thinking, industrious, active American women, object to taxation without representation.  We are willing to contribute our share to the support of this Government, as we always have done, but we have a right to ask for our little yes and no in the form of the ballot so that we shall have a direct influence in distributing the taxes.

Gentlemen, I am amenable to the gallows and the penitentiary, and it is no more than right that I shall have a voice in framing the laws under which I shall he rewarded or punished.  Am I asking too much of you as representative men of this great Government when I ask you to let me have a voice in making the laws under which I shall be rewarded or punished?  It is written in the law of every State in this Union that a person in the courts shall have a jury of his peers, yet so long as the word “male” stands as it does in the Constitutions of the United States and the States no woman in any State of this Union can have a jury of her peers, I protest in the name of justice against going into the court-room and being compelled to run the gauntlet of the gutter and of the saloon—­yes, even of the police court and of the jail—­as we are compelled to do to select a male jury to try the interests of women, whether relating to life, property, or reputation.  So long as the word “male” is in our constitutions just so long we can not have a jury of our peers in any State in the Union.

I ask that the women shall have the right of the ballot that they may go into our legislative halls and there provide for the prevention rather than the cure of crime.  I ask you on behalf of the twelve hundred children under twelve years of age who are in the poor-houses of Indiana, of the sixteen hundred in the poor-houses of Illinois, and on that average in every State in the Union, that you shall take the word “male” out of the constitutions and allow the women of this country to sit in legislative halls and provide homes for and look after the little waifs of society.  There are hundreds of moral questions to-day requiring the assistance of the moral element of womanhood to help make the laws under which we shall live.

Gentlemen, the political party that lives in the future must fight the moral battles of humanity.  The day of blood is passed; the day of brain and heart is upon us; and I ask you to let the moral constituency that resides in woman’s nature be represented.  Let me say right here that I do not believe that there is morality in sex, but the social customs have been such that woman has been held to a higher standard.  May the day hasten when the social custom shall hold man to as high a moral standard as it to-day holds woman.

This is the condition of things.  The political party that presumes to fight the moral battles of the future must have the women in its ranks.  We are non-partisan, as has been well said by my friend from Indiana [Mrs. Sewall.]