MR. DOLPH: I intended to say before I reached this point of being
interrogated that I not only do not believe that there is a
single argument against woman suffrage which is tenable, but also
that there is not a single one which is really worthy of any
serious consideration. The Senator from Louisiana is a lawyer,
and he knows very well that a mother with a nursing infant, that
fact being made known to the court, would be excused. He knows
himself, and he has seen it done a hundred times, that for
trivial excuses compared to that, men have been excused from
service on a jury.

MR. EUSTIS: I will ask the Senator whether he knows that under
the laws of Washington Territory this is a legal excuse from
serving on a jury?

MR. DOLPH: I am not prepared to state that it is; but there is no
question in the world but that any Judge, this fact being made
known, would excuse a woman from attendance upon a jury. No
special authority would be required. I will state further that I
have not learned that there has been any serious objection on the
part of any woman summoned for jury service in that Territory to
performing that duty. I have not learned that it has worked to
the disadvantage of any family, but I do know that the judges of
the courts have taken especial pains to commend the women who
have been called to serve upon juries for the manner in which
they have discharged their duty.

I wish to say further that there is no connection whatever
between jury service and the right of suffrage. The question as
to who shall perform jury service, who shall perform military
service, who shall perform civil official duty, is certainly a
matter to be regulated by the community itself; but the question
of the right to participate in the formation of a government
which controls the life, the property and the destinies of its
citizens, I contend is one which goes back of these mere
regulations for the protection of property and the punishment of
offenses under the laws. It is a matter of right which it is a
tyranny to refuse to any citizen demanding it.

Now, Mr. President, I shall close by saying, God speed the day
when not only in all the States of the Union and in all the
Territories, but everywhere, woman shall stand before the law
freed from