Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/315

 feel the need of the co-partnership of woman, but as his fatherhood was developed he felt his inadequacy and the necessity of the maternal element by his side. Woman suffrage is in harmony with the growth of the idea of the worth of the individual, which has its best expression in our republic. Our nation is heir of all the struggles for freedom which have been made.

The Magna Charta belongs to us as much as does the Declaration of Independence. In all these achievements for liberty women have borne their share. Not only have they inspired men but the record of the past is illumined with the story of their own brave deeds. Women love liberty as well as men do. The love of liberty is the corollary of the right of consent to government. All the progress of our nation has been along the line of extending the application of this basic idea.

Woman suffrage is in harmony with the evolution in the status of women. They always have done their share in the development of the race. There always has been a "new woman," some one stepping out in advance of the rest and gaining a place for others to stand upon. We have no cause to blush for our ancestors. We may save our blushes for the women of to-day who do not live up to their privileges.

Now that woman has made such advance in personal and property rights, educational and industrial opportunities, to deny her the ballot is to force her to occupy a much more degrading position than did the women of the past. We think the savage woman degraded because she walks behind her husband bearing the burden to leave his hands free for the weapon which is his sign of sovereignty; what shall we say of the woman of to-day who may not follow her husband and brother as he goes forth to wield the weapon of civilization, the ballot? If the evolution in the status of woman does not point to the franchise it is meaningless.

Mrs. Colby was followed by Miss Julie R. Jenney, a member of the bar in Syracuse, N. Y., with a thoughtful address on Law and the Ballot. She showed that woman's present legal rights are in the nature of a license, and therefore revocable at the will of the bodies granting them, and that until women elect the lawmakers they can not be entirely sure of any rights whatever. Between Daybreak and Sunrise was the title of the address of Mrs. May Stocking Knaggs (Mich.), who pleaded for the opportunity of complete co-operation between men and women, declaring that 'each human being is a whole, single and responsible; each human unit is concerned in the social compact which is formed to protect individual and mutual rights."

This was the first appearance of Mrs. Stetson on this national platform. She came as representative of the Pacific Coast