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Various

"Debate on Woman Suffrage in the Senate of the United States, 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, and January 25, 1887"

We love and appreciate our
country; we value the institutions of our country. We realize that
we owe great obligations to the men of this nation for what
they have done. We realize that to their strength we owe the
subjugation of all the material forces of the universe which give
us comfort and luxury in our homes. We realize that to their
brains we owe the machinery that gives us leisure for intellectual
culture and achievement. We realize that it is to their education
we owe the opening of our colleges and the establishment of our
public schools, which give us these great and glorious privileges.
This movement is the legitimate result of this development, of
this enlightenment, and of the suffering that woman has undergone
in the ages past. We find ourselves hedged in at every effort
we make as mothers for the amelioration of society, as
philanthropists, as Christians.
A short time ago I went before the Legislature of Indiana with a
petition signed by 25,000 women, the best women in the State. I
appeal to the memory of Judge McDonald to substantiate the truth
of what I say. Judge McDonald knows that I am a home-loving,
law-abiding, tax-paying woman of Indiana, and have been for 50
years. When I went before our Legislature and found that 100 of
the vilest men in our State, merely by the possession of the
ballot, had more influence with the law-makers of our land than
the wives and mothers of the nation, it was a revelation that was
perfectly startling.


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