Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/260

226 moment for Mrs. Colby when Senator Saunders, a large man of fine proportions, stepped to the front. But alas! her triumph over the Indiana ladies was short indeed, for while the senator surpassed the representative in size and official honors, he fell far below him in the logic of his statements and the earnestness of his principles. In fact the audience and the platform were in doubt at the close of his remarks as to his true position on the question. Mrs. May Wright Sewall, who followed him, sparkled with the satisfaction she expressed in paying most glowing tributes to the men of Indiana and their State institutions. She said:

The principal objection to woman suffrage has always been that it will take women from their homes and destroy all home life. She showed that there is not an interest of home which is not represented in the State, and that the subordination of the State to the family has kept pace with the subordination of physical to spiritual force. Woman has an interest in everything which affects the State, and only lacks the legitimate instrument of these interests—the ballot—with which to enforce them. Life regulates legislation. Domestic life is woman's sphere, but a sphere of much larger dimensions than has ever yet been accorded it, these dimensions reaching out and controlling the functions of the State. The ballot is not a political or a military, but a domestic necessity.

Mrs. Harriette R. Shattuck spoke on the golden rule, asking men to put themselves in the place of disfranchised women, and then legislate for them as they would be legislated for. Mrs. Robinson gave a résumé of the legal, political and educational position of women in Massachusetts. Mrs. Hooker showed that political equality would dignify woman in home life, give added weight to her opinions on all questions, and command new respect for her from all classes of men. Mrs. Colby gave an interesting address on "The Social Evolution of Woman":

She traced the history of woman from the time when she was bought and sold, up to the present. She said that the first believer in woman's rights was the one who first proposed that women should be allowed to eat with their husbands. This once granted, everything else has followed of necessity, and the ballot will be the crowning right. Once women were not allowed to sing soprano because it was the "governing part." From these and many like indignities woman has gradually evolved until she now stands on an equality with man in many social rights.

Martha McClellan Brown read an able essay on "The Power of the Veto." She is a woman of fine presence, pleasing manners and a well trained voice that can fill any hall. Her address was one of the best in the convention and all felt that in her we had