Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/506

 and your sympathies when I speak to you in behalf of the nine million women who are out today assuming their part in the industrial world. These women who are working in the shops and factories have simply followed the evolution of industry. It is not that they have entered into man's work at all, because they are doing what they formerly did in their homes, and I am asking today that you give to them power to protect themselves. Those girls working there now are the mothers of the generation to come and that they may be well protected in their hours of labor, in the conditions under which they work, that they may become mothers of healthy children in the future, we are asking that they may speak with authority through legislative chambersI wish to appeal to you, too, for another large group of women, the teachers of the United States. I myself am one of those who stand before the children of this great nation day after day. The teachers should be made citizens in order that they may keep both the letter and the spirit of this democratic country in their teachings. I have lived in my own State to know the difference in the spirit with which you teach citizenship when you yourself are a citizen. A slave cannot teach freedom, cannot comprehend the spirit of freedom; neither can a woman who is not a citizen comprehend the spirit of true citizenship. The teachers of Illinois since they were enfranchised have come to their work with a new life, a new zest and a new responsibility and we expect to send the boys out with a finer appreciation of what it means to render public service to a whole community and not a fraction of it. We also recognize the fact that our men are feeling that in every good work which they undertake a great help has been given to them.

Mrs. George Bass, whose address is quoted in the report of the Senate hearing in this chapter, gave a valuable résumé of the civic and legal reforms which already the women of Illinois had been able to accomplish with their votes and answered a number of questions. Miss Ruutz-Rees spoke along the lines of her speech before the Senate Committee, as did Mrs. Pattie Ruffner Jacobs, who made a strong appeal in the name of southern women for the Federal Amendment. She was subjected to a crossfire of questions from the southern members and Chairman Webb asked the question which many times afterwards came back to plague him: "Do you not think that as soon as you have a big enough majority of women in Alabama who want suffrage you will get it from the State and that you ought not come here bothering Congress about something that it should not, under our form of government, take jurisdiction of?" She answered: "I am very regretful that you have been bothered." During the questions and answers that