mortal in all the land to protect them. If you would look down
there the question would be solved; but the difficulty is that you
think only of those who are doing well. We are not speaking for
ourselves, but for those who can not speak for themselves. We are
speaking for the doomed as much as you, Senator EDMUNDS, used to
speak for the doomed on the plantations of the South.

Amendments have been proposed to put God in the Constitution and
to keep God out of the Constitution. All sorts of propositions to
amend the Constitution have been made; but I ask that you allow no
other amendment to be called the sixteenth but that which shall
put into the hands of one-half of the entire people of the nation
the right to express their opinions as to how the Constitution
shall be amended henceforth. Women have the right to say whether
we shall have God in the Constitution as well as men. Women have a
right to say whether we shall have a national law or an amendment
to the Constitution prohibiting the importation or manufacture of
alcoholic liquors. We have a right to have our opinions counted on
every possible question concerning the public welfare.

You ask us why we do not get this right to vote first in the
school districts, and on school questions, or the questions
of liquor license. It has been shown very clearly why we need
something more than that. You have good enough laws to-day in
every State in this Union for the suppression of what are termed
the social vices; for the suppression of the grog-shops, the
gambling houses, the brothels, the obscene shows. There is plenty
of legislation in every State in this Union for their suppression
if it could be executed. Why is the Government, why are the States
and the cities, unable to execute those laws? Simply because there
is a large balance of power in every city that does not want those
laws executed. Consequently both parties must alike cater to that
balance of political power. The party that puts a plank in its
platform that the laws against the grog-shops and all the other
sinks of iniquity must be executed, is the party that will not get
this balance of power to vote for it, and, consequently, the party
that can not get into power.

What we ask of you is that you will make of the women of the
cities a balance of political power,