etter.
Gentlemen, you have kept women just a little step below you. It
is only a short step. You shower down favors upon us it is true,
still we remain below you, the recipients of favors without the
right to take what is our own. We ask that this shall be changed;
that you shall take us by the hand and lift us up to the same
political level with you, where we shall have rights with you, and
stand equal with you before the law.
REMARKS BY MRS. MAY WRIGHT SEWALL.
Miss ANTHONY. I will now introduce to the committee Mrs. May
Wright Sewall, of Indianapolis, who is the chairman of our
executive committee.
Mrs. SEWALL. Gentlemen of the committee: Gentlemen, I believe,
differ somewhat in their political opinions. It will not then
be surprising, I suppose, that I should differ somewhat from my
friend in regard to the knowledge that you probably possess upon
our question. I do not believe that you know all that we know
about the women of this country, for I believe that if you did
know even all that I know, and my knowledge is much more limited
than that of many of my sisters, long ago the sixteenth amendment,
for which we ask, would have been passed through your influence.
I remember that when I was here two years ago and had the honor of
appearing before the committee, who granted us, on that occasion,
what you are so kind and courteous to grant on this occasion, an
opportunity to speak before you, I told you that I represented at
least seventy thousand women who had asked for the ballot in my
State, and I tried then to remind the members of the committee
that had seventy thousand Indiana men asked for any measure from
the Congress that then occupied this Capitol, that measure would
have secured the most deliberate consideration from their hands,
and, in all probability, its passage by the Congress. Of that
there can be no doubt.
I do not wish to exaggerate my constituency, but during the last
two years, and since I had the honor of addressing the committee,
the work of woman suffrage has progressed very rapidly in
my State. The number of women who have found themselves in
circumstances to work openly, and whose spirit has been drawn into
it, has largely increased, and as the workers have multiplied
the results have increased. While we have not taken the careful
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