ane of self-respect and
self-protection but will it not add the balance of power so much
needed by the workingmen in their struggle for protective
legislation, which will in the end be shared by the women? Today
women are cheap, unskilled labor and will be until organization
and technical training and the responsibility of the vote in
their hands develop a consciousness of their social value....

The vote and all that it implies will awaken this sense of value.
It will give to the wage-earning woman a new status in industry,
for men will help to educate her when she is a political as well
as an industrial co-worker. As man gave strength to the
developing of the institution of the home so woman must be given
the opportunity to help man humanize the State. This can be done
only when she has the ballot and shares the responsibility.

Representative A. W. Lafferty of Oregon said in his brief five
minutes: "I believe it is not only practicable but that it would be
profitable to the United States to extend equal suffrage to men and
women. We have had here this morning a practical demonstration of the
ability of the women of this country to participate intelligently in
the discussion of public questions. I think that we could not make a
mistake in placing the ballot in the hand that rocks the cradle.
Having only the best interests of this republic at heart, I believe it
would be a good thing if fifty of the mothers of this country were in
the House of Representatives today and I wish that at least
twenty-five of them were in the Senate. You should consider, as
lawyers, as statesmen and as historians that in the history of the
civilized world in monarchies women have participated in the
Government; it is a shame that in a republic like ours, the best form
of government that has ever yet been established, women can not, under
the present law, actively participate in it."

The address which Representative Edward T. Taylor put into the
_Congressional Record_ on this occasion was also printed in a pamphlet
of forty pages and until the end of the movement for woman suffrage
was a standard document for distribution by the National Association.
He said in the introduction:

I want to recite in a plain, conversational way some of my
personal experiences and individual observations extending over a
period of thirty years of public life, during nearly nin