Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/334

 cause she is not a recognized citizen by virtue of the ballot. If you would go into the factories, the mills, the mercantile establishments and meet these women and learn from them the indignities to which they ofttimes are subjected in order that they may retain their places you would not wait for any one to come here and argue the question with you. You would see for yourselves that the only remedy is to grant to them that same protection that you give to every man over 21 years of age. The girl so employed submits in a way to these things because she is thinking of the time when her factory days will be over, when she will make a home for husband and children, and God forbid that the time shall ever come that our girls will lose sight of this, their greatest vocation! But before they are competent to take charge of the home in every sense of the word, before they can give to their children all that these should have, they must themselves be placed upon a basis of equality with their husbands

Why should I, a tax-paying woman, be denied the right by casting my ballot to say how these taxes that I am paying shall be expended? In the light of progress and of American civilization, we know this cannot continue. We have great things at stake in our children. We are trying to take away that shadow which rests upon these United States, the shadow of child labor. It will not be done until the mothers have the right to speak for their children through the ballot. We are looking for the day when we shall be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with our men and share with them the burdens and responsibilities of this greatest nation and be able to hold up our heads and say: "We are on an equal footing because we have men in the United States who recognize equality of rights."

Mrs. Raymond Robins, thoroughly qualified to speak on this question, said in part: "I have the great honor and privilege of representing, as president of the National Women's Trade Union League, something like 75,000 organized working women, and I believe all through our country as well as through all the world there is a growing recognition of the cost of our modern industrial conditions to women. These are such that in many thousands of instances the motherhood of our girls has to be forfeited. No one knows except those who have made a very intimate and careful study of the present cost of social and industrial conditions how great that cost is. When we demanded in Illinois the limiting of the working hours for women to ten a day, many of our women physicians brought forward facts of great value showing the tremendous physical danger to girls of overwork. At present a very interesting and valuable investiga-