Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/92

 I want especially to notify the gentleman from Texas that we are not standing still on this matter. Eleven States—New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, Michigan, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado and Oregon—have authorized women to vote for school trustees and members of school boards. Kentucky extends this right to widows who have children and pay taxes. Women are nominated and voted for not only in the eleven States and three Territories, but in nearly all the Northern and Western States. Pennsylvania, Illinois, lowa and other States have large numbers of women county superintendents of public schools. And let me say, for the benefit of the Democratic party, that in the great, progressive western State of Kansas the Democracy rose so high as to nominate and vote for a woman for State Superintendent of Public Instruction at the last election. So there has been a little growing away from those old ideas and notions, even among the Democracy. We are permitting women ta fill public offices. Why should they not participate in the election of officers who are to govern them? We require them to pay taxes and there are a great many burdens imposed upon them. Kansas, Michigan, Colorado and Nebraska have in recent years submitted the question of woman suffrage to a vote of the people and more than one-third of the electors of each voted in favor. Oregon has now a similar proposition pending.

By the laws of all the States women are required to pay taxes; but we are practically working on the theory that these women shall be taxed without the right of representation. Taxation without representation led to the separation of the colonies from the mother country. They were not so much opposed to being taxed as they were to being taxed without representation. The patriots of that day conceived the idea that there was a principle somewhere involved in the right of representation. So they evolved and formulated that Revolutionary maxim, "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute." The basis of that maxim was that they would not give to the payment of taxes without the right of representation. Revolution and war made representation and taxation correlative. But the States tax all women on their property. For illustration, 8,000 women of Boston and 34,000 in Massachusetts pay $2,000,000 of taxes, one-eleventh of the entire tax of that great and wealthy State. The same ratio will be found to prevail in all the other States.:

Progress has gone on elsewhere than in the United States. England has been moving forward in this matter, and we should not stand behind her in anything. . . ..

I am one of those who do not believe that to give to women common rights and privileges will degrade them, but on the contrary I believe it will ennoble them; and I believe further that to put them on an equality in the matter of rights and privileges with men will enhance their charms and not lessen their beauty.

The vote resulted—yeas, 85; nays, 124; not voting, 112. Of