Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/390

 So it seems fair to say that if women are to keep on with the work which they have done since the beginning of the world—to continue with their humanitarian efforts which are so rapidly being taken over into the Government, and which when thus taken over are often not properly administered, women themselves must have the franchise

Introducing Representative Raker Miss Addams said smilingly that while the women speakers were allowed ten minutes the men were to have but five. Judge Raker of California referred to the fact that he had pledged himself to this Federal Amendment when he was first a candidate for Congress eight years before and said: "This matter, as it appears to me, has passed beyond the question of sentiment; it has passed beyond the question of advisability; it has passed beyond the question of whether or not women ought to participate in the vote for the benefit of the home or the benefit of the State. As I view it it is a clean-cut question of absolute right and upon that assumption I base my argument—that we today are depriving one-half of the intelligence, one-half of the ability of this republic from participating in public affairs and that from the economic standpoint of better laws, better homes, better government in the country, the city, the State and the nation, we need our wives', our sisters' and our mothers' votes and assistance."

"May I introduce one of my own fellow townswomen, Miss Mary E. McDowell," said Miss Addams, 'who has had what I may call a distressing life in the stockyards district of Chicago for many years, and she will tell you what she thinks of the franchise for women." Miss McDowell said in part:

We are all together very human, it seems to me, both men and women, and it is because we are human, because this is a human proposition and not a woman proposition, that I am glad to speak for it and believe in it so firmly. Giving the vote to women is not simply a woman's question, it has to do with the man, the child and the home. Women have always worked but within much less than a century millions of women and girls have been thrust out of the home into a man-made world of industry and commerce. We know that in the United States over 5,500,000, according to the census of 1900, are bread winnersDo we not see that the working women must be given every safeguard that workingmen have and now as they stand side by side with men in the factory and shop they must stand with them politically? The ballot may be but a