MISS ANTHONY.  Yes, sir; I wish you would.

    THE CHAIRMAN.  You have reflected on this subject a great deal.  You
    think there is a majority, as I understand, even in the State of
    New York, against women suffrage?

    MISS ANTHONY.  Yes, sir; overwhelmingly.

    THE CHAIRMAN.  How, then, would you get Legislatures elected to
    ratify such a constitutional amendment?

    MISS ANTHONY.  That brings me exactly to the point.

    THE CHAIRMAN.  That is the point I wish to hear you upon.

MISS ANTHONY.  Because the members of the State Legislatures are intelligent men and can vote and enact laws embodying great principles of the government without in any wise endangering their positions with their constituencies.  A constituency composed of ignorant men would vote solid against us because they have never thought on the question.  Every man or woman who believes in the enfranchisement of women is educated out of every idea that he or she was born into.  We were all born into the idea that the proper sphere of women is subjection, and it takes education and thought and culture to lift us out of it.  Therefore when men go to the ballot-box they till vote “no,” unless they have actual argument on it.  I will illustrate.  We have six Legislatures in the nation, for instance, that have extended the right to vote on school questions to the women, and not a single member of the State Legislature has ever lost his office or forfeited the respect or confidence of his constituents as a representative because he voted to give women the right to vote on school questions.  It is a question that the unthinking masses never have thought upon.  They do not care about it one way or the other, only they have an instinctive feeling that because women never did vote therefore it is wrong that they ever should vote.

    MRS. SPENCER.  Do make the point that the Congress of the United
    States leads the Legislatures of the States and educates them.

MISS ANTHONY.  When you, representative men, carry this matter to Legislatures, State by State, they will ratify it.  My point is that you can safely do this.  Senator Thurman, of Ohio, would not lose a single vote in Ohio in voting in favor of the enfranchisement of women.  Senator EDMUNDS would not lose a single Republican vote in the State of Vermont if he puts himself on our side, which, I think, he will do.  It is not a political question.  We are no political power that can make or break either party to-day.  Consequently each man is left independent to express his own moral and intellectual convictions on the matter without endangering himself politically.

SENATOR EDMUNDS.  I think, Miss Anthony, you ought to put it on rather higher, I will not say stronger, ground.  If you can convince us that it is right we would not stop to see how it affected us politically.