y such
meetings as this that public opinion is first awakened, and
public action is at last secured. Our question is essentially an
American question. It is a demand for equal rights, and will
therefore be heard. Whenever a free and intelligent people asks
any question involving human rights or liberty or development, it
will ask louder and louder until it is answered. The conscience
of this nation sits in the way like a sphinx, proposing its
riddle of true democracy. Presidents and parties, conventions,
caucuses, and candidates, failing to guess it, are remorselessly
consumed. Forty years ago that conscience asked, "Do men have
fair play in this country?" A burst of contemptuous laughter was
the reply. Louder and louder grew that question, until it was one
great thunderburst, absorbing all other questions; and then the
country saw that its very life was bound up in the answer; and,
springing to its feet, alive in every nerve, with one hand it
snapped the slave's chain, and with the other welded the Union
into a Nation--the pledge of equal liberty.

That same conscience sits in the way to-day. It asks another
question, "Do women have fair play in this country?" As before, a
sneer or a smile of derision may ripple from one end of the land
to the other; but that question will swell louder and louder,
until it is answered by the ballot in the hands of every citizen,
and by the perfect vindication of the fundamental principle, that
"governments derive their just powers from the consent of the
governed." By its very nature, however, the progress of this
reform will differ from every other political movement. Behind
every demand for the enlargement of the suffrage, hitherto there
was always a threat. It involved possible anarchy and blood. But
this reform hides no menace. It lies wholly in the sphere of
reason. It is a demand for justice, as the best political policy;
an appeal for equality of rights among citizens as the best
security of the common welfare. It is a plea for the introduction
of all the mental and moral forces of society into the work of
government. It is an assertion that in the regulation of society,
no class and no interest can be safely spared from a direct
responsibility. It encounters, indeed, the most ancient
traditions,