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
Let me illustrate by Colorado, the most recent State, in the
election of 1877. I am happy to say to you that I have canvassed
three States for this question. If Senator Chandler were alive,
or if Senator Ferry were in this room, they would remember that I
followed in their train in Michigan, with larger audiences than
either of those Senators throughout the whole canvass. I want to
say, too, that although those Senators may have believed in woman
suffrage, they did not say much about it. They did not help us
much. The Greenback movement was quite popular in Michigan at that
time. The Republicans and Greenbackers made a most humble bow
to the grangers, but woman suffrage did not get much help. In
Colorado, at the close of the canvass, 6,666 men voted "Yes."
Now I am going to describe the men who voted "Yes." They were
native-born white men, temperance men, cultivated, broad,
generous, just men, men who think. On the other hand, 16,007 voted
"No."
Now I am going to describe that class of voters. In the southern
part of that State there are Mexicans, who speak the Spanish
language. They put their wheat in circles on the ground with
the heads out, and drive a mule around to thrash it. The vast
population of Colorado is made up of that class of people. I was
sent out to speak in a voting precinct having 200 voters; 150
of those voters were Mexican greasers, 40 of them foreign-born
citizens, and just 10 of them were born in this country; and I was
supposed to be competent to convert those men to let me have as
much right in this Government as they had, when, unfortunately,
the great majority of them could not understand a word that I
said. Fifty or sixty Mexican greasers stood against the wall with
their hats down over their faces. The Germans put seats in a
lager-beer saloon, and would not attend unless I made a speech
there; so I had a small audience.
MRS. ARCHIBALD. There is one circumstance that I should like to
relate. In the county of Las Animas, a county where there is a
large population of Mexicans, and where they always have a large
majority over the native population, they do not know our language
at all. Consequently a number of tickets must be printed for those
people in Spanish. The gentleman in our little town of Trinidad
who had the charge of the printing of those tickets, being adverse
to us, had every ticket printed against woman suffrage. The
samples that were sent to us from Denver were "for" or "against,"
but the tickets that were printed only had the word "against" on
them, so that our friends had to scratch their tickets, and all
those Mexican people who could not understand this trick and did
not know the facts of the case, voted against woman suffrage; so
that we lost a great many votes. This was man's generosity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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