75 2 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE movement, that they recognized the necessity that State and Federal action must go together. ADDRESS OF MRS. CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT AT SENATE HEARING, DEC. 1$, Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee: Since our last appeal was made to your committee a vote has been taken in four Eastern States upon the question of amending their constitutions for woman suffrage. The inaction of Congress in not submitting a Federal amendment naturally leads us to infer that members believe the proper method by which women may secure the vote is through the referendum. We found in those four States what has always been true whenever any class of people have asked for any form of liberty and was best described by Macaulay when he said: "ii a people are turbulent they are uiiht for liberty; if they are quiet, they do not want it." We met a curious dilemma. On the one hand a great many men voted m the negative because women in Great Britain had made too emphatic a demand for the vote. Since they made that demand it is reported that 10,000,000 men have been killed, wounded or are missing through militant action, but all of that is held as naught compared with the burning of a few vacant buildings. Evidently the logic that thc^e American men followed was: Since some turbulent women in another land are unlit to vote, no American woman shall vote. There was no reasoning that could change the attitude of those men. On the other hand the great majority of the men who voted against us, as well as the great majority of the members of Legislatures and Congress who oppose this movement, hold that women have given no signal that they want the vote. Between the horns of this amazing dilemma the 1'ederal amendment and State sulfrage seem to be caught fast. So those oi us who want to learn how to obtain the vote have naturally asked ourselves over and over again what kind of a demand can be made. U e get nothing by "watchful waiting" and if we are turbulent we are pro- nounced unlit to vote. U e turned to history to learn vhat kind ol a demand the men of our own country made and determined to do what they had done. The census of lyio reported 27,000,000 males over 21. uf these 9,500,000 are direct descendants of the population of 1800; 2,458,873 are negroes; 15,040,278 are aliens, naturalized or descendants of naturalized citizens since 1800. The last two classes compose two-thirds ol the male population over 21. The enfranchisement of negro men is such recent history that it is unnecessary to repeat here that they made no demand for the vote. 1 he naturalization laws give citizenship to any man who chooses to make a residence of this country for rive years and automatically every man who is a citizen becomes a voter in the State of his residence. In the 115 years since 1800 not one single foreigner has ever been asked whether he wanted the vote or whether he was fit for it it has literally been thrust upon him. Two-thirds of our men of voting age today have not only made no demand for the vote but they have never been asked to give any evidence of capacity to use it intelligently.
e turned again to history to see how the men who lived in this country
in 1800 got their votes. At that time 8 per cent, of the total population were voters in New York as compared with 25 per cent. now. There was a struggle in all the colonial States to broaden the suffrage. New York seemed always to have lagged behind the others and therefore it forms a good example, it was next to the last State to remove the land qualification and it was not a leader in the extension of the suffrage to any class. In 1740 the British Parliament disqualified the Catholics for naturalization in this country. That enactment had been preceded in several of the States by their definite disfranchisement. In 1699 they were disfranchised by an Act of the Assembly of New York. Although the writers on the early fran- chise say that Jews were not permitted to vote anywhere in this country in 1701, as they certainly were not in England, yet occasionally they apparently did so. In New York that year there was a definite enactment disfranchising them. In 1737 the Assembly passed another disfranchising Act. Catholics and Jews were disfranchised in most States. It is interesting to learn how they became enfranchised. One would naturally suppose that together or sepa-
