“ The House has allowed the measure to come to vote but once, in 1915. Yet while women of the nation in large and increasing numbers have stood at doors of Congress waiting and hoping, praying and appealing for the democratic right to have their opinions counted in affairs of their government, millions of men have entered through our gates and automatically have passed into voting citizenship without cost of money, time or service, aye, without knowing what it meant or asking for the privilege. ”

“ The women of this nation will never be content with less protection in their right to vote than is given to men and there is no other possible way to secure that protection except through amendment to the National Constitution. ”

“ Had it been necessary for members of Congress to wait until all men wanted the vote before they had one for themselves, we should be living in an unconstitutional monarchy. More, had it been necessary for women to wait until all women approved of college or even public school education for girls, property rights, the right of free speech, or any one of the many liberties now enjoyed by women, but formerly denied them, the iniquities of the old common law would still measure the privileges of women, and high schools and colleges would still close their doors to women. ”

“ I am content with saying as regards the general question that in a republic which theoretically is founded upon the principle that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed I think it illogical, unreasonable and an injustice to deny the vote to adult women who are citizens. With that statement I shall address myself to the suggestion of the National American Woman Suffrage Association that Congress should propose to the States an amendment to the Constitution which shall in effect provide that no State shall deny to any person the right to vote on account of sex. ”

“ Let it also not be forgotten that the vote is the free-will offering of our forty-eight states to any man who chooses to make this land his home. Let it not be overlooked that millions of immigrant voters have been added to our electorate within a generation, men mainly uneducated and all moulded by European traditions, and let no man lose sight of the fact that women of American birth, education and ideals must appeal to these men for their enfranchisement. ”

“ Ballot reformers fear the increased corrupt vote and corruptionists fear the increased reform vote. Militarists are much alarmed lest women increase the peace vote and, despite the fact that the press of the country has poured forth increasing evidence that the women of every belligerent country have borne their full share of the war burden with such unexpected skill and ability that the authorities have been lavish in acknowledgment, seem certain that women of the United States will prove the exception to the world's rule and show the white feather if war threatens. ”

“ When suffragists have been fortunate enough to overcome the obstacles imposed by the constitution of their states and a referendum to the male voters has been secured, they must immediately enter upon the task of surmounting the infinitely greater obstructions of the election law. They make their appeal to the public upon the supposition that a majority of independent voters is to decide their question. Instead, they may discover that in a determining number of precincts the taking of the actual vote is a game in which the cards are stacked against them. ”

“ Purses that should be open to many causes are emptied into suffrage coffers until this monumental injustice shall be wiped away. Woman suffrage is a question of righting a nation-wide injustice, of establishing a phase of unquestioned human liberty and of carrying out a proposition to which our nation is pledged; it therefore transcends all considerations of states rights. This objection comes chiefly from Southern Democrats, who claim that it is a form of oppression for three-fourths of the states to foist upon one-fourth measures of which the minority of states do not approve. ”

“ If a sly dread of female supremacy is troubling the doubter he may find comfort in the rather astonishing fact that white males over 21 are considerably in excess of white females over 21 in all except Maryland and North Carolina; negro females over 21 exceed negro males in Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia, but the restrictions in these states of property ownership represented by tax receipts, education and various other tests, would fall more heavily upon women than men, and thus admit fewer women than men to the vote. ”

“ Meanwhile the system which admits the unworthy to the vote provided they are men, and shuts out the worthy provided they are women, is so unjust and illogical that its perpetuation is a sad reflection upon American thinking.
The clear thinker will arrive at the conclusion that women must be included in the electorate if our country wishes to be consistent with the principles it boasts as fundamental. The shortest method to secure this enfranchisement is the quickest method to extricate our country from the absurdity of its present position. ”

“ With no one on the election board whose special business it is to see that honesty is upheld, a suffrage amendment must face further hazards through the fact that most states do not permit women, or even special men watchers, to stand guard over the vote and the count upon such questions. ”

“ Election boards are bi-partisan and each party has its own machinery, not only of election officials but watchers and challengers, to see that the opposing party commits no fraud. The watchfulness of this party machinery, plus an increasingly vigilant public opinion, has corrected many of the election frauds which were once common and most elections are now probably free from all the baser forms of corruption. When a question on referendum is sincerely espoused by both the dominant parties it has the advantage of the watchfulness of both party machines and is doubly safeguarded from fraud. ”

“ Meantime Iowa, one of the most intelligent and progressive states in the nation, stands at the bar of public opinion accused of incapacity to conduct an honest election. How she will defend herself, what reparation she will make to her women, and what steps she will take to insure clean elections and better enforcement of her election law in the future are problems which await the Legislature. ”

“ There is no Southern state in which women of the highest families are not giving their all in order to propagate this cause, and they are doing it with so noble a spirit and so eloquent an appeal that final surrender of the citadel of prejudice is only a question of time. ”

“ Only one out of every twenty criminals are women. Women constitute a minority of drunkards and petty misdemeanants, and in all the factors that tend to handicap the progress of society women form a minority; whereas in churches, schools and all organizations working for the uplift of humanity, women are a majority. In all American states and countries that have adopted equal suffrage the vote of the disreputable woman is practically negligible, the slum wards of cities invariably having the lightest woman vote and the respectable residence wards the heaviest. ”

“ These facts are strange since it was the United States which first established general suffrage for men upon the two principles that "taxation without representation is tyranny" and that governments to be just should "derive their consent from the governed." The unanswerable logic of these two principles is responsible for the extension of suffrage to men and women the world over. ”

“ As men and women voters do not use separate boxes and as initials are often employed by both sexes in registration, election officials invariably reply to queries as to the number of women actually voting in their respective states, that positive figures are not obtainable. Yet the testimony, while lacking definite statement, is overwhelming that women in all lands vote in about the same proportion as men. Women in Illinois, not being possessed of complete suffrage rights, have voted in separate boxes, and figures are therefore obtainable. ”

“ For the first twenty-five years of statehood a three-fourths vote of both houses of the Legislature ratified by three-fourths of the electors voting, with two-thirds at least from each county, will be required to change the suffrage clause. After twenty-five years the majority will be reduced to two-thirds. This is the state whose Constitution provides that illiteracy shall never be a bar to the suffrage; her democracy falls short only in the matter of women whom she makes it constitutionally impossible ever to add to her electorate. ”

“ If suffrage amendments are defeated by illegal practices, why not demand redress, asks the novice in suffrage campaigns. Ah, there's the rub. In twenty-four states, no provision has been made by the election law for any form of contest or recount on a referendum nor are precedents for a recount found. Political corrupters may, in these states, bribe voters, colonize voters and repeat them to their hearts' content and redress of any kind is practically impossible. ”

“ I am not intimating that the admission of the white women to the polls will secure democratic supremacy (they will not impair it) , nor that it will prejudice the republican element. The equal suffrage movement has never proceeded on party lines and the women would scorn to be admitted unless they were as free in their choice of party measures and candidates as the men. ”

“ It is probable that at least a fourth of the voters in West Virginia, one of the recent suffrage campaign states, could not define the following words intelligently: constitution, amendment, franchise, suffrage, majority, plurality. It is probable they would succeed even less well at an attempt to give an account of the Declaration of Independence, the Revolution, Taxation without Representation, the will of the majority, popular government. Such men might make a fairly intelligent choice of men for local offices because their minds are trained to deal with persons and concrete things. ”

“ No watcher of events will deny that the women of all civilized lands will be enfranchised eventually as part of the people entitled to give consent and no American possessed of political foresight doubts woman suffrage in our land as a coming fact. ”

“ Members of Congress are apportioned among the several states according to population and are constitutionally obligated to represent women as well as men. As the electors of no constituency have voted solidly against woman suffrage, such objectors are accepting instructions from less than half their adult constituents and often from less than one-fourth. Women have had no opportunity to speak for themselves. As a matter of very suggestive fact, thirty-five members of Congress, who upon interview have expressed opposition to the Federal Amendment, were elected by minorities. ”

“ Election Day came. Women poll workers reported from many parts of the state that drunken hoodlums were marched in line into the precinct, saying boldly that they were going to vote "agin the —— women." The women workers testified with remarkable unanimity that their opposition was chiefly "riffraff and illiterate negroes and that it was under the direction of well-known 'wets.'" Even an excise commissioner under pay of the National Government worked against woman suffrage all day in one precinct. ”

“ The criminal, idiot and insane are not denied a vote in several states, and in most a large class of ignorant un-American men with no comprehension of our problems, our history, or ideals, are conspicuous voters on election day. ”

“ Some of these represent states which have had a referendum on woman suffrage and were elected by a smaller number of total votes than their respective districts gave the suffrage amendment. These are such curious facts, that it is difficult to believe in the sincerity of the objection. That men and elements which have contributed money and work to secure the election of a member of Congress instruct him how to vote is more believable. For the sake of the common welfare of the American people, it is well, that the number of such members is probably few. ”

“ If education, intelligence, grasp of public questions, patriotism, willingness and ability to give public service, respect of law, are selected as fair qualifications for those to be entrusted with the vote and the opposite as the qualities of those to be denied the vote, it follows that men and women will be included in the classes adjudged fit to vote, and also in those adjudged unfit to vote. ”

“ But assuredly woman suffrage is not one of these. One by one classes of men have been granted the vote until women are the only remaining unenfranchised class. States have set up various restrictive qualifications so that criminality, idiocy, insanity, pauperism, drunkenness, foreign birth are accepted as ordinary causes of disfranchisement. Yet not one of these conditions is common to all the states. The foreigner votes on his first papers in eight states and a five years' residence will usually secure his naturalization and a consequent vote in any state. ”

“ Ridiculous as this list of objections may appear, each is supported earnestly by a considerable group, and collectively they furnish the basis of opposition to woman suffrage in and out of Congress.
The answer to one is the answer to all.
Government by "the people" is expedient or it is not. If it is expedient, then obviously all the people must be included. If it is not expedient, the simplest logic leads to the conclusion that the classes to be deprived of the franchise should be determined by their qualities of unfitness for the vote. ”

“ Millions of new voters have entered our country and without the expenditure of time, money or service have received the vote since the pending Federal Amendment was first introduced.
For two generations groups of women have given their lives and their fortunes to secure the vote for their sex and hundreds of thousands of other women are now giving all the time at their command. No class of men in our own or any other country has made one-tenth the effort nor sacrificed one-tenth as much for the vote. ”