We know that many of us lay ourselves liable to contumely and ridicule.  We have to meet sneers; but we are determined that in the defense of right we will ignore everything but what we feel to be our duty.

We do not come here as agitators, or aimless, dissatisfied, unhappy women by any means; but we come as human beings, recognizing our responsibility to God for the advantages that have come to us in the development of the ages.  We wish to discharge that responsibility faithfully, effectually, and conscientiously, and we can not do it under our form of government, hedged in as we are by the lack of a power which is such a mighty engine in our form of government for every means of work.

I say to you, then, we come as one-half of the great whole.  There is an essential difference in the sexes.  Mr. Parkman labored very hard to prove what no one would deny—­that there is an essential difference in the sexes, and it is because of that very differentiation, the union of which in home, the recognition of which in society, brings the greatest happiness, the recognition of which in the church brings the greatest power and influence for good, and the recognition of which in the Government would enable us finally, as near as it is possible for humanity, to perfect our form of government.  Probably we can never have a perfect form of government, but the nearer we approximate to the divine the nearer will we attain to perfection; and the divine government recognizes neither caste, class, sex, nor nationality.  The nearer we approach to that divine ideal the nearer we will come to realizing our hopes of finally securing at least the most perfect form of human government that it is possible for us to secure.

I do not wish to trespass upon your time, but I have felt that this movement is not understood by a great majority of people.  They think that we are unhappy, that we are dissatisfied, that we are restive.  That is not the case.  When we look over the statistics of our State and find that 60 per cent. of all the crime is the result of drunkenness; when we find that 60 per cent. of the orphan children that fill our pauper homes are the children of drunken parents; when we find that after a certain age the daughters of those fathers who were made paupers and drunkards by the approbation and sanction and under the seal of the Government, go to supply our houses of prostitution, and when we find that the sons of these fathers go to fill up our jails and our penitentiaries, and that the sober, law-abiding men, the pains-taking, economical, and many of them widowed wives of this nation have to pay taxes and bear the expenses incurred by such legislation, do you wonder, gentlemen, that we at least want to try our hand and see what we can do?