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NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1896.
267
upon this greatest function of life without any preparation, and their mothers permit them to do it because they do not recognize motherhood as a business. We do not let a man practice as a doctor or a druggist, or do anything else which involves issues of life and death, without training and certificates; but the life and death of the whole human race are placed in the hands of utterly untrained young girls. The suffrage draws the woman out of her purely personal relations and puts her in relations with her kind, and it broadens her intelligence. I am not disparaging the noble devotion of our present mothers—I know how they struggle and toil—but when that tremendous force of mother love is made intelligent, fifty per cent. of our children will not die before they are five years old, and those that grow up will be better men and women. A woman will no longer be attached solely to one little group, but will be also a member of the community. She will not neglect her own on that account, but will be better to them and of more worth as a mother.

Mrs. Stetson closed with her own fine poem, Mother to Child.

The usual congressional hearings were held on Tuesday morning, January 28.[1] The speakers were presented by Miss Shaw, who made a very strong closing argument. At its conclusion Senator Peffer announced his thorough belief in woman suffrage, and Senator Hoar planted himself still more firmly in the favorable position he always had maintained.[2]

Miss Anthony led the host before the Judiciary Committee of the House, and opened with the statement that the women had been coming here asking for justice for nearly thirty years. She gave a brief account of the status of the question before Congress and then presented her speakers, each occupying the exact limit of time allotted and each taking up a different phase of the question.[3] Miss Anthony called on Representative John F. Shaf-

  1. The Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage—Senators Wilkinson Call, James Z. George, George F. Hoar, Matthew S. Quay and William A. Peffer—were addressed by Elizabeth D. Bacon (Conn.), Sallie Clay Bennett (Ky.), Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.), Lucretia L. Blankenburg (Penn.), Mariana W. Chapman (N. Y.), Mary N. Chase (Vt.), Dr. Mary D. Hussey (N. J.), Mrs. Frank Hubbard (Ills.), Lavina A, Hatch (Mass.), May Stocking Knaggs (Mich.), Helen Morris Lewis (N. C.), Orra Langhorne (Va.), Mary Elizabeth Milligan (Del.), Caroline Hallowell Miller (Md.), Julia B. Nelson (Minn.), Mrs. R. W. Southard (Ok.), Ellen Powell Thompson (D. C.), Victoria Conkling Whitney (Mo.), Virginia D. Young (S. C.).
  2. On April 23 Senator Call submitted the Bill for a Sixteenth Amendment without recommendation; and for himself and Senator George the same old adverse report which had begun to do duty in 1882, and which, he said, expressed their views. It will be found in the History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. III, p. 237. Senator Quay evidently allowed himself to be counted in the opposition.
  3. The members of the committee present were Representatives David B. Henderson (chairman), Broderick, Updegraff, Gillett (Mass.), Baker (N. H.), Burton (Mo.), Brown, Culberson, Boatner, Washington, Terry and De Armond. Absent: Ray, Connolly, Bailey, Strong and Lewis. The speakers were: Mrs. L. C. Hughes (Ariz.), Charlotte