ng for his wife and children? What is to become of the family
of the laboring man whose strength has been sapped by excessive toil and
who has been thrown upon the industrial scrap heap? It is questions
like these we must answer if we are to justify free institutions. They
are questions to which the masses of people are chained as to a body of
death. And they are questions which other and poorer nations are
answering.

We progressives mean that America shall answer them. The Progressive
party is the helping hand to those whom a vicious industrialism has
maimed and crippled. We are for the conservation of our natural
resources; but even more we are for the conservation of human life. Our
forests, water power and minerals are valuable and must be saved from
the spoilers; but men, women and children are more valuable and they,
too, must be saved from the spoilers.

Because women, as much as men, are a part of our economic and social
life, women, as much as men, should have the voting power to solve all
economic and social problems. Votes for women are theirs as a matter of
natural right alone; votes for women should be theirs as a matter of
political wisdom also. As wage-earners, they should help to solve the
labor problem; as property owners they should help to solve the tax
problem; as wives and mothers they should help to solve all the problems
that concern the home. And that means all national problems; for the
Nation abides at the fireside.

If it is said that women cannot help defend the Nation in time of war
and therefore that they should not help to determine the Nation's
destinies in time of peace, the answer is that women suffer and serve in
time of conflict as much as men who carry muskets. And the deeper answer
is that those who bear the Nation's soldiers are as much the Nation's
defenders as their sons.

Public spokesmen for the invisible government say that many of our
reforms are unconstitutional. The same kind of men said the same thing
of every effort the Nation has made to end national abuses. But in every
case, whether in the courts, at the ballot box, or on the battlefield,
the vitality of the Constitution was vindicated.

The Progressive party believes that the Constitution is a living thing,
growing with the people's growth, strengthening with the people's
strength, aiding the people in their struggle for life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness, permitting the people to meet all their needs as