SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION, }
NEW YORK, September 28, 1869. }

_To the Woman's Industrial Congress at Berlin_:

At a meeting of our Executive Committee the call for your
Convention was duly considered, and a committee appointed to
address you a letter. In behalf of the progressive women of this
country we would express to you the deep interest we feel in the
present movement among the women of Europe, everywhere throwing
off the lethargy of ages and asserting their individual dignity
and power, showing that the emancipation of woman is one of those
great ideas that mark the centuries. While in your circular you
specify various subjects for consideration, you make no mention
of the right of suffrage.

As yours is an Industrial Congress in which women occupied in
every branch of labor are to be represented, you may think this
question could not legitimately come before you. And even if it
could, you may not think best to startle the timid or provoke the
powerful by the assertion that a fair day's wages for a fair
day's work and the dignity of labor, alike depend on the
political status of the laborer. Perhaps in your country, where
the right of representation is so limited even among men, women
do not feel the degradation of disfranchisement as we do under
this Government, where it is now proposed to make sex the only
disqualification for citizenship.

The ultimate object of all these labor movements on both
continents, is the emancipation of the masses from the slavery of
poverty and ignorance, and the shorter way to this end is to give
all the people a voice in the laws that govern them, for the
ballot is bread, land, education, dignity, and power. The
extending of new privileges and abating of old grievances may
afford some temporary relief; but the kernel of the whole
question of the people's wrongs can never be touched until the
essential equality of all citizens under the government is fully
recognized. In America we have the true theory of government, and
step by step we are coming to its practical realization.

Seeing that no class ever did or ever can legislate wisely for
another, the women, even in this country, have done complaining
of specific wrongs, and are demanding the right to legislate for