The History of the Women's Suffrage: The Flame Ignites. Susan B. Anthony

Council and have them judiciously considered? I think it is due to our wives, daughters, mothers and sisters to afford them an avenue through which they can legitimately and judicially reach the ear of this great nation.

      Moved by Mr. Reagan's attacks, Mr. Keifer made a strong plea for the rights of women, which deserves a place in history, saying in part:

      We must remember that we stand here committed in a large sense to the matter of woman suffrage. In the Territories of Wyoming and Utah for fifteen years past women have had the right to vote on all questions which men can vote upon; and the Congress of the United States has stood by without disapproving the legislative acts of those Territories. And we now have before us a law passed at the last session of the Legislature of Washington, giving to its women the right to vote. We have not passed upon the question one way or the other, but we have the right to pass upon it. This, I think, seems to dispose sufficiently of the question of constitutional legislative power without trampling upon the toes of any State-rights man.

      The right of petition belongs to all persons within the limits of our republic, and with the right of petition goes the right on the part of the Congress through constitutional means to grant relief. Do gentlemen claim it is unconstitutional to amend the Constitution? I know that claim was made at one time on the floor of this House and on the floor of the Senate. When it was proposed to abolish slavery in the United States, distinguished gentlemen argued that it was unconstitutional to amend the Constitution so as to abolish slavery. But all that has passed away and we now find ourselves, in the light of the present, seeing clearly that we may amend the Constitution in any way we please, pursuing always the proper constitutional methods of doing so.

      There are considerations due to the women of this country which ought not to be lightly thrust aside. For thirty-five years they have been petitioning and holding conventions and demanding that certain relief should be granted them, to the extent of allowing them to exercise the right of suffrage. In that thirty-five years we have seen great things accomplished. We have seen some of the subtleties of the Common Law, which were spread over this country, swept away. There is hardly anybody anywhere who now adheres to the doctrine that a married woman can not make a contract, and that she has no rights or liabilities except those which are centered in her husband. Even the old Common-Law maxim that "husband and wife are one, and that one the husband," has been largely modified under the influence of these patriotic, earnest ladies who have taken hold of this question and enlightened the world upon it. There are now in the vaults of this Capitol hundreds of thousands of petitions for relief, sent in here by women and by those who believed that women ought to have certain rights and privileges of citizenship granted to them. For sixteen years there has been held in this city, annually, a convention composed of representative women from all parts of the country. These conventions, as well as various State and local conventions, have been appealing for relief; and they ought not to be met by the statement that we will not even give them the poor privilege of a committee to whom their petitions and memorials may be referred.

We have made some progress. In 1871 there was a very strong minority report made in this House in favor of woman suffrage. Notwithstanding the notion that we must stand by all our old ideas, the Supreme Court of the United States, after deliberately considering the question, admitted a woman to practice at the bar of that Court.21 A hundred years ago, in the darkness of which some gentlemen desire still to live, I suppose they would not have done this. Favorable reports on this subject were made by the Committee on Privileges and Elections in the Senate of the Forty-fifth Congress, and in the last Congress by a Select Committee of the Senate and of the House. The Legislatures of many of the States have expressed their judgment on the matter. There has been a great deal of progress in that direction. The Senate and the House of Representatives of the last Congress provided Select Committees to whom all matters relating to woman suffrage could be referred. Will this House take a step backward on this question?

      I want especially to notify the gentleman from Texas that we are not standing still on this matter. Eleven States—New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, Michigan, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado and Oregon—have authorized women to vote for school trustees and members of school boards. Kentucky extends this right to widows who have children and pay taxes. Women are nominated and voted for not only in the eleven States and three Territories, but in nearly all the Northern and Western States. Pennsylvania, Illinois, Iowa and other States have large numbers of women county superintendents of public schools. And let me say, for the benefit of the Democratic party, that in the great, progressive western State of Kansas the Democracy rose so high as to nominate and vote for a woman for State Superintendent of Public Instruction at the last election. So there has been a little growing away from those old ideas and notions, even among the Democracy. We are permitting women to fill public offices. Why should they not participate in the election of officers who are to govern them? We require them to pay taxes and there are a great many burdens imposed upon them. Kansas, Michigan, Colorado and Nebraska have in recent years submitted the question of woman suffrage to a vote of the people and more than one-third of the electors of each voted in favor. Oregon has now a similar proposition pending.

      By the laws of all the States women are required to pay taxes; but we are practically working on the theory that these women shall be taxed without the right of representation. Taxation without representation led to the separation of the colonies from the mother country. They were not so much opposed to being taxed as they were to being taxed without representation. The patriots of that day conceived the idea that there was a principle somewhere involved in the right of representation. So they evolved and formulated that Revolutionary maxim, "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute." The basis of that maxim was that they would not give to the payment of taxes without the right of representation. Revolution and war made representation and taxation correlative. But the States tax all women on their property. For illustration, 8,000 women of Boston and 34,000 in Massachusetts pay $2,000,000 of taxes, one-eleventh of the entire tax of that great and wealthy State. The same ratio will be found to prevail in all the other States.

      Progress has gone on elsewhere than in the United States. England has been moving forward in this matter, and we should not stand behind her in anything....

      I am one of those who do not believe that to give to women common rights and privileges will degrade them, but on the contrary I believe it will ennoble them; and I believe further that to put them on an equality in the matter of rights and privileges with men will enhance their charms and not lessen their beauty.

      The vote resulted—yeas, 85; nays, 124; not voting, 112. Of the affirmative votes 72 were Republican, 13 Democratic; of the negative, 4 were Republican, 120 Democratic.

      In January, 1884, after the return of the members from their holiday recess, Miss Anthony addressed letters to the 112 absentees, asking each how he would have voted had he been present. Fifty-two replies were received, 26 from Republicans, all of whom would have voted yes; 26 from Democrats, 10 of whom would have voted yes, 10, no, and 6 could not tell which way they would have voted.

      In the hope that this respectable minority could be increased to a majority, the Hon. John D. White (Ky.) made a further attempt, Feb. 7, 1884, to secure the desired committee, saying in his speech upon this question:

      It seems to me to be an anomalous state of affairs that in a great Nation like this one-half of the people should have no committee to which they could address their appeals.

      Women consider they have the same political rights as men. I might read from such distinguished authority as Miss Susan B. Anthony, whose name has been jeered in her native State, and who has been prosecuted there for voting, but who stands before the American people to-day the peer of any woman in the nation, and the superior of half the men occupying a representative capacity. It does seem to me hard that when a woman like this comes to Congress, instructed by thousands and tens of thousands of her sex, in order to be heard she should be compelled to hang around the doors of the Judiciary Committee, or of some other committee, pre-eminently occupied with other matters. But we are told there is no room. Yet we have a room where lobbyists of every sort are provided for. And are we to be told that no room in this wing of the Capitol can be had where respectable women of the nation