“ In the 120 years of our national life no class of men have been forced to organize a movement in behalf of their enfranchisement; they have offered no petition or plea or even given sign that the extension of suffrage to them would be acceptable. Yet American women, who have conducted a persistent, intelligent movement for a half-century, which has grown stronger and stronger with the years, appealing for their own enfranchisement and supported now by a petition of 400,000 citizens of the United States are told that it is unnecessary to consider their plea since all women do not want to vote! ”

“ Men and women, they are looking to us as the hope of the world and whenever I gaze on our flag, whenever I look on those stars on their field of blue and those stripes of red and white, I say to myself: "I do not wonder that when that flag went over the trenches and surmounted the barriers, the people of the world took heart of hope. ”

“ As they wait they are not blind to the fact that this nation did what no other nation has ever done, when it voluntarily made its former slaves the sovereign rulers of its loyal and patriotic women.
The greatest service suffragists can render their country and through it the whole world at this time, is to teach it that there is no sex in love of individual liberty and to stand without faltering by their demand for justice and equality of political rights for men and women. ”

“ We demand either that you shall do something to prevent war or that we shall be permitted to try to do something ourselves." Could there be any cowardice, could there be any injustice, could there be any wrong, greater than for men to refuse to hear the voice of a woman expressing the will of women at the peace table of the world and then not provide a way by which the women of the future shall not be robbed of their sons as the women of the past have been? ”

“ If we reject measures like this, in ignorant defiance of what a new age has brought forth, of what they have seen but we have not, they will cease to believe in us; they will cease to follow or to trust us. They have seen their own governments accept this interpretation of democracy—seen old governments like that of Great Britain, which did not profess to be democratic. ”

“ The founders took an even broader view of human rights when they declared that government could justly derive its powers only from the consent of the governed, and for 125 years this grand assertion was regarded as a corner-stone of the republic, with scarcely a recognition of the fact that one-half of the citizens were as completely governed without their consent as were the people of any absolute monarchy in existence. It was only when our government was extended over alien races in foreign countries that our people awoke to the meaning of the principles of the Declaration of Independence. ”

“ As an association we are confronted through the eternal law of progress by changes in our methods such as we have not met since the union of the two national societies in 1890. Our enlarged and expanding status as an association, the new and varied duties which devolve upon us and the innumerable demands increasing with the accumulation of means and workers call for a new kind of service in leadership. ”

“ We shall not only be distrusted, but shall deserve to be distrusted if we do not enfranchise women with the fullest possible enfranchisement, as it is now certain that the other great free nations will enfranchise them. ”

“ If ever there shall be established in America a republic-a Constitution and Government free from all caste and privilege, whether of color, creed or sex-its founders will he discovered not in those who purchased by their valor and blood mere independence of territory in which a government allied with slavery was founded, but among those who, while faithful to heart and home, toiled unweariedly for an ideal civilization. ”

“ I tell you plainly, as the commander-in-chief of our armies and of the gallant men in our fleets; as the present spokesman of this people in our dealings with the men and women throughout the world who are now our partners; as the responsible head of a great government which stands and is questioned day by day as to its purpose, its principles, its hope.... ”

“ Are we alone to ask and take the utmost that our women can give—service and sacrifice of every kind— and still say we do not see what title that gives them to stand by our side in the guidance of the affairs of their nation and ours? ”

“ On the other hand the great majority of the men who voted against us, as well as the great majority of the members of Legislatures and Congress who oppose this movement, hold that women have given no signal that they want the vote. Between the horns of this amazing dilemma the Federal amendment and State suffrage seem to be caught fast.
So those of us who want to learn how to obtain the vote have naturally asked ourselves over and over again what kind of a demand can be made. We get nothing by "watchful waiting" and if we are turbulent we are pronounced unfit to vote. ”

“ It was not that they sought persecution but that they loved justice and freedom more than escape from it—these pioneers of the greatest political reform which history recounts. Year after year the task has been carried forward until the time has come when "new occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth," and the idealist and the reformer are supplanted in our movement by the politician. Our cause has passed beyond the stage of academic discussion and has entered the realm of practical politics. ”

“ The women of the United States now pay taxes on real and personal estate valued at billions of dollars. In a number of individual States their holdings amount to many millions. Everywhere they are accumulating property. In hundreds of places they form one-third of the taxpayers, with the number constantly increasing, and yet they are absolutely without representation in the affairs of the nation, of the State, even of the community in which they live and pay taxes. ”

“ Gentlemen, is it not manifestly unfair to demand of women a test which has never been made in the case of men in this or any other country? Is it not true that the attitude of the Government toward an unenfranchised class of men has ever been that the vote is a privilege to be extended and it is optional with the citizen whether or not he shall use it? ”

“ They are looking to the great, powerful, famous democracy of the West to lead them to the new day for which they have so long waited; and they think, in their logical simplicity, that democracy means that women shall play their part in affairs alongside men and upon an equal footing with them. ”

“ When this movement began its pioneers were reformers, people who saw a vision and dreamed dreams of the time when all mankind should be free and all human beings have an equal opportunity under the law. ”

“ Surely anyone can see that if the Anthony Amendment had been passed by Congress the effect would be entirely different from that produced by the passage of one merely giving the Initiative and Referendum to the States. And again: "If ratified, this amendment would have the same effect in every State as if a suffrage amendment had already passed its Legislature." Even this-is untrue. If any Legislature had submitted a suffrage amendment, the subject would at once go to the men to be voted on but by this method there must be a petition signed by 8 per cent. ”

“ Two-thirds of our men of voting age today have not only made no demand for the vote but they have never been asked to give any evidence of capacity to use it intelligently.
We turned again to history to see how the men who lived in this country in 1800 got their votes. At that time 8 per cent. of the total population were voters in New York as compared with 25 per cent. now. There was a struggle in all the colonial States to broaden the suffrage. New York seemed always to have lagged behind the others and therefore it forms a good example. ”

“ It is because we love our country so much and because we are so anxious to give ourselves entirely to the great service of winning the war, that we want the freedom of American women now. We suffragists would he thrice traitors if at this time of the great struggle of the world for democracy we should fail to ask for the fundamental principles here which America is trying to help bring to other countries. ”

“ We enter our protest against this injustice and we demand that the immortal principles established by the War of the Revolution shall be applied equally to women and men citizens.
As our new republic passed into a higher stage of development the gross inequality became apparent of giving representation to capital and denying it to labor; therefore the right of suffrage was extended to the workingman. Now we demand for the 4,000,000 wage-earning women of our country the same protection of the ballot as is possessed by the wage-earning men. ”

“ We shall need in our vision of affairs, as we have never needed them before, the sympathy and insight and clear moral instinct of the women of the world. The problems of that time will strike to the roots of many things that we have hitherto questioned, and I for one believe that our safety in those questioning days, as well as our comprehension of matters that touch society to the quick, will depend upon the direct and authoritative participation of women in our counsels. ”

“ We little dreamed when we began this contest, optimistic with the hope and buoyancy of youth, that half a century later we would be compelled to leave the finish of the battle to another generation of women. ”

“ Is it not likewise unfair to compel women to seek their enfranchisement by methods infinitely more difficult than those by means of which any man in this country has secured his right to a vote? Ordinary fair play should compel every believer in democracy and individual liberty, no matter what are his views on woman suffrage, to grant to women the easiest process of enfranchisement and that is the submission of a Federal Amendment.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XIV.
the shafroth-palmer woman suffrage amendment. ”

“ We look for your support back of your Senators and from this day until the day when the League of Nations is accepted and ratified by the Senate of the United States, it should be the duty of every man and every woman to see that the Senators from their State know the will of the people; know that the people will that something shall be done, even though not perfect ”

“ I regard the concurrence of the Senate in the constitutional amendment proposing the extension of the suffrage to women as vitally essential to the successful prosecution of the great war of humanity in which we are engaged. ”

“ The women of America are too intelligent and too devoted to be slackers whether you give or withhold this thing that is mere justice; but I know the magic it will work in their thoughts and spirits if you give it to them. ”

“ It is not because of its artistic beauty, for other flags are as artistic. It is because you and I see in that piece of bunting what we see in no other. It is not visible to the human eye but it is to the human soul. ”

“ It is fifty-one years since first we met and we have been busy through every one of them, stirring up the world to recognize the rights of women. The older we grow the more keenly we feel the humiliation of disfranchisement and the more vividly we realize its disadvantages in every department of life and most of all in the labor market. ”

“ The American Constitution makers could not do less than Great Britain had done, and so in every one of the thirteen States they were guaranteed political equality with Protestants.
The next great movement was the elimination of the land qualification and on this we find that history is practically silent. In Connecticut and Rhode Island a small petition was presented to the Assembly asking for its removal. In New York in the constitutional convention of 1821 when some members advocated its removal others asked, “Where is the demand? Who wants to vote that has no land?” ”

“ This war could not have been fought, either by the other nations engaged or by America, if it had not been for the services of the women— services rendered in every sphere—not merely in the fields of efforts in which we have been accustomed to see them work but wherever men have worked and upon the very skirts and edges of the battle itself. ”

“ If we analyze the arguments set forth by these most ardent advocates of the Federal Constitutional Amendment as the only means of securing immediate results and learn upon what they base their hopes of success, we shall see, as has been shown again and again, that every one of them has its source in the enfranchised States ”

“ Why did not such evidence of a demand win the vote? Because the unscrupulous men of the State worked and voted against woman suffrage, aided and abetted by the weakminded and illiterate, who are permitted a vote in New York. In Rochester the male inmates of the almshouse and rescue home were taken out to vote against the amendment. Men too drunk to sign their own names voted all over the State, for drunkards may vote in New York. In many of the polling places the women watchers reported that throughout the entire day not one came to vote who did not have to be assisted ”

“ Was there ever a time when the peoples of all nations looked towards America as they are looking to-day because of our unselfishness in our dealings with them during the war? We have not always been unselfish but we have been in this war. The war is over as far as the fighting is concerned but it is only begun as far as the life of the people is concerned. ”

“ It has no record of the number of Indians who have accepted its offer of the vote as a reward for taking up land in severalty. Manifestly the Government, as represented by Congress and the State Legislatures, considers it entirely unnecessary to know whether men who have had the suffrage "thrust upon them" use it or not, but imperative that women must not only demand it in very large numbers but give guaranty that they will use it, before its extension shall be made to them. ”

“ If we be indeed democrats and wish to lead the world to democracy, we can ask other peoples to accept in proof of our sincerity and our ability to lead them whither they wish to be led, nothing less persuasive and convincing than our actions. ”