t all principles to their legitimate conclusions, go
where they will. There never was a time when men were so
practical, and so ready to learn. I am not a farmer, but I know
that the spring comes but once in the year. When the furrow is
open is the time to put in your seed, if you would gather a
harvest in its season. Now, when the red-hot plowshare of war has
opened a furrow in this nation, is the time to put in the seed.
If any man says to me, "Why will you agitate the woman's
question, when it is the hour for the black man?" I answer, it is
the hour for every man, black or white. (Applause.) The bees go
out in the morning to gather the honey from the morning-glories.
They take it when they are open, for by ten o'clock they are
shut, and they never open again until the next crop comes. When
the public mind is open, if you have anything to say, say it. If
you have any radical principles to urge, any organizing wisdom
to make known, don't wait until quiet times come. Don't wait
until the public mind shuts up altogether.

War has opened the way for impulse to extend itself. But progress
goes by periods, by jumps and spurts. We are in the favored hour;
and if you have great principles to make known, this is the time
to advance those principles. If you can organize them into
institutions, this is the time to organize them. I therefore say,
whatever truth is to be known for the next fifty years in this
nation let it be spoken now--let it be enforced now. The truth
that I have to urge is not that women have the right of
suffrage--not that Chinamen or Irishmen have the right of
suffrage--not that native born Yankees have the right of
suffrage--but that suffrage is the inherent right of mankind. I
say that man has the right of suffrage as I say that man has the
right to himself. For although it may not be true under the
Russian government, where the government does not rest on the
people, and although under our own government a man has not a
right to himself, except in accordance with the spirit and action
of our own institutions, yet our institutions make the government
depend on the people, and make the people depend on the
government; and no man is a full citizen, or fully competent to
take care of himself, or to defend himself, who has not all th