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 in the United States but in every other country the voters are the people of its own nationality. In no other would the question have to go to the nationalities of the whole world as it would in our country. For instance, we have to submit our question to the negro and to the Indian men, when we go to the individual voters, and to the native-born Chinese and to all those men from southern Europe who are trained in the idea of woman's inferiority. You put upon us conditions which are not put upon women anywhere in the world outside the United States.

Mr. Littleton (N. Y.): You would have to convince every legislator of the fact that this amendment to the National Constitution ought to be adopted. If you could convince the Legislatures of three-fourths of the States you could get three-fourths of them to grant the suffrage itself.

Mrs. Harper: They could only grant it to the extent of sending us to the individual voters, while if this amendment were submitted by Congress and the Legislatures endorsed it we would never have to deal with the individual voters. We would not have to convince every legislator but only a majority.

Mr. Higgins (Conn.): In other words, as I understand you, you have more confidence in the Legislatures than in the composite citizenship.

Mrs. Harper: The composite male citizenship, you mean. We suppose, of course, that the Legislatures represent the picked men of the community, its intelligence, its judgment, the best that the country has. That is the supposition.

The Chairman: That supposition applies to Congress also, does it?

Mrs. Harper: In a larger degree.

Representative Victor L. Berger of Wisconsin, who was out of the city, sent a statement which Miss Addams requested Mrs. Elsie Cole Phillips of Wisconsin to read to the committee. It said in part:

Woman suffrage is a necessity from both a political and an economic standpoint. We can never have democratic rule until we let the women vote. We can never have real freedom until the women are free. Women are now citizens in all but the main expression of citizenship—the exercise of the vote. They need this power to round out and complete their citizenship In political matters they have much the same interests that we men have. In State and national issues their interests differ little, if at all, from ours. In municipal questions they have an even greater interest than we have. All the complex questions of housing, schooling, policing, sanitation and kindred matters are peculiarly the interests of women as the home makers and the rearers of children. Women need and must have the ballot by which to protect their interests in these political and administrative questions.

The economic argument for woman suffrage is yet stronger. Eco-