our colleges; they are
reading and thinking and writing; and yet they are the political
inferiors of all the riff-raff of Europe that is poured upon our
shores. It is unbearable. There is no language that can express
the enormous injustice done to women....

We can not separate subjects and say we will vote on temperance
or on school matters, for all these questions are part of
government.... When women as well as men are voters, the church
will get some recognition. I marvel that all ministers are not in
favor of woman suffrage, when I consider that their audiences are
almost entirely composed of women and that the church to-day is
brought into disrepute because it is made up of disfranchised
members. The minister would stand a hundred-fold higher than he
does now if women had the suffrage. Everybody would want to know
what the minister was saying to those women voters.

We are in danger in this country of Catholic domination, not
because the Catholics are more numerous than we are, but because
the Catholic church is represented at the polls and the
Protestant church is not. The foreigners are Catholic--the
greater portion of them; the foreigners are men--the greater part
of them, and members of the Catholic church, and they work for it
and vote for it. The Protestant church is composed of women. Men
for the most part do not belong to it; they do not care much for
it except as something to interest the women of their household.
The consequence is the Protestant church is comparatively
unrepresented at the ballot-box....

I urge upon you, women, that you put suffrage first and foremost,
before every other consideration upon earth. Make it a religious
duty and work for the enfranchisement of your sex, which means
the growth and development of noble characters in your children;
for you can not educate your children well surrounded by men and
women who hold false doctrines of society, of politics, of
morals. Leave minor issues, leave your differences of opinion
about the Trinity, or the Holy Ghost, or endless misery; about
high license and low license; or Dorcas Societies and Chautauqua
Circles. Let them all go; they are of no consequence compared
with the enfranchisement of women.

Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell gave a humorous series of Suffrage