ing for his subject Women to the Front,
gave a valuable historical review of their progress during the last
half century. Mrs. Josephine K. Henry was introduced as "the daughter
of Kentucky," and the _Constitution_ said the next day: "If the spirit
of old Patrick Henry could have heard the eloquent plea of his
namesake, he would have had no reason to blush for a decadence of the
oratory which gave the name to the world." In considering Woman
Suffrage in the South, Mrs. Henry said:

It is asserted on all sides that the women of the South do not
want the ballot. The real truth is the women of the South never
have been asked what they want. When Pundita Ramabai was in this
country she saw a hen carried to market with its head downward.
This Christian method of treating a poor, dumb creature caused
the heathen woman to cry out, "Oh, how cruel to carry a hen with
its head down!" and she quickly received the reply, "Why, the hen
does not mind it"; and in her heathen innocence she inquired,
"Did you ask the hen?" Past civilization has not troubled either
dumb creatures or women by consulting them in regard to their own
affairs. For woman everything in sociology, law or politics has
been arranged without consulting her in any way, and when her
rights are trampled on and money extorted from her by the votes
of the vicious and ignorant, the glib tongue of tyranny says,
"Tax her again, she has no wish or right to tell what she wants."
...

Where the laws rob her in marriage of her property, she does want
possession and control of her inheritance and earnings. Where she
is a mother, she wants co-guardianship of her own children. Where
she is a breadwinner she wants equal pay for equal work. She
wants to wipe out the law that in its savagery protects brutality
when it preys upon innocent, defenseless girlhood. She wants the
streets and highways of the land made safe for the child whose
life cost her a hand to hand conflict with death. She wants a
single standard of morals established, where a woman may have an
equal chance with a man in this hard, old world, and it may not
be possible to crowd a fallen woman out of society and close
against her every avenue whereby she can make an honest living,
while the fallen man runs for Congress and is heaped with honors.
More than all, she need