atism which led other women to oppose the college
education, the control of property, the freedom of public speech
and the right of organization.

Years ago George William Curtis pleaded for fair play for women.
It is the same plea we are repeating. We only petition for fair
play, and this means the submission of our question to the most
intelligent constituency which has power to act upon it. If we
shall fail, we will abide by the decision. That is, we will wait
till courage has grown stronger, reason more logical, justice
purer, in the positive knowledge that our cause will eventually
triumph. As the daughters of Zelophehad appealed to Moses and his
great court for justice, so do the daughters of America appeal to
you.

Miss Anthony closed the hearing in a speech whose vigor, logic and
eloquence were accentuated in the minds of the hearers by the thought
that for more than thirty years she had made these pleas before
congressional committees, only to be received with stolid indifference
or open hostility. She began by saying: "In closing I would like to
give a little object lesson of the two methods of gaining the
suffrage. By one it is insisted that we shall carry our question to
what is termed a popular vote of each State--that is, that its
Legislature shall submit to the electors the proposition to strike the
little adjective "male" from the suffrage clause. We have already made
that experiment in fifteen different elections in ten different
States. Five States have voted on it twice." She then summarized
briefly the causes of the defeats in the various States, and
continued:

Now here is all we ask of you, gentlemen, to save us women from
any more tramps over the States, such as we have made now fifteen
times. In nine of those campaigns I myself, made a canvass from
county to county. In my own State of New York at the time of the
constitutional convention in 1894, I visited every county of the
sixty--I was not then 80 years of age, but 74....

There is an enemy of the homes of this nation and that enemy is
drunkenness. Every one connected with the gambling house, the
brothel and the saloon works and votes solidly against the
enfranchisement of women, and, I say, if you believe in chastity,
if you believe in honesty and integrity, then do what the enemy
wants you not to do, which is to take t