-or the lack of it--which we have taken under our
control.

We women are here at this time to do our best to awaken the
public conscience to a realizing sense of the state of affairs.
We are the result of what the religion, the education of the
nineteenth century and the liberty which it has granted to women
have made us. We are ready and willing and competent to befriend
our less favored sisters beyond the seas, and to extend to them
the benefits we enjoy, so far as they are able to receive them;
but--the tragedy of it--in a certain sense we are utterly
helpless to reach them and to give them what they, unconsciously
to themselves, so grievously need. There is no place for the
thought of the women of this land in the plans of the nation for
the study of these questions.

No matter how much our speaker may think and write and publish on
this subject--aye, and women like her--no matter how wise the
conclusions they reach, is it at all likely that their voices
will be listened to in the din and blare and clash of warring
political parties, or respected in legislative halls? Or is it
probable that the advocates of territorial expansion will pause a
moment to ponder on the woman side of that question? We, to-day,
are discussing this subject without even the shadow of a hope of
putting our convictions into practice. Is it any wonder that
women at large are dead to the importance of this matter?...

I am in favor of pushing the question to the utmost--not that I
have any hope that such a Commission will be appointed, but
because it furnishes a most valuable argument for extending the
suffrage to women: first, in order that, by its possession, they
may have an uncontested, legally-defined right of serving on such
commissions; and, second, because of the opportunity it offers
for proving to the world the necessity of commissions like this
for settling questions and conditions of which women form a
central and integral part. Of course if we possessed the
suffrage, we should have no necessity for a discussion like the
present. Everything we are saying would seem like truisms then,
instead of being contested point by point, as it is to-day....

MR. BLACKWELL: ....In those islands are peoples ranging from
absolute savagery to mediaeval civilizati