Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/237

Rh ished his remarks, or the Chair would not have stopped him at that moment. The question is on agreeing to the resolution, on which the senator from Missouri [Mr. Vest] is entitled to the floor.

Mr. : Mr. President, I was on the eve of finishing my remarks yesterday when the morning hour expired, and I do not now wish to detain the Senate. I was about to say at that time that the Senate now has forty-one committees, with a small army of messengers and clerks, one-half of whom, without exaggeration, are literally without employment. I shall not pretend to specify the committees of this body which have not one single bill, resolution, or proposition of any sort pending before them, and have not had for months. I am very well aware that if I should name one of them, Liberty would lie bleeding in the streets at once, and that committee would become the most important on the list of committees of the Senate. I shall not venture to do that. I am informed by the Sergeant-at-arms that if this resolution is adopted he must have six additional messengers to be added to that body of ornamental employés who now stand or sit at the doors of the respective committee-rooms. I have heard that this committee is for the purpose of giving a committee to a senator in this body. I have heard the statement made, but I cannot believe it, and I am very certain that no senator will undertake to champion the resolution upon any such ground.

The senator from Massachusetts was pleased to say that the Committee on the Judiciary had so many important questions pending before it, that the subject of woman suffrage should not be added to them. The Committee on Territories is open to any complaint or suggestion by the ladies who advocate woman suffrage, in regard to this subject in the territories; and the Committee on Privileges and Elections to which this subject should go most appropriately, as affecting the suffrage, has not now before it, as I am informed, one single bill, resolution, or proposition of any sort whatever. That committee is also open to inquiry upon this subject.

But, Mr. President, out of all committees without business, and habitually without business, in this body, there is one that beyond any question could take jurisdiction of this matter and do it ample justice. I refer to that most respectable and antique institution, the Committee on Revolutionary Claims. For thirty years it has been without business. For thirty long years the placid surface of that parliamentary sea has been without one single ripple. If the senator from Massachusetts desires a tribunal for calm judicial equilibrium and examination, a tribunal far from the "madding crowd's ignoble strife," a tribunal eminently respectable, dignified and unique, why not send this question to the Committee on Revolutionary Claims? When I name the personnel of that committee it will be evident that any consideration on any subject touching the female sex would receive not only deliberate but immediate attention, for the second member upon that committee is my distinguished friend from Florida [Mr. Jones], and who can doubt that he would give his undivided attention to the subject? [Laughter.] It is eminently proper that this subject should go to that committee because if there is any revolutionary claim in this country it is that of woman suffrage. [Laughter.] It revo-