cribed by Macaulay when
he said: "If a people are turbulent they are unfit for liberty;
if they are quiet, they do not want it." We met a curious
dilemma. On the one hand a great many men voted in the negative
because women in Great Britain had made too emphatic a demand for
the vote. Since they made that demand it is reported that
10,000,000 men have been killed, wounded or are missing through
militant action, but all of that is held as naught compared with
the burning of a few vacant buildings. Evidently the logic that
these American men followed was: Since some turbulent women in
another land are unfit to vote, no American woman shall vote.
There was no reasoning that could change the attitude of those
men. On the other hand the great majority of the men who voted
against us, as well as the great majority of the members of
Legislatures and Congress who oppose this movement, hold that
women have given no signal that they want the vote. Between the
horns of this amazing dilemma the Federal amendment and State
suffrage seem to be caught fast.

So those of us who want to learn how to obtain the vote have
naturally asked ourselves over and over again what kind of a
demand can be made. We get nothing by "watchful waiting" and if
we are turbulent we are pronounced unfit to vote. We turned to
history to learn "what kind of a demand the men of our own
country made and determined to do what they had done. The census
of 1910 reported 27,000,000 males over 21. Of these 9,500,000 are
direct descendants of the population of 1800; 2,458,873 are
negroes; 15,040,278 are aliens, naturalized or descendants of
naturalized citizens since 1800. The last two classes compose
two-thirds of the male population over 21. The enfranchisement of
negro men is such recent history that it is unnecessary to repeat
here that they made no demand for the vote. The naturalization
laws give citizenship to any man who chooses to make a residence
of this country for five years and automatically every man who is
a citizen becomes a voter in the State of his residence. In the
115 years since 1800 not one single foreigner has ever been asked
whether he wanted the vote or whether he was fit for it--it has
literally been thrust upon him. Two-thirds of our men of voting
age today