Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/422

Resolved, That the American Federation of Labor earnestly appeals to Congress to pass a resolution submitting to the Legislatures of the several States a proposition for a Sixteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution that shall prohibit the States from disfranchising United States citizens on account of sex.

Miss Anthony expressed her satisfaction that equal suffrage was endorsed by "the hard-working, wage-earning men of the country, each of them with a good solid ballot in his hand."

Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby (D. C.) gave a historical sketch of Our Great Leaders, replete with beauty and pathos. Miss Kate M. Gordon spoke entertainingly on the possibilities of A Scrap of Suffrage.^[1] In presenting her Miss Anthony said: "The right of taxpaying women in Louisiana to vote upon questions of taxation is practically the first shred of suffrage which those of any Southern State have secured, and they have used it well. They deserve another scrap, and I think they will get it before some of us do who have been asking for half a century."

Miss Gail Laughlin, a graduate of Wellesley and of the Law Department of Cornell University, discussed Conditions of the Wage-Earning Women of Our Country, saying in part:

"Wage-earner" among women is used in a broad sense. All women receiving money payment for work are proud to be called wage-earners, because wage-earning means economic independence. The census of 1890 reports nearly 400 occupations open to women, and nearly 4,000,000 women engaged in them. But government reports show the average wages of women in large cities to be from $3.83 to $6.91 per week, and the general average to be from $5.00 to $6.68. In all lines women are paid less than men for the same grade of work, and they are often compelled to toil under needlessly dangerous and unsanitary conditions. If the people of this country want to advance civilization, they have no need to go to the islands of the Pacific to do it.

How are these evils to be remedied? By organization, suffrage, co-operation among women, and above all, the inculcation of the principle that a woman is an individual, with a right to choose her work, and with other rights equal with man. Our law-makers control the sanitary conditions and pay of teachers. Here is work for the women who have "all the rights they want." When one of these comfortably situated women was told of the need of the ballot for working women, she held up her finger, showing the wedding ring on it, and said, "I have all the rights I want." The next time that I read the parable of the man who fell among thieves and was succored by the good Samaritan, methought I could see that woman with the wedding ring on her finger, passing by on the other side.

1. See chapter on Louisiana.