t many women who have no
men in their own households to represent them, either for
their wrongs or their rights. Mr. Collier, I suppose,
however, is talking about women who have husbands.

He says the woman loses her purity, her delicacy, her
feminine attributes when she lifts her voice and sentiments
against the man whose name she bears. We will say, then,
look across these western prairies to Utah. If the women
there dare to say to the congress of the United States,
"Amend this constitution that we women of Utah can have one
husband, and that the husband can take but one wife"; if
these women demand decency in the marriage relation, demand
justice for themselves, demand purity, they are lifting
themselves against the laws of womanhood and the laws of
God. Every woman represented by her husband is to lose her
purity, her delicacy, her refinement, if she dares to lift
her hand against him and his will. You have here, within the
limits of your State of Illinois, 100,000 drunkards. Every
woman who dares to lift her hand, cry out with her voice,
"Give me the ballot that may offset the votes of these
drunkards at the polls and save my children from starvation
and myself from being put into the workhouse"--this woman is
lifting herself against the laws of God and womanhood. That
is not all! Last summer this question of prohibition was
being tested in Massachusetts by votes. I went from town to
town--my engagements taking me all over the State at that
time--and said my say upon this question of woman suffrage.
In whatever city or town I went, women, bowed down with
grief, who desired to preserve their womanhood, their
persons from blows and abuse, their sons from going to
gambling hells and rum shops, their girls from being sent to
houses of abomination, came to me and said: "Anna Dickinson,
if you are a woman, speak and use your influence for our
cause." Women who have drunken husbands, whether they lived
in Beacon street or at the North End, whether they lived in
luxury or poverty, said: "For the sake of womanhood, for the
sake of motherhood, for the sake of all things g