Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/36

 powers to control the conditions and circumstances of their own and their children's lives."

The audience then listened with keen appreciation to the president's address, during which she said: "If I were asked what are the great obstacles to the speedy enfranchisement of women I should answer: There are three; the first is militarism, which once dominated the entire thought of the world and made its history. Although its old power is gone and its influence upon public thought grows constantly less, it still molds the opinions of millions of people and holds them to the old ideals of force in government and headship in the family. The second obstacle is the unconscious, unmeasured influence upon the estimate in which women as a whole are held that emanates from that most debasing of our evil institutions, prostitution.The third great cause is the inertia in the growth of democracy which has come as a reaction following the aggressive movements that with possibly ill-advised haste enfranchised the foreigner, the negro and the Indian. Perilous conditions, seeming to follow from the introduction into the body politic of vast numbers of irresponsible citizens, have made the nation timid. These three influences, born of centuries of tradition, shape every opinion of the opponents of woman suffrage. Not an objection, argument or excuse can be urged against the movement which may not be traced to one of these causes."

At the close of Mrs. Catt's address Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford of Denver presented her with a handsome gavel in behalf of the suffrage association of Colorado. The gavel was made of Colorado silver and the settings and engravings of Colorado gold. In one side was a Colorado amethyst; and the Colorado flower, the columbine, was burned into the gavel by a Colorado girl, Mrs. Bradford said she wished Mrs. Catt the good luck said to follow the possessor of an amethyst, who "shall speak the right word at the right time." She presented it as an expression of gratitude for her aid in their successful suffrage campaign of 1893. "We are apt to attribute everything good in Colorado to woman suffrage," said Mrs. Catt in response, "but in my secret mind I think much of it is due to the progressiveness of the Colorado men. They must be better than other men or they would not have enfranchised their women. I cannot love Colo-