That is equally true of woman, and simply because our property rights are enlarged, because our industrial field is enlarged, because we have more women who are producers in the industrial world, recognized as such, who own property in their own names, and consequently pay taxes upon that property, and thereby have greater financial and larger social, as well as industrial and business interests at stake in our own commonwealth, and in the manner in which the administration of national affairs is conducted—­because of all these privileges we the more need the power which shall emphasize our influence upon political action.

You know that industrial and property rights are in the hands of the law-makers and the executors of the laws.  Therefore, because of our advanced position in that matter, we the more need the recognition of our political equality.  I say the recognition of our political equality, because I believe the equality already exists.  I believe it waits simply for your recognition; that were the Constitution now justly construed, and the word “citizens,” as used in your Constitution, justly applied it would include us, the women of this country.  So I ask for the recognition of an equality that we already possess.

Further, because of what we have we ask for more.  Because of the duties that we are commanded to do, we ask for more.  My friend has said, and it is true in some respects, that men have always kept us just a little below them where they could shower upon us favors, and they have always done that generously.  So they have, but, gentlemen, has your sex been more generous in its favors to women than women have been generous toward your sex in their favors?  Neither one can do without the other:  neither can dispense with the service of the other; neither can dispense with the reverence of the other, with the aid of the other in domestic life, in social life.  The men of this nation are rapidly finding that they can not dispense with the service of women in business life.  I know that they are also feeling the need of what they call the moral support of women in their public life, and in their political life.

I always feel that it is not for women alone that I appeal.  As men have long represented me, or assumed to do so, and as the men of my own family always have done so justly and most chivalrously, I feel that in my appeal for political recognition I represent them; that I represent my husband and my brother and the interest of the sex to which they belong, for you, gentlemen, by lifting the women of the nation into political equality would simply place us where we could lift you where you never yet have stood, upon a moral equality with us.  Gentlemen, that is true.  You know it as well as I. I do not speak to you as individuals; I speak to you as the representatives of your sex, as I stand here the representative of mine; and never until we are your equals politically will