All but four of the members of the House Judiciary Committee were present, including the chairman, Richard Wayne Parker (N. J.), a remarkable attendance, and they showed much interest.[69] Mrs. Florence Kelley, second vice-president of the National Suffrage Association, was in charge of the speakers and the hearing was opened by Representative A. W. Rucker (Col.), who had introduced the resolution for the Federal Amendment, as also had Representative F. W. Mondell (Wyo.). Mrs. Kelley called attention to the petition of 404,823 names, saying: "Among those who have signed the petition are sixteen Governors, a large number of Mayors and many State, county and city officials; many of the best-known instructors and writers on political economy and many presidents of colleges and universities. It includes the names of many Judges of Supreme Courts and among them the Chief Justice and Associate Justice of Hawaii. It contains a long list of the names of persons engaged in various trades and from those in the thirty-three States which are classified are 7,515 professional people, lawyers, doctors, clergymen and others; also 52,603 listed as home keepers."
Mrs. Susan W. Fitzgerald (Mass.) said in part: "I come here to speak for those 52,000 home makers who signed the petition to Congress asking for equal political rights in this democracy.... To ask woman under our modern industrial conditions to care adequately for her home and family without a right to share in the making of the laws and the electing of all those officers who are to enforce the laws is like asking people to make bricks without straw. It cannot be done. We must remember that in the early days of this country a family was practically self-supporting and independent of the rest of the community; a man and a woman working together could provide for their family all that was necessary for their sustenance; meats, vegetables, grains, milk, eggs, butter, cheese, all were home products. They provided their own lighting and controlled their own water supply. The women spun the thread, wove the cloth, dyed it and made the garments. In every way, if it was necessary, the family could maintain its existence independent of the cooperation of society except in the one matter of defense from violence. None of this is true today." Mrs. Fitzgerald took up the questions of food, drink and clothing as supplied at the present time and showed the great need that women should have a voice in the legislation that controls their production.
It had been announced that all of the arguments would be made along industrial lines. Arthur E. Holder, of the legislative committee of the American Federation of Labor, presented for the record a series of the very positive resolutions for woman suffrage which had been adopted by that body at its annual conventions beginning with 1904 and read the one passed at Toronto in 1909: "The best interests of labor require the admission of women to full citizenship as a matter of justice to them and as a necessary step toward insuring and raising the scale of wages for all." He closed a strong speech by saying: "We want the right of representation for all the people, women as well as men. Women have been disfranchised in our country long enough and we now ask for that measure which will constitutionally grant the right to vote to the women of our land. We believe that women ought to be free agents, free selectors, free voters. The law is no respecter of persons. Women cannot shirk their responsibility because they are women; neither should they be longer denied their normal citizenship rights and privileges because they are women."
In a most convincing address Mrs. Elizabeth Schauss, factory inspector of Ohio, said:
It seems almost superfluous that we should come here pleading for the vote when we know it is the only thing which will give the wage-earning woman the protection that she needs and should have, as to-day she has absolutely no chance beside her brother. Although she gives the same quality and the same amount of work yet she can not command the same wage, and why? Simply because she is not a recognized citizen by virtue of the ballot. If you would go into the factories, the mills, the mercantile establishments and meet these women and learn from them the indignities to which they ofttimes are subjected in order that they may retain their places you would not wait for any one to come here and argue the question with you. You would see for yourselves that the only remedy is to grant to them that same protection that you give to every man over 21 years of age. The girl so employed submits in a way to these things because she is thinking of the time when her factory days will be over, when she will make a home for husband and children, and God forbid that the time shall ever come that our girls will lose sight of this, their greatest vocation! But before they are competent to take charge of the home in every sense of the word, before they can give to their children all that these should have, they must themselves be placed upon a basis of equality with their husbands....
Why should I, a tax-paying woman, be denied the right by casting my ballot to say how these taxes that I am paying shall be expended? In the light of progress and of American civilization, we know this cannot continue. We have great things at stake in our children. We are trying to take away that shadow which rests upon these United States, the shadow of child labor. It will not be done until the mothers have the right to speak for their children through the ballot. We are looking for the day when we shall be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with our men and share with them the burdens and responsibilities of this greatest nation and be able to hold up our heads and say: "We are on an equal footing because we have men in the United States who recognize equality of rights."
Mrs. Raymond Robins, thoroughly qualified to speak on this question, said in part: "I have the great honor and privilege of representing, as president of the National Women's Trade Union League, something like 75,000 organized working women, and I believe all through our country as well as through all the world there is a growing recognition of the cost of our modern industrial conditions to women. These are such that in many thousands of instances the motherhood of our girls has to be forfeited. No one knows except those who have made a very intimate and careful study of the present cost of social and industrial conditions how great that cost is. When we demanded in Illinois the limiting of the working hours for women to ten a day, many of our women physicians brought forward facts of great value showing the tremendous physical danger to girls of overwork. At present a very interesting and valuable investigation is going on, led by some of our woman physicians, showing the evil result on the second generation of these industrial conditions.... These facts are of national importance and it is because right there is the crux of the entire situation that we women are working for the ballot, for the sake of protecting the womanhood and motherhood of our 6,000,000 working women, I think half of them under 21 years of age...."
Mrs. Robins gave a number of special instances and in answer to the question how the ballot would remedy these evils, she said: "The women, an unorganized group, get together and take collective action and they find themselves not fighting their industrial battles in the economic field but in the political field and the weapons that are constantly used against them with the greatest success are political weapons. The power of the police and of the courts is used against them in many instances and whenever they try to meet that expression of political power, they are handicapped because there is no force in their hands to help change it...."
In the course of a speech punctuated with lively questions and answers Mrs. Upton said: "I represent the industry of wifehood and housekeeping. I spent many of my childhood days in the room of this committee, my father having been a member of the Judiciary Committee for thirteen years and chairman for several years. He was the only one who ever reported a bill favorably for woman suffrage.... I want to ask you to report against us if you will not report for us. Just tell the world that we must not vote because we cannot fight, because it will destroy the home, anything you please, but break your long years of silence. Is it fair for you not to tell us why you are opposed to us? Women are not fools; on the contrary, they are very intelligent people and sure to be enfranchised before long. If this committee does not help some other will; it is going to be done and it is for you to decide whether your daughters will be able to say years from now, 'My father was one of the men who helped get woman suffrage!' While men of this country have been running after dollars at a terrific rate in recent years women have been studying and preparing themselves in clubs and all sorts of organizations for this right, so that they will be the most intelligent class—if you call them a class—that was ever enfranchised in all history. Are you afraid of intelligence? All we ask is to let the mother heart, the home element, be expressed in the government.... I beg of you to let all the world know why the women of the United States, who by hundreds of thousands have petitioned you to submit this amendment, ought not have at least this request considered and a report on it made."