For twelve years a body of influential women of New York City appeared before the board of estimate and apportionment to ask for the pitiable sum of $18,000 to be appropriated to pay the salaries of eighteen inspectors to look after the welfare of 60,000 women and girls in retail stores but we never got it. One candid friend, Mayor Van Wyck, in listening to our plea, told us the whole trouble. Said he: "Ladies, why do you waste your time year after year in coming before us and asking for this appropriation? You have not a voter in your constituency and you know it and we know it and you know we know it," and they never did give it to us....

A spirited discussion ensued here between Representative Robert L. Henry (Tex.) and Mrs. Kelley as to whether Congress has the power to coerce a State through a Federal Amendment into giving women the right to vote. Representative Edwin Y. Webb (N. C.) asked if the majority of women wanted to vote and she answered that there was not the slightest doubt of it, that as reasoning beings women could not help desiring a full share in the Government under which they live. Representative Goebel (O.) said that at any time man might be called on to uphold the laws and the Constitution and asked: "Do you think that woman is physically and temperamentally fitted to give any return to the Government for any privilege she might have in the exercise of her right as a citizen?" Mrs. Kelley answered: "Yes, I think we have always done it. We pay taxes, we teach the children to obey the laws, we fill their hearts with patriotism, but the principal thing is that we furnish the army at the risk of our own lives. Every time an army has been called for in the United States it has been the sons of American women on the whole who have carried the weapons and every son has been born at the risk of his mother's life. Her service is a very much greater contribution than the two or three years of the son's carrying a gun or perhaps dying of typhoid fever while in the service."

Miss Clay could not keep silent but asked if they realized how much the order of society depended on the teaching and the restraining influence of women, on their power to maintain decency of life, not alone by their presence but also by their high ideals of law and society. "When they are recognized as voting citizens," she said, "their idea of civic duty will reach a still higher point and they will have power to see that it is enforced." Members of the committee began to bring forward the stock misrepresentations about the voting of women in Colorado, which called Mr. Rucker to his feet with statistics to show that women voted in quite as large a proportion as men; that, instead of men's controlling the women's votes, women often controlled the men's; that in the hundreds of cases of election frauds only one or two women had been implicated; that less than 15 per cent. of the so-called "ostracized" women go to the polls.

In closing Chairman Parker said: "I wish to render the thanks of the committee for this large and representative audience, which is almost an American Congress. I am all the more pleased and interested to find such strong presentations by those whom I might call, possibly without offense, 'Daughters of the American Congress,' two of whom claim an acquaintance with this committee that goes back at least as far as any of us. I wish to offer all of you our thanks for the earnest consideration that you seem to have given to the great problems, industrial and social, as well as those of the family, which confront us all, and in comparison with which the political powers and actions of this country are but as nothing. Those who think and work for the good of the family, the home, the workshop, the farm and the school are those to whom the American Congress always owes its thanks."

Although the speakers who addressed these committees represented the very highest of American womanhood; although it was conceded that their arguments had never been exceeded in logic, directness and force; although there was no doubt that they represented a large proportion of the women of the country in the homes, colleges, professions and trades, yet this committee, like that of the Senate, ignored the petitions and the hearing completely and made no report whatever, either favorable or unfavorable.

FOOTNOTES:

[65] Part of Call: During the past year women have voted for the first time in Norway at a Parliamentary election, for the first time in Denmark at the Municipal elections, for the first time in Victoria at an election for the State Parliament. This year a woman has been nominated as a member of the Municipal Council in Paris, a woman is filling the office of Mayor in one English city and a number are serving as aldermen in others. In our own country women are voting for the first time in Michigan on questions of local taxation, while in Washington, Oregon, South Dakota and Oklahoma, suffrage amendments to the State constitutions are pending. From Chicago, radiating north, east, south and west, there is going out an influence which is making the social settlements centers of political influence. In Spokane, New York and Baltimore, political settlements are under way. From one of the great press centers of the world, New York City, suffrage propaganda is travelling through all civilized countries, and in its New York headquarters the National American Woman Suffrage Association is receiving news of an unprecedented rising suffrage sentiment from men and women belonging to all the great nations of the earth.

Our cause is universal, its majesty is intrinsic, its logic is unanswerable, its success is sure. Let the women of America come together in this year 1910 consecrated anew to the superb hope for humanity which lies in a full democracy.

Anna Howard Shaw, President.
Rachel Foster Avery, First Vice-President.
Florence Kelly, Second Vice-President.
Frances Squire Potter, Corresponding Secretary.
Ella S. Stewart, Recording Secretary.
Harriet Taylor Upton, Treasurer.
Laura Clay, } Auditors.
Alice Stone Blackwell,