I gave the larger part of
my life, the women who do equal work with the men do not receive equal
pay. The Government more than any other employer has taken advantage
of women of my class because they have not a vote.... The workmen,
more than any other men, even more than those who are supposed to be
statesmen, have seen the necessity for women to have a vote. Ever
since 1890 the convention of the American Federation of Labor has
unanimously adopted a resolution favoring woman suffrage. I do not
believe that any one will deny that the workingmen are the thinking
men of the country. I am asking you, in the name of the women I
represent at least, to do for us what our working brothers are trying
to do--give us our rights."

Mrs. Lucia Ames Mead said in the course of a long address: "The man
who talks about home today as if it still gave ample opportunity for
woman's productive activity as it once did, is talking about a
condition which is as obsolete as the conditions before we had
railroads and telegraphs. Woman's educational opportunities and
productive capacity are so altered as to require her political status
to be altered.... There is a class of women who do not need to earn
their living and have a large leisure. They are not idle, they are as
active as fireflies, but they are not obliged to be productive as
every human being should be.... They have more time than men to study
and to apply the principles of justice and mercy and to do that
preventive, educational work which is a better defense of country than
a squadron of battleships. The suffrage has done much to develop man;
the woman of leisure needs it to develop her; the working woman needs
it to obtain salutary conditions under which to earn her living; the
woman working for reforms needs it so as to accomplish in a year what
otherwise she may wait for twenty-five years of pleading and
'influence' to obtain."

Miss Alice Stone Blackwell began her address: "We are not here to ask
you to extend suffrage to women but to give to the State Legislatures
an opportunity to vote on it, and probably some practical
considerations should be offered to show that public sentiment has
arrived at a point where it seems to be timely and worth while that
this question should be submitted to them. We would like to convince
you that this is only right. If three-fourths of them are not prepared
to give us suffrage, we shall not get it. If three-fourths of them are
prepared, the