The great underlying mass of ignorance is always conservative. Hence the difficulty of making constitutional amendments, and the importance of employing an easier method. Let every man or woman who believes in woman suffrage organize within their respective States and endeavor to obtain such an act from their respective Legislatures next winter, and let it be understood that the votes of the woman suffrage party, both men and women, will be cast as a unit within each State for the party which does this great act of political justice.
Giles B. Stebbins said: It has been stated that women don't want the ballot. Well, suppose they don't. That is the very strongest argument why they should be taught that they do. Fred. Douglass said, "Show me a contented slave, and I will show you a depraved man." We want duties and responsibilities shared equally by all, that man may be more manly and woman more womanly.
Mrs. Elizabeth K. Churchill, of Providence, said: Can there be an aristocracy meaner and more tyrannical than that of sex, by which a wise, cultured, intelligent woman is made the inferior (for that is what the denial of the ballot implies), the inferior of a base, brutal, degraded man? The divine right of kings is an exploded notion; it is time for the divine right of sex to follow it. The chief value of the ballot is the educational power. He who feels an interest in men and measures will soon feel a responsibility. Everybody knows that women are no better than men. They are no angels floating in an ethereal atmosphere. It is the fashion sometimes to call them "angels," but I observe they are no longer angels when they get aged. I don't know a more unpleasant rôle to play than that of an aged angel. If it is said that woman can't know enough to vote, I can only reply that God made them to match men. But no standard of education was ever fixed for the ballot; and if there had been one, it never could exclude woman, any more than it could negroes.
Mrs. Livermore left the chair for a short time to read a note from a lady inquiring whether, if she thought the woman suffrage movement was condemned in the New Testament, she would abandon the movement. I think she said, that it is not the proper way to put the question. If the question were put to me, If I thought the woman's reform contrary to Christianity, would I throw it overboard? I should answer, Yes, unhesitatingly; I should desire, for one, to stop it; I should renounce it forever. What is it that the woman's reform asks for woman? We ask for the ballot, and we ask it simply because it is the symbol of equality. There is no other recognized symbol of equality in this country. We ask for the ballot that we may be equal to men before the law. The very moment we obtain it the work of this association is done, and it must get out of the way. Then new associations must be formed to take the new work that will come before us, for when the ballot is given to woman then the great work will begin. Then comes the tug of war. For the obtaining of the ballot by woman is but stepping up the first round of the ladder, whose topmost round takes hold of perfection.
Oliver Johnson moved that the resolutions reported in the morning be