Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/100

 The disfranchisement of one-half the people places a dangerous power in the hands of the other half. All history shows that one class never did legislate with justice for another, and all philosophy shows they never can, as the relations of class grow out of either natural or artificial advantages which one has over the other and which it will maintain if possible. It is folly to say that women are not a class, so long as there is any difference in the code of laws for men and women, any discrimination in the customs of society, giving advantages to men over women; so long as in all our State constitutions women are ranked with lunatics, idiots, paupers and criminals. When you say that one-half the people shall be governed by the other half, surely the class distinction is about as broad as it can be.

The disfranchisement of one-half the people deprives the State of the united wisdom of man and woman—that "consensus of the competent" so necessary in national affairs—making our Government an oligarchy of males, instead of a republic of the people, thus perpetuating with all its evils a dominant masculine civilization. But in answer to this it is said that although women do not vote, yet they have an indirect influence in Government through their husbands and brothers. Yes, an "irresponsible power," of all kinds of influence the most dangerous.

The dogged, unreasonable persecutions of sex in all ages, the evident determination to eliminate, as far as possible, the feminine element in humanity, has been the most fruitful cause of the moral chaos the race has suffered, under every form of government and religion. . . . . The loss to women themselves of the highest development of which they are capable is sad, but when this involves a lower type of manhood and danger to our free institutions, it is still more sad. The primal work in every country, for its own safety, should be the education and freedom of woman.

The arguments before the Judiciary Committee of the House were given the next morning, March 8, twelve of the fifteen members being present. Miss Anthony opened the hearing with an earnest address in which she referred to the hundreds of thousands of petitions which had been sent to Congress for woman suffrage—far more than for any other measure—and continued:

Negro suffrage was again and again overwhelmingly voted down in various States—New York, Connecticut, Ohio, etc—and you know, gentlemen, that if the negro had never had the right to vote until the majority of the rank and file of white men, particularly foreign-born men, had voted "Yes," he would have gone without it