Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/534

5OO HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE millenium will come soon after women get the vote, but I believe that women will take an unusual interest in the effort to clean up vicious conditions, because all down the ages women have paid the ^ price of vice and crime. 1 do not believe that at heart a man is any worse than a woman, but all through the centuries he lias been taught that he may do some things which a woman may not. It is only of late that we have begun to light these things in the open and you cannot suc- cessfully fight any evil in the dark. For sixteen years my work has brought me in contact with this peculiar phase of public morals and I know whereof I speak. Public morals are corrupted because woman's point of view has no representation. We have laws to regulate these things but they are man-made and the public senti- ment behind them which should govern their enforcement has grown up through the ages and it is the sentiment of men only. The laws are not equal nor equally enforced. If you doubt it you have only to go into the night court and you will see woman after woman convicted on the word of a policeman only, while in order to con- vict a man you have to pile evidence on evidence. I think this inequality of treatment will not cease till women get a vote. In a very convincing address Dr. Lovejoy said : The past month has been memorable in the history of child labor reform in America. A three-years' campaign culminated last Fri- day in the signing of a bill by President Wilson which excludes from the facilities of interstate commerce the exploiters of child labor, it has been estimated that 150,000 children who now bow under the yoke of excessive toil will be able to straighten up and look heaven in the face when this law begins to operate on the first of next September. In signing the bill the President said: "I want to say that with real emotion I sign this bill, because I know how long the struggle has been to secure legislation of this sort and what it is going to mean to the health and vigor of this country and also to the happiness of those whom it affects. It is with genuine pride that I play my part in completing legislation." 1 am convinced that we need the voice of the church, the school, the home, in making and enforcing laws to protect working children, and, since half the adult population of our American homes are women, since approximately 75 per cent, of the church members are women, since 90 per cent, of the school teachers are women and since every moral and educational enterprise in the country is repre- sented in about the same proportion, cold logic forces us to the conclusion that we need women in politics. Of 10,000 members of the National Child Labor Committee, 6,400 are women. Some of the experiences we have had with men in Legislatures in response to the appeal of mothers for the protection of working children have forced me to the conclusion that in this protection the partici- pation of women in the law-making of the State is vital.