ry new privilege granted to women has been by the
Legislatures. The liberal laws for married women, the right of
the wife to own and control her inherited property and separate
earnings, the right of women to vote at school elections in a
dozen States, the right to vote on all questions in three
Territories, have all been gained through the Legislatures. Had
any one of these beneficent propositions been submitted to the
masses, do you believe a majority would have placed their
sanction upon them? I do not.

It takes all too many of us women, and too much of our hard
earnings, from our homes and from the works of charity and
education of our respective localities, even to come to
Washington, session after session, until Congress shall have
submitted the proposition, and then to go from Legislature to
Legislature, urging its adoption; but when you insist that we
shall beg at the feet of each and every individual voter of each
and every one of the thirty-eight States, native and foreign,
white and black, educated and ignorant, you doom us to
incalculable hardships and sacrifices and to most exasperating
insults and humiliations. I pray you, therefore, save us from the
fate of working and waiting for our freedom until we shall have
educated the masses of men to consent to give their wives and
sisters equality of rights with themselves. You surely will not
compel us to wait the enlightenment of all the freedmen of this
nation and all the newly-made voters from the monarchial
governments of the Old World!

Liberty for one's self is a natural instinct possessed alike by
all, but to be willing to accord liberty to another is the result
of education, of self-discipline, of the practice of the golden
rule--"Do unto others as you would that others should do unto
you." Therefore we ask that the question of equality of rights to
women shall be arbitrated upon by the picked men of the nation in
Congress, and the picked men of the several States in their
respective Legislatures.

THE REV. FLORENCE KILLOCK (Ills.): ... Called as I am into the
homes of the people through the requirements of my office, I know
whereof I speak when I say that I am as faithfully fulfilling its
sacred duties when I come before you urging this claim, as when,
on my ben