands.

....All that is good in the home, and largely the highest principles taught in your youth, were given by your mothers. How then it is possible for you to return this love and interest, as soon as you are capable of acting, by riveting the chains which hold them still slaves, politically and civilly?

You need woman's presence and counsel in legislation as much as she needs yours in the home; you need the association and influence of woman; her intuitive knowledge of men's character and the effect of measures upon the household; you need her for the economical details of public work; you need her sense of justice and moral courage to execute the laws; you need her for all that is just, merciful and good in government. But above all, women themselves need the ballot for self-protection, and as we are by common right and the laws of God free human beings, we demand that you no longer hold us your subjects—your political slaves.

MRS. MARY E. HAGGART (Ind.): When Abraham Lincoln penned the immortal emancipation proclamation he did not stop to inquire whether every man and every woman in Southern slavery did or did not want to be free. Whether women do or do not wish to vote does not affect the question of their right to do so. The right of man to the ballot is a logical deduction from the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. And singular to say, while this inheres in all people alike, the privilege of exercising it is withheld from women by a class who have no right to say whether they are willing or not that women should vote. Their right to the ballot was long ago settled beyond a quibble, by laws and principles of justice which are superior to the codes of men, who have usurped the power to regulate the voting privileges of citizens. If this right be inherent and existing in the great body of society before governments are formed, it follows that all citizens of a republic, be they male or female, are alike entitled to its exercise.

....Is there a man among you willing to resign his own right to the ballot and to place his own business interests and general welfare at the mercy of the votes of others? Would you not resent an attempt on the part of any man, or set of men, to fix your mental status, assign your work in life and lay out with mathematical precision your exact sphere in the world? And yet men undertake to adjust the limitations of the Elizabeth Cady Stantons, the Susan B. Anthonys, the Harriet Beecher Stowes, the Frances E. Willards, the Harriet Hosmers of the world, and continue to talk with patronizing condescension of female retirement, female duties and female spheres.

The question is not whether women want or do not want to vote, but how can republican inconsistencies be wiped out, justice universally recognized and impartially administered, and the civil and political errors of the past effectually repaired. Whoever admits that men have a right to the franchise must include in the admission women also, for there are no reasons capable of demonstrating an abstract right in behalf of one sex which are not equally applicable to the other....

The assertion that women do not want to vote is absolutely without authority, so long as each individual woman does not speak out for herself. In Ohio 225,000, and in Illinois 185,000, have signified a desire to use the ballot for home protection, and yet it is still asserted in those States that women do not want it. Over 100,000 women have already notified this Congress that they desire equality of political rights, and still it is declared all around us that women do not want to vote. Gentlemen, this is most emphatically an assertion which no individual can be justified in making for another.

Since the elective franchise is the parent stem from which branch out legal, industrial, social and educational enterprises necessary to the welfare of the citizens, it will be readily seen how women engaged in reforms, public charities, social enterprises, are hampered and trammeled in their progress without the ballot. Women have beheld their plans frustrated, their Herculean labor undone, their lives wasted, for want of legislative power through the citizen's emblem of sovereignty....

All ranks and occupations are beginning to realize that monstrous evils must ever crowd upon both classes while one side of humanity only is represented, and while one sex has the irresponsible keeping of the rights and privileges of the other. To-day, throughout the length and breadth of our land, woman finds the greatest need of the ballot through an almost overpowering desire to have her wishes and opinions crystallized into law.

I have no hesitancy in saying that if the conditions which surround the women of this nation to-day were the conditions of the male citizens of the country, they would rise up and pronounce them the exact definition of civil and political slavery, instead of the true interpretation of natural justice and civil equity.

Many persons claim that men are born with the right to vote, as they are to the right of life, liberty and happiness; that suffrage is the gift of the State, and that the State has a right to regulate it in any way that it may deem best for the common good. If men are born with the right to life, liberty and happiness, they are also born with the right to give expression as to how these are to be maintained; and in this nation, which professes to rest upon the consent of the governed, this expression is given through the ballot. Consequently the expression of a freeman's will is as God-given as his right to be free. Since the year of Magna Charta we have repudiated the idea of representation by proxy.

We all know that there are thousands of women in this nation who are owners of property, mothers of children, devoted to their homes and families and to all the duties and responsibilities which grow out of social life, and hence are most deeply interested in the public welfare. They have just as much at stake in this Government, which affords them no opportunity of giving or withholding their consent, as men who are consulted. John Quincy Adams said in that grand speech in defense of the petitions of the women of Plymouth: "The women are not only justified, but exhibit the most exalted virtue, when they do depart from the domestic sphere and enter upon the concerns of their country, of humanity and of God."

Miss Phoebe W. Couzins (Mo.) in closing her address said: "At the gateway of this nation, the harbor of New York, there soon shall stand a statue of the Goddess of Liberty, presented by the republic of France—a magnificent figure of a woman, typifying all that is grand and glorious and free in self-government. She will hold aloft an electric torch of great power which is to beam an effulgent light far out to sea, that ships sailing towards this goodly land may ride safely into harbor. So should you thus uplift the women of this nation, and teach these men, at the very threshold, when first their feet shall touch the shore of this republic, that here woman is exalted, ennobled and honored; that here she bears aloft the torch of intelligence and purity which guides our Ship of State into the safe harbor of wise laws, pure morals and secure institutions."

It had been the custom of these committees, when they reported at all, to delay doing so until the following year. In 1884, however, those of both Senate and House submitted reports soon after the hearings. The favorable recommendation was presented March 28, 1884, signed by Thomas W. Palmer, Henry W. Blair, Elbridge G. Lapham and Henry B. Anthony. Senators Francis Marion Cockrell and Joseph E. Brown dissented.[24] The name of Senator James G. Fair does not appear on either document, but he had signed an adverse report in 1882.

An adverse majority report from the House Judiciary Committee was presented by William C. Maybury (Mich.) and began thus:

The right of suffrage is not and never has, under our system of government, been one of the essential rights of citizenship....

What class or portion of the whole people of any State should be admitted to suffrage, and should, by virtue of such admission, exert the active and potential control in the direction of its affairs, was a question reserved exclusively for the determination of the State.

[The report loses sight entirely of the point that this question was not and never has been left to "the people" of a State, but that men alone usurped the right to decide who should be admitted to the suffrage, arbitrarily excluded women and have kept them excluded.]

Under the influence of a just fear that without suffrage as a protective power to the newly-acquired rights and privileges guaranteed to the former slave he might suffer detriment, and with this dominant motive in view, originated the Fifteenth Amendment. It will be noted that by this later amendment the privilege of suffrage is not sought to be conferred on any class; but an inhibition is placed upon the States from excluding from the privilege of suffrage any class on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.

[The Fifteenth Amendment does not mention the "privilege" of suffrage. It says expressly, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged." But whether it be a "right" or a "privilege," where did the negro get that which the States are forbidden to deny or abridge, if it does not inhere in citizenship? The report is incorrect in saying that the State is prohibited from excluding any "class;" it is only the "males" of any class who are protected from exclusion. The same right or privilege belongs to women, but they are not protected in the exercise of it. Women never have asked Congress to grant them any new right or privilege, but only to prohibit the States from denying or abridging what is already theirs, as it did in the case of negro men.]

Woman's true sphere is not restricted, but is boundless in resources and consequences. In it she may employ every energy of the mind and every affection of the heart, while within its limitless compass, under Providence, she exercises a power and influence beyond all other agencies for good. She trains and guides the life that is, and forms it for the eternity and immortality that are to be. From the rude contact of life, man is her shield. He is her guardian from its conflicts. He is the defender of her rights in his home, and the avenger of her wrongs everywhere.

[That is, what man considers her true sphere is not restricted, but she is not allowed to decide for herself what shall be its dimensions. "Her power for good is beyond all other agencies," but it is not wanted in affairs of State, where surely it is needed quite as badly as in any place in the world. "Man is her shield, guardian, defender and avenger." Witness the Common Law of England, made by men, under which women lived for centuries and which is still in force in a number of the States; witness the records of the courts with the wife-beaters and slayers, the rapists, the seducers, the husbands who have deserted their families, the schemers who have defrauded widows and orphans—witness all these and then say if all men are the natural protectors of women. But even if they were, witness the millions of women who are not legally entitled to the protection and assistance of any man. However, the report does not forget these women.]

The exceptional cases of unmarried females are too rare to change the general policy, while expectancy and hope, constantly being realized in marriage, are happily extinguishing the exceptions and bringing all within the rule which governs wife and matron.

To permit the entrance of political contention into the home would be either useless or pernicious—useless if man and wife agree, and pernicious if they differ. In the former event the volume of ballots alone would be increased without changing results. In the latter, the peace and contentment of home would be exchanged for the bedlam of political debate and become the scene of base and demoralizing intrigue.

[What a breadth of statesmanship, what a grasp of the principles of a republican form of government, to see in the voting of husband and wife only an "increase of ballots"; what a reflection upon men to assume that if there were an honest difference of opinion "the home would become a scene of base and demoralizing intrigue"; what a recognition of justice to decree that, since possibly there might be a disagreement, the man should do the voting and the woman should be forbidden a voice!]

In respect to married women, it may well be doubted whether the influences which result from the laws of property between husband and wife, would not make it improbable that the woman should exercise her suffrage with freedom and independence. This, too, in despite of the fact that the dependence of woman under the Common Law has been almost entirely obliterated by statutory enactments.

[Almost, but not quite, and it would still prevail everywhere had its obliteration depended upon the committee making this report. Think of saying in cold blood that, as the husband holds the purse-strings, the wife would not dare vote with freedom and independence!]

Your committee are of the opinion that while a few intelligent women, such as appeared before the committee in advocacy of the pending measure, would defy all obstacles in the way of their casting the ballot, yet the great mass of the intelligent, refined and judicious, with the becoming modesty of their sex, would shrink from the rude contact of the crowd and, with the exceptions mentioned, leave the ignorant and vile the exclusive right to speak for the gentler sex in public affairs.

[This opinion has been wholly disproved by the experience of States where women do vote. The "intelligent and judicious" have learned that there is more "rude contact" in going to the market, the theater, the train and the ferry-boat, than in a quiet booth where no man is permitted to come within a hundred feet. But women are not so "modest and refined" as to shrink from "rude contact" even, if it would give them the opportunity to control the conditions which surround and influence their husbands, their children, their homes and their community.]

Your committee are of the opinion that the general policy of female suffrage should remain in abeyance, in so far as the general Government is concerned, until the States and communities directly chargeable under our system of government with the exercise and regulation of this privilege, shall put the seal of affirmation upon it; and there certainly can be no reason for an amendment of the Constitution to settle a question within the jurisdiction of the States, and which they should first settle for themselves.

[Of course, according to this logic, after the States settle the question and put the seal of affirmation on it, then the general Government will take a hand!]

This House Report (No. 1330) was not drastic enough to suit the Hon. Luke P. Poland (Vt.), so he made his own, in which he said:

No government founded upon the principle that sovereignty resides in the people has ever allowed all the people to vote, or to directly participate in making or administering the laws. Suffrage has never been regarded as the natural right of all the people or of any particular class or portion of the people. Suffrage is representation, and it has been given in free governments to such class of persons as in their judgment [whose judgment?] would fairly and safely represent the rights and interests of the whole. The right has generally, if not universally, been conferred on men above twenty-one years of age, and often this has been restricted by requiring the ownership of property or the payment of taxes. [Which?]

The great majority of women are either under the age of twenty-one, or are married and therefore under such influence and control as that relation implies and confers. Is there any necessity for the protection and preservation of the rights of women, that they must be allowed to vote and, of course, to hold office and directly to participate in the administration of the laws?

Nearly every man who votes has a wife or mother or sisters or daughters; some sustain all these relations or more than one. I think it certain that the great majority of men when voting or when engaged as legislators or in administering the laws in some official character, are fully mindful of the interests of all that class with whom they are so closely connected, and whose interests are so bound up with their own, and that, therefore, they fairly represent all the rights and interests of women as well as their own. Persons who have been accustomed to see legal proceedings in the courts, and occasionally to see a female litigant in court, know very well whether they are apt to suffer wrong because their rights are determined wholly by men.[25] There is just as little reason for suspicion that their rights are not carefully guarded in legislation, and in every way where legislation can operate.

There is another reason why I think this proposal to enlist the women of the country as a part of its active political force, and to cast upon them an equal duty in the political meetings, campaigns and elections—to make them legislators, jurors, judges and executive officers—is all wrong. I believe it to be utterly inconsistent with the very nature and constitution of woman, and wholly subversive of the sphere and function she was designed to fill in the home and in society. The office and duty which nature has devolved upon woman during all the active and vigorous portion of her life would often render it impossible, and still more often indelicate, for her to appear and act in caucuses, conventions or elections, or to act as a member of the Legislature or as a juror or judge.

I can not bring myself to believe that any large portion of the intelligent women of this country desire any such thing granted them, or would perform any such duties if the chance were offered them.

[To comment upon this would be "to gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume on the violet." It would be positively "indelicate."]

William Dorsheimer (N. Y.) agreed with the committee to table the resolution, but did not endorse their arguments. He signed the following statement: "I think it probable that the interests of society will some time require that women should have the right of suffrage, and I am not willing to say more than that the present is not an opportune time for submission to the States of the proposed amendment."

In this, it will be observed, there is no recognition of woman's right to represent herself, no disposition to grant her petition for her own sake, but simply the opinion that should there ever be a crisis when her suffrage was needed it should be allowed as a matter of expediency.

In the eyes of posterity the Judiciary Committee of this Forty-eighth Congress will be redeemed from the disgrace of these reports by that of the minority, signed by Thomas B. Reed, afterwards for many years Speaker of the House; Ezra B. Taylor (O.); Moses A. McCoid (Ia.); Thomas M. Browne (Ind.). The question of woman suffrage never has been and never can be more concisely and logically stated.

No one who listens to the reasons given by the superior class for the continuance of any system of subjection can fail to be impressed with the noble disinterestedness of mankind. When the subjection of persons of African descent was to be maintained, the good of those persons was always the main object. When it was the fashion to beat children, to regard them as little animals who had no rights, it was always for their good that they were treated with severity, and never on account of the bad temper of their parents. Hence, when it is proposed to give to the women of this country an opportunity to present their case to the various State Legislatures to demand equality of political rights, it is not surprising to find that the reasons on which the continuance of the inferiority of women is urged are drawn almost entirely from a tender consideration of their own good. The anxiety felt lest they should thereby deteriorate would be an honor to human nature were it not an historical fact that the same sweet solicitude has been put up as a barrier against all the progress which women have made since civilization began.

There is no doubt that if to-day in Turkey or Algiers, countries where woman's sphere is most thoroughly confined to the home circle, it was proposed to admit them to social life, to remove the veil from their faces and permit them to converse in open day with the friends of their husbands and brothers, the conservative and judicious Turk or Algerine of the period, if he could be brought even to consider such a horrible proposition, would point out that the sphere of woman was to make home happy by those gentle insipidities which education would destroy; that by participating in conversation with men they would debase their natures, and men would thereby lose that ameliorating influence which still leaves them unfit to associate with women. He would point out that "nature" had determined that women should be secluded; that their sphere was to raise and educate the man-child, and that any change would be a violation of the divine law which, in the opinion of all conservative men, ordains the present but never the future.

So in civilized countries when it was proposed that women should own their own property, that they should have the earnings of their own labor, there were not wanting those who were sure that such a proposition could work only evil to women, and that continually. It would destroy the family, discordant interests would provoke dispute, and the only real safety for woman was in the headship of man; not that man wanted superiority for any selfish reason, but to preserve intact the family relation for woman's good. To-day a woman's property belongs to herself; her earnings are her own; she has been emancipated beyond the wildest hopes of any reformer of twenty-five years ago. Almost every vocation is open to her. She is proving her usefulness in spheres which the "nature" worshiped by the conservative of the last generation absolutely forbade her to enter. Notwithstanding all these changes the family circle remains unbroken, the man-child gets as well educated as before, and the ameliorating influence of woman has become only the more marked.

Thirty years ago hardly any political assemblage of the people was graced by the presence of women. Had it needed a law to enable them to be present, what an argument could have been made against it! How easily it could have been shown that the coarseness, the dubious expressions, the general vulgarity of the scene, could have had no other effect than to break down that purity of thought and word which women have, and which conservative and radical are alike sedulous to preserve. And yet the actual presence of women at political meetings has not debased them but has raised the other sex. Coarseness has not become diffused through both sexes but has fled from both. To put the whole matter in a short phrase: The association of the sexes in the family circle, in society, and in business, having improved both, there is neither history, reason nor sense to justify the assertion that association in politics will lower the one or demoralize the other.

Hence, we would do well to approach the question without trepidation. We can better leave the "sphere" of woman to the future than confine it in the chains of the past. Words change nothing. Prejudices are none the less prejudices because we vaguely call them "nature," and prate about what nature has forbidden, when we only mean that the thing we are opposing has not been hitherto done. "Nature" forbade a steamship to cross the Atlantic the very moment it was crossing, and yet it arrived just the same. What the majority call "nature" has stood in the way of all progress of the past and present, and will stand in the way of all future progress. It is only another name for conservatism. With conservatism the minority have no quarrel. It is essential to the stability of mankind, of government and of social life. To every new proposal it rightfully calls a halt, demanding countersign, whether it be friend or foe. The enfranchisement of women must pass this ordeal like everything else. It must give good reason for its demand to be, or take its place among the half-forgotten fantasies which have challenged the support of mankind and have not stood the test of argument and discussion.

The majority of the committee claim that suffrage is not a right but a privilege to be guarded by those who have it, and to be by them doled out to those who shall become worthy. That every extension of suffrage has been granted in some form or other by those already holding it is probably true. In some countries, however, it has been extended upon the simple basis of expediency, and in others in obedience to a claim of right. If suffrage be a right, if it be true that no man has a claim to govern any other man except to the extent that the other man has a right to govern him, then there can be no discussion of the question of Woman Suffrage. No reason on earth can be given by those who claim suffrage as a right of manhood which does not make it a right of womanhood also. If the suffrage is to be given man to protect him in his life, liberty and property, the same reasons urge that it be given to woman, for she has the same life, liberty and property to protect. If it be urged that her interests are so bound up in those of man that they are sure to be protected, the answer is that the same argument was urged as to the merging in the husband of the wife's right of property, and was pronounced by the judgment of mankind fallacious in practice and in principle. If the natures of men and women are so alike that for that reason no harm is done by suppressing women, what harm can be done by elevating them to equality? If the natures be different, what right can there be in refusing representation to those who might take juster views about many social and political questions?

Our Government is founded, not on the rule of the wisest and best, but upon the rule of all. The learned and the ignorant, the wise and the unwise, the judicious and the injudicious are all invited to assist in governing, and upon the broad principle that the best government for mankind is not the government which the wisest and best would select, but that which the average of mankind would select. Laws are daily enacted, not because they seem the wisest even to those legislators who pass them, but because they represent what the whole people wish. And, in the long run, it may be just as bad to enact laws in advance of public sentiment as to hold on to laws behind it. Upon what principle in a Government like ours can one-half the minds be denied expression at the polls? Is it because they are untrained in public affairs? Are they more so than the slaves were when the right of suffrage was conferred on them? It is objected that to admit women would be temporarily to lower the suffrage on account of their lack of training in public duties. What is now asked of us is not immediate admission to the right, but the privilege of presenting to the Legislatures of the different States the amendment, which can not become effective until adopted by three-fourths of them. It may be said that the agitation and discussion of this question will, long before its adoption, have made women as familiar with public affairs as the average of men, for the agitation is hardly likely to be successful until after a majority, at least, of women are in favor of it.

We believe in the educating and improving effect of participation in government. We believe that every citizen in the United States is made more intelligent, more learned and better educated by his participation in politics and political campaigns. It must be remembered that education, like all things else, is relative. While the average American voter may not be all that impatient people desire, and is far behind his own future, yet he is incomparably superior to the average citizen of any other land where the subject does not fully participate in the government. Discussions on the stump, and above all the discussions he himself has with his fellows, breed a desire for knowledge which will take no refusal and which leads to great general intelligence. In political discussion, acrimony and hate are not essential, and have of late years quite perceptibly diminished and will more and more diminish when discussions by women, and in the presence of women, become more common. If, then, discussion of public affairs among men has elevated them in knowledge and intelligence, why will it not lead to the same results among women? It is not merely education that makes civilization, but diffusion of education. The standing of a nation and its future depend not upon the education of the few, but of the whole. Every improvement in the status of woman in the matter of education has been an improvement to the whole race. Women have by education thus far become more womanly, not less. The same prophecies of ruin to womanliness were made against her education on general subjects that are now made against her participation in politics.

It is sometimes asserted that women now have a great influence in politics through their husbands and brothers. This is undoubtedly true. But that is just the kind of influence which is not wholesome for the community, for it is influence unaccompanied by responsibility. People are always ready to recommend to others what they would not do themselves. If it be true that women can not be prevented from exercising political influence, is not that only another reason why they should be steadied in their political action by that proper sense of responsibility which comes from acting themselves?

We conclude then, that every reason which in this country bestows the ballot upon man is equally applicable to the proposition to bestow the ballot upon woman, and that in our judgment there is no foundation for the fear that woman will thereby become unfitted for all the duties she has hitherto performed.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] For an interesting account of the struggle to secure these committees see History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. III, p. 198.

[21] But it was after five years of persistent appeal to Congress by Mrs. Belva A. Lockwood, and the enactment of a law, by overwhelming majorities in both Houses, prohibiting the Supreme Court from denying admission to lawyers on account of sex, that this act of justice was accomplished.

[22] This committee was composed of Senators Cockrell (Mo.), Fair (Nev.), Brown (Ga.), Anthony (R. I.), Blair (N. H.), Palmer (Mich.), Lapham (N. Y.).

[23] J. Randolph Tucker, Va.; Nathaniel J. Hammond, Ga.; David B. Culberson, Tex.; Samuel W. Moulton, Ills.; James O. Broadhead, Mo.; William Dorsheimer, N. Y.; Patrick A. Collins, Mass.; George E. Seney, O.; William C. Maybury, Mich.; Thomas B. Reed, Me.; Ezra B. Taylor, O.; Moses A. McCoid, Ia.; Thomas M. Browne, Ind.; Luke P. Poland, Vt.; Horatio Bisbee, Jr., Fla.

[24] Their report, dated April 23, 1884, was used entire by Senator Brown in the debate on woman suffrage which took place in the Senate of the United States January 25, 1887, and will be found in Chapter VI, which contains also a portion of the majority report included in the speech of Senator Blair.

[25] Would the men whose crimes very often have sent these "female litigants" into the courts, be willing to have their cases tried before a jury of women?



CHAPTER IV.

THE NATIONAL SUFFRAGE CONVENTION OF 1885.[26]

The Seventeenth of the national conventions was held in Lincoln Hall, Washington, D. C., Jan. 20-22, 1885, preceded by the usual brilliant reception, which was extended by Mr. and Mrs. Spofford each season for the twelve years during which the association had its headquarters at the Riggs House.

It is rather amusing to note the custom of the newspaper reporters to give a detailed description of the dress of each one of the speakers, usually to the exclusion of the subject-matter of her speech. On this occasion the public was informed that one lady "spoke in dark bangs and Bismarck brown;" one "in black and gold with angel sleeves, boutonniere and ear-drops;" another "in a basque polonaise and snake bracelets;" another "in black silk dress and bonnet, gold eye-glasses and black kid gloves." One lady wore "a small bonnet made of gaudy-colored birds' wings;" one "spoke with a pretty lisp, was attired in a box-pleated satin skirt, velvet newmarket basque polonaise, hollyhock corsage bouquet;" another "addressed the meeting in low tones and a poke bonnet;" still another "discussed the question in a velvet bonnet and plain linen collar." "A large lady wore a green cashmere dress with pink ribbons in her hair;" then there was "a slim lady with tulle ruffles, velvet sacque and silk skirt." Of one it was said: "Her face, though real feminine in shape, was painted all over with business till it looked like a man's, and her hair was shingled and brushed in little banglets." "Miss Anthony," so the report said, "wore a blue barbe trimmed in lace," while Mrs. Stanton "was attired in a black silk dress with a white handkerchief around her throat." One record declares that "there was not a pair of earrings on the platform, but most of the ladies wore gold watch-chains."

These extracts are taken verbatim from the best newspapers of the day. The conventions had passed the stage where, according to the reporters, all of the participants had short hair and wore bloomers, but, according to the same authority, they had reached the wonderful attire described above. This was fifteen years ago. The proceedings of the national convention of 1900 occupied from four to seven columns daily in each of the Washington papers, and one or more columns were telegraphed each day to the large newspapers of the United States, and yet it may be safely said that there was not one line of reference to the costumes of the ladies in attendance. The business meetings, speeches, etc., were reported with the same respect and dignity as are accorded to national conventions of men. The petty personalities of the past were wholly eliminated and women were presented from an intellectual standpoint, to be judged upon their merits and not by their clothes. This result alone is worth the fifty years of endeavor.

Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton presided over all of the sessions. Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake gave a full report of the legislative work done in New York during the past year. In the address of Mrs. Harriette R. Shattuck (Mass.) she laid especial stress on the need for women to be invested with responsibility. Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage (N. Y.) discussed the woman question from a scientific standpoint. She was followed by Mrs. Laura de Force Gordon, the second woman admitted to practice before the U. S. Supreme Court, who answered the question, Is our Civilization Civilized? and described the legal status of women in California. Mrs. Caroline Gilkey Rogers (N. Y.) gave a spirited talk on the Aristocracy of Sex. The principal address of the evening was by Mrs. Stanton, a long and thoughtful paper in which she said:

Those people who declaim on the inequalities of sex, the disabilities and limitations of one as against the other, show themselves as ignorant of the first principles of life as would that philosopher who should undertake to show the comparative power of the positive as against the negative electricity, of the centrifugal as against the centripetal force, the attraction of the north as against the south end of the magnet. These great natural forces must be perfectly balanced or the whole material world would relapse into chaos. Just so the masculine and feminine elements in humanity must be exactly balanced to redeem the moral and social world from the chaos which surrounds it. One might as well talk of separate spheres for the two ends of the magnet as for man and woman; they may have separate duties in the same sphere, but their true place is together everywhere. Having different duties in the same sphere, neither can succeed without the presence and influence of the other. To restore the equilibrium of sex is the first step in social, religious and political progress. It is by the constant repression of the best elements in humanity, by our false customs, creeds and codes, that we have thus far retarded civilization....

There would be more sense in insisting on man's limitations because he can not be a mother, than on woman's because she can be. Surely maternity is an added power and development of some of the most tender sentiments of the human heart and not a "limitation." "Yes," says another pertinacious reasoner, "but it unfits woman for much of the world's work." Yes, and it fits her for much of the world's work; a large share of human legislation would be better done by her because of this deep experience....

If one-half the effort had been expended to exalt the feminine element that has been made to degrade it, we should have reached the natural equilibrium long ago. Either sex, in isolation, is robbed of one-half its power for the accomplishment of any given work. This was the most fatal dogma of the Christian religion—that in proportion as men withdrew from all companionship with women, they could get nearer to God, grow more like the Divine Ideal.

Telegrams of greetings were received from many associations and individuals. Miss Frances Ellen Burr, who made a fine stenographic report of the entire convention, spoke for Connecticut, closing with an ideal picture of civilization as it might be with the wisdom of both sexes brought to bear on the problems of society. The following resolutions were written by Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby:

WHEREAS, The dogmas incorporated in the religious creeds derived from Judaism, teaching that woman was an afterthought in creation, her sex a misfortune, marriage a condition of subordination, and maternity a curse, are contrary to the law of God as revealed in nature and the precepts of Christ; and,

WHEREAS, These dogmas are an insidious poison, sapping the vitality of our civilization, blighting woman and palsying humanity; therefore,

Resolved, That we denounce these dogmas wherever they are enunciated, and we will withdraw our personal support from any organization so holding and teaching; and,

Resolved, That we call upon the Christian ministry, as leaders of thought, to teach and enforce the fundamental idea of creation that man was made in the image of God, male and female, and given equal dominion over the earth, but none over each other. And further we invite their co-operation in securing the recognition of the cardinal point of our creed, that in true religion there is neither male nor female, neither bond nor free, but all are one.

The resolutions were introduced and advocated by Mrs. Stanton, who said: "Woman has been licensed to preach in the Methodist church; the Unitarian and Universalist and some branches of the Baptist denomination have ordained women, but the majority do not recognize them officially, although for the first three centuries after the proclamation of Christianity women had a place in the church. They were deaconesses and elders, and were ordained and administered the sacrament. Yet through the Catholic hierarchy these privileges were taken away in Christendom and they have never been restored. Now we intend to demand equal rights in the church."

This precipitated a vigorous discussion which extended into the next day. Miss Anthony was opposed to a consideration of the resolutions and in giving her reasons said:

I was on the old Garrisonian platform and found long ago that this matter of settling any question of human rights by people's interpretation of the Bible is never satisfactory. I hope we shall not go back to that war. No two can ever interpret alike, and discussion upon it is time wasted. We all know what we want, and that is the recognition of woman's perfect equality—in the Home, the Church and the State. We all know that such recognition has never been granted her in the centuries of the past. But for us to begin a discussion here as to who established these dogmas would be anything but profitable. Let those who wish go back into the history of the past, but I beg it shall not be done on our platform.

Mrs. Mary E. McPherson (Ia.) insisted that the Bible did not ignore women, although custom might do so. The Rev. Dr. McMurdy (D. C.) declared that women were teachers under the old Jewish dispensation; that the Catholic church set apart its women, ordained them and gave them the title "reverend"; that the Episcopal church ordained deaconesses. He hoped the convention would not take action on this question. John B. Wolf upheld the resolution. Mrs. Shattuck thought the church was coming around to a belief in woman suffrage and it would be a mistake to antagonize it.

Mrs. Colby insisted the resolutions did not attack the Bible, but the dogmas which grew out of man's interpretation of it, saying:

This dogma of woman's divinely appointed inferiority has sapped the vitality of our civilization, blighted woman and palsied humanity. As a Christian woman and a member of an orthodox church, I stand on this resolution; on the divine plan of creation as set forth in the first chapter of Genesis, where we are told that man was created male and female and set over the world to have equal dominion; and on the gospel of the new dispensation, in which there is neither male nor female, bond nor free, but all are one. This resolution avows our loyalty to what we believe to be the true teachings of the Bible, and the co-operation of the Christian ministry is invited in striving to secure the application of the golden rule to women.

Edward M. Davis (Penn.) declared that, while individual members might favor woman suffrage, not one religious body ever had declared for it, and the convention ought to express itself on this subject. Mrs. Gordon pointed out the difference between religion and theology. Mrs. Stanton, being called on for further remarks, spoke in the most earnest manner:

You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman. There is not one which has not made her subject to man. Men may rejoice in them because they make man the head of the woman. I have been traveling over the old world during the last few years and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn herself on the funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion. Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, "Thus saith the Lord," of course he can do it. So long as ministers stand up and tell us that as Christ is the head of the church, so is man the head of the woman, how are we to break the chains which have held women down through the ages? You Christian women can look at the Hindoo, the Turkish, the Mormon women, and wonder how they can be held in such bondage. Observe to-day the work women are doing for the churches. The church rests on the shoulders of women. Have we ever yet heard a man preach a sermon from Genesis i:27-28, which declares the full equality of the feminine and masculine element in the Godhead? They invariably shy at that first chapter. They always get up in their pulpits and read the second chapter.

Now I ask you if our religion teaches the dignity of woman? It teaches us that abominable idea of the sixth century—Augustine's idea—that motherhood is a curse; that woman is the author of sin, and is most corrupt. Can we ever cultivate any proper sense of self-respect as long as women take such sentiments from the mouths of the priesthood?... The canon laws are infamous—so infamous that a council of the Christian church was swamped by them. In republican America, and in the light of the nineteenth century, we must demand that our religion shall teach a higher idea in regard to woman. People seem to think we have reached the very end of theology; but let me say that the future is to be as much purer than the past as our immediate past has been better than the dark ages. We want to help roll off from the soul of woman the terrible superstitions that have so long repressed and crushed her.

Through the determined efforts of Miss Anthony and some others the resolution was permitted to lie on the table.

Miss Matilda Hindman (Penn.) gave an address on As the Rulers, So the People, well fortified with statistics. The Rev. Olympia Brown (Wis.) made a stirring appeal under the title All Are Created Equal. Among the many excellent addresses were those of Mrs. Colby, Mrs. Annie L. Diggs (Kas.) and Dr. Alice B. Stockham (Ills.). The usual resolutions were adopted, and the memorial called forth a number of eulogies: