meet the present intensely utilitarian age and continued: "Today we know that the ballot is just a machine. In fact it impresses us as being something like the long-distance telephone which we in this scientific age have grown accustomed to use. We go into the polling booth and call up central (the Government) and when we get the connection we deliver our message with accuracy and speed and then we go about our business. Women have been encouraged during the past to have opinions about governmental matters and there is no denying that we do have opinions. If we could submit to you today the list of bills which the Federations of Women's Clubs of the various States have endorsed and for which they are working you would know that women have a large civic conscience and an intelligent appreciation of the measures which affect both women and the homes. They have been encouraged to have these opinions but to try to influence legislation only in indirect ways. Today, being practical and scientific, we are asking ourselves all the time why should we be limited to expressing our opinion on governmental affairs in our women's clubs? Why should we breathe them only in the prayer meeting or in the parlors of our friends? Why not directly into the governmental ear—the ballot box? Why do we not go into that long-distance telephone booth, get connection with central, and then know that our message has been delivered in the only place where it is recorded. The Government makes. no record whatever of the opinions which we express in our women's clubs and our prayer meetings."
Mrs. Caroline A. Lowe of Kansas City, Mo., spoke in behalf of the 7,000,000 wage-earning women of the United States from the standpoint of one who had earned her living since she was eighteen and declared that to them the need of the ballot was a vital one. She gave heart-breaking proofs of this fact and said:
