NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1910
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an order for the discharge of all women employees for the ostensible reason that they marry too soon but for the real reason that they do not vote.
There may be a woman in any of these varied employments who is so convinced of her own inferiority that she does not want the ballot but to the credit of the women lawyers it may be said that almost every one does want to vote and can tell several reasons why. A woman may in this century go through a law college the only woman in her class without discomfort. She opens those sacred law books as easily and learns as readily as do the men and passes as good an examination. She sees her young men classmates rise to great distinction in the service of the State. She may count among them, as I can, city attorneys, State attorneys, civil-service commissioners, Judges of high degree, Senators and Governors. It will be impossible to prove to her that she, who in law school fed on the same mental diet as did these now renowned political leaders, is too ignorant to vote for them or against them or that the quality of her brain forbids her understanding of the great problems her law classmates are now solving....Dr. Shaw: The next speaker will be Miss Eveline Gano, a teacher of history in one of the high schools of New York City, who will speak on behalf of the teachers of the country.
Miss Gano. If the woman teacher's need of the ballot is a debatable question then another very natural question arises: Do men teachers need the ballot? . . . I am asked to speak particularly of women who have made teaching a profession. In 1870, 41 per cent. of the teachers in the United States were men; 21 per cent. to-day are men. In large cities the number of women teachers is still greater in proportion. In New York only 12 1-2 per cent. of the 17,000 teachers are men. According to the last census there are 17,000,000 children in the United States who should be in elementary schools. Approximately 90 per cent. are taught almost entirely by women. In New York City only seven per cent. of the 600,000 children in the public schools ever enter grades higher than the elementary; in western cities a few more. Practically all of the schooling that 90 citizens out of 100 ever get they receive from the hands and hearts and minds of women. Whatever this great number of future citizens knows of citizenship and correct standards of morals and industry they have learned from the mothers and the women teachers. The very foundations of law and equity and justice are in the hands of women who are in the eyes of the law but wards and dependents. If these women teachers and mothers had a keener sense of their responsibilities by actual participation in civic life, what might be the results in even one decade? Who is to blame if they do not have the keener sense?
One of the greatest problems facing this republic has been turned
