e footsteps of those boys, even after their hair has turned gray
and they have seats in the United States Congress. I ask you to
give them the power to throw protecting laws around those boys to
the very confines of eternity. This can be done in no indirect
way; it can not be done by the silent influence; it can not be
done by prayer. While I do not underestimate the power of prayer,
I say give me my ballot on election day that shall send pure
men, good men, intelligent men, statesmen, instead of the modern
politician, into our legislative halls. I would rather have that
ballot on election day than the prayers of all the disfranchised
women in the universe.

So I ask you to loosen our hands. I ask you to let us join with
you in developing this science of human government. What is
politics after all but the science of government? We are
interested in these questions, and we are investigating them
already. We have our opinions. Recently an able man has said that
we have been grandly developed physically and mentally, but as a
nation we are a political infant. So we are, gentlemen; we are
to-day in America politically simply an infant. Why is it? It
is because we have not recognized God's family plan in
government--man and woman together. He created the male and
female, and gave them dominion together. We have dominion in every
other interest in society, and why shall we not stand shoulder
to shoulder and have dominion, in the science in government, in
making the laws under which we shall live?

We are taxed to support this Government--this immense Capitol
building is built largely from the industries of the tax-paying
women of this country--and yet we are denied the slightest voice
in distributing our taxes. Our foreparents did not object to
taxation, but they did object to taxation without representation,
and we, as thinking, industrious, active American women, object to
taxation without representation. We are willing to contribute our
share to the support of this Government, as we always have done,
but we have a right to ask for our little yes and no in the
form of the ballot so that we shall have a direct influence in
distributing the taxes.

Gentlemen, I am amenable to the gallows and the penitentiary, and
it is no more than right that I shall have a voice in framing th