alf of the pay. Do you
suppose if they had ballots they would not make their voices
heard here and get for the same work the same pay? Who ever knew
a labor strike of women to succeed? When women in New York City
and other places are bowed down to the earth by their
labor--making shirts at a shilling a day--and they strike for
more pay, for more bread, for an opportunity to live, who ever
heard of one of their strikes succeeding? Men strike from their
workshops and they succeed, and why? Because they have the
ballot; because they have political force, because they have the
power of citizenship behind them in its fullest sense. Give these
poor struggling women the same chance and they can make their way
to a fair remuneration of wages in the public offices, and they
can make their way in the workshops, and these toiling mothers,
widows, and sisters supporting orphan brothers and sisters will
have some opportunity to vindicate their rights and to procure
not merely political rights, but a chance to live, and a chance
to avoid infamy.

Senators talk about this question as if the ballot was not
demanded for women. Will you tell me why it was that the great
party which controls both branches of Congress and holds the
Executive, when it met in Philadelphia at that grand convention,
put a plank in its platform stating that these demands for
further rights should be respectfully considered? Do you think
there was no agitation, no desire on the part of women for the
ballot when that great convention could be moved to a declaration
like this:

The Republican party is mindful of its obligations to the
loyal women or America for their noble devotion to the cause
of freedom. Their admission to higher fields of usefulness
is viewed with satisfaction, and the honest demand of any
class of citizens for additional rights shall be treated
with respectful consideration.

Was that mere euphuism, mere phrasing? Did that mean nothing? Did
it respond to no demand? Ay, sir, did it not only respond to a
demand which was there pressed, but did it not imply a duty, a
pledge which this party ought to redeem?

But the Senator from Maine, as well as the Senator from North
Carolina, asserts that the XIV. Amendment of the Constitu