Mr. HENRY. I think Mr. Bryce, in his American Commonwealth, states that women had the right to vote in the Territory of Washington prior to its admission as a State; that when the constitution was framed there the women cared so little for that right they abandoned it and now have no elective franchise under that constitution, and they do not care for that franchise in the State of Washington. Mr. RUCKER. Well, I want to say in answer to that that I do not know how it is about Washington, but there is no disposition on the part of anyone in Colorado to ever withdraw the right that has been given to the women to vote.

Mr. NYE. Has it not been noticeable in Colorado that while, perhaps, on ordinary subjects the vote of the wife would be the same as that of her husband, yet on all moral questions, when they involved character, good government, and cleanliness, her vote has been on the moral side?

Mr. RUCKER. You are exactly right. No man other than the kind you refer to can be elected now to any office even, you might say, as an alderman in one of our cities. I want to say in that connection that instead of the men controlling the votes of the women it is my judgment that upon those questions, about which the Member has just asked, in nine cases out of ten the votes of the men are controlled by the women.

Mr. DENBY. Has there been any appreciable change for the better in industrial conditions in Colorado on account of the vote having been given to women?

Mr. RUCKER. Decidedly so. It has been shown and demonstrated thoroughly that in all of those matters that is true, and especially true with regard to the question of the schools. The Interparliamentary Congress declared by resolution that we had the best school laws of any State or country in the world, and it is in that direction that the women's influence and vote are shown of great value. Of course we do not have to deal with the same conditions in regard to factories that they have back in these other cities, and hence we are anxious that they shall have the benefit of the ballot in order to take care of the peculiar situation they are in.

Mr. HENRY. When election frauds have been alleged or charged in Denver or in the State of Colorado, have the women been mixed up in any of them?

Mr. RUCKER. In the hundreds that have been charged with the violation of the election laws I think there have been one or two, to my recollection I think only two, that have ever been charged with them.

Mr. HENRY. You of course think, then, the women are willing to vote and not stuff the ballot boxes?

Mr. RUCKER. I know they would not stuff the ballot boxes; enough of their votes will be cast without stuffing the boxes.

Mr. CARLIN. I have been very much interested in your remarks, Mrs. Kelley, and impressed with your earnestness and ability in presenting your views to the committee. There are some ladies who are opposed to you and you will not have an opportunity to reply to them, so I think it but just to call your attention to this one communication, which perhaps every member of this committee has received, from those who are opposed to you, in which they speak of you and your methods in such terms as might lead you to desire an opportunity to reply. I will hand the letter to you, so you may reply to it.

Mr. HENRY. I think we ought to give the ladies all the time they

want.

Mr. CARLIN. You may want to have something to say after reading the letter.

The CHAIRMAN. I understand you have until 10 minutes after 12, which is twelve minutes from now. I did not start this hearing until 10 minutes after 10, and I will, therefore, give you two full hours if you desire it.

Mr. HENRY. Is there any objection to having an afternoon session, Mr. Chairman?

The CHAIRMAN. I intended to inquire, a little after 12 o'clock, whether the house was going to take up the railroad bill, and if so, we would sit until one or half-past one and dispose of this matter to-day.

Mr. HENRY. I want these ladies to have all the time they wish. Mrs. KELLEY. We do not ask for any extension of time.

Mr. CARLIN. My view was that you at least ought to have an opportunity, if you desired it, to make a reply to these ladies, especially in view of the fact that every member of the committee no doubt has in his possession such a letter as I have handed to you, and for that reason, if you desired any extension of time, I should be in favor of your having such an extension.

Mr. CLAYTON. I would suggest that Mrs. Kelley take the letter with her and reply to it in a signed letter to the chairman.

Mr. CARLIN. I am willing to leave that with Mrs. Kelley. The point is this, these ladies are taking the affirmative side of this proposition and should have the concluding argument before the committee, but by some disarrangement they are to be answered without an opportunity to answer, but they ought to have the right to answer if they so desire.

The CHAIRMAN. The chairman would say that before beginning this session he proposed they should have the opening and closing, but they preferred that arguments should be made for the full two hours without interruption.

Mrs. KELLEY. That is true.

The CHAIRMAN. We will try to give the ladies an opportunity for proper answer, if it can be done, either in writing or orally, as may seem best to the committee under the circumstances; but this matter has been thrashed out so fully in the public papers throughout the United States that I do not see there is anything of which everyone has not been informed. May I ask you, Mrs. Kelley, whether you have more speakers to call upon?

Mrs. KELLEY. No; no more.

Mrs. UPTON. Miss Clay wished to answer the gentleman here who asked what women would give in return for what they themselves had. May she have a minute to do it?

The CHAIRMAN. If Mrs. Kelley is through.

Mrs. KELLEY. Oh, yes.

Mr. CLAYTON. I do not wish to be put in the unenviable position of being replied to myself. That was Mr. Goebel who suggested that. Miss CLAY. I understood the gentleman was not satisfied with what the women had given in return for the ballot, and Mrs. Kelley pointed out that the whole army of soldiers had been given at the danger and

risk of women, and if it was done by the women without the vote, there was no reason why they should have it.

Mr. GOEBEL. You are wholly mistaken when you make that statement as to what I intended.

Miss CLAY. I wish to answer, they will give the protection to women and children which the men have not succeeded in giving by themselves, and that is the great object of government. The government stands for nothing except that, is of no use except for that, and by the mere order of nature, gentlemen, which I tried to show in the few minutes I spoke, woman is the natural protector of children, and, I may say, in my own judgment-it is no particular finding fault with men-that they have not succeeded in doing what nature intended women to do. Women will protect the children in a manner that men never have done, and, in my judgment, they are not able to do. I believe the men have done the best they can, allowing for the frailities of human nature, to protect women and children. [Laughter.] They have not succeeded because they were not designed by the Creator to do that. But give the women a chance and we will do it.

Leaving out the army, gentlemen, have you ever realized how much of the order of society depends on women in our teaching the people and in our restraining influence? We have instances of this in our western towns, where disorder and brutality reigned until a posse of respectable women came in, and then they have more power to enforce order and maintain decency and a habitable life by their presence, not by their mere sex, but by their having high ideals of law and order, and when you recognize women as citizens, then their notions of civic duty will rise by necessity to the very thing that they show they are now able to do, to exercise police power, not by might, but by the spirit. When they have the high power of citizenship, they will exercise that in a high degree, and the men will profit as much by that as the women.

Mrs. KELLEY. A question was asked by a gentleman here with regard to the State of Washington. The federal judge who twice deprived the women of the State of Washington of the power of the ballot by his construction of the ballot law of that State is an acquaintance of my own. He told me a year ago that he had recently seen a great light, and if he had now the privilege of interpreting those laws he would interpret them in the opposite sense.

Mr. STERLING. May I ask Mrs. Kelley a question, if you please? If we submit this amendment, it must go to the State legislatures. Do you think they would be more likely to adopt it than to adopt statutes giving franchises?

Mrs. KELLEY. I think it would have two effects. I think those States which like federal legislation would give very great respect to a bill emanating from this source, and those States which no not like federal legislation would make very great haste to forestall it.

Mr. HENRY. Mrs. Kelley, just a minute. I think you misapprehended my question about the State of Washington. I said that prior to the admission of Washington into the Union, in the territorial government, women voted, but when the constitution was written they abandoned the right and did not care for it. I referred to Mr. Bryce, the present ambassador from England here, who devotes several chapters in his work on The American Commonwealth to

this question, and my recollection is that he states that after studying the question thoroughly and looking back through history he has ascertained that women cared very little for this right, and he cited the State of Washington and some other Western States to show that where the right had been conferred upon them they took so little interest in it that in some localities they had abandoned it, and a very small percentage only in America were now insisting on the right. Of course, that being very high authority, I refer to it, and would like to have it discussed fairly and squarely as the facts

'warrant.

Mrs. KELLEY. I had the pleasure of visiting the State of Washington at length last year, and I was told there by an official of the State that the situation was thus he was there in the territorial days. He said the federal judge twice deprived the women, by his interpretation of the statute, of the right to vote, so that at the time of the adoption of that new constitution women would not vote on that constitution and the provision enfranchising them or striking the word "male" out of the new constitution.

Mr. HENRY. That may be true, and Mr. Bryce may have misapprehended the real situation.

Mrs. UPTON. Mr. Chairman, may I just say one word-that the women of Washington did not want the ballot, and it was taken away from them for that reason? There was a political condition back of that, and the Washington women were used to that purpose, and the Washington women had not the right to speak for themselves on the question. It is not true, gentlemen, that the women of Washington wanted the ballot taken from them.

Mr. CLAYTON. May I ask you if woman's suffrage did not once obtain in the State of Oregon? Mrs. UPTON. No; it did not. chise in the State of Oregon; never.

Women have never had the full fran-
We carried an election there

once, but we were counted out, we think. [Laughter.]

The CHAIRMAN. The agreed time for the presentation of the arguments in favor of these resolutions has now ended. I do not know whether all of you are going to stay here during the closing argument and I therefore wish to render you the thanks of this committee for this large and representative attendance, which is almost an American Congress. I am all the more pleased and interested to find such strong presentations by those whom I might call, possibly without offense, "Daughters of the American Congress," one of whom claims an acquaintance with this committee that goes back at least as far as any of us. I wish to give you all our thanks for the earnest consideration that you seem to have given to the great problems, industrial and social, as well as those of the family, which confront us all, and in comparison with which the political powers and actions of this country are but as nothing. Those who think and work for the good of the family and of the home and of the workshop and of the farm and of the school are those to whom the American Congress always owes its thanks.

Mr. MOON. May I be permitted to say to Mrs. Kelley that I claim no small part of the distinction of this Congress in being the successor of her honored father in the fourth district of Pennsylvania. [Applause.]

STATEMENT OF MISS PHOEBE W. COUZINS, LL. B., IN OPPOSITION TO WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

Miss COUZINS. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, from the table-land which marks the halfway division of life's toilsome journey, looking back toward my youth, and forward to the sunset, whose shadows are already athwart my pathway, I am here to bear witness to the wide sweep of vision which this length of years invites. In presenting my changed views on this perennial subject, I shall simply state facts as I saw them, after zealous participation and earnest belief in its reformatory influence, extending over a quarter of a century's activity and observation.

My conversion is not of rapid transition, nor the change of heart of sudden denial. A careful study of conditions throughout a period of many years, devoted not only to public discussion but to the holding of important offices, some of them unusual, as was my position of United States marshal, giving me varied opportunities, and a clearer survey of the field than falls to the experience of most women, led me step by step to a final decision against woman's entrance into the political arena.

And first, it is impracticable and of but temporary value to the wife and mother, and of no permanent use to woman in the outside world, the chief objection being the limitations which are inherent in the nature of woman-both by reason of motherhood and the lack of incentive, which confronts women in pursuit of public careers. In rough estimate, the Census Bureau not having exact data, over 2,000,000 children are born every year. This means that millions of mothers are practically set aside from public duties before and after the birth of the child for a period of not less than two years, and possibly more, in which she can not be tabulated as a factor in the political world, and if we pursue her domestic limitations still further as the maternal guide and director of the family group, she is practically of little value as an integral part in the political count. depletion of the masculine vote in like ratio as this would mean serious results for manhood suffrage. For, however much the stock argument may be reiterated that politics ought not to mean so much physical as mental and moral power, the latter claimed as woman's especial prerogative, the fact remains that the physical cuts the largest figure in the marching army of voters, as it does in that of the regulars with sword and gun, and whose victories depend, as Napoleon averred, "on the heaviest battalions."

The power to endure the fatigue of campaigning, the power to capture political prizes, and the power to emphasize by sheer muscular force the results of the march and the fight, are all included in the service of the ballot as surely as in the carriage of the bullet, and if battalions of masculine voters were continuously incapacitated as are the mothers, the inevitable fiat of nature's limitations would disband them, possibly, at the supreme moment when they were most needed. Still further, I witnessed the tragic struggle in one of the States on the temperance question. Not only were women called from their homes in continuous service of one kind or another, but they were marched through the streets at midday with banners and singing, and at midnight to theaters and churches for prayer and exhortation, furnishing luncheons at the polls as the final round-up of an exhaustive but limited campaign. The tabulated physical and nervous wrecks

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