have women placed on the
school boards of that State, due wholly to their disfranchisement. In
a forcible speech Mrs. Sewall declared:

In coming here my sense of justice is satisfied, for we belong to
this nation as well as you. This room, this building, this
committee, the whole machinery of government is supported in part
by the money of women and is for their protection as well as for
that of men....

Our question should never be partisan. We do not wish to go
before our State Legislatures crippled with the fact that an
amendment has been submitted by one party rather than the other.
The Republican party gave the ballot to the negro and claimed its
vote in return. We do not wish any party to feel it has a right
to our vote. The Senate now has a majority of Republicans and the
House of Democrats, consequently any measure which is passed by
this Congress will be unpartisan. This question should receive
support of both parties by the higher laws of the universe.
Another name for life is helpfulness. Separation of parts
belonging to one whole is death. Separation of parties on
questions not of partisan interest is death to many issues. It is
in your power to bring the parties together by that higher law of
the universe on this proposition to submit a Sixteenth Amendment
to our Legislatures, that without entanglement of partisan
interests this question can be decided.

The committee were so interested in the address of Madame Neymann that
the time of the hearing was extended in order that she might finish
it. She said in part:

Why Americans, so keen in their sense of what is right and just,
should be so dull on this question of giving woman her due share
of independence, I can not comprehend. Is not this the land where
foreigners flock because they have heard the bugle call of
freedom? Why then is it that your own children, the patriotic
daughters of America, who have been reared and nurtured in free
homes, brought up under the guidance and amidst the blessings of
freedom--why is it that you hold them unworthy of the honor of
being enrolled as citizens and voters? England, Canada and even
Ireland have gone ahead of us, and was not America destined by
its tradition to be first and foremost in this important movement
of making women the equal, the true pa