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HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
a part of the Government we should have at least a chance to exercise whatever powers we possess equally with all other citizens. It is because we believe that this Government should be true to its fundamental principles that we make these demands.
Some one asked Wendell Phillips if Christianity were not a failure and he replied, "It has not yet been tried." So we can say in regard to democracy. We hear the cry everywhere that democracy is a failure. A speaker in New York said that our democracy was the laughing stock of all the civilized nations of the world. It is the laughing stock because of the failure of this democracy to dare to be democratic. We have never tried universal suffrage but if that which we have is a failure the cure for it is not to restrict it but to extend it, because no class of men is able to represent another class and it is much truer that no class nor all classes of men are capable of representing any class or all classes of women. Believing this, we have come as citizens of the United States to this Mecca of all the people for more than forty years and we are ready to come for as many years more as may be necessary until our plea is granted.Dr. Shaw then said: "I desire to introduce speakers from the professions and lines of work represented in our petitions: Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch of Chicago, who has been a practicing lawyer for twenty-four years and was recently re-elected to the office of justice of the peace."
Mrs. McCulloch. There may be a woman school-teacher somewhere who does not want to vote that may be satisfied to receive only 75 per cent. as much as men teachers and to have no chance at highly paid superintendencies. 'There may be a mother who does not want equality at the ballot box nor in the guardianship of her children. There may be some factory girl who so earnestly believes it right to receive less wages than men do that she never wants the ballot to help her get equal pay for equal work. It may be that there is some woman paying heavy taxes—heavier than the equally wealthy man next door—who is happy to be taxed without being represented. It may be that some woman civil-service employee at Washington or in the State has for a long time been at the top of the list of those who are eligible for promotion and has seen men below her on the list requisitioned for places with large salaries and approves of this and enjoys being discriminated against because she is not a voter. There may be some woman physician who does not want to vote and who observes uncomplainingly that all remunerative political offices to which physicians are eligible on city or State boards of health or in public hospitals are filled by men. There may be a nurse so busy saving life that she has not realized the foolishness of her disfranchisement on the ground that she was never a soldier to destroy life. There may be some young woman in railroad office, stenographer, bookkeeper or clerk, who meekly approves
