Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/783

 "The building is in constant use and is a great contribution to the comfort, health and pleasure of our women students."

Friends of Miss Anthony gave a scholarship for women in her name and Miss Mary S. Anthony gave the money for one in her own name. The university has seven other scholarships for women.

Although the Constitution of the United States in section 2 of Article I seems to have relegated authority over the extension of the suffrage to the various States, yet, curiously, few men in the United States possess the suffrage because they or the class to which they belong have secured their right to it by State action. The first voters were those who possessed the right under the original charters granted by the mother country and as the restrictions were many, including religious tests in most of the colonies and property qualifications in all, the number of actual voters was exceedingly small. When it became necessary at the close of the Revolution to form a federation for the "common defense" and the promotion of the "general welfare," it was obvious that citizenship must he made national. To do this it became clearly necessary that religious tests must be abandoned. since Catholic Maryland, Quaker Pennsylvania and Congregational Massachusetts could be united under a common citizenship by no other method. The elimination of the religious test enfranchised a large number of men and this without a struggle or any movement in their behalf.

In 1790 the first naturalization law was passed by Congress. Under the Articles of Confederation citizenship had belonged to the States but since it was apparent that it must now he national, a compromise was made between the old idea of State's rights and the new idea of Federal union. Each of the original States had its representatives in the convention which drafted the Federal Constitution and by common consent it was there planned that citizenship should carry with it the right to vote, although this was to be put into the State constitutions and not into the National. These delegates, influencing their own States in the forming of their constitutions, easily brought this about and without any movement on the part of those who were to he naturalized. This common understanding in the National Constitutional Convention and the Naturalization Act of Congress in 1790 certainly enfranchised somewhere between three-fourths and four-fifths of all men in the United States at this time.

The population of the colonies at the time of the Revolution was two and a half millions and even though all men had been voters the number could not have been more than seven or eight hundred thousand. By the census of 1900 there were 21,000,000 men of voting age in the United States. The Act. therefore, of the U. S. Government virtually enfranchised millions upon millions of men. Generations then unborn have come into the right of the suffrage in this country under that Act and men of every nationality have availed themselves of its privileges to become voting citizens. Although, technically speaking,