the outcome. We believe that women have in their possession what is needed to make it a success—those things upon which are built the home life and the ethical life of the nation. We can supply what is lacking, not because women are better than men, but because they are other than men; because they have a supplementary part, and it is their mission to guard most sacredly and closely those things which protect the home life. Because of their womanhood, because of their divine function of motherhood, women must always be most closely concerned with the matters that pertain to the home. It belongs to man, with his strong right arm, to pioneer the way, and then woman comes along to help him build the enduring foundation upon which everything rests.
Miss Shaw, in a short, good-naturedly sarcastic speech on The Bulwarks of the Constitution, showed the illogical position of President Eliot of Harvard in declaiming grand sentiments in favor of universal suffrage and then protesting against having them applied to women. The last number on the program was The Ballot as an Improver of Motherhood, by Mrs. Stetson. It was an address of wonderful power which thrilled the audience. Among other original statements were these:
We have heard much of the superior moral sense of woman. It is superior in spots but not as a whole.... Here is an imaginary case which will show how undeveloped in some respects woman's moral sense still is: Suppose a train was coming with a children's picnic on board—three hundred merry, laughing children. Suppose you saw this train was about to go through an open switch and over an embankment, and your own child was playing on the track in front of it. You could turn the switch and save the train, or save your own child by pulling it off the track, but there was not time to do both. Which would you do? I have put that question to hundreds of women. I never have found one but said she would save her own child, and not one in a hundred but claimed this would be absolutely right. The maternal instinct is stronger in the hearts of most women than any moral sense....
What is the suffrage going to do for motherhood? Women enter upon this greatest function of life without any preparation, and their mothers permit them to do it because they do not recognize motherhood as a business. We do not let a man practice as a doctor or a druggist, or do anything else which involves issues of life and death, without training and certificates; but the life and death of the whole human race are placed in the hands of utterly untrained young girls. The suffrage draws the woman out of her purely personal relations and puts her in relations with her kind, and it broadens her intelligence. I am not disparaging the noble devotion of our present mothers—I know how they struggle and toil—but when that tremendous force of mother love is made intelligent, fifty per cent of our children will not die before they are five years old, and those that grow up will be better men and women. A woman will no longer be attached solely to one little group, but will be also a member of the community. She will not neglect her own on that account, but will be better to them and of more worth as a mother.
Mrs. Stetson closed with her own fine poem, Mother to Child.
The usual congressional hearings were held on Tuesday morning, January 28.109 The speakers were presented by Miss Shaw, who made a very strong closing argument. At its conclusion Senator Peffer announced his thorough belief in woman suffrage, and Senator Hoar planted himself still more firmly in the favorable position he always had maintained.110
Miss Anthony led the host before the Judiciary Committee of the House, and opened with the statement that the women had been coming here asking for justice for nearly thirty years. She gave a brief account of the status of the question before Congress and then presented her speakers, each occupying the exact limit of time allotted and each taking up a different phase of the question.111 Miss Anthony called on Representative John F. Shafroth of Colorado, who was among the listeners, to say something in regard to the experiment in his State. He spoke in unqualified approval, saying: "In the election of 1894 a greater per cent. of women voted than men, and instead of their being contaminated by any influence of a bad nature at the polls, the effect has been that there are no loafers, there are no drunkards, there are no persons of questionable character standing around the polls. One of the practical effects of woman suffrage will be to inject into politics an element that is independent and does not have to keep a consistent record with the party. We find that the ladies of Colorado do not care whether they vote for one ticket or the other, but they vote for the men they think the most deserving. Consequently if a man is nominated who has a questionable record invariably they will strike the party that does it. That tendency, I care not where it may exist, must be for good."
Miss Anthony closed with an earnest appeal that the committee would report in favor of a Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, thus enabling the women to carry their case to the Legislatures of the different States instead of to the masses of voters. She then submitted for publication and distribution the address of Mrs. Stanton, which said in part:
There is not a principle of our Government, not an article or section of our Constitution, from the preamble to the last amendment, which we have not elucidated and applied to woman suffrage before the various committees in able arguments that have never been answered. Our failure to secure justice thus far has not been due to any lack of character or ability in our advocates or of strength in their propositions, but to the popular prejudices against woman's emancipation. Eloquent, logical arguments on any question, though based on justice, science, morals and religion, are all as light as air in the balance with old theories, creeds, codes and customs.
Could we resurrect from the archives of this Capitol all the petitions and speeches presented here by women for human freedom during this century, they would reach above this dome and make a more fitting pedestal for the Goddess of Liberty than the crowning point of an edifice beneath which the mother of the race has so long pleaded in vain for her natural right of self-government—a right her sons should have secured to her long ago of their own free will by statutes carved indelibly on the corner-stones of the Republic.
As arguments have thus far proved unavailing, may not appeals to your feelings, to your moral sense, find the response so long withheld by your reason? Allow me, honorable gentlemen, to paint you a picture and bring within the compass of your vision at once the comparative position of two classes of citizens: The central object is a ballot box guarded by three inspectors of foreign birth. On the right is a multitude of coarse, ignorant beings, designated in our constitutions as male citizens—many of them fresh from the steerage of incoming steamers. There, too, are natives of the same type from the slums of our cities. Policemen are respectfully guiding them all to the ballot box. Those who can not stand, because of their frequent potations, are carefully supported on either side, each in turn depositing his vote, for what purpose he neither knows nor cares, except to get the promised bribe.
On the left stand a group of intelligent, moral, highly-cultivated women, whose ancestors for generations have fought the battles of liberty and have made this country all it is to-day. These come from the schools and colleges as teachers and professors; from the press and pulpit as writers and preachers; from the courts and hospitals as lawyers and physicians; and from happy and respectable homes as honored mothers, wives and sisters. Knowing the needs of humanity subjectively in all the higher walks of life, and objectively in the world of work, in the charities, in the asylums and prisons, in the sanitary condition of our streets and public buildings, they are peculiarly fitted to write, speak and vote intelligently on all these questions of such vital, far-reaching consequence to the welfare of society. But the inspectors refuse their votes because they are not designated in the Constitution as "male" citizens, and the policemen drive them away.
Sad and humiliated they retire to their respective abodes, followed by the jeers of those in authority. Imagine the feelings of these dignified women, returning to their daily round of duties, compelled to leave their interests, public and private, in the State and the home, to these ignorant masses. The most grievous result of war to the conquered is wearing a foreign yoke, yet this is the position of the daughters of the Puritans....
What a dark page the present political position of women will be for the future historian! In reading of the republics of Greece and Rome and the grand utterances of their philosophers in