Volume III Part 22 (1/2)

The committee a.s.sembled at half-past 10 o'clock A.M. Present, Mr.

Thurman, _chairman_, Mr. McDonald, Mr. Bayard, Mr. Davis of Illinois, Mr. Edmunds.

The CHAIRMAN: Several members of the committee are unable to be here. Mr. Lamar is detained at his home in Mississippi by sickness; Mr. Carpenter is confined to his room by sickness; Mr.

Conkling has been unwell; I do not know how he is this morning; and Mr. Garland is chairman of the Committee on Territories, which has a meeting this morning that he could not fail to attend. I do not think we are likely to have any more members of the committee than are here now, and we will hear you, ladies.

Mrs. ZERELDA G. WALLACE of Indiana said: _Mr. Chairman, and Gentlemen of the Committee_: It is scarcely necessary to say that there is not an effect without a cause. Therefore it would be well for the statesmen of this nation to ask themselves the question, What has brought the women from all parts of this nation to the capital at this time? What has been the strong motive that has taken us away from the quiet and comfort of our own homes and brought us before you to-day? As an answer to that question I will read an extract from a speech made by one of Indiana's statesmen. He found out by experience and gave us the benefit of it:

You can go to meetings; you can vote resolutions; you can attend great demonstrations in the street; but, after all, the only occasion where the American citizen expresses his acts, his opinions, and his power is at the ballot-box; and that little ballot that he drops in there is the written sentiment of the times, and it is the power that he has as a citizen of this great republic.

That is the reason why we are here; the reason why we want to vote. We are not seditious women, clamoring for any peculiar rights; it is not the woman question that brings us before you to-day; it is the human question underlying this movement. We love and appreciate our country; we value its inst.i.tutions. We realize that we owe great obligations to the men of this nation for what they have done. To their strength we owe the subjugation of all the material forces of the universe which give us comfort and luxury in our homes. To their brains we owe the machinery that gives us leisure for intellectual culture and achievement.

To their education we owe the opening of our colleges and the establishment of our public schools, which give us these great and glorious privileges. This movement is the legitimate result of this development, and of the suffering that woman has undergone in the ages past.

A short time ago I went before the legislature of Indiana with a pet.i.tion signed by 25,000 of the best women in the State. I appeal to the memory of Judge McDonald to substantiate the truth of what I say. Judge McDonald knows that I am a home-loving, law-abiding, tax-paying woman of Indiana, and have been for fifty years. When I went before our legislature and found that one hundred of the vilest men in our State, merely by the possession of the ballot, had more influence with our lawmakers than the wives and mothers it was a startling revelation.

You must admit that in popular government the ballot is the most potent means for all moral and social reforms. As members of society, we are deeply interested in all the social problems with which you have grappled so long unsuccessfully. We do not intend to depreciate your efforts, but you have attempted to do an impossible thing; to represent the whole by one-half, and because we are the other half we ask you to recognize our rights as citizens of this republic.

JULIA SMITH PARKER of Glas...o...b..ry, Conn., said: _Gentlemen_: You may be surprised to see a woman of over four-score years appear before you at this time. She came into the world and reached years of discretion before any person in this room was born. She now comes before you to plead that she can vote and have all the privileges that men have. She has suffered so much individually that she thought when she was young she had no right to speak before the men; but still she had courage to get an education equal to that of any man at the college, and she had to suffer a great deal on that account. She went to New Haven to school, and it was noised around that she had studied the languages. It was such an astonis.h.i.+ng thing for girls at that time to have the advantages of education, that I had actually to go to cotillon parties to let people see that I had common sense. [Laughter.]

She has had to pay $200 a year in taxes without knowing what becomes of it. She does not know but that it goes to support grog-shops. She knows nothing about it. She has had to suffer her cows to be sold at the sign-post six times. She suffered her meadow land, worth $2,000, to be sold for a tax less than $50. If she could vote as the men do she would not have suffered this insult; and so much would not have been said against her as has been said if men did not have the whole power. I was told that they had the power to take anything that I owned if I would not exert myself to pay the money. I felt that I ought to have some little voice in determining what should be done with what I paid.

I felt that I ought to own my own property; that it ought not to be in these men's hands; and I now come to plead that I may have the same privileges before the law that men have. I have seen what a difference there is, when I have had my cows sold, by having a voter to take my part.

I have come from an obscure town on the banks of the Connecticut, where I was born. I was brought up on a farm. I never had an idea that I should come all the way to Was.h.i.+ngton to speak before those who had not come into existence when I was born. Now, I plead that there may be a sixteenth amendment, and that women may be allowed the privilege of owning their own property. I have suffered so much myself that I felt it might have some effect to plead before this honorable committee. I thank you, gentlemen, for hearing me so kindly.

ELIZABETH L. SAXON of Louisiana, said: _Gentlemen_: I feel that after Mrs. Wallace's plea there is no necessity for me to say anything. I come from the extreme South, she from the West.

People have asked me why I came. I care nothing for suffrage merely to stand beside men, or rush to the polls, or to take any privilege outside of my home, only, as Mrs. Wallace says, for humanity. I never realized the importance of this cause, until we were beaten back on every side in the work of reform. If we attempted to put women in charge of prisons, believing that wherever woman sins and suffers women should be there to teach, help and guide, every place was in the hands of men. If we made an effort to get women on the school-boards we were combated and could do nothing.

In the State of Texas, I had a niece living whose father was an inmate of a lunatic asylum. She exerted as wide an influence as any woman in that State; I allude to Miss Mollie Moore, who was the ward of Mr. Cus.h.i.+ng. I give this ill.u.s.tration as a reason why Southern women are taking part in this movement. Mr. Wallace had charge of that lunatic asylum for years. He was a good, honorable, able man. Every one was endeared to him; the State appreciated him as superintendent of this asylum. When a political change was made and Gov. Robinson came in, Dr. Wallace was ousted for political purposes. It almost broke the hearts of some of the women who had sons, daughters or husbands there. They determined at once to try and have him reinstated. It was impossible, he was out, and what could they do?

A gentleman said to me a few days ago, ”These women ought to marry.” I am married; I am a mother; and in our home the sons and brothers are all standing like a wall of steel at my back. I have cast aside the prejudices of the past. They lie like rotted hulks behind me.

After the fever of 1878, when our const.i.tutional convention was about to convene, I suppressed the agony and grief of my own heart (for one of my children had died) and took part in the suffrage movement in Louisiana with the wife of Chief-Justice Merrick, Mrs. Sarah A. Dorsey, and Mrs. Harriet Keating of New York, the niece of Dr. Lozier. These three ladies aided me faithfully and ably. I went to Lieutenant-Governor Wiltz, and asked him if he would present or consider a pet.i.tion which I wished to bring before the convention. He read the pet.i.tion. One clause of our State law is that no woman can sign a will. Some ladies donated property to an asylum. They wrote the will and signed it themselves, and it was null and void, because they were women. That clause, perhaps, will be wiped out. Many gentlemen signed the pet.i.tion on that account. Governor Wiltz, then lieutenant-governor, told me he would present the pet.i.tion. He was elected president of the convention. I presented my first pet.i.tion, signed by the best names in the city of New Orleans and in the State. I had the names of seven of the most prominent physicians. Three prominent ministers signed it for moral purposes alone. When Mrs. Dorsey was on her dying bed the last time she ever signed her name was to a letter to go before that convention. Mrs. Merrick and myself addressed the convention. We made the pet.i.tion then that we make here; that we, the mothers of the land, should not be barred on every side in the cause of reform. I pledged my father on his dying bed that I would never cease work until woman stood with man equal before the law.

I beg of you, gentlemen, to consider this question seriously. We stand precisely in the position of the colonies when they plead, and, in the words of Patrick Henry, were ”spurned with contempt from the foot of the throne.” We have been jeered and laughed at; but the question has pa.s.sed out of the region of ridicule. This clamor for woman suffrage, for woman's rights, for equal representation, is extending all over the land.

I plead because my work has been combated in the cause of reform everywhere that I have tried to accomplish anything. The children that fill the houses of prost.i.tution are not of foreign blood and race. They come from sweet American homes, and for every woman that went down some mother's heart broke. I plead by the power of the ballot to be allowed to help reform women and benefit mankind.

MARY A. STEWART of Delaware said: The negroes are a race inferior, you must admit, to your daughters, and yet that race has the ballot, and why? It is said they earned it and paid for it with their blood. Whose blood paid for yours? The blood of your forefathers and our forefathers. Does a man earn a hundred thousand dollars and lie down and die, saying, ”It is all my boys'”? Not a bit of it. He dies saying, ”Let my children, be they cripples, be they idiots, be they boys, or be they girls, inherit all my property alike.” Then let us inherit the sweet boon of the ballot alike. When our fathers were driving the great s.h.i.+p of State we were willing to sail as deck or cabin pa.s.sengers, just as we felt disposed; we had nothing to say; but to-day the boys are about to run the s.h.i.+p aground, and it is high time that the mothers should be asking, ”What do you mean to do?”

In our own little State the laws have been very much modified in regard to women. My father was the first man to blot out the old English law allowing the eldest son the right of inheritance to the real-estate. He took the first step, and like all those who take first steps in reform he received a mountain of curses from the oldest male heirs.

Since 1868 I have, by my own individual efforts, by the use of hard-earned money, gone to our legislature time after time and have had this law and that law pa.s.sed for the benefit of women; and the same little s.h.i.+p of State has sailed on. To-day our men are just as well satisfied with the laws in force in our State for the benefit of women as they were years ago. A woman now has a right to make a will. She can hold bonds and mortgages of her own. She has a right to her own property. She cannot sell it though, if it is real-estate, simply because the moment she marries, her husband has his right of courtesy. The woman does not grumble at that; but still when he dies owning real-estate, she gets only the rental value of one-third, which is called the widow's dower. Now I think the man ought to have the rental value of one-third of the woman's maiden property or real-estate, and it ought to be called the widower's dower. It would be just as fair for one as for the other. All that I want is equality.

The women of our State, as I said before, are taxed without representation. The tax-gatherer comes every year and demands taxes. For twenty years I have paid tax under protest, and if I live twenty years longer I shall pay it under protest every time.

The tax-gatherer came to my place not long since. ”Well,” said I, ”good morning, sir.” Said he, ”Good morning.” He smiled and said, ”I have come bothering you.” Said I, ”I know your face well. You have come to get a right nice little woman's tongue-las.h.i.+ng.”

Said he, ”I suppose so, but if you will just pay your tax I will leave.” I paid the tax, ”But,” said I, ”remember I pay it under protest, and if I ever pay another tax I intend to have the protest written and make the tax-gatherer sign it before I pay the tax, and if he will not sign that protest then I shall not pay, and there will be a fight at once,” Said he, ”Why do you keep all the time protesting against paying this small tax?” Said I, ”Why do you pay your tax?” ”Well,” said he, ”I would not pay it if I did not vote.” Said I, ”That is the very reason why I do not want to pay it. I cannot vote.” Who stay at home from the election? The women, and the black and white men who have been to the whipping-post. Nice company to put your wives and daughters in.

It is said that the women do not want to vote. Every woman sitting here wants to vote, and must we be debarred the privilege of voting because some luxurious woman, rolling around in her carriage in her little downy nest that some good, benevolent man has provided for her, does not want to vote? There was a society that existed up in the State of New York called the Covenanters that never voted. Were all you men disfranchised because that cla.s.s or sect up in New York would not vote? Did you all pay your taxes and stay at home and refrain from voting because the Covenanters did not vote? Not a bit of it. You went to the election and told them to stay at home if they wanted to, but that you, as citizens, were going to take care of yourselves.

That was right. We, as citizens, want to take care of ourselves.

One more thought, and I will be through. The fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, in my opinion, and in the opinion of a great many smart men in the country, and smart women, too, give the right to women to vote without any ”if's” or ”and's” about it, and the United States protects us in it; but there are a few who construe the law to suit themselves, and say that those amendments do not mean that, because the congress which pa.s.sed the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments had no such intention.