enfranchise ignorance and vice
and disfranchise intelligence and virtue?" The action of Legislatures
in past years was depicted as "playing shuttlecock and battledore with
the amendment, passing it in one House to defeat it in another, in a
hypocritical desire to appear favorable and inspire us with hope in
order to retain the small amount of influence they think we possess,
and yet compelling us to begin the work all over again." After
reviewing the long struggle of American women for political freedom
she ended with an impassioned peroration of which only a portion can
be quoted:

No class of men in any nation have ever been compelled to wage
such an arduous and difficult struggle for their political
freedom. Through the influence of the Democratic party, without
an effort on their own behalf, white working men were
enfranchised; and by an Act of Congress under Republican
leadership the newly emancipated men slaves were protected in
their right of suffrage. The same Act placed in the Constitution
of the United States for the first time the word "male," which
robbed women of the protection guaranteed to every other class of
citizens in the most sacred right of citizenship--the right to a
voice in the Government.

Such is the boasted chivalry of the Land of Freedom, which has
left its women to strive against tradition, prejudice,
conservatism, self-interest, political power and in addition all
the forces of corruption combined, to secure the privilege which
was conferred upon vast numbers of men who never even demanded it
and many of whom knew nothing of its significance after it was
granted. I claim, and fear no contradiction, that the women of
this land are better qualified to exercise the suffrage with
intelligence, honesty and patriotism than were any other class of
citizens in the world at the time when it was conferred upon
them.

Must women, unaided, continue the struggle for forty years longer
until they have rounded out a century, assailing the bulwarks of
prohibitive constitutions in the forty-one States yet to be won?
Or will not some brave, consistent and freedom-loving President,
recognizing the duty the Government owes to the disfranchised
millions of patriotic women, recommend to Congress to submit an
amendment to the Federal Constitution forbidding disfranch