in the loss
of beloved ones is added the agony of hard and griping want. For
the sake of the poor girl who has no power to cope with the hard
actualities of a desolate life, while her trembling feet tread
the crumbling edge of the dark abyss of infamy. For the sake of
this we are pleading and entertaining this great question,
withhold your answer till at least you have learned to say, "God
speed."

The next speaker was Miss Phoebe Couzins, a young law student from St.
Louis, who spoke in a most agreeable and forcible manner.

Miss COUZINS said:--MRS. PRESIDENT AND LADIES: I deem it the duty
of every earnest woman to express herself in regard to the XVth
Amendment to our Federal Constitution. I feel deeply the
humiliation and insult that is offered to the women of the United
States in this Amendment, and have always publicly protested
against its passage. During a recent tour through the Eastern
States I became still more (if that were possible) firmly fixed
in my convictions. Its advocates are unwilling to have it
publicly discussed, showing that they know there is an element of
weakness in it which will not bear a thorough investigation.

While feeling entirely willing that the black man shall have all
the rights to which he is justly entitled, I consider the claims
of the black woman of paramount importance. I have had
opportunities of seeing and knowing the condition of both sexes,
and will bear my testimony, that the black women are, and always
have been, in a far worse condition than the men. As a class,
they are better, and more intelligent than the men, yet they have
been subjected to greater brutalities, while compelled to perform
exactly the same labor as men toiling by their side in the
fields, just as hard burdens imposed upon them, just as severe
punishments decreed to them, with the added cares of maternity
and household work, with their children taken from them and sold
into bondage; suffering a thousandfold more than any man could
suffer. Then, too, the laws for women in the Southern States,
both married and single, degrade them still further. The black
men, as a class, are very tyrannical in their families; they have
learned the lesson of brute force but too well, and as the
marriage law allows the husband entire control over hi