sitting. As one
rum-seller after another brought in his petition for a renewal
of license who had violated the law, those women presented the
testimony against him. The law of the State of New York is that no
man shall have a renewal who has violated the law. But in not one
case did that board refuse to grant a renewal of license because
of the testimony which those women presented, and at the close of
the sitting it was found that twelve hundred more licenses had
been granted than ever before in the history of the State. Then
the defeated women said they would have those men punished
according to law.

Again they retained an attorney and appointed committees to
investigate all over the city. They got the proper officer to
prosecute every rum-seller. I was at their meeting. One woman
reported that the officer in every city refused to prosecute the
liquor dealer who had violated the law. Why? Because if he should
do so he would lose the votes of all the employes of certain shops
on that street, if another he would lose the votes of the railroad
employes, and if another he would lose the German vote, if another
the Irish vote, and so on. I said to those women what I say to
you, and what I know to be true to-day, that if the women of the
city of Rochester had held the power of the ballot in their hands
they would have been a great political balance of power.

The last report was from District Attorney Raines. The women
complained of a certain lager-beer-garden keeper. Said the
district attorney, "Ladies, you are right, this man is violating
the law, everybody knows it, but if I should prosecute him I would
lose the entire German vote." Said I, "Ladies, do you not see
that if the women of the city of Rochester had the right to vote
District Attorney Raines would have been compelled to have stopped
and counted, weighed and measured. He would have said, 'If I
prosecute that lager-beer German I shall lose the 5,000 German
votes of this city, but if I fail to prosecute him and execute the
laws I shall lose the votes of 20,000 women.'"

Do you not see, gentlemen, that so long as you put this power of
the ballot in the hands of every possible man, rich, poor, drunk,
sober, educated, ignorant, outside of the State's prison, to make
and unmake, not only every law and law-maker, but