s is worse than mockery, it is cruelty.
Responsibilities grow out of rights and powers. Therefore before
mothers can rightfully be held responsible for the vices and crimes,
for the general demoralization of society, they must possess all
possible rights and powers to control the conditions and
circumstances of their own and their children's lives."

The audience then listened with keen appreciation to the president's
address, during which she said: "If I were asked what are the great
obstacles to the speedy enfranchisement of women I should answer:
There are three; the first is militarism, which once dominated the
entire thought of the world and made its history. Although its old
power is gone and its influence upon public thought grows constantly
less, it still molds the opinions of millions of people and holds them
to the old ideals of force in government and headship in the family.
The second obstacle is the unconscious, unmeasured influence upon the
estimate in which women as a whole are held that emanates from that
most debasing of our evil institutions, prostitution.... The third
great cause is the inertia in the growth of democracy which has come
as a reaction following the aggressive movements that with possibly
ill-advised haste enfranchised the foreigner, the negro and the
Indian. Perilous conditions, seeming to follow from the introduction
into the body politic of vast numbers of irresponsible citizens, have
made the nation timid. These three influences, born of centuries of
tradition, shape every opinion of the opponents of woman suffrage. Not
an objection, argument or excuse can be urged against the movement
which may not be traced to one of these causes."

At the close of Mrs. Catt's address Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford of Denver
presented her with a handsome gavel in behalf of the suffrage
association of Colorado. The gavel was made of Colorado silver and the
settings and engravings of Colorado gold. In one side was a Colorado
amethyst, and the Colorado flower, the columbine, was burned into the
gavel by a Colorado girl. Mrs. Bradford said she wished Mrs. Catt the
good luck said to follow the possessor of an amethyst, who "shall
speak the right word at the right time." She presented it as an
expression of gratitude for her aid in their successful suffrage
campaign of 1893. "We are apt to attribute everything good in Colorado
to woman suffrage," said Mrs. Catt in response, "but in my secret mind
I think muc