Mrs. Harper: They could only grant it to the extent of sending us to the individual voters, while if this amendment were submitted by Congress and the Legislatures endorsed it we would never have to deal with the individual voters. We would not have to convince every legislator but only a majority.
Mr. Higgins (Conn.): In other words, as I understand you, you have more confidence in the Legislatures than in the composite citizenship.
Mrs. Harper: The composite male citizenship, you mean. We suppose, of course, that the Legislatures represent the picked men of the community, its intelligence, its judgment, the best that the country has. That is the supposition.
The Chairman: That supposition applies to Congress also, does it?
Mrs. Harper: In a larger degree.
Representative Victor L. Berger of Wisconsin, who was out of the city, sent a statement which Miss Addams requested Mrs. Elsie Cole Phillips of Wisconsin to read to the committee. It said in part:
Woman suffrage is a necessity from both a political and an economic standpoint. We can never have democratic rule until we let the women vote. We can never have real freedom until the women are free. Women are now citizens in all but the main expression of citizenship—the exercise of the vote. They need this power to round out and complete their citizenship.... In political matters they have much the same interests that we men have. In State and national issues their interests differ little, if at all, from ours. In municipal questions they have an even greater interest than we have. All the complex questions of housing, schooling, policing, sanitation and kindred matters are peculiarly the interests of women as the home makers and the rearers of children. Women need and must have the ballot by which to protect their interests in these political and administrative questions.
The economic argument for woman suffrage is yet stronger. Economics plays an increasingly important part in the lives of us all and political power is absolutely necessary to obtain for women the possibility of decent conditions of living. The low pay and the hard conditions of working women are largely due to their disenfranchisement. Skilled women who do the same work as men for lower pay could enforce, with the ballot, an equal wage rate.
The ideal woman of the man of past generations (and especially of the Germans) was the housewife, the woman who could wash, cook, scrub, knit stockings, make dresses for herself and her children and take good care of the house. That ideal has become impossible. Those good old days, if ever they were good, are gone forever.... Moreover, then the woman was supported by her father first and later by her husband. The situation is entirely different now. The woman has to go to work often when she is no more than fourteen years old. She surely has to go to work sometime if she belongs to the working class. She must make her own living in the factory, the store, the office, the schoolroom. She must work to support herself and often her family. The economic basis of the life of woman has changed and therefore the basis of the argument that she should not vote because she ought to stay at home and take care of her family has been destroyed. She cannot stay at home whether she wants to or not. She has acquired the economic functions of the man and she ought also to acquire the franchise.
Mr. Berger called attention to the fact that "the Socialist party ever since its origin had been steadfastly for woman suffrage and put this demand of prime importance in all its platforms everywhere." Representative Littleton made a persistent effort to ally woman suffrage with Socialism, saying that he "had noticed the identity during the past two years" and Mrs. Harper answered: "I wish to remind Mr. Littleton that the Socialist party is the only one which declares for woman suffrage and thereby gives women an opportunity to come out and stand by it. The Democratic and Republican parties do not stand for woman suffrage and that is why there seem to be more Socialist women than Republican or Democratic women. If the two old parties will declare for woman suffrage, then the women in general will show their colors."