tion of helpless subjection?...
The industrial basis of the life of the woman has changed and the
political superstructure must be adjusted to conform to it. This
industrial change has given to woman a larger horizon, a greater
freedom of action in the industrial world. Greater freedom and
larger expression are at hand for her in the political life. The
time is ripe for the extension of the franchise to women.

We do not come before you to beg of you the granting of any
favor. We present to you a glorious opportunity to place
yourselves abreast of the current of this great evolutionary
movement.

Mrs. Donald Hooker of Baltimore gave striking instances of the
conditions in that State regarding the social evil, of the hundreds of
virtuous girls who every year are forced into a life of shame, of the
thousands of children who die because mothers have no voice in making
laws for their protection. "There was never a great act of injustice,"
she said, "that was not paid for in human life and happiness. A great
act of injustice is being perpetrated by denying women the right to
vote."

Miss Leonora O'Reilly, a leader among the working women of New York,
made an impassioned plea that carried conviction. "I have been a
wage-earner since I was thirteen," she said, "and I know whereof I
speak. I want to make you realize the lives of hundreds of girls I
have seen go down in this struggle for bread. We working women want
the ballot as our right. You say it is not a right but a privilege.
Then we demand it as a privilege. All women ought to have it,
wage-earning women must have it." After plainer speaking than the
committee had ever heard from a woman she concluded: "You may tell us
that our place is in the home. There are 8,000,000 of us in these
United States who must go out of it to earn our daily bread and we
come to tell you that while we are working in the mills, the mines,
the factories and the mercantile houses we have not the protection
that we should have. You have been making laws for us and the laws you
have made have not been good for us. Year after year working women
have gone to the Legislature in every State and have tried to tell
their story of need in the same old way. They have gone believing in
the strength of the big brother, believing that the big brother could
do for them what they should, as citizens, do for themselves. They
have seen time after time the pow