Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
I hardly need say to this audience that the girl of the future
will vote. She will not plead for the privilege--she will be
urged to exercise the right, and no one will admit that he ever
opposed it, or remember that there was a time when woman's ballot
was despised and rejected of men. She will not be told that she
needs the suffrage for her own protection, but she will be urged
to exercise it for the good of her country and of humanity. It
will not be known that the Declaration of Independence was once a
dead letter. No one will believe that it ever was declared that
the Constitution did not protect this right. It will be
incredible that women were once neither people nor citizens, _and
yet were the mothers, and in so much the creators, of the men who
governed them_.
Mrs. Mary S. Lockwood (D. C.), member-at-large of the World's Fair
Board of Lady Managers, read a carefully prepared statement of the
methods and aims of that body, which began: "The Board of Lady
Managers owe their existence to Susan B. Anthony and her co-workers.
It was these women who went before Congress and not only asked but
demanded that women should have a place in the management of this
Columbian Exposition--and they got it"![92] She closed as follows:
I have been greatly impressed as I have come into this hall from
day to day, and have looked upon the sweet representative face in
marble of Lucretia Mott and the benign, glorified face of Mrs.
Stanton, with Susan B. Anthony as the central figure of the trio,
and have thought of the years they have lifted up their voices
praying they might see the glory of the coming of the Lord; and I
have felt if only I could bring before them the sheaves which we
are gathering from the women of the earth for this great
exposition; if only I could show them how their work has put the
women of this nation in touch with the women of every other
country, awakening them to new aspirations, new hopes, new
efforts, to whom the dawn of a brighter day is visible--these
pioneers would say, "Our eyes are indeed opened; a handful of
corn planted on the top of the mountain has been made to shake
all Lebanon."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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