that church members should administer it. Not Jews, nor Baptists, nor Quakers, but those who worshipped God in the Puritan way.

This was the birth impulse of inconsistency in government on this continent and it has surged down through our history with unremitted movement. It was class distinction in republican government.

After the Revolution a new distinction was made. Every man who had stake in the government was a citizen. Every man who had two hundred and fifty dollars worth of property might vote. This was property suffrage. In the State of New Jersey, till a given time, women with property had a vote.

The idea of a free government was not born here, as we like to think it was; but in that awful conflict, the French Revolution, it received its baptism of blood; when Liberty, Equality and Fraternity were, by those resistants to tyranny, proclaimed to be the natural rights of man. Prior to that time the world believed in rights conferred upon men, but the thought that man has rights because he is a man had not entered the minds of those who made laws and framed constitutions.

Then men caught the inspiring thought, and with prophetic vision looking down the vista of years saw, that in times such as ours when vast trusts and moneyed interests might control, liberty and the pursuit of happiness would be left unguarded unless poor men had the right of suffrage. Thus the money qualification went out of favor and the right to vote. irrespective of wealth, was passed on to the people as a necessary safeguard to liberty.

Until a few years ago men never voted because they were MEN. They voted because they were church members, because they had property, (i.e., property voted) or because they were white.

The great work of the Republican party was, to seize the evolutionary eraser and rub out the word "white" as the voter's qualification. So, all along through the years we have kept erasing limiting words and opening wider the doors of political

freedom, till now we have the limiting word "male" alone left, to hinder our country from being a Republic, in so far as class distinctions among the voters affect it.

In the beginning God said, "It is not good for man to be alone," and it is now as it was in the beginning,-men and women must work in harmony, must help each other in all fairness, as equals, if they would prosper or be happy. A home is never complete without the father, the mother and the child; and in this home must be absolute equality of rights, privileges and responsibilities between the father and mother, to make it a happy one.

So it is with governments. The father element is needed therein, yet not more so than is the mother element. All the fine qualities of both men and women, all the wisdom and all the goodness of both, are needed in the founding and maintenance of an equitable, stable government,-a real Democracy.

A government with the word "male" in its constitution is not a Democracy but an oligarchy. We have disposed of the hierarchy, of the plutocracy, and of the aristocracy of race; our next step is, to leave behind the oligarchy of sex; then, indeed, will we come to the realization of Democracy, and a "Government of the people, for the people and by the people," will become a verity, not merely the stuff of which poets dream; and I believe this time is not far distant now.

Let us take inspiration for the women's cause from the present struggle of the Philadelphia men of law and order. They have been saying: "Our streets are filthy, but we can do nothing to better them." "Our water supply breeds disease, but we must bear it," "our 'management' is extravagant, but we cannot help it," and they did not. Yet suddenly they waked up and said: "We will not stand these things any longer;"-and they did not have to.

Remember, the men of Philadelphia failed just as long as they were willing to fail!

Woman must have the ballot, to guard her own interests and those of her children.

Why were the women of Philadelphia repulsed by the mayor when they sought his official action against the traffic in white slaves? Why was his righteous soul not stirred by their evidences of degraded womanhood and debauched manhood? Why were emigrant girls, who came to this country full of the hope to find a field of usefulness in this land of vaunted freedom, met when they landed by emissaries of evil, and degraded and dishonored, with the connivance of the government? No great mass meetings were held, to voice popular indignation at such outrageous conditions. The reform committee was commendably active. A few ministers made protests, but where were the people? The needs of the defenceless, the outrage of decency, did not move them. The electric nerve of public conscience which terminates in the pocket-book was not thrilled by these tragedies. How long will we hold money as being of more value than virtue? When will it be seen that boys and girls are of infinitely greater worth than gas-plants and subways?

Recently when the two great political parties, as represented in Congress, juggled for control of votes in the two new States, another monstrous insult to womanhood was perpetrated. In defining the franchise privileges, the proposed constitution said: The right to vote shall not be denied on account of race, color or any consideration except imbecility, crime, illiteracy, sex and minority. In response to the protest of a great body of women against being classed with criminals, idiots and babies, the chairman of the committee wrote: "Your very reasonable request has been considered and the entire clause stricken out of the constitution." Many women felt satisfied with this. For my part I feel no more satisfaction in being counted out with male idiots and babies than I did in being counted in with them. I feel indignant to the very heart of my being at such classification.

How can women be content with their status? Because slaves do not free themselves. Slavery destroys the spirit of freedom and the ability to rise and demand emancipation.

We often hear that when women want the ballot they will get it, and while there is a degree of truth in the saying, the

case is like that of the boy who, holding a piece of meat above his dog, said: "Speak for it." The dog jumped and barked and the boy raised the meat higher with the same command, and when the dog had exhausted his ability to "speak" the boy put the meat in his game bag and went a-fishing.

Susan B. Anthony once asked Mr. Dana to print matter favorable to Equal Suffrage in the New York Sun. "The Sun prints what people want to read," he replied. "If you can show me that the people want women's suffrage we will come over to your side." "How many names do you want, to convince you that the people want it," she asked. "Get 100,000 names and you may have "The Sun." At the Constitutional Convention soon after the petition of 300,000 women was set aside "because women did not want the ballot," and the editorial in The Sun, next day, spoke the same old story.

Corporate interests and the political machine do not want women's suffrage. It is here that the opposition is, rather than with the people. Foreigners oppose it because of their oldworld education,—that some must rule and others be subject. Ignorant, oppressed classes oppose it, in accordance with the law of Sociology, that people who have been subject feel that it adds to their power and importance to put somebody else under.

There is really no logical opposition to woman's suffrage with men or women. It is rather inertia and prejudice with both. We need to leave forever in the museum of ancient curios, the idea that contact with government must degrade women. We need rather to feel that to be a part of the governing power is, to be allied to the Infinite Ruler of the Universe, who shapeth all things for the ultimate good of all.

Of the immigrant classes those with a high percentage of women among them are the best. The men with wives and children wish to found homes in the new land and rear their children to usefulness. There is no antagonism between duty to the home and to the State. The best home-makers are the best citizens. The science of home-making is the tap root of the science of government. In severing a woman's connection with the State one-half of this tap root is cut off, and the tree

of State, necessarily, does not flourish. Important functions of government are, to protect, to educate, to promote healthful conditions of life. The same factors that are required to make a successful home are essential to make a satisfactory governIt is admitted that woman's place is to train children, and to train them to be good citizens. How can she teach that which she is presumed to be incapable of comprehending. Oh, ye logicians!

The wise management of an orderly home proves woman's capacity for understanding and, if necessary, for assisting in State affairs.

There is an organic and a social heredity. Children inherit that which their parents have to give them, but they may be said to inherit from the community in which they live very much that may be for good or evil. We are all makers of social heredity. A responsibility is upon us now. The thought of the next generation will be what we make it. Our personal influence now will be beneficial or otherwise then. But friends. in order that we may adequately influence our law-makers and office-holders on any important point under their control, in the present time or the coming future, we, the women of the country, must have the ballot, and become an acknowledged power in the government of which we form a part. In this there is nothing unwomanly. The purpose of government is not to build up the natural, animal instincts of brute force, but to develop the Divine, to put into law, less of beast and more of God.

The morning meeting closed with music.

SIXTH DAY.-AFTERNOON SESSION.

The meeting opened with a musical selection by MISS SLEEPER and the choir.

The Finance Committee attended to duty, during which service MISS FRANCES MATTHEWS, of Philadelphia, gave a violin solo, with organ accompaniment.

MISS SLEEPER then sang with feeling, "Angels Ever Bright and Fair," when the following memorials were read: