MRS. CAROLINE GILKEY ROGERS (N. Y.): It is often said to us that when _all_ the women ask for the ballot it will be granted. Did _all_ the married women petition the Legislatures of their States to secure to them the right to hold in their own name the property which belonged to them? To secure to the poor forsaken wife the right to her earnings? _All_ the women did not ask for these rights, but _all_ accepted them with joy and gladness when they were obtained, and so it will be with the franchise. Woman's right to self-government does not depend upon the numbers that demand it, but upon precisely the same principles on which man claims it for himself. Where did man get the authority which he now exercises to govern one-half of humanity; from what power the right to place woman, his helpmeet in life, in an inferior position? Came it from nature? Nature made woman his superior when it made her his mother--his equal when it fitted her to hold the sacred position of wife. Did women meet in council and voluntarily give up all their right to be their own law-makers? The power of the strong over the weak makes man the master. Thus, and thus only, does he gain the authority. It is all very well to say, "Convert the women." While we most heartily wish they could all feel as we do, yet when it comes to the decision of this great question they are mere ciphers, for if it is settled by the States it will be left to the men, not to the women, to decide. Or if suffrage comes to women through a Sixteenth Amendment to the National Constitution, it will be decided by Legislatures elected by men only. In neither case will women have an opportunity of passing upon the question. So reason tells us we must devote our best efforts to converting those to whom we must look for the removal of the barriers which now prevent our exercising the right of suffrage.... MRS. MARY SEYMOUR HOWELL (N. Y.): We ask for the ballot for the good of the race. Huxley says: "Admitting, for the sake of argument, that woman is the weaker, mentally and physically, for that very reason she should have the ballot and every help which the world can give her." When you debar from your councils and legislative halls the purity, the spirituality and the love of woman, then those councils are apt to become coarse and brutal. God gave us to you to help you in this little journey to a better land, and by our love and our intellect to help make our country pure and noble, and if you would have statesmen you must have stateswomen to bear them....