There are certain classes in this country, deprived of the right of self-government, and it is undoubtedly true, as I have heard gentlemen speaking on the other side of this case (and women too)-saying that the suffrage is not a right but a privilege. I am not here to argue whether it is a right or a privilege. If it is a right I want my right. If it is a privilege I want my privilege. I do not care which it is. If it is a privilege demanded for cause it is a privilege I demand for the same cause for which every man demands it. If he needs it for his protection I need it for my protection. But it will be said it is not a right, it is a privilege. If it were a right it would be the right of a baby boy as much as of a woman. I confess

If

I heard that argument a great many times, but I never had acquired enough religion to be able to hear it without getting angry. When I hear people compare mature, intelligent women with baby boys, I think the thing has been carried a little too far, and yet that is about the distance to which it is carried. it is a right of a woman it is a right of the baby boy. I grant that may be true, but I also grant it is the right of the baby boy. Every creature, baby boy or woman, is born with the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, and the baby as well as these men has the same inherent rights, and to protect the rights of the baby as well as men governments are instituted. Then, what is the right of a child, shall a child vote? No. Why? Simply because children are incapable of forming correct opinions; and the reason the baby boy is not permitted to use this right which was his the day he was born as much as when twenty-one years of age, is because he is incapable of exercising it for his own good or the general welfare of the people. It might be said because the baby boy could not exercise this right, which is his right, that he shall never have it because it was not his right as a baby. We might as well say also that he is not the heir of his father because he could not inherit his father's estate until twenty-one. Let the father die, and the son, if one day old, is by right and by law as much the heir of the father as the son twenty-one years old; but why does not the son one day old come into the right of using his property and expending it as he

will? One day he will, why not give it to him? Because he has not wisdom enough to expend that property until he is twenty-one years of age. We protect him and his interest until he is twenty-one. But the time comes when the boy outgrows his infancy and enters into that which was his right as much when he was a baby as when he was twenty-one.

Boys who have not come to years of accountability, and have not sufficient intelligence to cast a vote, are not allowed to do so. We never exclude them on account of a lack of intelligence. But we women are born and die and none of us are ever supposed to become wise enough to know enough to cast a vote or make a law for ourselves. Prejudice has stood in our way all down the years and opposed us. Conservatism has blocked the path of progress. Conservatism has, however, done remarkable things for us. At the beginning of our agitation, women were not fitted perfectly to exercise the right of suffrage, they were not fitted to cast ballots wisely.

But while we were waiting to enter our country we were beginning to see that there were other avenues and lines we should fill. We knocked at the doors of our colleges. The doors were beaten down: our young women went in. They said, if you come in we will have to lower the grade of scholarship to the intellectual capabilities of woman. But they did not lower the grade. And to-day Miss Fawcett stands 600 points above the senior wrangler in mathematics in England, and Miss Brown takes the prize in classics from the foremost students of Harvard, through the Annex. It was discovered that we had brains which when cultivated would turn out as good work as the brains of men.

In regard to the opposition upon these questions, I do not care what it may be, or what the thought may be, it comes under one of these four heads: either that the enfranchisement of women is contrary to revealed religion as taught in the Holy Book, in the Scriptures given us by and through our Lord Jesus Christ; that suffrage in the hands of women would interfere with the family and degrade the nature of woman; that suffrage in the hands of women would interfere with and overturn the institu

tions of the home; that suffrage in the hands of women would overturn the government. Now, take the argument, of whatever kind it may be, and it will come under one of those heads. Under the head of religion there are two schools of exegesis, in this country and in the world. There are two classes of theologians. One gives us what is termed the higher criticism, and one what is called the lower criticism of the Bible, especially of the New Testament. One assures us that the New Testament must be taken literally, and that when it makes certain statements in regard to women, those statements are to be accepted to-day exactly as they were uttered by Paul hundreds of years ago. The other set of exegetes says that these things are not to be taken literally, but that they are to be interpreted as we interpret all books published at that time, taking into account the circumstances under which they were uttered, the condition of society, and the needs of the people. These are the two schools, and when we come to woman's relation to the government and the relation of men to women, we find the same difference here. The party who declares that the Bible should be taken literally is especially emphatic that it should be taken literally when it speaks anything about the subjection of women. And there are men to-day who do not believe a single word of that Bible was inspired, except that thought which is in the Bible-that Paul said-wives obey your husbands. And almost every man on earth believes that was uttered through a divine inspiration; and I presume four ministers out of five believe that this is in the Bible and do not know that it is not there. But they preach it.

Then we hear that women must keep still in the church, and we find women in the choir standing up and squealing at the top of their voices, and loud enough to raise the roof, and we call that singing. The whole thing is so utterly opposed to the gospel that is preached to us, that it is marvelous to me that it could be advocated with any kind of seriousness. I know of only one man who is thoroughly consistent in this matter. He is a clergyman in the South. He will not allow a woman to talk in the church or to teach in the Sunday school because she makes

a loud noise.

He would not even allow her to teach in the infant class if there was a male infant in the class. I have the profoundest respect for that man. He is an idiot, but consistent.

I say there are two sides to this whole matter, and I have profound respect for the people who interpret it against women; for according to their nature they are no more responsible for that than for being born with red hair and blue eyes. It is the way their minds are bent. There are many most excellent men who believe that a woman in the pulpit is utterly foreign to the gospel and spirit of the word. Therefore I respect these men if they will be consistent enough to carry it out entirely in their church work. Shall I be blamed for standing with those who put the more liberal construction on the word, and which I believe to be in accord with the teachings of Christ, the whole of which may be covered with the Golden Rule? That is the highest law given by highest authority to human beings. The difficulty with our Christian church to-day is that it preaches Christ but it practices Moses. If we could make our preaching and practice agree and preach and practice Christ and the Golden Rule, to love each other and to love God would be the sum total for all our thought and all our living.

We are told that the highest development of nature, as we contend, is contrary to nature; that woman would be going out of her sphere. Is it not marvelous that woman would go out of her sphere? I have been out of it for about twenty-two years, and I think have been about as comfortable as most women who have been in it. How difficult it is for man to get out of his sphere. Did you ever know of a man getting out of his sphere? I never did in all my life. I used to wonder how it was that woman could get out of her sphere so easily and it was so difficult for a man to get out of his sphere, until I discovered that man hadn't any sphere. I have noticed this, however, that if man don't get out of his sphere, he gets into ours. Our sphere has almost been taken away from us. To-day in this place I saw men who had come into woman's sphere. I saw men waiters at the tables. that men cooked it.

Men served the food, and I have no doubt Three fourths of the women were created

for the very purpose of cooking. Now, man has entered that sphere. When I was a girl they paid a dollar and a half a week to a girl for this work. Now, they pay from one thousand to ten thousand dollars a year for a cook, and the cook is a man. When the salary is this latter large sum, then it is man's sphere; but where the low wages are paid, there it is woman's sphere. They are doing all sorts of woman's work, cooks, dish washers, dressmakers, milliners, housekeepers, etc. Immense millinery establishments are in existence where all the assistants are men; and the same with regard to ladies' dressmaking houses. In sleeping cars there are men chambermaids. We have no objection to all this, if you want to come into our sphere. We women believe so much in ourselves that we believe if you have free competition with us that you will be able to live, and we will be able to hold our own. If you only had the same belief in yourselves that we have in ourselves, a belief that you can hold your own when we preach, how much better you would be, and how much easier our time in life. And taking it altogether you can see how much more charitable and largehearted we are when we say to come into our sphere and take our washtub, cookstove, and everything that you can.

One thing is forgotten, and that is, that before woman is woman she is human. We are always talking about womanhood in women, but back of womanhood is humanhood, and whatever is good and wise and best for humanity in man is good and best and wisest for humanity in woman. Whatever develops the humanity in man develops the humanity in woman. And I believe the time is coming when women will not be forever having pressed before them in their undertakings in life that, rather than their humanity. And we women claim that we have every right divine to the development of our humanity that men have, and that though we are women there can be nothing which shall attach to us as women that can justly interfere with our highest possible development as human. And that our human nature may develop as highly as possible we must be free to grow physically, free to become strong in our muscles. We are called the weaker sex, physically. Brethren, if we could exchange