pledging the ballot to all citizens, women as well as men, should it come into power.  You may remember how Mr. Seymour ordered my petition to be read, after looking at it in the most scrutinizing manner, when it was referred to the committee on resolutions, where it has slept the sleep of death from that day to this.  But before the close of the convention a body of ignorant workingmen sent in a petition clamoring for greenbacks, and you remember that the Democratic party bought those men by putting a solid greenback plank in the platform.

Everybody supposed they would nominate Pendleton, or some other man of pronounced views, but instead of doing that they nominated Horatio Seymour, who stood on the fence, politically speaking.  My friends, Mrs. Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and women who have brains and education, women who are tax-payers, went there and petitioned for the practical application of the fundamental principles of our Government to one-half of the people.  Those most ignorant workingmen, the vast mass of them foreigners, went there, and petitioned that that great political party should favor greenbacks.  Why did they treat those workingmen with respect, and put a greenback plank in their platform, and only table us, and ignore us?  Simply because the workingmen represented the power of the ballot.  They could make or unmake the great Democratic party at that election.  The women were powerless.  We could be ridiculed and ignored with impunity, and so we were laughed at, and put on the table.

Then the Republicans went to Chicago, and they did just the same thing.  They said the Government bonds must be paid in precisely the currency specified by the Congressional enactment, and Talleyrand himself could not have devised how not to say anything better than the Republicans did at Chicago on that question.  Then they nominated a man who had not any financial opinions whatever, and who was not known, except for his military record, and they went into the campaign.  Both those parties had this petition from us.

I met a woman in Grand Rapids, Mich., a short time ago.  She came to me one morning and told me about the obscene shows licensed in that city, and said that she thought of memorializing the Legislature.  I said, “Do; you can not do anything else; you are helpless, but you can petition.  Of course they will laugh at you.”  Notwithstanding, I drew up a petition and she circulated it.  Twelve hundred of the best citizens signed that petition, and the lady carried it to the Legislature, just as Mrs. Wallace took her petition in the Indiana Legislature.  They read it, laughed at it, and laid it on the table; and at the close of the session, by a unanimous vote, they retired in a solid body to witness the obscene show themselves.  After witnessing it, they not only allowed the license to continue for that year, but they have licensed it every year from that day to this, against all the protests of the petitioners. [Laughter.]

    SENATOR EDMUNDS.  Do not think we are wanting in respect to you and
    the ladies here because you say something that makes us laugh.