Woman from all time has occupied the highest positions in the world.  She is just as competent to-day as she was hundreds of years ago.  We are taxed without representation; there is no mistake about that.  The colonies screamed that to England; Parliament screamed back, “Be still; long live the king, and we will help you.”  Did the colonies submit?  They did not.  Will the women of this country submit?  They will not.  Mark me, we are the sisters of those fighting Revolutionary men; we are the daughters of the fathers who sang back to England that they would not submit.  Then, if the same blood courses in our veins that courses in yours, dare you expect us to submit?

The white men of this country have thrown out upon us, the women, a race inferior, you must admit, to your daughters, and yet that race has the ballot, and why?  He has a right to it; he earned and paid for it with his blood.  Whose blood paid for yours?  Not your blood; it was the blood of your forefathers; and were they not our forefathers?  Does a man earn a hundred thousand dollars and lie down and die, saying, “It is all my boys’?” Not a bit of it.  He dies saying, “Let my children, be they cripples, be they idiots, be they boys, or be they girls, inherit all my property alike.”  Then let us inherit the sweet boon of the ballot alike.

When our fathers were driving the great ship of state we were willing to ride as deck or cabin passengers, just as we felt disposed; we had nothing to say; but to-day the boys are about to run the ship aground, and it is high time that the mothers should be asking, “What do you mean to do?” It is high time that the mothers should be demanding what they should long since have had.

In our own little State the laws have been very much modified in regard to women.  My father was the first man to blot out the old English law allowing the eldest son the right of inheritance to the real estate.  He took the first step, and like all those who take first steps in improvement and reform he received a mountain of curses from the oldest male heirs; but it did not matter to him.

Since 1868 I have, by my own individual efforts, by the use of hard-earned money, gone to our Legislature time after time and have had this law and that law passed for the benefit of the women; and the same little ship of state has sailed on.  To-day our men are just as well satisfied with the laws of our State for the benefit of women in force as they were years ago.  In our State a woman has a right to make a will.  In our State she can hold bonds and mortgages as her own.  In our State she has a right to her own property.  She can not sell it, though, if it is real estate, simply because the moment she marries her husband has a life-time right.