Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/77

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THE NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1902
47

arguments for the submission of an amendment to the Federal Constitution which would enfranchise women, and at an earlier date to advocate other suffrage measures. Because of the distinguished speakers from abroad the hearings at this time were of unusual interest. The convention adjourned for them on the morning of February 18 and the Senate and House Committee rooms were crowded.

All the members of the Senate Committee were present— Augustus O. Bacon (Ga.) chairman; James H. Berry (Ark.); George P. Wetmore (R. I.) ; Thomas R. Bard (Calif.) ; John H. Mitchell (Ore.). Miss Susan B. Anthony, honorary president of the association, presided and said:

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, this is the seventeenth Congress that has been addressed by the women of this nation, which means that we have been coming to Congress thirty-four years. Once, in 1887, the Senate brought the measure to a discussion and vote and defeated it by 34 to 16, with 26 not wishing to go on record. We ask for a 16th Amendment because it is much easier to persuade the members of a Legislature to ratify this amendment than it is to get the whole three million or six million, as the case may be, of the rank and file of the men of the State to vote for woman suffrage. We think we are of as much importance as the Filipinos, Porto Ricans, Hawaiians, Cubans and all of the different sorts of men that you are carefully considering. The six hundred teachers sent over to the Philippines are a thousand times better entitled to vote than are the men who go there to make money. The women of the islands are quite as well qualified to govern and have charge of affairs as are the men. I do not propose to talk. I am simply here to introduce those who are to address you.

Miss Anthony then presented Miss Harriet May Mills (N. Y.), who spoke from the standpoint of tax paying women, who in the towns and villages alone of her State paid taxes on over $5,000,000 worth of property; Mrs. Lucretia L. Blankenburg, president of the Pennsylvania Suffrage Association, who showed the connection between politics and conditions in Philadelphia; the Rev. Olympia Brown, president of the Wisconsin association, who pointed out the need of both the reason and the intuition in the country to govern it wisely. Mrs. Mariana W. Chapman, president of the New York association, called for a Federal Amendment to enfranchise women because of the principles on which this Government was founded. Miss Gail Laughlin, a graduate