this great problem, which it
is so much in your hands to hasten in its solution--these women
are in earnest. My State is far away beyond the confines of the
Rocky Mountains, away over beside the singing Pacific sea, but the
spirit of liberty is among us there, and the public heart has been
stirred. The hearts of our men have been moved to listen to our
demands, and in Washington Territory, as one speaker has informed
you, women to-day are endowed with full and free enfranchisement,
and the rejoicing throughout that Territory is universal.

In Oregon men have also listened to our demand, and the
Legislature has in two successive sessions agreed upon a
proposition to amend our State constitution, a proposition which
will be submitted for ratification to our voters at the coming
June election. It is simply a proposition declaring that the right
of suffrage shall not hereafter be prohibited in the State of
Oregon on account of sex. Your action in the Senate of the United
States will greatly determine the action of the voters of Oregon
on our, or rather on their, election day, for we stand before the
public in the anomaly of petitioners upon a great question in
which we, in its final decision, are allowed no voice, and we can
only stand with expectant hearts and almost bated breath awaiting
the action of men who are to make this decision.

We have great hope for our victory, because the men of the broad,
free West are grand, and chivalrous, and free. They have gone
across the mighty continent with free steps; they have raised the
standard of a new Pacific empire; they have imbibed the spirit of
liberty with their very breath, and they have listened to us far
in advance of many of the men of the older States who have not
had their opportunity among the grand free wilds of nature for
expansion.

So all of our leaders are with us to-day. You may go to either
member of the Senate of the United States from Oregon, and while I
can not speak so positively for the senior member, as he came over
here some years ago before the public were so well educated as
now, I can and do proudly vouch for the late Senator-elect DOLPH,
who now has a seat upon the floor of the Senate, who is heart and
soul and hand and purse in sympathy with this great movement for
the enfranchisement of the women o