may
hope for more good things to follow.

The Republican party, in convention assembled, at Des Moines,
July 1, 1874, inserted the following, as the tenth plank of its
platform:

_Resolved_, That since the people may be entrusted with all
questions of governmental reform, we favor the final
submission to them of the question of amending the
constitution so as to extend the right of suffrage to women,
pursuant to the action of the fifteenth General Assembly.

The reading of the resolution called forth cheers of approval,
and was adopted without a dissenting vote, Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton
Harbert is entitled to great credit for this "woman's plank," she
having gone before the committee on resolutions and made an
earnest appeal for woman's recognition by the Republican party.
The _State Record_ said:

When the Republicans, in national convention, recognized
woman, and gave her a plank in the platform of the party, it
reflected back a spirit of justice and progress which is
looked for in vain in the party opposing, of whatever name.
But when the Republicans of Iowa gave to a woman the
privilege of bringing in a plank of her own production, and
that plank was added to the State platform without a
dissenting voice, it placed Iowa, men and women alike, in
the vanguard of the world's onward march to a more rational
life, more even justice, and purer government.

In the Republican State platform of Iowa is the first real
and purely woman's plank that ever entered into any
political platform--because it originated in the brain of
woman. It was by a woman carried to the committee, and in
response to an able, dignified, and true womanly appeal, it
was accepted, and by the convention incorporated into the
platform of the party. It may seem to be a small plank, but
it has strength and durability. It is the live oak of a
living principle, that will remain sound while other planks
of greater bulk around it will have served their purpose and
wasted away.

It argues thus: if woman is competent to present a political
issue, clothed in her own language, with a dignity and
modesty that silence opposit