Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/486

 The firm fact proved by experience is that women do vote. Before the law was enacted, the old objection used to meet us on every hand, "The women do not want to vote"—as though that, if true, were a valid reason. They ought to want to. It is my business to urge men to repent, and I have never supposed it a reason to cease preaching to them because they did not want to repent; they ought to want to. But our experience has proved that women do want to vote. It was universally conceded that in our first general Territorial election fully as many women voted in proportion to their numbers as men.

Woman's influence as a citizen has been of equal value in the jury-box. Experience shows that she is peculiarly fitted for that duty. Woe to the gambler who enriches himself by the folly or innocence of the ignorant, and the rum-seller who lures boys into his backroom! Woe to the human vultures who prey upon young lives, when they fall into the hands of a jury of mothers!

You who have not hitherto been woman suffragists, why not espouse this cause now, when it is in the full flush of its heroic struggle? When John Adams went courting Abigail Smith,-her proud father said to her: "Who is this young Adams? Where did he come from?" Abigail answered: "I do not know where he came from and I do not care, but I know where he is going and I am going with him." Ladies and gentlemen, you know where we are going; we invite your company for the journey.

State Senator R. W. Blue said: "One of the greatest questions of the day is how to counteract the influence of the vicious vote cast every year in the large cities. I believe the only way to do that is to enfranchise the women." He added that he had worked for the Municipal Suffrage Bill in the preceding Legislature, and should do so in the next. President Foulke complimented him on his bold and outspoken remarks, and said he thought a man in politics never lost anything by telling the people exactly where he stood on vital issues.

James G. Clark, associate editor of the Minneapolis Spectator, was a delegate, and delighted the audience with his equal rights songs. A letter was received from Dr. Mary F. Thomas and, by a rising vote of the convention, it was decided to send her a telegram of greeting and congratulations on her seventieth birthday.

Letters were read from Chief-Justice Greene of Washington