question, admitted a woman to practice at the bar
of that Court.[21] A hundred years ago, in the darkness of which
some gentlemen desire still to live, I suppose they would not
have done this. Favorable reports on this subject were made by
the Committee on Privileges and Elections in the Senate of the
Forty-fifth Congress, and in the last Congress by a Select
Committee of the Senate and of the House. The Legislatures of
many of the States have expressed their judgment on the matter.
There has been a great deal of progress in that direction. The
Senate and the House of Representatives of the last Congress
provided Select Committees to whom all matters relating to woman
suffrage could be referred. Will this House take a step backward
on this question?

I want especially to notify the gentleman from Texas that we are
not standing still on this matter. Eleven States--New Hampshire,
Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, Michigan, Kentucky, Minnesota,
Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado and Oregon--have authorized women to
vote for school trustees and members of school boards. Kentucky
extends this right to widows who have children and pay taxes.
Women are nominated and voted for not only in the eleven States
and three Territories, but in nearly all the Northern and Western
States. Pennsylvania, Illinois, Iowa and other States have large
numbers of women county superintendents of public schools. And
let me say, for the benefit of the Democratic party, that in the
great, progressive western State of Kansas the Democracy rose so
high as to nominate and vote for a woman for State Superintendent
of Public Instruction at the last election. So there has been a
little growing away from those old ideas and notions, even among
the Democracy. We are permitting women to fill public offices.
Why should they not participate in the election of officers who
are to govern them? We require them to pay taxes and there are a
great many burdens imposed upon them. Kansas, Michigan, Colorado
and Nebraska have in recent years submitted the question of woman
suffrage to a vote of the people and more than one-third of the
electors of each voted in favor. Oregon has now a similar
proposition pending.

By the laws of all the States women are required to pay taxes;
but we are pract