ary Bentley Thomas (Md.); the Rev.
Antoinette Brown Blackwell (N. J.); Miss Anne Fitzhugh Miller (N. Y.);
Mrs. Upton, Mrs. Steinem and Mrs. Fessenden.

The hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, the Hon. John J.
Jenkins (Wis.), chairman, was in charge of Mrs. Florence Kelley, first
vice-president of the association. Mrs. Blankenburg told of the
herculean efforts of over 2,000 women at the last November election of
Philadelphia. Mrs. Harriet A. Eager spoke of the work of a woman's
Committee of Moral Education in Boston where there was no law
prohibiting the circulation of any kind of literature. They went to
the Legislature for such a law with a petition from 32,000 of the
representative women of Massachusetts and stayed there six weeks
working for it only to have it refused. She told how the women of the
State petitioned fifty-five years for a law giving mothers equal
guardianship of their children and pointed out the helpless position
of women without political power.

Miss Kate M. Gordon of New Orleans, corresponding secretary of the
association, began: "My message this morning was particularly for the
southern members of the committee but I shall have to ask others
present to carry it to them, as I do not believe any of them are here
although seven are members." She protested against the attitude of
southern members of Congress toward woman suffrage and expressed the
deep resentment of southern women at their classification with the
disfranchised, saying that their men more than all others should feel
the responsibility of lifting them from their present humiliating
position. Mrs. Ella S. Stewart, president of the Illinois Suffrage
Association, based her argument on simple justice, and said in
conclusion: "Your power is absolute and your responsibility
correspondingly great. Humiliating as it is for me to beg for what is
mine from strangers, I would a thousand times rather be a defrauded
mendicant than to hold in my hand the rights, the destiny and the
happiness of millions of human beings and have the heart to deny their
just claims."

Mrs. Mary Kenney O'Sullivan (Mass.) spoke "as one representing
3,000,000 women who have been forced out of the home through
necessity," and said in the course of her strong speech: "I know that
the working women of this country are not receiving the highest wages
because they have not a vote. Right here in Washington, in your big
bindery of the Government, a trade to which