n the more
showy political movements. We should have on that Commission two
archaeologists, a man and a woman, and I can name them--Otis T.
Mason and Alice C. Fletcher....

An earnest discussion followed this paper, in which Mrs. Clara Bewick
Colby (D. C.), Mrs. Helen Philleo Jenkins (Mich.), Henry B. Blackwell
(Mass.), Miss Octavia W. Bates (Mich.), Miss Martha Scott Anderson
(Minn.), and Miss Anthony took part:

MRS. JENKINS: ....Whatever power in government may be given to
the men of our new possessions in selecting their rulers, let the
same privilege be accorded the women. It may be said that the
women are ignorant, and need yet to be held in subjection--that
they are unfit to have a voice in the new order of things. Let us
not be deceived. Probably the women are no more ignorant and
stupid than the masses of men in these newly acquired
regions--excepting always the few men whom circumstances have
developed. The ignorant mother can guide her child quite as
safely as its ignorant father. Men and women in all nations and
tribes are pretty nearly on a level as to common sense and
forethought for the future good of the family. Indeed, the
interests of the home, protection of the children, and the morals
and behavior of the community make the standard of even
unlettered women one notch higher than that of their ignorant
husbands. Let us of this nation hesitate before we establish a
sex supremacy that it may take long centuries to overcome....

Thousands of dollars are expended on a military commission; it is
sent to investigate the commercial possibilities, the financial
opportunities, in remote lands; but the army, the commerce, the
finance are not all there is of a nation. There are more vital
interests--there is something which lies at the very base of the
nation, without which it could not exist--the homes, the women
and the children. It is the social conditions that need special
consideration in our country's dealings with these new lands.

MISS BATES: ....In the presence of the events which have
transpired during the past year, and in all the discussions
pertaining to the new peoples who have suddenly become our
proteges, seldom if ever does one hear a word about the women,
who, all will admit, are a most important factor in the
civilization-