energetic and enterprising anywhere to be found, and in number they largely exceed our women. Gentlemen, make this the most advantageous State for women, and they will soon be wending their way hither. Women have been granted select committees in both Houses of congress, and better still, each of those committees has given us a majority report in favor of a sixteenth amendment to the constitution of the United States, prohibiting the disfranchisement of citizens on account of sex. Gentlemen, delegates of this State constitutional convention, I now appeal to your highest sense of honor and justice to give us the right to vote—give it to us, not because we possess any particular merit, but give it to us because it is our right! Then Dakota will in fact be "a home of the free"—honored by all nations, and the Banner State of the Union [applause].
But, after all our work and pleading, they turned a deaf ear—infinitely worse, they were dishonest; at least this was true of the committee on elections. I was present at every meeting of that committee. At their last, I was with them three hours (the entire session) to answer objections. One member made the motion, "that the word 'male' be not incorporated within our State constitution." The vote on the motion was a tie, when the chairman cast his vote in the affirmative. After weeks of hard work I had reached the goal! and with eyes brim full of tears, thanked that committee. They then adjourned, to report in open convention the next morning to my utter surprise, that "Women may vote at school elections and for school officers." No words of mine can express the disappointment and humiliation this defeat of justice caused me. Among the hundreds of questions asked me by that committee were these: "Do you want a prohibitory plank in our State constitution?" Answer: "No; prohibition should be settled by the people; it cannot be with one-half our citizens disfranchised, and that half its most earnest advocates." "Do you think prohibition prohibits?" "No; man's prohibitory laws are good enough, but he does not enforce them; women have not the authority to do so; but if you will give us the power, we will soon have prohibition that will prohibit." A voice: "I believe it!" "Do you think the majority of women want to vote?" "I do not; but is that any reason why you should deprive the one who does? You do not force men to vote; women, as a rule, have not given this subject the attention they should; many of them are as ignorant of the advantages the ballot would secure as were the negroes when John Brown raised the insurrection at Harper's Ferry."
There is a trite saying: "The darkest hour is just before the dawn." The day cannot be far distant when Dakota's women will be free; for the most intelligent men, and those occupying the most prominent positions in our territory, are avowed friends of suffrage. Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court for Dakota, Hon. A. J. Edgerton, said in his Fourth of July oration here: "How necessary it is for us to elect only good and honest men to office! To do this, woman likewise must act her part in the labor of arresting the advance of crime and corruption, although through timidity the politician is slow to invest her with the higher duties and obligations of American citizenship."
This same just judge has appointed a woman (Mrs. Washburn of Chamberlain) stenographer of his judicial district—the best salaried office in
