public conscience to a realizing sense of the state of affairs. We are the result of what the religion, the education of the nineteenth century and the liberty which it has granted to women have made us. We are ready and willing and competent to befriend our less favored sisters beyond the seas, and to extend to them the benefits we enjoy, so far as they are able to receive them; but—the tragedy of it—in a certain sense we are utterly helpless to reach them and to give them what they, unconsciously to themselves, so grievously need. There is no place for the thought of the women of this land in the plans of the nation for the study of these questions.
No matter how much our speaker may think and write and publish on this subject—aye, and women like her—no matter how wise the conclusions they reach, is it at all likely that their voices will be listened to in the din and blare and clash of warring political parties, or respected in legislative halls? Or is it probable that the advocates of territorial expansion will pause a moment to ponder on the woman side of that question? We, to-day, are discussing this subject without even the shadow of a hope of putting our convictions into practice. Is it any wonder that women at large are dead to the importance of this matter? ....
I am in favor of pushing the question to the utmost—not that I have any hope that such a Commission will be appointed, but because it furnishes a most valuable argument for extending the suffrage to women: first, in order that, by its possession, they may have an uncontested, legally-defined right of serving on such commissions; and, second, because of the opportunity it offers for proving to the world the necessity of commissions like this for settling questions and conditions of which women form a central and integral part. Of course if we possessed the suffrage, we should have no necessity for a discussion like the present. Everything we are saying would seem like truisms then, instead of being contested point by point, as it is to-day. ....
Mr. Blackwell: .... In those islands are peoples ranging from absolute savagery to medieval civilization, from fighters with blow-guns and bows and arrows to fighters with Mauser rifles and modern artillery. Laws and institutions suited to the needs of one tribe are unsuited to those of another. Side by side are Catholicism, Mohammedanism and heathenism. Their amusements vary from cannibalism to cock-fighting. Their social status -ranges from barbarous promiscuity to Moslem polygamy and thence to Hindoo monogamy. But everywhere exist masculine domination and feminine subjection, under varied forms of political despotism, tempered with Protestant liberalism in the case of Hawaii. To establish over all these diverse social conditions the rigid principles of the English common law, which prevail largely in our jurisprudence, will perpetuate and intensify the tyranny of husband over wife, of father over offspring.
We see the consequences-already in the British West Indies, where negro women generally prefer to live outside of legal marriage because as wives they find themselves subjected to practical
