ds
to be said to women. This is quite natural both because of their
timidity in putting themselves forward and because of their
frequent ignorance of the principles upon which reform is based.
No one could be more opposed to woman suffrage than I was twenty
years ago. Everything I had read and heard seemed to point in
exactly the opposite direction. But at the first meeting I
attended I heard Lucy Stone, Henry B. Blackwell, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and other pioneers of the cause, found nothing but
reasonableness in their speech and their arguments and so was
speedily converted.

The Battle Hymn of the Republic was then sung by Prof. James G. Clark,
the well-known singer of anti-slavery days, the audience rising and
joining in the chorus.

Mrs. Margaret W. Campbell of Iowa, who was introduced by Lucy Stone
with a history of her many years of devoted work for the cause, said
in part: "Good men who mean well often say that women are as fit to
vote as the ignorant foreigners just landed at Castle Garden or the
freedmen who can not read or write. Don't say that any more; you don't
know how it hurts. Say instead, 'You are as fit to vote as we are.'
The names of those who emancipated the slave will be written in
letters of gold, but the names of those who have helped to emancipate
the women of this nation will be written in letters of living light."

The closing address was made by Mrs. Stone. "Her feeling and womanly
appeals," said the Minneapolis papers, "were such as to move any
masculine heart not thoroughly indurated." She said in part:

If the question of the right of women to a voice in making the
laws they are to obey could be treated in the same common-sense
way that other practical questions are treated it would have been
settled long ago. If the question were to be asked in any
community about to establish a government, "Shall the whole
people who are of mature age and sound mind have a right to help
make the laws they are required to obey?" the natural answer
would be that they should have that right. But the fact is that
only the men exercise it. If the question were asked, "Shall the
whole people who are of mature age and sound mind and not
convicted of crime have a right to elect the men who will have
the spending of the money they pay for taxes?" the common-sense
answer would be that they shoul