roperty rights are in the hands of
the law-makers and the executors of the laws. Therefore, because
of our advanced position in that matter, we the more need the
recognition of our political equality. I say the recognition of
our political equality, because I believe the equality already
exists. I believe it waits simply for your recognition; that were
the Constitution now justly construed, and the word "citizens," as
used in your Constitution, justly applied it would include us, the
women of this country. So I ask for the recognition of an equality
that we already possess.

Further, because of what we have we ask for more. Because of the
duties that we are commanded to do, we ask for more. My friend has
said, and it is true in some respects, that men have always kept
us just a little below them where they could shower upon us
favors, and they have always done that generously. So they have,
but, gentlemen, has your sex been more generous in its favors
to women than women have been generous toward your sex in their
favors? Neither one can do without the other: neither can dispense
with the service of the other; neither can dispense with the
reverence of the other, with the aid of the other in domestic
life, in social life. The men of this nation are rapidly finding
that they can not dispense with the service of women in business
life. I know that they are also feeling the need of what they call
the moral support of women in their public life, and in their
political life.

I always feel that it is not for women alone that I appeal. As men
have long represented me, or assumed to do so, and as the men of
my own family always have done so justly and most chivalrously, I
feel that in my appeal for political recognition I represent them;
that I represent my husband and my brother and the interest of the
sex to which they belong, for you, gentlemen, by lifting the women
of the nation into political equality would simply place us where
we could lift you where you never yet have stood, upon a moral
equality with us. Gentlemen, that is true. You know it as well as
I. I do not speak to you as individuals; I speak to you as the
representatives of your sex, as I stand here the representative
of mine; and never until we are your equals politically will the
moral standard for men be what