have filled. For myself, I am weary of the service in which I have toiled for so many years, and I welcome a season of rest, or at least a change of labor. But when your hope goes farther, and points to our return here by the votes of enfranchised women, and our welcome from a sisterhood of co-representatives in the halls of Congress, I confess the prophecy is so pleasing and the picture seems so tempting that its realization would completely reconcile me to my restored place in the House of Representatives, or even to a seat in that smaller body at the other end of the Capitol. And I am not lacking in the spirit of good courage and hope which animates you. These are revolutionary times. Whole years of progress are now crowded into days. Who will venture to judge the future by any political almanac of by-gone times? I can say with old Thomas Carlyle, "One strong thing I find here below, the just thing, the true thing." And no man or party is strong enough, no earthly power is strong enough to stay the grand march of events through which the hand of God is visibly guiding the Republic to universal liberty, and through that to enduring prosperity and peace.
Mr. Arnell, of Tennessee, said—Mrs. Hooker and Ladies: You have been kind enough to refer to me by name. I think you have been over-generous in your estimation of my poor services. If I have accomplished anything, no matter how inconsiderable, for your cause, I greatly rejoice. Yet, in reality, it is my cause as much as yours—a man's cause as much as a woman's; for the inquiry you have raised is a great fundamental question, broad as humanity itself. I thank you for your wide interpretation of the invitation I gave you to occupy the Committee-room of Education and Labor. You have rightly touched its true meaning. The doors were opened hopefully, invitingly to you as the advance-guard of American women, who are soon, I trust, to take equal part with their brothers, husbands and fathers in the government of this great and free Republic.
There is a bit of history connected with this room of Education and Labor. A hard-working woman was once driven from it by vote of the House of Representatives. She carried her work across the ocean, rested it under the Italian skies, until it blossomed into everlasting stone. Then she brought it back. A great admiring city and the self-same men who had voted her out, marveled and said, "Well done, woman." Her success is a triumph for woman. Meantime you, representing, arguing a higher cause than Art, had found a footing in this very apartment from which she had been turned out. This was a higher triumph. The amiable New York Tribune, chuckling over a false rumor that you were denied its further use, has misstated the facts. The Tribune only advertised its own narrow, pretentious wishes.
In bringing the proposition before Congress to pay women the same price as men for the same work performed, I desired not only to help those spirited, deserving women in the Departments, but also to aid two and a half millions of my working sisters in this country. It seemed to me that just here was room for practical legislation. Here was an angle to be carried in this great contest for justice and freedom, and I drew my best inspiration from a bright, sunny-faced wife, who to-day is far away among the hills of Tennessee. I greatly admire and respect either a working man