Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/394

 do you expect women to treat with respect National and State constitutions and legislative bodies that stand thus an impenetrable barrier between them and their rights as citizens of the United States?" A long colloquy followed which began:

The Chairman: The committee will be very glad to have you extend your remarks to answer a question propounded by Mr. Littleton awhile ago. I wish to say that this committee, during my service on it, has always been met with this proposition when this amendment was proposed, that the States already have the authority to confer suffrage upon women, and, therefore, why is it necessary for women to wait for an amendment to the Federal Constitution when they can now go to the States and obtain this right to vote, just as the women of California did last year?

Mrs. Harper: Mr. Chairman, the women are not waiting; they are keeping right on with their efforts to get the suffrage from the States. They began in 1867 with their State campaigns and have continued them ever since, but in sending the women to the States you require them to make forty-eight campaigns and to go to the individual electors to get permission to vote. After the Civil War the Republican party with all its power and with only the northern States voting, was never able to get the suffrage for the negroes. The leaders went to State after State, even to Kansas, with its record for freeing the negroes, and every State turned down the proposition to give them suffrage. I doubt if the individual voters of many States would give the suffrage to any new class, even of men. The capitalists would not let the working people vote if they could help it, and the working people would not let the capitalists vote; Catholics would not enfranchise the Protestants and the Protestants would not give the vote to Catholics. You impose upon us an intolerable condition when you send us to the individual voters. What man on this committee would like to submit his electoral rights to the voters of New York City, for instance, representing as they do every nationality in the world? If we could secure this amendment to the Federal Constitution, then we could deal with the Legislatures, with the selected men in each State, instead of the great conglomerate of voters that we have in this country, such as does not exist in any other.

The Chairman: But if one of these suffrage resolutions should be favorably reported and both Houses of Congress should pass it of course it would be referred to the States and then before it became a law it would have to have their approval.

Mrs. Harper: Only of the Legislatures, not the individual voters.

The Chairman: You use an expression which a member of the committee has asked me to have you explain—"conglomerate of voters," which you said does not exist elsewhere. The desire is to know to whom you refer.

Mrs. Harper: I mean no disrespect to the great body of electors