“ Here then is an open door to equal suffrage. Once let the women of any State take their equal part in this great national election and their complete equality is assured. Without change of State or Federal Constitution, without ratification by the individual voters, a simple majority of both houses of any Legislature at any time in any State can confer upon women citizens this magnificent privilege, which will carry with it a certainty of speedy future concessions of all minor rights and privileges. ”

“ If we concede that women have any moral strength, and it has been conceded from the time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, I now ask the question: Is there any one place in the universe where moral strength and moral character are more needed than in modern politics under a republican form of government? In some of our western States we have already seen what the women can do and the day will come when they will vote with us just as they read with us, talk with us, ride with us and consult with us. The most important object of our Government is education. ”

“ Nothing has given me greater hope for women and has made me prouder of women than the splendid reserve power shown by southern womanhood for the last twenty-five years. When your hearthstones were left desolate and your bravest and strongest had gone forth never to come back, your women, who had been cared for as no other women ever were cared for, who were uneducated to toil, unacquainted with business requirements, averse to them by instinct and tradition—when they had to face the world they went out uncomplaining and worked with sublime heroism. ”

“ I have seen sufficient of the women who are working in this fight for suffrage to believe that hand-in-hand with earnest men, as co-workers and equals, in no way subordinate, they can furnish brains and power to remove a vast load of the iniquities and inequalities of life and even in our generation lift this country to a plane of civilization wherein the masses shall have a chance for happiness and freedom. ”

“ How can we get hold of the wage-earning women in mass and convince them that from their own selfish and personal standpoint, if from no other, they should join the ranks of those that are working for the ballot? Talented speakers from the ranks of wage-earners have thrilled audiences with their impetuous oratory but there has been no general rally of working women to secure the ballot for themselves. ”

“ The most important part of education is the education of the young. The most important factor in education of the young is woman's influence, and when it comes to saying who shall decide upon the proper laws for the education of children, the women of Louisiana or the intelligent wiseacres who have in this State emasculated civil service, massacred the Australian ballot and assaulted with intent to kill each and every measure which looks to the improvement of the State, we give our answer in no uncertain terms. ”

“ It is therefore, with courage and hope inspired by the glorious promise of the new century for greater material and moral progress in all directions than the world has ever known, that the advocates of this measure, which ultimately will affect the destinies of the whole American people, are called in convention to review the labor of the past year, to plan that of the future, to strengthen the old comradeship and greet new workers and friends. ”

“ When men grow just enough to abandon the idea that keeping house and doing the family sewing and rearing children is a "snap" and not a profession; when they grow broad enough to realize that the woman with the broom is a laborer just as much worthy of her hire as a typewriter, we shall have fewer women yearning to go out into the world and earn a few dollars of spending money. ”

“ Miss Mary N. Chase, president of the New Hampshire Suffrage Association, made an earnest plea for the enfranchisement of women, "the natural guardians and protectors of the home. It will strengthen their minds and broaden their intellects and render them more fit for its government," she said, "and until women join with men in exercising the sacred right of the franchise we cannot hope for the dawn of the kingdom of God on the earth." ”

“ It is only when something happens to the housekeeper we realize that she is the kingpin who holds the universe together. "Every injustice is the prolific mother of wrongs," said Mrs. Gilmer, "and the fact that the woman with the broom is neither sufficiently appreciated nor decently paid brings its own train of evils. ”

“ Some of the young Chinese are learning that it is pleasanter for a man to have a wife who can walk by his side. Formerly men thought it desirable that a woman’s mind should be cramped. ‘The modern man is beginning to find that it is more satisfactory to have for a wife a woman whose mind can keep pace with his. It is more womanly and dignified for women to sit in legislative halls than to stand around the lobbies. This exclusion of woman from the government today is a relic of the dark ages when they were regarded as appendages to men and it was even doubted if they had a soul. ”

“ Some women would like to sit on a jury at the trial of the sharks that live by corrupting boys and girls. It would be easier for a woman to sit on a jury and send to the penitentiary the men who are trying to ruin her boy than to be always watching the boy." Another question was: "Have not men a better right to the suffrage because they have to support the family?" She answered: "It is fallacy to say that the men support the women. The men by their industry provide the raw material and the women by their industry turn it into clothing and nourishment. ”

“ It has been my lot to attend meetings all over the country but never in my life have I heard such eloquence, such logic and such glorious oratory as in this hall during this convention. A cause that can bring forth such talent and devotion must have in it a great truth. .... I have come now to see that the franchise is not an end but a means to an end; that the object of these women is not merely to escape injustice done to themselves but to be able to take part in the great work of reform which is calling for the best energies of the nation. ”

“ How can we stimulate in women of wealth and opportunity, whose influence would be invaluable and whose support might give the movement the financial backing it needs, a consciousness of the solidarity of human interests, so they will see that from an impersonal, unselfish standpoint, if they have no personal need, they are under the most commanding obligation to add their strength to ours to make better conditions for working women? ”

“ An ignorant voter may be an honest one but unless he is intelligent enough to study public questions for himself he is an easy prey for the political sharper. It is beyond the power of the pen to portray what a magnificent government would be possible with an educated electorate. ”

“ For as these earnest but conservative women find themselves in contact with life at so many new points they are getting so used to all the things which go to make up that awful bugaboo, ‘politics,’ that they will soon begin to realize that politics affects for good or evil all the things which touch the daily lives of every one of them. ”

“ Hala Hammond Butt, president of the Mississippi Suffrage Association, entitled, Restricted Suffrage from a Southern Point of View. After referring to the man's all-mastering desire for liberty from the early history of the race the speaker said: "Did women not share with men this craving for freedom, then would they justly be reckoned as unnatural and unworthy members of the human family, but the same red blood pulses in our veins as in yours, fathers, sons, brothers; we are alive to the same impulses, our souls are kindled by the same aspirations as are yours. ”

“ She showed the record southern leaders had made in the wars; she traced the progress of slavery, which began alike in the North and South but proved unnecessary in the former, and told of the enormous struggle for white supremacy which had been placed on the South by the enfranchisement of the negro. "The present suffrage laws in the southern States are only temporary measures for protection," she said. "The enfranchisement of women will have to be effected and an educational and property qualification for the ballot be made to apply without discrimination to both sexes and both races." ”

“ It is because we have a noble ideal for the future of our government that we make our demand for woman suffrage. We point to the official statistics for proof that there are more white women in the United States than colored men and women together; that there are more American-born women than foreign-born men and women combined; that women form only one-eleventh of the criminals in the jails and penitentiaries; that they compose more than two-thirds of the church membership, and that the percentage of illiteracy is very much less among women than among men. ”

“ It is impossible to discuss the woman question without discussing also the man question. What is fundamental to one is fundamental to the other. It is argued by some that on account of the difference in characteristics between men and women it is the man who ought to govern. They are mistaken. It is now recognized that the best and noblest men and women are those in whom the different characteristics of each sex are most harmoniously blended. ”

“ There is an undercurrent of thought that recognizes in its true proportions the value of an educated suffrage to the South, a restriction based not upon color, race or previous condition of servitude, not upon sex, not upon the question of taxable property, but its sole requirement is the ability to perform worthily the functions of citizenship. ”

“ There was another there, a woman who has been very near to the hearts of New Orleans people, who has never been aggressive in her advocacy of the cause but whose quiet approval, whose earnest sympathy, whose expenditure of time and money and whose high social standing gave to it a strength even in those early days that one of less ability and social position and more pronounced opposition could not have secured. ”

“ We might despair of reaching either the overworked, underpaid and unresponsive wageearner, or the indifferent, irresponsible and almost inaccessible woman of fortune, were it not that all along the social line we are linked by one common possession, our womanhood, which, when awakened, is the Divine Motherhood and it is to this we must appeal. ”

“ We see its baneful effect in municipal, State and national government. The unparalleled political corruption in most of our large cities, the narrowness of public men in State and nation, whose horizon is bounded by the limits of their home districts or their own sordid purposes, regardless of public interests, find their culmination in the highest legislative body of our land. ”

“ A careful investigation of laws relating to women's property, earnings, rights of action, eligibility to paying positions, selection of family home, guardianship of children and many others where women's interests are involved shows that these so-called privileges usually give women less than men enjoy in the same States and that the vote in their own hands is the only assurance of equal privilege. ”

“ It is written between the lines of our own constitution and underlies the institutions of every liberal government: "Equal rights and opportunities for all; special privileges to none," understanding by this that the Government shall protect all in the enjoyment of their natural rights—life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—and that all who measure up to a certain standard shall have a voice in shaping the policy and choosing the agents of the government under which they live. ”

“ She spoke in glowing terms of the pure democracy of Thomas Jefferson, who extended its privileges to the great masses of the people. "This ideal has been growing," she said, "it will never stop growing, developing, widening and changing and it must ultimately extend to women citizens the same rights in the government that men have. This is the 20th century idea of democracy."
The address of Miss Belle Kearney, Mississippi's famous orator, was a leading feature of the last evening's program The South and Woman Suffrage. ”

“ All women of legal age with the proposed educational requirements should be enfranchised without delay but laws should be enacted demanding that all citizens, men and women alike, presenting themselves to cast their ballot after 1910 must be able to read and write. If the women suffragists will base their claim to vote upon the broad ground of good government and not demand suffrage for the ignorant woman because it is exercised by the ignorant man, they will make ten friends where they now have one. ”

“ While not often has the call been to women to don armor and press on to battle, yet it may be that Thou hast reserved them for the battle of ballots, in which they can secure victory for all moral good and aid in the overthrow of every organized vice and infamy, so that there shall be a higher type of public morals and nobler methods of government. ”

“ She referred to the many successful business and professional women at the convention and said:
But I am not here to speak for the wage-earning woman, she can speak for herself. My plea is not for justice for her but for the domestic woman—the woman who is the mainstay of the world, who is back of every great enterprise and who makes possible the achievements of men—the woman behind the broom, who is the hardest-worked and worst-paid laborer on the face of the earth. .... Of the housekeeper we demand a universal genius. ”