tle more than
one-third of all the people in this country, something over 29,500,000
in actual numbers, are children under the age of fifteen--that is,
still in a state of tutelage; and it is of unbounded importance that
nothing be done by the rest of us which will injure this budding
growth. So it is right to judge in large measure any proposed change
in our social fabric by its probable effect on that dependent third of
the race to whom we are pledged, for whose succession it is the work
of this generation to prepare. What we propose is to give universal
suffrage to women."

Answering the question, "Do we propose a mad revolution?" she traced
the development in the position of woman, every step of which was
condemned at the time as a dangerous innovation. "It was a revolution
when women were given equal property rights over their goods and equal
rights over their children," she said. "We must blush that there are
States in this country where that revolution is still to be
accomplished. I have heard an old Illinois lawyer describe the early
efforts to secure equal property rights for women in that State and
the constant objection that such laws would destroy the family, that
there could be no harmony unless the ownership were all in one person
and that person the man. It was feared then, as now, that women would
become tyrannical and unbearable if they were allowed too much
independence. Do children suffer because their mothers own property?"
She pointed out the necessity for woman's political influence on
humanitarian movements and said: "Suffrage for women is not the final
word in human freedom but it is the next step in the onward march,
because it is the next step in equalizing the rights and balancing the
duties of the two types of individuals who make up the human race."

Miss Lathrop showed the need of legislation for all social reforms and
how the experience of women beginning with domestic duties carried
them forward to a sense of their obligations in community life and a
fitness for it. Referring to the uneducated women she said: "The
ignorant vote is not the working vote. Working women in great
organized factories have been having, since they began that work, an
education for the suffrage. They are not the ignorant voters nor are
wives of workingmen; at least, they know in part what they need to
safeguard themselves and their homes. The ignorant vote is the
complacent, blind vote of men and of the feminine