“ No harm has come to either woman, man or the State. Justice never harmed any one. If Colorado women were not angels before, the ballot has brought no wings. Suffrage has not elevated them, it has simply placed them where they belonged but it has raised the men who have dared to be just. Woman has not yet conquered iniquity nor has it conquered her. Suffrage is not a revolution, it is but a step and not the end of the journey..... ”

“ Mead's address Mrs. Catt said: "Sometimes the cause of peace and arbitration seems to me the greatest of all. To help working women was the motive that determined me to devote my life to obtaining woman suffrage. How hard it is that women must spend so many years just to get the means with which to effect reforms! But we who believe that behind them all is the ballot are chained to the work for that until it is gained." ”

“ We have come to the time when we must feel that the word chivalry belongs to the past. It is connected with a period when woman's position before the law and in her home was far from a desirable one; and so I believe you will not misunderstand me when I say that if you will give us justice we feel that it will mean a great deal more than chivalry ever did. ”

“ Equal suffrage has not taken Colorado out of the Union. She stands an example of what a sovereign State should be—a model to those self-righteous States that preach equal rights in press, pulpit and forum and deny it in the law. ”

“ I have heard reports from the cities of Philadelphia and New York by which, if I should judge male suffrage, I should say it was an utter failure in the States of Pennsylvania and New York. We have tens of thousands of women voters in Colorado. We have indictments out against many dishonest voters and with the utmost searching they have found one woman who is charged with 'repeating' in the election. Our State penitentiary has five women prisoners today and 600 men. That surely cannot be used as an argument for woman suffrage having injured the women, whatever it may have done to the men. ”

“ I have found Colorado women much like their sisters elsewhere save that they have a broader view of public affairs and they take naturally a more active interest in the world's work. They have learned to think and to say what they think simply and freely in gatherings where men and women meet to discuss the vital concerns of life. They have not forgotten that they are women but they have come to know that they are also human beings, and, like Terence, they find nothing that concerns humanity foreign to them. ”

“ The feminine ideal with many is the bee-hive—lots of honey, lots of young ones and nothing else. It was necessary that the male should become dominant for a time if the race was to progress. Now women are ceasing to be subjugated and we are approaching a state of equal rights. It was through a free motherhood and the female's' constant selection of the best mate that she brought into the world power and brain enough to enable man to do what he has done. That free motherhood, reinstated, choosing always the best and refusing anything less, will bring us a higher humanity than we have yet known. ”

“ People outside of the association often ask why it is that women can be found who are willing to give their time to a work without recompense. We can not answer such inquiries and yet we ourselves know that, through this devotion to a just and holy cause, we rise to a higher plane, we see with larger eyes, we feel the presence of the real self of our fellow-worker. ”

“ She may have found one woman who would say that they were using philanthropy and charity for political purposes but to admit that the women of the State would do a thing of that kind—would so debase themselves— would be an impeachment of the decency and honesty of womankind everywhere. I am not prepared to make that admission and the citizens of Colorado cannot make it. There are 100,000 honest women in the State who are voters and there are not 100 who will subscribe to the sentiments she gave voice to. ”

“ Under the stimulus of an educated intelligence and awakened self-respect women daily grow more unwilling that their opinions in government, the fundamental source of civilization, should continue to be uncounted with those of the defective and criminal classes of men. In the industrial world organized labor is recognizing in the underpaid services of women an enemy to economic prosperity and is making common cause with woman's demand for the ballot with which to protect her right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, avowed to be inalienably hers by the Declaration of Independence. ”

“ Catt said: "This is Miss Anthony's 84th birthday. We might have had a program filled with tributes to her and no doubt you would all have enjoyed them but instead we have what she will like better, a program to show, not that woman suffrage would be a good thing but that it has been a good thing. When Miss Anthony was born no woman in America could vote; no woman in modern times had been a lawyer. Tonight our ushers are seven women graduates of the Washington Law School, in the cap and gown which used to be forbidden to women. ”

“ Do at least recognize that we have a cause, that there are women here whose hearts are aching because they see great movements to which they desire to give their help and yet they are chained down to work for the power that is not yet within their hands.... If you, Mr. Chairman, feel that you can not offer a favorable report because the majority of the committee is not favorable, then I beg of you, in behalf of the women of the United States, to show where you stand and to give an adverse report. ”

“ Nathan, president of the New York Consumers' League, considered the Wage Earner and the Ballot, her handsome presence, fine humor and long experience rendering her an unusually attractive speaker. "The opponents of our cause," she said, "whether they be of the fair sex or the unfair sex, seem to think that we regard the extension of the suffrage to women as a panacea for all evils in this world and the next. No honest suffragist has ever taken that ground. ”

“ What is it that this suffrage movement has had to meet, as it has plowed along up hill for fifty years, with its tremendous battery of arguments which it discharges into thin air? What it has to overcome is not an argument but a feeling, which rests at bottom on the idea expressed in the "rib story." As a parable this fairly represents the old belief that man was created first, that he was the race, was "it," and that woman was created, as modern jokers put it, for "Adams Express Company." The poet expressed the same idea when he called woman "God's last, best gift to man." ”

“ But as time passes it is as when we climb a mountain—we gradually rise to where we can see over the foothills and everything appears in its proper place and proportion. Out of the present, its arrogant militarism, its sordid commercialism and worship of gold, is there anything to give us cheer and hope for tomorrow? There never was greater reason for hope for humanity. Underlying all the tumult and disorder of our time is one grand, golden thought, that of the human brotherhood of the world. ”

“ No one who knows anything about our laws will attempt to deny that women have revolutionized the attitude of our State toward the child. Two-thirds of their work has been for the children. ... These laws mean that in Colorado there are no children under 14 out of school; we have no child beggars nor street musicians and no girls vending anything. We have the best child labor law in the world. We have the strictest laws for the prevention of the abuse, moral, mental or physical of children, of any country, and the best enforced, not merely in our cities but throughout the entire State. ”

“ I want you to stand up not only for children and animals but also for negroes. You will never get suffrage until the sense of justice has been so developed in men that they will give fair play to the colored race. ”

“ Anna Garlin Spencer, of whom Felix Adler, head of the Ethical Culture Society of New York, was quoted as saying: "She is the only woman with whom I would share my platform," was the first speaker. In considering New Professions in Philanthropic Work for Women, she said: "Charity is old but social science is new and it is the uniting of the two that makes modern philanthropy and that is what opens these new professions. Charity is supposed to come by nature but the knowledge of how to deal with its problems does not. Society is divided into three groups. ”

“ There never was a democracy comparable to ours, faulty as it is and hopeless as it appears to some. Though the ideal does not seem to impress itself upon the world, yet in the silence it is there. .... Today is the best this world has ever seen. Tomorrow will be still better."
Miss Gordon spoke on A Sustaining Faith, showing that from labor, from all forms of social service and from countless sources was converging the demand for the reform which the suffrage association was seeking. ”

“ If the same conditions continue for the next twenty years—that is, if there is no restriction in the suffrage for men and women still remain disfranchised, and if the proportionate increase of women over men in the output of our public schools continues, we shall witness the curious spectacle of the illiterate sex governing the literate sex. ”

“ To my mind the ballot is simply one of our many modern labor-saving inventions. It is the easiest way. ... In the ten years that women have been voting in Colorado, I believe they have done at least five times as much as all the rest of the non-voting women in the United States together, and I base this modest claim upon the record of our statute books as compared with those of other States. Women stand relatively for the same thing everywhere and their first care is naturally and inevitably for the child. Whatever we have done, other women wish to do. ”

“ We have the strongest compulsory school law and the most enlightened law concerning delinquent children of any, save where our laws have been copied. ... What we have done has not been for ourselves but for the very least of these. It has been not for our fading today but for the dawning tomorrow. We have gone to our legislators with new ideas and have set a little child in the midst of them, and they have not been unmindful of the heavenly vision. ”

“ I challenge any one to find 100 intelligent women in Colorado who will voluntarily request that the word 'male' be restored in the constitution and statutes of the State. Many women may not go to the polls but the man who would try to take away their right to do so would need a bombproof conning tower. There will be no repeal, it stands for all time. There never will be less than four woman suffrage States— there should be forty-five..... Since 1876 school affairs have practically been in the hands of women. ”

“ The president of the League for Honest Elections in Denver, when stating that about thirty arrests had been made in connection with the frauds, said: "Of those arrested and bound over, only one is a woman. We believe that she is the least guilty of all and whatever connection she had with the election in her precinct was as the passive instrument of the men in charge of the fraudulent work at that place. ”

“ I can not help thinking that my sisters elsewhere have lost something rare and precious from their lives through the lack of that complete citizenship which has been bestowed upon the women of Colorado, and I hope the day may be near when those sisters may be made man's equal under the law of the land as they have always been under the law of God. ”

“ A measure to grant suffrage to women is pending in Denmark with the backing of the government and the women of that country have arranged a great demonstration in favor of the bill and have fixed the date for today because it is the birthday of Susan B. Anthony. Opponents of woman suffrage pay almost their whole attention to Colorado, so we have asked Colorado to come and talk for itself and it has responded magnificently. All the speakers pay their own expenses and have come this long way for the pleasure of saying a word for woman suffrage. ”

“ Unfettered by tradition and prejudice Colorado has dared to do right. She has given to woman what Solomon gave to Sheba—"whatsoever she asked"—and has no regrets and no desire to recall the gift. After ten years of experience, equal suffrage needs neither apology nor defense. ”

“ Do you not see that while in this country there are millions of people who believe in the enfranchisement of women, while there is more sentiment for it than in any other, yet we are restricted by this stone wall of constitutional limitations which was set at a time when a republican form of government was totally untried? ”

“ They have voted at school elections, held the office of superintendent in a majority of the counties and taught most of the schools. In these twenty-eight years neither politics nor scandals have impaired our public school system and in efficiency we challenge comparison with any State in the Union. What the women have done for our schools they can do for our civic government. They have introduced conscience into educational affairs and they will do the same in city and State. That is the fear of those who make politics a profession..... ”

“ It may be said that women are not morally responsible for this unfortunate state of affairs, since they do not make the laws, but the facts do not altogether justify this excuse. The child-labor legislation which has been achieved through the efforts of women during the past ten years shows that women can do very much even without the ballot in the way of securing legislation on behalf of women and children, and it remains true that women buy the product of the work of women and children far more than do men. ”

“ Watson Lister was introduced as representing over 800,000 women voters in Australia and said in part: "It seems very odd to me to come to America to speak on self-government. In Australia woman suffrage is not an experiment but a long experience and one effect has been to disprove all the things that were said against it." Dr. Shaw spoke of the hardships women had endured to make this country what it is and of the injustice of denying them any voice in its government. ”