with a strong appeal for a report from
the committee which should recommend Congress to submit a Sixteenth
Amendment and allow the women of the country to carry their case to
the State Legislatures. The committee seemed much impressed by the
arguments, but evidently there was no change of opinion.[86]

A hearing was granted February 17 by the House Judiciary Committee,
with delegates present from twenty-six States. Addresses were made in
part as follows:

MRS. CHAPMAN CATT: ... You know that in these modern years there
has been a great deal of talk about natural rights, and we have
had an innumerable host of philosophers writing books to tell us
what natural rights are. I believe that to-day both scientists
and philosophers are agreed that they are the right to life, the
right to liberty, the right to free speech, the right to go where
you will and when you please, the right to earn your own living
and the right to do the best you can for yourself. One of the
greatest of those philosophers and writers, Herbert Spencer, has
accorded to woman the same natural rights as to man. I believe
every thoughtful man in the United States to-day concedes that
point.

The ballot has been for man a means of defending these natural
rights. Even now in some localities of the world those rights are
still defended by the revolver, as in former days, but in
peaceable communities the ballot is the weapon by means of which
they are protected. We find, as women citizens, that when we are
wronged, when our rights are infringed upon, inasmuch as we have
not this weapon with which to defend them, they are not
considered, and we are very many times imposed upon. We find that
the true liberty or the American people demands that all citizens
to whom these rights have been accorded should have that
weapon....

MRS. LIDA A. MERIWETHER (Tenn.): "Oh, Caesar, we who are about to
die salute you!" was the gladiators' cry in the arena, standing
face to face with death and with the Roman populace. All over
this fair city, youth and beauty, freshness and joy, stand with
welcoming hands, calling you to all pleasures of ear and eye, of
soul and sense. But here, into the inner sanctuary of your
deepest, gravest thought, come, year after year, a little band of
women over whose heads the snows of many win