Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/339

 Chicago, and to work sixteen hours a day as they do in the stores during the Christmas rush, and as they do in the box factories and candy factories. Yet the women of Illinois have not had one word to say as to the personnel of these courts which decide what is a matter of life and death for every woman who is rushed into her grave by work in the laundries and other sweat shops of that State.

Mrs. Kelley gave some tragic instances of occurrences during her eight years in Hull House with Miss Jane Addams, where the working of women overtime caused death and permanent invalidism, and continued:

During the fifteen years since that Illinois court so decided, the miners who work underground in sixteen States, from Missouri to Nevada and from Montana to Texas and Arizona, have been able to change the constitutions of their States so that they work but eight hours a day. They are voters, they have power, they have intelligence and organization; they obtained from the Supreme Court of the United States the famous decision of Holden vs. Hardy, in which it held that it is not only the right but the duty of the State to restrict the hours of those who work underground. In Illinois the women must have unlimited hours because they are not voting citizens

For twelve years a body of influential women of New York City appeared before the board of estimate and apportionment to ask for the pitiable sum of $18,000 to be appropriated to pay the salaries of eighteen inspectors to look after the welfare of 60,000 wonien and girls in retail stores but we never got it. One candid friend, Mayor Van Wyck, in listening to our plea, told us the whole trouble. Said he: "Ladies, why do you waste your time year after year in coming before us and asking for this appropriation? You have not a voter in your constituency and you know it and we know it and you know we know it," and they never did give it to us

A spirited discussion ensued here between Representative Robert L. Henry (Tex.) and Mrs. Kelley as to whether Congress has the power to coerce a State through a Federal Amendment into giving women the right to vote. Representative Edwin Y. Webb (N. C.) asked if the majority of women wanted to vote and she answered that there was not the slightest doubt of it, that as reasoning beings women could not help desiring a full share in the Government under which they live. Representative Goebel (O.) said that at any time man might be called on to uphold the laws and the Constitution and asked: "Do you think that woman is physically and temperamentally fitted to give any