and the feminine together constitute the human being. The human brain is twofold, the masculine and the feminine. Most men realize this, and take to themselves the feminine heart, and so make themselves complete men. Why should Uncle Sam be the only fellow to go about doing his work with half a brain? [Laughter.] Why should he not be allowed the feminine half of the brain to help him to solve the questions and the problems of peace and war and finance with which he is confronted? We want all the intellect and all the reason and all the intuition that God has given us, to adjust the varied relations of the people in such a country as ours. With these varied peoples of all nationalities, how absurd it would be and how unjust it would be to suppose that the men in Maine, for instance, could understand and properly determine what should be the policy of this whole country.

What would South Carolina say to a proposition to leave all questions of government to the men of Maine. Or suppose on the other hand the men of South Carolina should be set up to determine the interests of Maine. Would they understand what the men of Maine want at all? No; because they have an entirely different point of view. So men can not understand women's point of view.

And then, again, we desire the ballot in the hands of women because we desire an entire reform in our suffrage laws, for the sake of the Congressmen of the country. We wish to help them all we can. Our Congressmen at present are placed in a very uncomfortable position. They desire to do their best for the people whom they represent. They must fulfill the wishes of their constituency. They must be responsible and answerable to that constituency.

Now, you do not stand on an equality, on a level plane, on the floor of Congress. A man from Iowa has behind him a constituency of male citizens-men who have lived in this country at least five years, consequently men who can read our language, men who probably own property and have real estate interests here, and when he has been elected by those citizens and has come to Congress, and has done his best in mind and thought to please them-when he goes home he meets the same men there. They live there; that is their home; they know what he has done; they voted for him before, and they have applauded his course. That man can stand up quite strongly on the floor of Congress; feeling that his action will be understood at home.

Take Wisconsin and some of the other Northwestern States. The Representative in Congress has behind him no such constituency as I have described, but he has behind him a voting population that may have landed in the State within the last year, or within the last six months, or in some of the States in the last four months. A large number of them can not speak the language. Very many of them know nothing of our institutions or our history. They have voted for this man because they have been following some leader, or been governed by some chance circumstance. They are not capable of follow ing his acts in Congress; and when, at the end of his term of service, he comes back he finds strangers in their places. He does not meet the same men who voted for him, for they have gone on to make new homes in other places. He finds in their places a lot of people who do not know anything about him. He is not on an equality with the man from Iowa. We ask you to make these Congressmen equal, by giving us some kind of a uniform suffrage law, whereby all the citizens, and

only the citizens of the United States, will have an equal right of suffrage everywhere. [Applause.]

Miss ANTHONY. Mrs. Mariana W. Chapman, president of the New York State society, will now address the committee.

STATEMENT OF MRS. MARIANA W. CHAPMAN.

Mrs. CHAPMAN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, we come to you asking for a sixteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States forbidding disfranchisement by the States on account of sex, because we believe it to be a part of the grounds of justice on which this Government was established. On the top of the Dome of this great Capitol is the figure of a women as the emblem of freedom in this so-called Republic. Is it consistent, when a woman is the only permanently disfranchised citizen of the country?

Even criminals, if they be men, may assume the prerogative of the franchise so soon as they are out of the penitentiaries. Lunatics, if men, may recover their reason and do likewise. Paupers, if men, are released from the almshouses a few days before election and present themselves at the polls. Aliens, if men, which they are in a larger proportion, may overcome their exclusion by varying periods of residence in the different States. Minors, if boys, will vote at twentyone, but their mothers are minors forever in the eyes of the law. They are legislated for and governed and, to some extent, protected. We acknowledge the chivalry of this, but we ask for something more precious-the jewel of justice. We ask for it because we are individual human beings who average well with men in intelligence, in virtue, and in sobriety. We ask for it as taxpayers, because we help to maintain the expense of this great Capitol and other buildings, and to pay the salaries of those who serve in them. We desire it for our own protection just as men desire it for theirs. We ask it because we are the only civilized country in the world which makes its women subjects of foreign men, educated and uneducated, of the negro, and the American Indians. We ask it because, except in four States, we are the only Anglo-Saxon country where women have so low a political status.

In England and all her colonies women have all but the Parliamentary vote. Shall the men of the United States be less generous? We ask this Congress to make itself historic by asserting that the Declaration of Independence refers to all rational human beings as the possessors of the inalienable rights there affirmed. [Applause.]

Miss ANTHONY. The next speaker will be Miss Gail Laughlin, who will speak of this matter as it affects the wage-earner.

Miss Laughlin is a graduate of Wellesley College and of the Cornell University Law School, so that she is competent to speak on this question. [Applause.]

STATEMENT OF MISS GAIL LAUGHLIN.

Miss LAUGHLIN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, within the last few years the United States has taken its place among the nations of the earth as one of the great world powers. The countries of Europe which a century ago viewed with contemptuous

scorn the new nation for which they predicted but a short life are now rivals for our friendship, and considerable space in their newspapers is at the present time devoted to setting forth their respective claims upon us for favorable consideration. The immediate cause of this is to be found in our economic importance. Political power has always been the outgrowth of economic strength, as the history of the world shows. It is of primary, it is of paramount importance that the nation should be economically strong, and the nation will be economically strong just in proportion as its people are intelligent, developed, and efficient. Whatever therefore brings about the best development of the people and makes them most intelligent and efficient promotes most the economic strength of the country and therefore adds most to its power and importance among the nations of the world.

There is no one force, there is no combination of forces so potent in the development of the people as is individual liberty. We have learned this as a nation, and we are beginning to teach it to the world. There is no workman on the face of the earth so efficient as is the American workman. Manufacturer after manufacturer testified to this fact before the United States Industrial Commission. One witness before the Commission, Mr. Jacob Weidmann, a silk manufacturer of Paterson, N. J., who has been an employer of labor both in this country and abroad, stated not only that the workmen in the silk mills in this country are more efficient than those across the water, but went so far as to say that foreign workmen coming to this country become in the course of time wholly different men and fully a third more efficient. Why is this so? Why, except that the workman feels in this country the vivifying influence of liberty? His ambition is stimulated by the greater opportunities which are opened up to him, and is reinforced by the self-respect which grows out of the knowledge that here he may become a sovereign citizen-an equal ruler with other sovereign citizens. In his own hands, through his possession of the right of suffrage, lies the power of control over the conditions which affect him. Not only does this fact make more of a man of him by inspiring him with confidence and hope and with a sense of power, but it has a practical and immediate value as well, in that it enables him directly to resist oppression and injustice.

"Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men," says the Declaration of Independence. Life itself is wrapped up in the possession of industrial opportunity. "Earning a living" is the short and familiar phrase for economic activity. To secure just and equitable industrial conditions then is one of the primary functions of government. That just and equitable conditions may be secured for any individual or class of individuals, that individual or class of individuals must have a share in the government whose function it is to secure these rights.

That the share in the government possessed by the workmen of the country is no empty, is conclusively evidenced by the mass of labor legislation which has been enacted in recent years. There is no need, though, to use up time in proving that the right of suffrage is the most valuable possession of the workingman and the only guaranty of his liberty. But there are working women as well as working men, women who stand side by side with the men in our shops and factories, doing similar work for the same employers, and under similar conditions. There were in 1890, according to the census of that year, 3,914,571

women engaged in labor other than that of their own households, 2,611,843 of them being engaged in other than domestic service. Unfortunately the figures for the census of 1900 are not yet available. Such advance bulletins as have been issued, however, show an increase in the number of women wage-earners. At the same ratio of increase

in the decade from 1890 to 1900 as is shown in the decade from 1880 to 1890 the number of women engaged in wage-paid occupations would be 5,789,650 and the number engaged in occupations other than that of domestic service would be 4,069,251. Such an army of women constitutes an important factor in the industrial life of the country. That it should be the most efficient factor possible is of vital importance. To women, as to men, the fullest individual liberty will be productive of the greatest development, and therefore of the greatest efficiency. Not only is it their inalienable right as individuals, as shareholders equally with men in this Government of the people, to be given the fullest opportunity for development, but by giving to them the fullest opportunity for development the country as a whole will gain in strength.

This is the country's side of it; then there is the man's side of it. The woman worker is deprived of the protection which the ballot would give to her. She can therefore be the more easily bullied, can be forced to accept conditions and wages which could never be forced on man. Since she is man's competitor, she is a factor in dragging him down to her lower standard. He suffers through her, and it is for his interest that woman should be made equally strong with him to resist industrial oppression.

Then there is the woman's side of it. The power of self-defense which is wrapped up in the ballot is her right as well as that of man, and her need for it is equally great. In the industrial world as nowhere else men and women meet simply as human beings. Sex has no place. There are no separate functions, no family ties to complicate the situation. The labor performed is exactly similar in character. There there is no possible opportunity for the claim that a woman's interests are protected by her husband, her father, her son, or her brother. The men with whom she works side by side are her rivals and competitors, each looking for every chance to get an advantage over his neighbor.

If woman is to be protected at all she must protect herself. She can not protect herself while the man by her side competing with her possesses a power by which he may determine the conditions under which both he and she may work, possesses the power to make conditions less favorable for her than for himself, and thus obtain for himself an unfair advantage over her. This, however, is the situation to-day. Men, through their right of suffrage and their consequent power over legislation, have the power to handicap their women competitors. Already there has been some discriminating legislation, some restriction on the hours and occupations of women which do not apply to men, and there are not lacking propositions on the part of labor leaders and others to restrict further the economic activity of women. Some of the restrictions made may be for the benefit of women workers, but women should be the ones to decide what is for their benefit rather than to have it decided for them by their business rivals, whose advantage it is to further their own interests.

If men and women stood on an equality industrially in all other

respects, women would need the right of suffrage in common with men in order to protect that equality. And they do not stand on an equality. Without considering whether or not the original cause of their unequal position is due to their inferior political position, the fact remains that inequality exists and that women in industrial life are at a serious disadvantage as compared with men. The restrictions on their movements which tradition and prejudice have imposed have made it less easy for them to move about in search of new occupations and wider opportunities. Their wages average only 40 per cent of the average wages paid to men. The report of the Senate Committee on Finance on prices, wages, and transportation, published some ten years ago, showed the average rate of men's wages in this country in the industries enumerated to be $2.17 per day; the special report of the National Department of Labor published in 1889, showed the average wages of working women in twenty-two principal cities of the country to be 87 cents per day. In part this difference between the wages of men and women is due to the fact that the more important positions are given to men. In part it is due to the fact that for exactly similar work, women receive only a fractional part of the wages paid to men. Whichever cause operates in any particular case, the fact remains unaltered that the woman is at a disadvantage.

Not only is this true in purely business occupations, but it is equally true in respect to public positions. In Massachusetts the salaries of the women school-teachers average only one-third of the salaries of the men teachers. The school law in the State of New York, where the amount of salary is graded according to length of service, and where retention in office depends on efficiency, discriminates between men and women in favor of men in respect to salaries.

It is true that the wage rate paid in business occupations can not be directly affected by legislation. The salaries paid to those holding public positions, however, are directly under the control of the voting population, and the equalizing of the salaries of men and women teachers in the public schools and of men and women employed in any public position could be accomplished directly through legislation. In fact, this is what has been done in the State of Wyoming, where men and women share equally in the government. The equalizing of conditions for men and women in the schools and in other public positions would affect wages and conditions in other occupations, even as the shortening of the hours and the raising of the wages of men employed on public works, which has been done in some States, has already had an effect on hours and wages in private enterprises.

There is more than a personal question involved in this question of wages for women, more than a mere economic question. There is a moral question, for in too many cases the wages of women are depressed below the cost of living, and there are presented to women the alternatives of starvation or immorality. The New York bureau of labor in 1885, and again in 1895, when investigations were made, found large numbers of women obliged to work nineteen hours a day in order to earn 25 cents. In view of the existence of such conditions, it is not strange that vice flourishes. Here again, then, the community as a whole is as vitally concerned in the economic elevation of women as are the women themselves.

Weighed down in the beginning by their lower wages and by the greater tendency on the part of their employers to take advantage of