ted me assured me that I should be welcome
even if I did not support all the views which were here advanced.
I considered that this movement represented a sufficient part of
the intelligence of the community to justify my coming here and
welcoming you to Washington. The difficulty I expect to encounter
is this--at least it is a difficulty that occurs to me as I judge
my own feelings in causes in which I have an intense interest--to
wit: that I am always a good deal more impatient with those who
only go half-way with me than with those who actually oppose me.
Now when I was sixteen years old and was graduated from the
Woodward High School in Cincinnati, I took for my subject "Woman
Suffrage" and I was as strong an advocate of it as any member of
this convention. I had read Mills's "Subjection of Women"; my
father was a woman suffragist and so at that time I was orthodox
but in the actual political experience which I have had I have
modified my views somewhat.

In the first place popular representative government we approve
and support because on the whole every class, that is, every set
of individuals who are similarly situated in the community, who
are intelligent enough to know what their own interests are, are
better qualified to determine how those interests shall be cared
for and preserved than any other class, however altruistic that
class may be; but I call your attention to two qualifications in
that statement. One is that the class should be intelligent
enough to know its own interests. The theory that Hottentots or
any other uneducated, altogether unintelligent class is fitted
for self-government at once or to take part in government is a
theory that I wholly dissent from--but this qualification is not
applicable here. The other qualification to which I call your
attention is that the class should as a whole care enough to look
after its interests, to take part as a whole in the exercise of
political power if it is conferred. Now if it does not care
enough for this, then it seems to me that the danger is, if the
power is conferred, that it may be exercised by that part of the
class least desirable as political constituents and be neglected
by many of those who are intelligent and patriotic and would be
most desirable as members of the