to pay. In 1792, in Newburyport, Mass., it was not thought
necessary to give women education. At that time there were no
schools for girls; the public money was not so used, and when one
man said he had five daughters, and paid his taxes like other
men, and his girls were not allowed to attend school, and that
they ought to give the girls a chance, another man said, "Take
the public money and educate shes? Never!"

Remember this was one hundred years ago. Some of the fathers
urged that the girls should be educated in the public schools,
and so the men--God forgive them!--said, "We will let the girls
go in the morning between 6 and 8 o'clock, before the boys want
the schoolhouse." Just think of the time those girls would have
to rise in order to have a little instruction before the boys got
there! This plan did not work well, and the teacher was directed
not to teach females any longer. Every descendant of those men
now feels ashamed of them; and I think that in one hundred years
the children of the men who are now letting us come here, year
after year, pleading for suffrage, will feel ashamed. Men would
rather lose anything than their votes; they would fight for their
right of suffrage, and if anybody attempted to deprive them of it
there would be war to the knife and the knife to the hilt. We
come here to carry on our bloodless warfare, praying that the
privilege granted in the foundation of the Government should be
applied to women....

What we look forward to is part of the eternal order. It is not
possible that thirty millions of women should be held forever as
lunatics, fools and criminals. It is not possible, as the years
go on, that each person should not at least have the right to
look after his or her own interests. As the home is at its best
when the father and mother consult together in regard to the
family interests, so it is with the Government. I do not think a
man can see from a man's point of view all the things that a
woman needs, or a woman from her single point of view all the
things that a man needs. Now men have brought their best, and
also brought their worst, into the Government, and it is all
here, but the thing you have not at all is the qualities which
women possess, the feminine qualities. It has been said that