appointed by men who are politicians.

MISS ANTHONY. I want to read a few words that come from good
authority, for black men at least. I find here a little extract
that I copied years ago from the Anti-Slavery Standard of 1870. As
you know, Wendell Phillips was the editor of that paper at that
time:

"A man with the ballot in his hand is the master of the situation.
He defines all his other rights; what is not already given him he
takes."

That is exactly what we want, Senators. The rights you have not
already given us; we want to get in such a position that we can
take them.

"The ballot makes every class sovereign over its own fate.
Corruption may steal from a man his independence; capital may
starve, and intrigue fetter him, at times; but against all these,
his vote, intelligently and honestly cast, is, in the long run,
his full protection. If, in the struggle, his fort surrenders,
it is only because it is betrayed from within. No power ever
permanently wronged a voting class without its own consent."

Senators, I want to ask of you that you will, by the law and
parliamentary rules of your committee, allow us to agitate this
question by publishing this report and the report which you shall
make upon our petitions, as I hope you will make a report. If your
committee is so pressed with business that it can not possibly
consider and report upon this question, I wish some of you would
make a motion on the floor of the Senate that a special committee
be appointed to take the whole question of the enfranchisement
of women into consideration, and that that committee shall have
nothing else to do. This off-year of politics, when there is
nothing to do but to try how not to do it (politically, I mean,
I am not speaking personally), is the best time you can have to
consider the question of woman suffrage, and I ask you to use your
influence with the Senate to have it specially attended to this
year. Do not make us come here thirty years longer. It is twelve
years since the first time I came before a Senate committee. I
said then to Charles Sumner, if I could make the honorable Senator
from Massachusetts believe that I feel the degradation and the
humiliation of disfranchisement precisely as he would if his
fellows had adjudged him incompetent from any cause whatever from