of the hour demand it. We ask you in the
name of equity and humanity alone, and not in that of any
party....

You ask us if we are impatient. Yes; we are impatient. Some of us
may die, and I want our grand old standard-bearer, Susan B.
Anthony, whose name will go down to history beside those of
George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Wendell Phillips--I want
that woman to go to Heaven a free angel from this republic. The
power lies in your hands to make all women free.

MRS. CAROLINE GILKEY ROGERS (N. Y.): It is often said to us that
when _all_ the women ask for the ballot it will be granted. Did
_all_ the married women petition the Legislatures of their States
to secure to them the right to hold in their own name the
property which belonged to them? To secure to the poor forsaken
wife the right to her earnings? _All_ the women did not ask for
these rights, but _all_ accepted them with joy and gladness when
they were obtained, and so it will be with the franchise. Woman's
right to self-government does not depend upon the numbers that
demand it, but upon precisely the same principles on which man
claims it for himself. Where did man get the authority which he
now exercises to govern one-half of humanity; from what power the
right to place woman, his helpmeet in life, in an inferior
position? Came it from nature? Nature made woman his superior
when it made her his mother--his equal when it fitted her to hold
the sacred position of wife. Did women meet in council and
voluntarily give up all their right to be their own law-makers?
The power of the strong over the weak makes man the master. Thus,
and thus only, does he gain the authority.

It is all very well to say, "Convert the women." While we most
heartily wish they could all feel as we do, yet when it comes to
the decision of this great question they are mere ciphers, for if
it is settled by the States it will be left to the men, not to
the women, to decide. Or if suffrage comes to women through a
Sixteenth Amendment to the National Constitution, it will be
decided by Legislatures elected by men only. In neither case will
women have an opportunity of passing upon the question. So reason
tells us we must devote our best efforts to converting those to
whom we must look for the removal of