is the work before us. This is the meaning of the desperate unrest and unhappiness of women. It is this that has drawn us here to enter our protest against the wicked, old, one-legged order of things. Our honored Miss Anthony has gone through fire and hail while she worked for her convictions. All of us have wrought as best we might for the higher education of women, for their pecuniary independence, for their civil and political rights, fighting the world, the flesh and the devil.
My own work has been in the field of journalism. For nearly twenty years I have faced here every form of disability because I am a woman, have met defeat after defeat, till the iron has entered my soul. Yet every day I have thanked God that I have been permitted to bear my share in the tremendous struggle for the development of women in the nineteenth century. Struggle means development; it can come in no other way, and this will be the grandest since creation began—the crowned, perfected woman. For this the cry of womanhood has risen out of the depths through the centuries. Up through agony and despair it has come, through sin and shame, through poverty and martyrdom, through torture which has wrung drops of blood from woman's lips, still up, up, till it has reached the great white throne itself.
The enrollment committee reported a list of about one hundred thousand names of persons asking for woman suffrage. The treasurer announced the receipts for 1888 to be $12,510. All of the expenses of the great International Council had been paid and a balance of nearly $300 remained.
The resolutions might be described as an epitomized recital of wrongs and a Bill of Rights.
Whereas, Women possessed and exercised the right of suffrage in the inauguration of this Government; and,
Whereas, They were deprived of this right by the arbitrary Acts of successive State Legislatures in violation of the original compact as seen in the early constitutions; therefore,
Resolved, That it is the duty of the several States to make prompt restitution of these ancient rights, recognized by innumerable precedents in English history, and to-day by the gradual extension of the suffrage over vast territories.
Whereas, Woman's title deed to an equal share in the inheritance left her by the fathers of the Republic has been examined and proved by able lawyers; and,
Whereas, This right is already exercised in some form in one hundred localities in different parts of the world; therefore,
Resolved, That sex is no longer considered a bar to the exercise of suffrage by civilized nations.
Resolved, That it is the duty of Congress to pass a declaratory act, compelling the several States to establish a "republican form of government" within their borders by securing to women their right to vote, thus nullifying the fraudulent Acts of Legislatures and making our Government homogeneous from Maine to Oregon.
Resolved, That the question of enfranchising one-half the people is superior to that of Indian treaties, admission of new States, tariff, international copyright or any other subject before the country, and that it is the foremost duty of the Fiftieth Congress at this, its last session, to submit an amendment to the Constitution forbidding States to disfranchise citizens on account of sex.
Resolved, That as a question of ethics the difference between putting a fraudulent ballot in the box and keeping a rightful ballot out is nothing, and that we condemn the action which prevents women from casting a ballot at any election as a shameful evidence of the corruption of dominant political parties in this country.
Whereas, The Legislature of Washington Territory has twice voted for woman suffrage—women for the most part having gladly accepted and exercised the right, Governor Squire in his report to the Secretary of the Interior in 1884 having declared that it met the approval of a large majority of the people; and,
Whereas, In 1887, after the women had voted for three and a half years, the Territorial Supreme Court pronounced the law invalid on the ground that the nature of the bill must be described in the title of the act; and,
Whereas, In January, 1888, another bill passed by the Legislature gave to this law an explicit title; and the bill, again granting suffrage to women, was signed by Governor Semple, thus triumphantly showing the approval of the people, the Legislature and the Governor; and,
Whereas, The Territorial Supreme Court, in August, 1888, again rendered a decision against the right of the women of the Territory to vote, basing their decision upon the false assumption that Congress had never delegated to the Territories the right to define the status of their own voters; and,
Whereas, This decision strikes a blow at the fundamental powers of the United States Congress, confounding laws delegated to the Territories by the Organic Act of 1852, which vests in their Legislatures the power to prescribe their qualifications for voting and holding office—with State governments which limit legislative enactments by constitutions of their own making—thus setting at naught the will of the people; therefore,
Resolved, That we earnestly and respectfully petition Congress that in passing an enabling act or acts for the admission of the other Territories there be incorporated a clause allowing women to vote for delegates to their constitutional conventions, and at the election for the adoption of the constitution, in every one where the Legislature has granted woman suffrage and such law has not been repealed by a subsequent Legislature.
Whereas, In the year 1873 our leader, Susan B. Anthony, was deprived of the right of trial by jury, by a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, simply because she was a woman, it is the duty of all women to resent the insult thus offered to womanhood and demand of the men of this closing century of constitutional government such condemnation of this infamous decision of Judge Ward Hunt74 as shall teach the coming generation of voters that the welfare of the republic demands that women be protected equally with men in the exercise of citizenship; and,
Whereas, In the great Centennial Celebration of 1876 women were denied all participation in the public proceedings commemorating the birth of the Declaration of Independence, though they sought earnestly and respectfully to declare their sentiments of loyalty to the great principles of liberty and responsibility there enunciated, they should now demand official recognition by Congress and the State Legislature on all the Boards of Commissioners which, at the public expense, are to initiate and carry out the august ceremonials of the coming Constitutional Celebration in New York in April, 1889, to the end that taxation without representation shall no longer be acknowledged a just and constitutional policy in this government nominally of the people, therefore,
Resolved, That a committee be appointed by the National W. S. A. to memorialize Congress on this subject, and to take such other action as shall bring before the enlightened manhood of our country their duty of chivalry no less than justice in this important matter.75
Whereas, The question of woman's enfranchisement is fundamental and of paramount importance; therefore,
Resolved, That, while the National Woman Suffrage Association welcomes and claims the support of persons of all parties and beliefs, it desires to strongly reassert the position which it has held of being nonpartisan.
A hearing was granted by the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage the morning of January 24. Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. Minor, Mrs. Duniway, Mrs. Johns, the Rev. Olympia Brown, the Rev. Miss Shaw and Miss Alice Stone Blackwell were introduced to the committee by Miss Anthony, and each from a different standpoint presented the arguments for the submission of a Sixteenth Amendment enfranchising women.
On February 7, Senator Blair reported for the committee—Senators Charles B. Farwell (Ill.), Jonathan Chace (R. I.), Edward O. Wolcott (Col.), in favor of the amendment. After an able and exhaustive argument the report closed as follows:
Unless this Government shall be made and preserved truly republican in form by the enfranchisement of woman, the great reforms which her ballot would accomplish may never be; the demoralization and disintegration now proceeding in the body politic are not likely soon to be arrested. Corruption of the male suffrage