keeping house and doing the family sewing and rearing children is
a "snap" and not a profession; when they grow broad enough to
realize that the woman with the broom is a laborer just as much
worthy of her hire as a typewriter, we shall have fewer women
yearning to go out into the world and earn a few dollars of
spending money.

Edwin Merrick, the son of a Chief Justice of Louisiana and Mrs.
Caroline E. Merrick, its pioneer suffragist, began his address on A
Political Anomaly by referring to the distinguished women he had been
privileged to meet in his home. He spoke of the constitution drawn up
on the Mayflower to give equal liberty to all without the slightest
conception of what true liberty really meant, and of the larger
conception of it which was imbedded in the Declaration of Independence
and the Constitution of the United States. "But," he said, "while the
words were there, slavery still existed and the people of the Union
were slowly led to see the handwriting on the wall and slavery had to
go. Had the great leader of his day, Abraham Lincoln, been preserved
to help shape the destinies of this country, what followed would not
have happened." He then spoke of the crime of enfranchising "a horde
of ignorant negro men when at that time there were nearly 4,000,000
intelligent white women keenly alive to the interests of their country
to whom the ballot was denied." He sketched the steady degeneration of
national and State politics and exposed the conditions in Louisiana.
He showed how the reforms that had been accomplished had been largely
aided by women and concluded:

If we concede that women have any moral strength, and it has been
conceded from the time whereof the memory of man runneth not to
the contrary, I now ask the question: Is there any one place in
the universe where moral strength and moral character are more
needed than in modern politics under a republican form of
government? In some of our western States we have already seen
what the women can do and the day will come when they will vote
with us just as they read with us, talk with us, ride with us and
consult with us. The most important object of our Government is
education. The most important part of education is the education
of the young. The most important factor in education of the young
is woman's influence, and when it comes to saying who shall
deci