possession of power, and I
look at them and wonder how it is possible for them to be willing
that their own mothers, sisters, wives and daughters should be
debarred from the possession of like power. We have been going to
the Legislature in Massachusetts longer than Mrs. Stanton has
been coming here. We asked that when a husband and wife make a
contract with each other, as for instance, if the wife loan the
husband her money, the contract should be considered valid just
as it would be between any other parties--for now in case the
husband fails in business, she can not get her money--and the
Legislature very kindly gave us leave to withdraw. Then we asked
that when a man dies and the wife is left alone, with the whole
burden of life on her shoulders, the law might give her more than
forty days in which to stay in her home without paying rent. But
we could not defeat one of our legislators, and they cared not a
cent for our petition and less than a cent for our opinion; and
so when we asked for this important measure they gave us leave to
withdraw.

They respect the wants of the voter, but they care nothing about
the wants of those who do not have votes. So, when we asked for
protection for wives beaten by their husbands, and that the
husband should be made to give a portion of his earnings to
support the minor children, again we had leave to withdraw....

I can think of nothing so helpless and humiliating as the
position of a disfranchised person. I do not know whether I am
treading on dangerous toes when I say that, after the late war
the Government in power wished to punish Jefferson Davis, and it
considered that the worst punishment it could inflict upon him
was to take away his right to vote. Now, the odium which attached
to him from his disfranchisement is just the same as attaches to
women from their disfranchisement. The only persons who are not
allowed to vote in Massachusetts are the lunatics, idiots, felons
and people who can not read and write. In what a category is this
to place women, after one hundred years and at the close of this
nineteenth century? And yet that is history. In Massachusetts we
are trying to get a small concession--the right to vote in the
cities and towns in which we live in regard to the taxes we have