ur papers, you make it impossible for its merits to be brought before
the voters.

Who are the men that come to our women's meetings? We have just finished
the tour of the sixty counties in the State of New York. We had
magnificent gatherings, composed of people from the farthest townships
in the county, and in many of them from every township, with the largest
opera houses packed, hundreds going away who could not get in. Our
audiences have been five-sixths women, and the one man out of the six,
who was he? A man who already believed there was but one means of
salvation for the race or the country, and that was through the
political equality of women, making them the peers of men in every
department of life. How are we going to reach the other five-sixths of
the men who never come to women's meetings? There is no way except
through the political rallies which are attended by all men. Now if you
shut out of these the discussion of this question, then I say the fate
of this amendment is sealed.

Even if it were possible to reach the men through separate meetings,
the women of Kansas can not carry on a fall campaign. They can not get
the money to do it unless you men furnish it. Our eastern friends have
already contributed to the extent of their ability to hold these spring
meetings, and you very well know that after the husbands shall have paid
their party assessments there will be nothing left for them to "give to
their wives" to defray the expenses of a woman suffrage campaign.
Therefore, no discussion in the regular political meetings means no
discussion anywhere. But suppose there were plenty of money, and there
could be a most thorough fall campaign, what then? Why, the same old
story of "women talking to women," not one of whom can vote on the
question.

Again, with what decency can either of the parties ask women to come to
their political meetings to expound Populist or Republican doctrines
after they have set their heels on the amendment? Do you not see that if
it will lose votes to the parties to have the plank, it will lose votes
to allow women to advocate the amendment on their platforms? And what a
spectacle it would be to see women pleading with men to vote for the one
or the other party, while their tongues were tied on the question of
their own right to vote! Heaven and the Republican and Populist State
Conventions spare us such a dire humiliation!

But should the Republicans refuse to insert the plan