mmittees of the Senate and House of Representatives on
the District of Columbia.

MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, of New York, said: _Mr. Chairman and
Gentlemen of the Committee_: On behalf of the National
Association, which has its officers in every State and territory
of the Union, and which numbers many thousands of members, and on
behalf of the Woman's Franchise Association of the District of
Columbia, we appear before you, asking that the right of suffrage
be secured equally to the men and women of this District. Art. 1,
sec. 8, clauses 17, 18 of the Constitution of the United States
reads:

Congress shall have power to exercise exclusive legislation
in all cases whatsoever over such district as may become the
seat of government of the United States, * * * * * to make
all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying
into execution the foregoing powers.

Congress is therefore constitutionally the special guardian of
the rights of the people of the District of Columbia. It
possesses peculiar rights, peculiar duties, peculiar powers in
regard to this District. At the present time the men and women
are alike disfranchised. Our memorial asks that in forming a new
government they may be alike enfranchised. It is often said as
an argument against granting suffrage to women that they do not
wish to vote; do not ask for the ballot. This association,
numbering thousands in the United States, through its
representatives, now asks you, in this memorial, for suffrage in
this District. Petitions from every State in the Union have been
sent to your honorable body. One of these, signed by thirty-five
thousand women, was sent to congress in one large roll; but what
is the value of a petition signed by even a million of an
unrepresented class?

The city papers of the national capital, once bitterly opposed to
all effort in this direction, now fully recognize the dignity of
the demand, and have ceased to oppose it. One of these said,
editorially, to-day, that the vast audiences assembling at our
conventions, the large majority being women, and evidently in
sympathy with the movement, were proof of the great interest
women take in this subject, though many are too timid to openly
make the demand. The woman's temperance moveme