cheeks, and begging for power, begging for the ballot to save their homes, and themselves, and their children. Do you tell this audience—do you tell any mother or daughter here this afternoon, that she protests against the purity of womanhood, and lifts her powers against the laws of God? Pardon me for taking this much of your time. I will simply add a thought. This is the cause of purity. This is the cause which is to strengthen young girls, which is to give them self-reliance and self-respect. This is the thing that is to put these girls on their feet; say to them "you are an independent being; you are to earn the clothes that cover you," and this will allow them to walk with steady feet through rough places. This thing which is to give these women such power, certainly will be strengthening to them by making them independent and self-reliant. The ballot is to save womanhood and save purity, which he says is in danger—the feminine element of dependence and weakness and tenderness, of clinging helplessness, which he so much adores. Let justice be done. Give us the ballot. Here is the power to defend yourself when your rights are assailed; when your home is entered. Here is the authority to tell the spoiler to stand back; when our sons are being brought up to wickedness and our daughters to lives of shame, here is the power in the mother's hand which says these children shall be taken from the wrong place and put in the right one. For the rights of mothers I plead. Let us allow, from one end of this country to the other, every man and woman, black and white, to go to the polls to defend their own rights and the rights of their homes.
The Rev. R. L. Collier said he would to God that every woman in America had such a heart and such a voice for woman's rights. But sympathy was one thing and logic was another. If he thought the ballot in the hand of woman would cure the wrongs she speaks of, he would favor female suffrage, but he was firmly convinced that it would only aggravate their wrongs. He could not fight Anna Dickinson.
Anna Dickinson: I certainly do not intend to fight Mr. Collier. I believe I have the name of not being a belligerent woman. Mr. Collier says sympathy is one thing and logic is another. Very true! I did not speak of the 40,000 women in the State of Massachusetts who are wives of drunkards, as a matter which shall appeal to your sympathies, or move your tears. Mr. Collier says that these women are to, find their rights by influence at home.
Mr, Collier: That is what I mean.
Miss Dickinson: That they are to do it by womanly and feminine love, and I tell him that is the duty of this same feminine element which is so admirable and adorable. I have seen men on your street corners, as I have seen men on the street corners of every city of America, with bloated faces, with mangled forms, and eyes blackened by the horrible vice and orgies carried on in their dens of iniquity and drunkenness and sin. I have seen men with not a semblance of humanity in their form or in their face, and not a sentiment of manhood in their souls. I have seen these men made absolute masters of wives and children; men who reel to their homes night after night to beat some helpless child; to beat some helpless woman. A woman was beaten here in Chicago the other day until there was scarcely a trace of the woman's face left, and scarcely a trace of the woman's form remaining. Mr. Collier tells me, then, that these -women whose husbands reel home at, 12, I, 2, 3 o'clock at night, to demolish the furniture, beat the children, and destroy their wives' peace and lives—that these women are to find their rights by influence, by argument, by tenderness. These brutes who deserve the gallows if any human being can deserve anything so atrocious in these days—are these women, their wives, to find their safety, their security for themselves and their children, by influence, through argument and tenderness, or love, when nothing can influence save drink? The law gives man the power to say, "I will have drink; I will put this into my mouth." If the ballot were given to women they would vote against drunkenness. It is not sentiment, it is logic, if there be any logic in votes and in a home saved.
The Rev. R. L. Collier, in reply to Miss Dickinson, quoted a story from an English author of a drunkard who was reclaimed by a daughter's love and devotion. He never wanted to hear a woman say that law could accomplish what love could not.
