before the war broke out that the French Parliament was
pledged to extend universal municipal suffrage to women. Men and women
of high repute say the full suffrage is certain to be extended by
the British Parliament to the women of England, Scotland, Ireland and
Wales soon after the close of the war and already these women have all
suffrage rights except the vote for Parliamentary members. These facts
are strange since it was the United States which first established
general suffrage for men upon the two principles that "taxation
without representation is tyranny" and that governments to be just
should "derive their consent from the governed." The unanswerable
logic of these two principles is responsible for the extension of
suffrage to men and women the world over. In the United States,
however, women are still taxed without "representation" and still
live under a government to which they have given no "consent." IT IS
OBVIOUSLY UNFAIR TO SUBJECT WOMEN OF THIS COUNTRY--WHICH BOASTS THAT
IT IS THE LEADER IN THE MOVEMENT TOWARD UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE--TO A
LONGER, HARDER, MORE DIFFICULT PROCESS THAN HAS BEEN IMPOSED BY OTHER
NATIONS UPON MEN OR WOMEN. American constitutions of the nation and
the states have closed the door to the simple processes by which men
and women of other countries have been enfranchised. An amendment to
our Federal Constitution is the nearest approach to them. To deny the
benefits of this method to the women of this country is to put upon
them a PENALTY FOR BEING AMERICANS.

[Footnote A: See Appendix A for dates and conditions.]

2. EQUAL RIGHTS DEMANDS IT.

Men of this country have been enfranchised by various extensions of
the voting privilege but IN NO SINGLE INSTANCE were they compelled to
appeal to an electorate containing groups of recently naturalized
and even unnaturalized foreigners, Indians, Negroes, large numbers of
illiterates, ne'er-do-wells, and drunken loafers. The Jews, denied the
vote in all our colonies, and the Catholics, denied the vote in
most of them, received their franchise through the revolutionary
constitutions which removed all religious qualifications for the vote
in a manner consistent with the self-respect of all. The property
qualifications for the vote which were established in every colony and
continued in the early state constitutions were usually removed by a
referendum but the question obviously went to an electorate limited to
property-holders only. The larges