Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/628

 Mrs. Catt pictured eloquently the marvelous work being done by women in Great Britain in the munitions factories, the railway service, the dockyards, and also in our own and all countries; she described the heroic sacrifices of the nurses; she told how the women of Canada and New Zealand had voted for conscription and how in all countries the women were backing their men in the war. "It is declared that American women cannot carry a gun," she said. "Why that is the kind of talk we heard forty years ago and Mr. Bailey's speech is just that much behind the timesI am sorry for any man who has stood still while the world has moved on." Only the merest outline of this convincing address is given but before its conclusion Mr. Bailey had deliberately insulted Mrs. Catt by leaving the room. Mrs. Wads worth, when asked if she wished her side to be heard in rebuttal, introduced Miss Charlotte E. Rowe of Yonkers, N. Y., who made a vigorous plea for saving the home, children and womanhood and declared woman suffrage would lead to Socialism. During the course of her speech she said, according to the official stenographic report: "If working girls and women in colleges will study cooking and sewing and domestic science and hygiene, or simple rules of health and how to care for the sick and the fine and beautiful art of home making, it will be much better for them and better for the country than if they spend their time parading up the avenue of a crowded city and praying that they may some day, somehow, become police men or boiler-makers side by side with menI say to you that it has remained for this self-sufficient 2Oth century to have produced a womanhood which would stand even a small proportion of it in legislative halls and say that they are doing more in this great and terrible war than the men are doingGentlemen, if I were a married woman and my husband was a feminist and on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November he said to me, 'Come, walk by me so as to strengthen and sustain me as I go to the polls,' I would say to him, 'Look here, Mabel, here is the key of the flat; I am going home to father.' I would advise men and women suffragists and especially those suffragist men who need their wives to strengthen and sustain