Debate on Woman Suffrage in the Senate of the United States,: 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, and January 25, 1887Various
History
Debate on Woman Suffrage in the Senate of the United States,: 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, and January 25, 1887
Various
Women -- Suffrage -- United States
Miss ANTHONY. I now introduce to the committee Mrs. Mary Seymour
Howell, the president of the Albany, N.Y., State society.
Mrs. HOWELL. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee: Miss
Anthony gives me five minutes. I shall have to talk very rapidly.
I ask you for the ballot because of the very first principle that
is often repeated to you, that "taxation without representation is
tyranny." I come from the city of Albany, where many of my sisters
are taxed for millions of dollars. There are three or four women
in the city of Albany who are worth their millions, and yet they
have no voice in the laws that govern and control them. One of our
great State senators has said that you can not argue five minutes
against woman suffrage without repudiating every principle that
this great Republic is founded upon.
I ask you also for the ballot for the large class of women who are
not taxed. They need it more than the women who are taxed, I have
found in every work that I have conducted that because I am a
woman I am not paid for that work as a man is paid for similar
work.
You have heard, and perhaps some of you are thinking--I hope
not--that women should be at home. I wish to say to you that there
are millions of women in the United States who have no homes.
There are millions of women who are trying to earn their bread and
hold their purity sacred. For that class of women I appeal to you.
In the city of Albany there are hundreds of women in our factories
making the shirts that you can buy for $1.50 and $2, and all those
women are paid for making the shirts is 4 cents apiece. There are
in the State of New York 18,000 teachers. When I was a teacher
and taught with gentlemen in our academies, I received about
one-fourth of the pay because I happened to be a woman. I consider
it an insult that forever burns in my soul, that I am to be handed
a mere pittance in comparison with what man receives for same
quality of work. When I was sent out by our superintendent of
public instruction to hold conventions of teachers, as I have
often done in our State of New York, and when I did one-third more
work than the men teachers so sent out, but because I was a woman
and had not the ballot, I was only paid about half as much as
the man; and saying that once to our superintendent of public
instruction in Albany, he said, "Mrs. Howell, just as soon as you
get the ballot and have a political influence in the work you will
have the same pay as a man."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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