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 seventy years ago, when the Indian squaws did all the manual labor, and the braves limited themselves to the noble task of hunting. There has been a corresponding change in the condition of women all along the line.

In the response of Miss Susan B. Anthony, the national president, she said:

Since our last convention the area of disfranchisement in the possessions of the United States has been greatly enlarged. Our nation has undertaken to furnish provisional governments for Hawaii and the Philippine Islands, Cuba and Porto Rico. Hitherto the settlers of new Territories have been permitted to frame their own provisional governments, which were ratified by Congress, but to-day Congress itself assumes the prerogative of making the laws for the newly-acquired Territories. When the governments for those in the West were organized there had been no practical example of universal suffrage in any one of the older States, hence it might be pardonable for their settlers to ignore the right of the women associated with them to a voice in their governments.

But to-day, after fifty years' continuous agitation of the right of women to vote, and after the demand has been conceded in one-half the States in the management of the public schools; after one State has added to that of the schools the management of its cities; and after four States have granted women the full vote—the universal reports show that the exercise of the suffrage by women has added to their influence, increased the respect of men, and elevated the moral, social and political conditions of their respective commonwealths. With those object-lessons before Congress, it would seem that no member could be so blind as not to see it the duty of that body to have the provisional governments of our new possessions founded on the principle of equal rights, privileges and immunities for all the people, women included. I hope this convention will devise some plan for securing a strong expression of public sentiment on this question, to be presented to the Fifty-sixth Congress which is to convene on the first Monday of December next.

During the reconstruction period and the discussion of the negro' s right to vote Senator Blaine and others opposed the counting of all the negroes in the basis of representation, instead of the old-time three-fifths, because they saw that to do so would greatly increase the power of the white men of the South on the floor of Congress. Therefore the Republican leaders insisted upon the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to secure the ballot to the negro men. Only one generation has passed and yet nearly all of the Southern States have by one device or another succeeded in excluding from the ballot-box very nearly the entire negro vote, openly and defiantly declaring their intention to secure the absolute supremacy of the white race, but there is not a suggestion on their part of allowing the citizens to whom they deny the right of suffrage to be counted out from the basis of representation. Some of the Northern news-