May 1894 — Woman Suffrage Committee, Constitutional Convention, Albany, New York

Mr. Chairman, Gentlemen of the Committee,

The speakers who have preceded me have so fully and so ably covered the ground upon which we are to be heard that what I say may be regarded by you as unnecessary repetition, but I feel that the strength of our position largely lies in this very unanimity of thought and opinion on this issue, with all classes and conditions of women, whose representatives appear before you.

I belong to the great unclassified mass of women who stay at home and mind the children, get and keep the servants, go to market — in short, whose occupation is the conservation of the family comfort, and who propose to adhere to that life with the ballot, as we have without it.

We are told, however, that this peaceful and happy and entirely satisfactory arrangement can no longer be ours to enjoy once we possess the fatal ballot-that wicked instrument that is to do away with the possibility of matrimonial harmony, to blast the peace of families and to destroy the maternal instinct. We are even threatened with entire dispossession of our homes, so that we are never again to be able to pass any of our waking moments within their friendly walls and still hope to do our full duty by the franchise; but, most terrible of all menace is this, men will no longer love or respect us; they will never marry us.

But, Gentlemen, we know better — you know better. It is now nearly thirty years ago that a noble-hearted and broad-minded man, who had amassed a fortune by the manufacture of good ale, Mat- thew Vassar, built the first college for women, and such a hue and cry went up to heaven against the unsexing enormity of a higher education for girls that the wonder is that anyone of them ever had the temerity to enter its doors. It is nearly twenty years since women of my own generation availed themselves of that training, and even then we were warned with the old menace, “Men will not protect you or treat you politely; they will never choose you as wives.” That is an old story now and we know the result. College girls go off in the matrimonial market, if you will permit me the homely simile, like hot cakes, while the unpaired men stand, like Oliver, asking for more! Surely the deportment of gentlemen has not deteriorated, for so marked has become the national trait of politeness in American men to women that it is the subject of constant comment with foreigners. Indeed the most immediate effect of a like education for the sexes has been notably to make them mutually companionable, and whatever draws them together in a community of interest by so much knits together and strengthens the home, the bulwark and foundation of the State. This bettered condition has become so much a matter of course that it no longer excites comment, and, I venture to say, that it has never even occurred to a gentleman of this generation that because a woman knew the nature of a syllogism or could read Plato in the original, he was, therefore, absolved from his obligation to rise when she entered a room, or to offer his seat in a public conveyance, or to take off his hat to her sex. Does anyone really believe that the ballot could break down the divine institution of sex? Is there anyone so presumptuous as to believe that those eternal and beautiful laws of human nature are only preserved by the artificial agency of our civil disabilities-those disabilities of which our anti-suffragist friends seem to be as proud as is the Chinese woman of her deformed feet?

A Christian minister has recently shamed his cloth and put himself on record as saying that he could no longer respect his wife or his daughter, if he saw either of them at the ballot-box. A respect that takes no deeper root than that, is better done without, and the regard of such a man is but an affront.

Political equality a menace to the home! Why, Sirs, the only real and imminent danger that now threatens our firesides is the reactionary spirit of separation of the sexes that is being disseminated with mischievous activity. The Ouidas and Sarah Grands, who rant at you men from over seas, are no more dangerous to our harmony than these would-be friendly enemies at home, the anti-suffragists. God grant that we keep far from us the evil day when ‘ men and women may no longer look into each other’s eyes without foul suspicion and distrust, and God grant also that the old days come not back to us, when men and women, however closely bound by outward ties, were, in all the intellectual activities that constitute practical life, whole worlds apart! We American women have confidence in American manhood: we believe that under our social system we shall be permitted still to revere our fathers and to love and honor our husbands and brothers. And, in return, you will continue your confidence in American womanhood. You will not, I am sure, believe or assert, that we, your mothers, sisters, wives, could or would unsex ourselves.  

I feel that I speak for a great majority of the representative women of the State, not for the wives of the very rich or of the very poor, but for those who have cast in their lot with the representative men of the State, the merchants. business men and the great professional class. We have fought the battle of life side by side and hand in hand with you; we are the partners of your work, your pleasures and your counsels; we discuss with you merchandise, medicine or law, as may be your trade. but politics constantly as you well know — and it is this community of thought and interest, this comradeship of ours, that makes American homes what they are — the best and happiest in the world. Now, will it be too much to ask of your courtesy and companionship, that by-and-by you will escort us to your ballot-box? You have in the past — not you, but your fathers, perhaps — tried to frighten us away with direful tales of bogies that lurk behind it to devour and destroy us, but we do not want to go there alone, and if you go with us, what can make us afraid?

In conclusion, I would say that we desire not to weary you with over-discussion, but this is a momentous question and demands patience and ample consideration from all points, a question which, if slighted now, will surely recoil upon you in the future. suffrage is bound to come. Let us have it now in a non-partisan, reasonable manner, divorced from politics, not waiting until we must needs take it after the wretched English fashion of extending the franchise, at the hands of one or the other of the great political parties, hampered by all the heat and passion of a party measure, and entangled in the meshes of the tricky tactics of a great party machine.

I beg of you to remember that, however your opinions may incline upon this question — and I trust that many of you incline our way — its legitimate decision lies not with you but with your constituents. I beg of you to remember that what we ask of you is not permission to vote, but permission to carry our cause to the final tribunal of the ballot-box. We ask you to open the door for us of that court of last resort, and with us, or against us, to record your opinions there. To vote to submit our cause to the people in no sense commits you to a record on the question, while to yield to the clamor of our opponents is to close that door in our faces, an act of petty tyranny of which I will not believe so distinguished a body can be guilty.

Source: 1894. Constitutional-Amendment Campaign Year. Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association, Twenty-Sixth Annual Convention, Ithaca, N.Y., November 12-15 (Rochester: Charles Mann, 1895), pp. 46-49.