hearings were held Tuesday morning, February 13, in the Marble Room of the Senate and the committee room of the House Judiciary, both of which were crowded to the doors, the seats being filled with women while members of Congress stood about the sides of the room. That before the Senate Committee—John W. Daniel (Va.), chairman; James H. Berry (Tenn.); George P. Wetmore (R. I.); Addison G. Foster (Wash.)—was confined to a historical résumé of the movement for woman suffrage, the speakers being presented by Miss Anthony. The Work with Congress was carefully delineated by Mrs. Colby, who concluded: "Everything that a disfranchised class could do has been done by women, and never in the long ages in which the love of freedom has been evolving in the human heart has there been such an effort by any other class of people. Surely it ought to win the respect and support of every man in this republic who has a brain to understand the blessings of liberty and a heart to beat in sympathy with a struggle to obtain it."127
Municipal Suffrage in Kansas was described by Mrs. Laura M. Johns. Woman Suffrage in Colorado was presented by Mrs. Bradford. Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch told of Woman Suffrage in England, closing as follows:
We have heard about the suffrage in the Western States of America, and the reply always is: "Oh, that is all very well for thinly populated countries." Now I am going to tell you a little of the suffrage question in England, not a thinly populated country, with its 20,000,000 of people crowded in that small space.
Gentlemen of the committee, I would like to draw your attention to one thing, which is true in America as well as in England—that nothing has been given to women gratuitously. They have had at each step to prove their ability before you gave them anything else. In 1870 England passed the Education Act, which gave women the right to sit on the school boards and to vote for them. It was the first time they had had elective school boards in England; before that all the education had been controlled by church organizations, who had appointed boards of managers. Women had been appointed to those boards and so admirable had been their work that when the law was passed in 1870 many women stood for election and were elected, and in three cases they came in at the head of the polls. Five years after that a verdict was passed upon the work of those women as school officials, for in 1875, women were allowed to go on the poor-law boards. In 1894 the law was further modified so that it contemplated the possibility of a larger circle of poor-law guardians. Before that there had been a high qualification—occupation of a house of a certain rental, etc., but now that was all pushed aside. What was the result? Nearly 1,000 women are now sitting on the poor-law boards of England; 94 on the great board of London itself.
These local boards deal with the great asylums, with the great pauper schools, with the immense poorhouses and, more than that, they deal with one of the largest funds in England, the outdoor and indoor relief. What has been the verdict upon the work of those women on the poor-law board? In 1896 there was the question, when this law was extended to Ireland, whether women should be put on those boards. The vote in Parliament was 272 in favor of the women and only 8 against. Eight men only, so unwise, so foolish, left in the great English Parliament, who said it was not for women to deal with those immense bodies of pauper children, not for women to deal with this outdoor relief fund, not for women to deal with the unfortunate mothers of illegitimate children....
Women in England, qualified women, have every local vote, everything which would correspond with your State and municipal vote here, they have all except the Parliamentary vote.
In England we have opponents, just as you have here. I do not know whether they are more illogical or less so, but they certainly do one extraordinary thing—they are in favor of everything that has been won and take advantage of it. A large number of the 2,000 women who are sitting on the various local bodies in England are opposed to the Parliamentary vote for their sex, and yet they are really in political life. Now, gentlemen, if you want to have the women stop coming here, give us the vote and then we won't come; give the "antis" the vote, and then they will have the political life that they are really longing for.
Almost always, if you analyze the anti-suffrage idea in either a man or a woman you find it is anti-democratic. I have begun to think that I am the only good democrat left in America. I believe in the very widest possible suffrage. Why do I believe it? Because I have lived and seen the other thing in England, and I have seen that as democracy broadened politics was purified. That has been the history from the beginning. No politics in the world was more corrupt than the English at the beginning of this century, but as democracy has come farther and farther into the field, England has become politically one of the purest nations in the world.
The paper on Woman Suffrage in the British Isles and Colonies was prepared by Miss Helen Blackburn, editor of the Englishwoman's Review; and Woman Suffrage in Foreign Countries was described by Mrs. Jessie Cassidy Saunders. The last address was given by Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt (N. Y.), Why We Ask for the Submission of an Amendment:
A survey of the changes which have been wrought within the past hundred years in the status of women—educational, social, financial and political—fills the observing man or woman with a feeling akin to awe. No great war has been fought in behalf of their emancipation; no great political party has espoused their cause; no heroes have bled and died for their liberty; yet words fail utterly to measure the distance between the "sphere" of the woman of 1800 and that of the woman of 1900. How has the transformation come? What mysterious power has brought it?
On the whole, men and women of the present rejoice at every right gained and every privilege conceded. Not one jot or tittle would they abate the advantage won; yet when the plea is made that the free, self-respecting, self-reliant, independent, thinking women of this generation be given the suffrage, the answer almost invariably comes back, "When women as a whole demand it, men will consider it." This answer carries with it the apparent supposition that all the changes have come because the majority of women wanted them, and that further enlargement of liberty must cease because the majority do not want it. Alas, it is a sad comment upon the conservatism of the average human being that not one change of consequence has been desired by women as a whole, or even by a considerable part. It would be nearer the truth to say women as a whole have opposed every advance.
The progress has come because women of a larger mold, loftier ambitions and nobler self-respect than the average have been willing to face the opposition of the world for the sake of liberty. More than one such as these deserve the rank of martyr. The sacrifice of suffering, of doubt, of obloquy, which has been endured by the pioneers in the woman movement will never be fully known or understood....
With the bold demand for perfect equality of rights in every walk of life the public have compromised. Not willing to grant all, they have conceded something; and by repeated compromises and concessions to the main demand the progress of woman's rights has been accomplished.
There are two kinds of restrictions upon human liberty—the restraint of law and that of custom. No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion. At the beginning of our century both law and custom restricted the liberty of women.
It was the edict of custom which prohibited women from receiving an education, engaging in occupations, speaking in public, organizing societies, or in other ways conducting themselves like free, rational human beings. It was law which forbade married women to control their own property or to collect their own wages, and which forbade all women to vote. The changes have not come because women wished for them or men welcomed them. A liberal board of trustees, a faculty willing to grant a trial, an employer willing to experiment, a broad-minded church willing to hear a woman preach, a few liberal souls in a community willing to hear a woman speak—these have been the influences which have brought the changes.
There is no more elaborate argument or determined opposition to woman suffrage than there has been to each step of progress.... Had a vote been taken, co-education itself would have been overwhelmingly defeated. In 1840, before women had studied or practiced medicine, had it been necessary to obtain permission to do so by a vote of men or women, 8,000 graduated women physicians would not now be engaged in the healing art in our country. In 1850, when vindictive epithets were hurled from press, pulpit and public in united condemnation of the few women who were attempting to be heard on the platform as speakers,