Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/425

 franchised in Germany, yet German women are governed by German men; French women are governed by Frenchmen; in all the nations of Europe where women are disfranchised it is by the men of their own nation but in the United States men of every race may go to the polls and vote that American-born women may not have a voice in their own government. Therefore we claim that it is the business of the Government to protect women citizens in this right of suffrage as it protects men citizens, and we ask for this committee because we believe that if our question can be brought before Congress and discussed freely, it will be submitted to the Legislatures and decided favorably."

Two anti-suffrage associations were represented, the National, headed by its president, Mrs. Arthur M. Dodge of New York, and the Guidon Club, headed by its president, Mrs. William Force Scott of New York. Mrs. Dodge presented as speakers Miss Alice Hill Chittenden and Miss Minnie Bronson (N. Y.), Mrs. Robert Garrett (Md.), Miss Emily P. Bissell (Del.), Mrs. A. J. George (Mass.), Miss Annie Bock (Calif.), Mrs. O. D. Oliphant (N. J.), Miss Ella Dorsey (D. C.), Mrs. R. C. Talbot and Miss Lucy Price (O.), Miss Eliza Armstrong, Miss Emmeline Pitt and Miss Julia Harding (Penn.), Miss Alice Edith Abell, president "Wage-earners' Anti-Suffrage League" (N. Y.); Everett P. Wheeler and Charles L. Underhill, representing the Men's Anti-Suffrage Leagues of New York and of Massachusetts. Letters were read from Miss Elizabeth McCracken (Mass.) and Arthur Pyle (Minn.). Mrs. Scott introduced as speakers Dr. and Mrs. Rossiter Johnson and John C. Ten Eyck of New York. Representative J. Thomas Heflin (Ala.) spoke over an hour on his own initiative.

As the anti-suffragists had entirely disregarded the agreement to confine the hearing to the purpose of obtaining a special committee and had covered the whole field of woman suffrage itself, the Committee on Rules willingly granted time for a rebuttal. Miss Alice Stone Blackwell (Mass.), editor of the Woman's Journal, was selected as the principal speaker because of her extensive knowledge of the subject and another large audience assembled for the fifth time, both suffragists and oppo-