THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

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one with the spirit to buildup a community, to fortify a state, and insure the perpetu­ity of a republic. Such are the women of our country; these are the citizens and peo­ple who “ form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty to themselves and their posterity.” These are the citizens and people who furnish less than ten per cent, of all the criminals in jails and prisons; who furnish a small per cent, of the paupers in the poor-houses; who supply but few recruits to the great army of tramps, burglars and train robbers; who supply but a small per cent, of the patrons of the saloon; who pay an equal per cent, of tax on every dollar invested; who have won the highest honors in institutions of learning; who constitute about three-fourths of the graduates of the high school; who constitute nine-tenths of the teachers of the young; who do at least two-thirds of the church work; who do a large proportion of the charitable work; who made up the home reserves, to conduct the business interests when the fathers and brothers had answered their country’s call to save it from rebellion; who sent train-loads of money, food and clothing to the wounded and sick on the battlefield änd in the hospital; who left the shelter of home to comfort the dying and nurse the sick; and who leave the old home, ease, and civiliza­tion to endure the hardships and privation of pioneer life; bravely, cheerfully help husband, father and brother to build up- the wilderness with homes and schools, its great grain fields and young cities filled with the whirr and hum of factory and shop. The pioneer mothers! Who shall tell of their patience, bravery, courage and helpful­ness, without honor, or offices, or salaries?

For more than a century, in a land of boasted freedom and self-protection, the men, because of superior physical strength, have arrogated to themselves mental and political supremacy.

For more than a century the women have accepted and acquiesced, scarcely lift­ing a voice in protest, and I grieve to say that there are those who, in the high noon light of the last half of this nineteenth century, feel no degradation, no humiliation; who, like the black men of slavery days, do not want to be free. Sad, indeed, have been the conditions and environments of an individual or people who do not prize freedom and long for all the liberty that belongs to any soul. It is a stain on the fair name of republican government, when part of that government have usurped rights and abridged the privileges of the other part until those defrauded are incapable of smart­ing under a sense of humiliation at having set upon them, in the words of the “Grand Old Man,” “the stamp of inequality, which is the brand of degradation.”

The petty thief, the disorderly, the visitor of houses of ill-fame, the drunkard, may serve his time for having broken the law, and leaving the jail today go to the ballot-box tomorrow to vote into office the man who, he knows, will be lenient to criminals. The man who has committed forgery, or theft, or criminal assault, may serve his time or be pardoned and go to the polls and vote into office the prosecuting attorney, or judge, whom, he believes, will shield the guilty and cater to the criminal class. But how cautiously the way is hedged about for the wives and mothers. After appealing to and petitioning legislatures, pleading their cause and asking for simple justice from legislators, humiliating themselves to beg and plead for rights of which they have been defrauded; slowly and cautiously the small measure of school suffrage has been granted in many states, but always with restrictions. After a long struggle municipal suffrage was granted to the women of Kansas; and let me here speak in honor of the just men of Wyoming who have recognized that their wives and mothers are citizens and people, fully and freely with no discrimination.

We women in various states have been hammering away at that wellnigh invul­nerable old wall, prejudice, until the men of one more state have dared to trust their wives and mothers with a carefully-restricted ballot. Ignorance in men is not a dangerous qualification; it is not subversive of good government and the safety of the people. Every male, native or foreign born, white or black, ignorant or otherwise, drunk or sober, self-supporting or a pauper, any male but a duellist in Michigan, a