ily, that contagious cases are isolated,
that food is pure in quality and reasonable in price, that
inspection of food is honest and scientific, that weights and
measures are true, that gas and electricity are inexpensive, that
buildings are strongly constructed--these are all matters under
the control of certain officials elected by voters....

Women, too, want protection for the children, proper regulations
in regard to the schools, the trains at crossings, seducers,
tramps and child abductors. They want strict laws against obscene
literature and the unhealthy cigarette; and what is equally
important, honest enforcement of such laws and ordinances....

One class can not, will not, legislate better for all classes
than they can do for themselves. So men alone can not legislate
better for women and men than can the two for both. Women need
the ballot to protect themselves and all that they hold dear.

The hearing was closed by Miss Shaw, who said in ending her remarks:

Dire results have been predicted at every step of radical
progress. When women first enjoyed higher education the cry went
out that the home would be destroyed. It was said that if all the
women were educated, all would become bluestockings, and if all
women became bluestockings all would write books, and if all
women wrote books what would become of the homes, who would rear
the children? But the schools were opened and women entered them,
and it has been discovered that the intelligent woman makes a
wiser mother, a better homemaker and a much more desirable
companion, friend and wife than a woman who is illiterate, whose
intellectual horizon is narrowed.

In many of the States where the statutes were based on the old
English common law, the husband absorbed the wife's property as
he absorbed her personal rights. Then came the demand for
property rights for wives, but the cry went up they will desert
their homes. Then it was found there were thousands of women who
could have no home if they were not permitted to pursue
avocations in the outside world. And then it was said that the
moral life of women would be degraded by public contact. Yet the
statistics show that in those occupations in which women are able
to earn a livelihood in an honorable and respectable manner they