of their own children; that their property and personal rights are disregarded; that they are classed with paupers, idiots, and lunatics, then we are perfectly willing, aye, desirous of relinquishing all claims to superiority, and taking our chances on terms of equality.

We are fully alive to the fact that every reform in past centuries has witnessed a struggle between opposing parties, and it has even been said that "Christianity has progressed from stake to stake, from guillotine to guillotine," but in every age there have been those who have fearlessly stood for truth and right regardless of consequences to

themselves.

If I were an adept in the science of palmistry I would read the past, present, and future of this hand of woman's progress something after this fashion:

Its general appearance has ever been indicative of strength of character and purity of purpose.

Its headline has been as strong and vigorous as the minds of the many famous men who have fearlessly espoused the cause of the oppressed.

Its heart line has been and is as true and pure as the lives and hearts of the devoted army of women which has led and is still leading us to victory.

Its fate line, straight as the line of duty, constantly points toward the desired goal, while its life line, a curving line of beauty yet unbroken, will not be ended until the women of these United States have had placed in their hands that sacred token of citizenship, the ballot.

Miss ANTHONY. Next in order will be Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, daughter of Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell, editor of the Woman's Journal.

STATEMENT OF MISS ALICE STONE BLACKWELL.

Miss BLACKWELL. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I wish to submit to you to-day a few remarks, in very brief compass, simply from the standpoint of common sense.

I wish to recall to your memory the fact that every step of progress toward improvement in the condition of women has been opposed by exactly the same predictions of disaster as are now made in regard to equal suffrage. When my mother was trying to secure for married women the right to control their own property it was said that it would entirely destroy the home.

When school suffrage was granted to women in my own State, some twenty years ago, one of our State senators, Senator Winne, of Franklin, said in his address: "If we make this experiment we shall destroy the race, which will be blasted by the vengeance of Almighty God." That was twenty years ago. Since then half the States in the Union have granted the school franchise to women, and the vengeance of the Deity has not descended upon us in any appreciable manner.

When Vassar College was opened, a woman, who was the head of a band of missionaries going out to the Holy Land, said one thing she was sure of, that no refined Christian mother would ever send her daughter to Vassar College; that the mere fact that it was called a college for women was enough to condemn it. The popular belief was that it would surely be the destruction of the home.

These reiterated predictions of disaster that never materialize suggest the story of a very valuable mare which only had one fault. She would always shy at an open umbrella. Her owner undertook to cure her. She was very fond of raw potatoes, and he put a raw potato on the end of an umbrella which was tightly furled, took it into her stable, and gave her the potato off the tip of the umbrella. The next day he took another, and opened the umbrella an inch. The next day he opened it a little farther, and the next day a little farther, until it was wide open. The first time that he took the umbrella into the stall wide open the mare looked at it rather suspiciously for a moment, but ended by eating the potato off the tip of it, as usual. The next rainy day he took her out, and when they met an umbrella he waited to see what she would do. Instead of shying, she walked deliberately across the street toward the umbrella, and looked for a potato on the tip of it. She got one when she reached home, and she never shied at an umbrella again.

Now, the gradual broadening of woman's sphere has been just like the gradual opening of that umbrella. Every successive widening of it has proved to be entirely without danger, and has always been followed by something good. The only question is, How long will it take us to develop enough "horse sense" to see that the unfolding of the last inch is not going to do any harm?

Gentlemen of the committee, every one of you, and probably every ember of Congress, has received or will receive from my State a document published by a little knot of ladies who oppose equal suffrage, setting forth their arguments against it. I will not take your time longer, inasmuch as we have our foreign delegates here, whom I know you are desirous to hear, but I will ask permission to print a condensed statement of the arguments on the other side, which we have prepared in reply. [Applause.]

The CHAIRMAN. Ordinarily we do not print anything in the Senate which is not read, but we will make an exception in this case. The document is as follows:

PROGRESS OF EQUAL SUFFRAGE.

The annual Remonstrance, just issued by the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women, says: "With the growth of civilization women's political power has diminished." On this point let the facts speak for themselves.

Seventy years ago women could not vote anywhere. In 1838 Kentucky gave school suffrage to widows. In 1850 Ontario gave it to women both married and single. In 1861 Kansas gave it to all women. In 1867 New South Wales gave women municipal suffrage. In 1869 England gave municipal suffrage to single women and widows, Victoria gave it to women both married and single, and Wyoming gave full suffrage to all women.

In 1871 West Australia gave municipal suffrage to women. School suffrage was granted in 1875 by Michigan and Minnesota, in 1876 by Colorado, in 1877 by New Zealand, in 1878 by New Hampshire and Oregon, in 1879 by Massachusetts, in 1880 by New York and VerIn 1880 South Australia gave municipal suffrage to women. In 1881 municipal suffrage was extended to the single women and widows of Scotland. Nebraska gave women school suffrage in 1883,

mont.

Ontario and Tasmania gave them municipal suffrage in 1884, and Wisconsin gave them school suffrage in 1885. In 1886 municipal suffrage was given in New Zealand and New Brunswick.

In 1887 municipal suffrage was granted in Kansas, Nova Scotia, and Manitoba, and school suffrage in North and South Dakota, Montana, Arizona, and New Jersey. In the same year Montana gave taxpaying women the right to vote upon all questions submitted to the taxpayers. In 1888 England gave women county suffrage and British Columbia and the Northwest Territory gave them municipal suffrage. In 1889 county suffrage was given to the women of Scotland and municipal suffrage to single women and widows, in the Province of Quebec. In 1891 school suffrage was granted in Illinois. In 1893 school suffrage was granted in Connecticut and full suffrage in Colorado and New Zealand. In 1894 school suffrage was granted in Ohio, bond suffrage in Iowa, and parish and district suffrage in England to women both married and single. In 1895 full suffrage was granted in South Australia to women both married and single. In 1896 full suffrage was granted in Utah and Idaho.

In 1898 the women of Ireland were given the right to vote for all officers except members of Parliament, Minnesota gave women the right to vote for library trustees, Delaware gave school suffrage to taxpaying women, French women engaged in commerce were given the right to vote for judges of the tribunals of commerce, and Louisiana gave taxpaying women the right to vote upon all questions submitted to the taxpayers. In 1900 West Australia granted full Parliamentary suffrage to women both married and single.

In 1901 New York gave taxpaying women the right to vote on questions of local taxation, and Norway gave them municipal suffrage.

Years ago, when equal suffrage was much more unpopular than it is now, somebody asked Bishop Gilbert Haven if it were true that he had been speaking at a suffrage meeting.

"Yes," answered the Bishop. "I don't want to fall in at the rear of this reform; I mean to march with the procession.”

There can be no doubt as to which way the procession is moving.

THE M. A. O. F. E. S. W.

The Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women claims to have 9,865 members in 191 cities and towns. This statement gives a greatly exaggerated idea of its strength, when unaccompanied with an explanation as to what constitutes membership. In most societies those who join pay a membership fee and renew their membership from year to year. Those who join the M. A. O. F. E. S. W. pay no membership fee; they merely sign an antisuffrage document, in many cases only a return postal card; and the woman who wrote down her name seven years ago and has never given any sign of interest since is still counted as a "member" to-day. As Mrs. Livermore has pointed out, those women who join the M. A. O. F. E. S. W. show the same amount of interest as those who sign a suffrage petition; no more, no less. If all the women in Massachusetts who have ever signed a petition for suffrage were counted as members of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, it would count at least 100,000 members.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN ENGLAND.

Mr. I. N. Ford is quoted in the Remonstrance as saying that in England, for many years past, "public interest in the political enfranchisement of women has steadily declined."

The first petition for woman suffrage presented to Parliament, in 1867, was signed by only 1,449 women. The petition of 1873 was signed by 11,000 women. The petition presented to the members of the recent Parliament was signed by 257,000 women.

THE CASE OF KANSAS.

The Remonstrance intimates that municipal woman suffrage in Kansas must be a failure because a constitutional amendment to grant women full suffrage was voted down. The Georgia legislature has just voted down a bill to admit women to the State university. Does it follow that girls have not done well as students in the grammar and high schools of Georgia?

Suppose the Georgia legislature had just voted down, unanimously and with ridicule, a bill to exclude girls from the high schools; should we nevertheless be justified in insisting that girls must have proved failures in the high schools because the legislature refuses as yet to admit them to the university? After fourteen years' experience of municipal woman suffrage, the last Kansas legislature voted down, almost unanimously, and amid "a ripple of amusement," a bill to repeal it.

An amendment to grant women full suffrage has been twice submitted in Kansas. It was first submitted some years before women obtained municipal suffrage, and it then received only 9,100 votes. It was submitted again after seven years' experience of municipal suffrage, and it received 95,302 votes.

Somebody says few women would vote if enfranchised. Well, it often happens in an election that more than half the men refuse to vote. But if one man or woman wants to exercise the right to vote, what earthly reason is there for denying it because other men and women do not wish to exercise it? If I desire to breathe the fresh air of heaven, shall I not cross my threshold because the rest of the family group prefer the stale atmosphere indoors?-Secretary of the Navy Long.

It is often said that whenever the majority of women ask for suffrage they will get it. But it is a simple historical fact that every improvement thus far made in the condition of women has been secured, not by a general demand from the majority of women, but by the arguments, entreaties, and "continual coming" of a persistent few. In each case the advocates of progress have had to contend not merely with the conservatism of men, but with the indifference of women, and often with active opposition from some of them.

When a man in Saco, Me., first employed a saleswoman the men boycotted his store, and the women remonstrated earnestly with him on the sin of which he was guilty in placing a young woman in a position of such publicity. When Lucy Stone began to try to secure for married women the right to their own property women asked, with scorn, "Do you think I would give myself where I would not give my property?" When Elizabeth Blackwell began to study medicine the women at her boarding house refused to speak to her, and women passing her on the streets held their skirts aside, so as not to touch her. It is a matter of history with what ridicule and opposition Mary Lyon's first efforts for the education of women were received, not only by the mass of men, but by the mass of women as well. In England, when the Oxford examinations were thrown open to women, the Dean of Chichester preached a sermon against it, in which he said: "By the sex at large, certainly, the new curriculum is not asked for. I have ascertained, by extended inquiry among gentlewomen, that with true feminine instinct they either entirely distrust or else look with downright disfavor on so wild an innovation and interference with the best traditions of their sex."

In Eastern countries, where women are shut up in zenanas and forbidden to walk the streets unveiled, the women themselves are among the strongest upholders of these traditional restrictions, which they have been taught to think add to their dignity. The Chinese lady is as proud of her small feet as any American "anti" is of her political disabilities. Ramabai tells us that the idea of education for girls is so unpopular with the mass of Hindoo women that when a progressive Hindoo proposes to educate his little daughter it is not uncommon for the women of his family to threaten to drown themselves.

All this merely shows that human nature is conservative, and that it is fully as conservative in women as in men. The persons much interested in any reform are always comparatively few, whether among men or women, and they are habitually regarded with disfavor, even by those whom the proposed reform is to benefit. Thomas Hughes says, in Tom Brown at Rugby: "So it is and must be always, my dear boys. If the Angel Gabriel were to come down from heaven and head a successful rise against the most abominable and unrighteous vested interest which this poor old world groans under, he would most certainly lose his character for many years, probably for centuries, not only with the upholders of the said vested interest, but with the respectable mass of the people whom he had delivered."

Women as a sex are not belligerent, and under whatever conditions of injustice or hardship they have been placed, the majority of them have never protested. Prof. James Bryce says, in "Transcaucasia and Ararat:"

Nothing strikes a Westerner with more disgust than the way he sees women treated in Mohammedan countries. It is not so much the enforced seclusion that revolts you as the tacit assumption that women are inferior creatures altogether, unfit to be companions for man, but rather to be reckoned a link between him and the brutes, and treated with little more regard than the latter. That they acquiesce uncomplain ingly in this view, and assert their power in hidden and crooked ways, does not make the sight less offensive or the results less mischievous.

Many changes for the better have been made during the last half century in the laws, written and unwritten, relating to women. Everybody approves of these changes now, because they have become accomplished facts. But not one of them would have been made to this day