Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/102

 trating the finest powers of our country and threatening the life of social purity: it is in truth the fell destroyer of peace, virtue and domestic and national safety, and upon the unoffending the blow falls with the greatest weight. Why should not they who suffer the most deeply through this evil, be authorized before the law of the land to protect themselves and their loved ones from its fearful ravages? Is it other than simple justice which I ask for them? I have listened to too many sad stories from heart-broken wives and mothers not to know that the demand which the women of the land make in this matter comes not from love of power, is not prompted by false ambition, springs not from unwomanly aspirations, but does come from a direful need of self-protect ion and an earnest desire to protect those dearer than life itself.

Gentlemen of the Judiciary Committee, in the same spirit in which I seek the aid of Heaven in my endeavor to promote the spiritual welfare of mankind, I now and here seek your aid in promoting the highest moral welfare of every man, woman and child. This you will do in giving your vote and influence for the equality of women before the law, and as you thus confer this new power upon the women of our land, like the bread cast upon the waters, it shall come to you in a higher, nobler type of womanhood, in sweeter homes, in purer social life, in all that contributes to the welfare of the individual and the state.

(Ky.): We do not come here to plead as individual women with individual men, but as a subject class with a ruling class; nor do we come as suffering individuals though God knows some of us might do that with propriety but as the suffering millions whom we represent

We are born of the same parents as men and raised in the same family. We are possessed of the same loves and animosities as our brothers, and we inherit equally with them the substance of our fathers. So long as we are minors the Government treats us as equals, but when we come of age, when we are capable of feeling and knowing the difference, the boy becomes a free human being, while the girl remains a slave, a subject, and no moral heroism, no self-sacrificing patriotism, ever entitles her to her freedom. Is this just? Is it not, indeed, barbarous?

If American men intend always to keep women slaves, political and civil, they make a great mistake when they let the girl, with the boy, learn the alphabet, for no educated class will long remain in subjection. We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket-handkerchief?

Each one of you is responsible for these laws continuing as they are, and you can not avoid responsibility by saying that you did not help to make them. Great injustice is done us in the fact that we