SPEECHES & WRITINGS FILE
[Woman's Suffrage]

It is a blessed dispensation of Providence that the good great women and
great men do is not confined within the narrow limits of a life time.
Such a prodigal waste of goodness and greatness would make the human race
poor, indeed.  It is because deeds live long that the lives of real heroes
and heroines, the real benefactors of the world are so precious in our
sight.  It is because their careers are an inspiration to  us that we hang
so rapturously upon the words they uttered, cling so tenaciously upon the
principles they enunciated and tell so proudly the work they accomplished.
It is because their lives are lessons, object lessons at that, which are
the most effective of all lessons that we study them with such conscientious
care.  They are guides to us, when we grope in darkness and comforts,
when we groan in despair.
Thus we are gathered here to day in loving remembrance of those whose live
were the incarnation of those qualities and virtues which make for the
elevation and progress not of any particular sex or race but of mankind
as a whole.  The lives of those whose services to the world we commemorate 
to day were so full of sacrifices for the general good and were so
distinguished for the high standard of conduct to which they rigidly adhered
that they are among the most priceless legacies which this or any
other nation could possibly possess.  It would be instrictive and inspiring
to review chronologically the principal events in the careers of those who
were pioneers in the woman suffrage movement, for their careers are replete
with interest to us all.  But since lack of time forbids a review of
the lives or these individuals, we could do nothing better than to confine
ourselves for a few minutes to a discussion of the subject which was so
dear to their hearts.
To assign reasons in this day and time to prove that it is unjust
to withhold from one half of the human race rights and privileges freely
accorded the other half which is neither more deserving nor more capable of
exercising them seems almost like a reflection upon the intelligence of
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those to whom they are presented.  To argue the inalienability and the
equality of human rights in the twentieth century in a country whose government
was founded upon the eternal principles that all men are created
free and equal, that governments get their just powers from the consent of
the governed seems like laying one's self to the charge of anachronism.
For two thousand years mankind has been breaking down the various barriers
which interposed themselves between creatures made in the image of God and
their perfect freedom to exercise all the faculties with which the have
been divinely endowed.  Even in moarchies old fetters which formerly restricted
freedom, dwarfed the intellect and doomed certain individuals to
narrow, circumscribed spheres, because of the mere accident of birth, are
being loosed and broken one by one.
In view of such wisdom and experience the political subjection
of woman in the United States can be likened only to a relic of barbarism
or to a spot upon the moon, or to an octopus helping this republic in its
hideous grasp, so that further progress to the best form of government is
impossible and that precious idea its founders promised it would be seems
nothing more tangible than a mirage.  As a nation we professed long ago to
have abandoned the principle that might makes right.  Before the world, we
pose to day a government whose citizens are guaranteed the right to
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness by the constitution.  And yet in
spite of these lofty professions and noble sentiments and the present
policy of the United States is to hold one half of its citizens in
political subjection to the other hald without being able to give good and
sufficient reasons for violating the very principles upon which the government
was founded.
The disparity between the theory and the practice of this government
is all the more striking, when one reflects that in withholding from
women the right of suffrage, men are inflicting upon them the same injustice
as that from which their forefathers and foremothers fought so

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desperately to be free.  with hearts afire with burning indignation and in
tones which shook the very foundations of all the governments of this earth
the pilgrim fathers declared that taxation without representation was tyranny.
In defense of this principle, they with the equally courageous and
loyal women of the colonies were willing to endure the horrors of a seven
years war.  But no sooner had independence and liberty been purchased by the
blood and treasure of their champions - without regard to sex that the same
tyranny which had evoked what was called a righteous war was saddled upon
women who had just helped to lift the yoke of oppression from the necks of
men.  Though women are to day and always have been taxed equally with men,
though the hardships and burdens of war fall as heavily upon women as upon
men, though the evils from misgovernment fall as heavily upon women as
upon men,, since women are denied this right of suffrage they can neither
defend themselves nor remove the evils which vex and oppress them.
What a reproach it is to a government which owes its very existence
to the love of freedom in the human heart that it should deprive any of 
its citizens of their sacred and cherished rights.  The founders of this
Republic called Heaven and earth to witness that it should be a government
of the people, for the people, and by the people.  And yet the elective
franchise is withheld from one half of its citizens, many of whom are intelligent,
virtuous and cultures and unstintingly bestowed upon the other
half, many of whom are illiterate, degraded and vicious, because the word
people by an unparelled exhibition of lexicographical acrobatics has been
turned and twisted to mean all who were shrewd and wise enough to have
themselves born boys instead of girls, or who took to trouble to be born
white instead of black.
Political thralldom is all the harder for women to bear, because it
can not be defended by anything which in the wildest flight of a lurid
imagination can be dignified by the name of argument or supported by anything
which bears the slightest semblance to fact.  Reduced to their low[?]

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terms the very reasons which can be assigned for denying women all their
rights as citizens are as follows: in the beginning man was stronger physically
than woman.  The power which his tougher muscle, not his finer,
stronger mentality enabled him to acquire over them has been so crystallized
into custom and grafted into law that now it seems perfectly natural for
woman to be dominated by man and unwomanly in her to resist his rule and
assert her rights.  And so this masculine usurpation of power which had its
origin in brute force has been maintained down thru all the ages with
crushing effect to blight the prospects and blast the hopes of its victims.
When one reads those immortal lines in our constitution, in which
the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness is guaranteed the
citizens of this republic and reflects upon the great number of intelligent,
cultured, patriotic women, from the right to liberty has been violently
snatched, to whom the highest happiness is impossible, because they
are forbidden by law from discharging their obligation to the State, he
can not but be deeply impressed with this striking object lesson in the
miscarriage of justice and in the futility of good intentions, when adherence
to the old law of force is the avowed principle of those who hold the
reins of government in their hands.
But why all this indignation and pathos about the circumscribed
sphere of woman, the remonstrants and their friends sometimes ask.  Before
the chronic fault-finders and the disgruntled few began to agitate the
question of woman suffrage, women were perfectly satisfied with their lot.
But the statement like so many others can not be sustained by the facts.
There have always been a few women in the world who knew a hawk from a
hand saw, even when the darkness which covered the female brain was the
densest.  These few have understood perfectly the masculine motives underlying
the embargo placed upon the female brain. They have chafed because of
the unnecessary, unreasonable restraint imposed upon them by custom and
have felt degraded because they were disfranchised by law.

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Even if it be true that the majority of American women are not at all concerned 
about securing their political rights, such indifference and inertia 
on their part can be easily explained. Until recently the education of 
woman was planned with such subtle cunning that she was deeply, indelibly
impressed with the fact that any attempt on her part to usurp man's exclusive 
right in the field of literature, politics, science or art would not
only be treason against nature, but an offence which good society would
never forgive. Under such circumstances it was too much to expect that
the majority of women would openly rebel against their political disabilities, 
even if they had sufficient mental acumen to recognize them as such. 
Three of the most serious charges which can be preferred against human 
slavery in any form is that it utterly infits its victime for serious 
thought, that it crushes their spirit and paralyzes their will. But in spite of custom, education and law, or rather the lack of it, many more
American women have secretly rebelled against political disabilities than
the world will ever know.
But why grant women the suffrage, if the majority do not want 
it, the remonstrants sometimes ask with innocent, engaging seriousness.
Simply because there are many people, men as well as women, who are so
constructed by nature to be unable to ascertain by any process of reason 
what it the best thing for them to have or to do. Until the path is
blazed by the pionned, those who have superior intellects and great moral
courage refuse to forge ahead. On the same principle and for just exactly
the same reason that American women would reject suffrage, Chinese women
they ever expressed an opinion at all would object to having the feet
of their dear little girls removed from the bandages which stunt their
growth. East Indian women would  with indigation and scorn reject the proffered freedom of their 
American sisters as unnatural and vulgar and would die before they would
have their harems abolished. Before the war slaves in the South always
referred to free niggers with contempt and scorn. Slaves have often preferred

Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.