Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/333

 a man and a woman working together could provide for their family all that was necessary for their sustenance; meats, vegetables, grains, milk, eggs, butter, cheese, all were home products. They provided their own lighting and controlled their own water supply. The women spun the thread, wove the cloth, dyed it and made the garments. In every way, if it was necessary, the family could maintain its existence independent of the cooperation of society except in the one matter of defense from violence. None of this is true today." Mrs. Fitzgerald took up the questions of food, drink and clothing as supplied at the present time and showed the great need that women should have a voice in the legislation that controls their production.

It had been announced that all of the arguments would be made along industrial lines. Arthur E. Holder, of the legislative committee of the American Federation of Labor, presented for the record a series of the very positive resolutions for woman suffrage which had been adopted by that body at its annual conventions beginning with 1904 and read the one passed at Toronto in 1909: "The best interests of labor require the admission of women to full citizenship as a matter of justice to them and as a necessary step toward insuring and raising the scale of wages for all." 'He closed a strong speech by saying: "We want the right of representation for all the people, women as well as men. Women have been disfranchised in our country long enough and we now ask for that measure which will constitutionally grant the right to vote to the women of our land. We believe that women ought to be free agents, free selectors, free voters. The law is no respecter of persons. Women cannot shirk their responsibility because they are women; neither should they be longer denied their normal citizenship rights and privileges because they are women."

In a most convincing address Mrs. Elizabeth Schauss, factory inspector of Ohio, said:

It seems almost superfluous that we should come here pleading for the vote when we know it is the only thing which will give the wage-earning woman the protection that she needs and should have, as to-day she has absolutely no chance beside her brother. Although she gives the same quality and the same amount of work yet she can not command the same wage, and why? Simply be-