that go to make up that grand unity we come before
you to-day and ask you to recognize our rights as citizens of this
Republic.

We know that many of us lay ourselves liable to contumely and
ridicule. We have to meet sneers; but we are determined that in
the defense of right we will ignore everything but what we feel to
be our duty.

We do not come here as agitators, or aimless, dissatisfied,
unhappy women by any means; but we come as human beings,
recognizing our responsibility to God for the advantages that have
come to us in the development of the ages. We wish to discharge
that responsibility faithfully, effectually, and conscientiously,
and we can not do it under our form of government, hedged in as we
are by the lack of a power which is such a mighty engine in our
form of government for every means of work.

I say to you, then, we come as one-half of the great whole. There
is an essential difference in the sexes. Mr. Parkman labored very
hard to prove what no one would deny--that there is an essential
difference in the sexes, and it is because of that very
differentiation, the union of which in home, the recognition of
which in society, brings the greatest happiness, the recognition
of which in the church brings the greatest power and influence for
good, and the recognition of which in the Government would enable
us finally, as near as it is possible for humanity, to perfect our
form of government. Probably we can never have a perfect form of
government, but the nearer we approximate to the divine the nearer
will we attain to perfection; and the divine government recognizes
neither caste, class, sex, nor nationality. The nearer we approach
to that divine ideal the nearer we will come to realizing our
hopes of finally securing at least the most perfect form of human
government that it is possible for us to secure.

I do not wish to trespass upon your time, but I have felt that
this movement is not understood by a great majority of people.
They think that we are unhappy, that we are dissatisfied, that
we are restive. That is not the case. When we look over the
statistics of our State and find that 60 per cent. of all the
crime is the result of drunkenness; when we find that 60 per cent.
of the orphan children that fill our pauper homes are the children
of drunk