Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/597

Rh ment They are not inseparable. Fortunately for our country the necessity for the use of the bayonet occurs very seldom; but when it does occur there are large classes of male voters who are not called to the field, but are exempted by the policy of our law. No one believes that if women had this privilege, or this immunity, or this right—whatever you may call it—put into their hands we would therefore require of them to do things that would degrade or unsex them, or that would be improper for them to perform. I believe that men would have the same respect for women with the ballot in their hands as without it.

It is not for the few women who remonstrate from luxurious parlors, sitting upon sofas, in the glare of the gaslight, changing and choosing their phrases, but for the great class of laboring women in the country that I appeal for this redress. I appeal for the women who have been struggling on in these Government offices, doing the same work that men do, aye, and in many cases doing it better, for about one-half of the pay. Do you suppose if they had ballots they would not make their voices heard here and get for the same work the same pay? Who ever knew a labor strike of women to succeed? When women in New York City and other places are bowed down to the earth by their labor—making shirts at a shilling a day—and they strike for more pay, for more bread, for an opportunity to live, who ever heard of one of their strikes succeeding? Men strike from their workshops and they succeed, and why? Because they have the ballot; because they have political force, because they have the power of citizenship behind them in its fullest sense. Give these poor struggling women the same chance and they can make their way to a fair remuneration of wages in the public offices, and they can make their way in the workshops, and these toiling mothers, widows, and sisters supporting orphan brothers and sisters will have some opportunity to vindicate their rights and to procure not merely political rights, but a chance to live, and a chance to avoid infamy.

Senators talk about this question as if the ballot was not demanded for women. Will you tell me why it was that the great party which controls both branches of Congress and holds the Executive, when it met in Philadelphia at that grand convention, put a plank in its platform stating that these demands for further rights should be respectfully considered? Do you think there was no agitation, no desire on the part of women for the ballot when that great convention could be moved to a declaration like this:

Was that mere euphuism, mere phrasing? Did that mean nothing? Did it respond to no demand? Ay, sir, did it not only respond to a demand which was there pressed, but did it not imply a duty, a pledge which this party ought to redeem?

But the Senator from Maine, as well as the Senator from North Carolina, asserts that the XIV. Amendment of the Constitution has no relation whatever to political rights, that it relates to something with reference to social equality, something in the far distance, but does not touch this question at all. When I called the attention of the Senator from North Carolina to the