The usual hearings were granted by the Senate and House Committees on February 16 at 10:30 a.m. Miss Anthony presided at the Senate hearing and the speakers in the Marble Room were Mrs. Watson Lister, Australia; Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch, England; Dr. Anna Howard Shaw and Mrs. Ida Porter Boyer, Pennsylvania; Miss Laura A. Gregg, Nebraska; Miss Harriet May Mills, Miss Emily Howland, Mrs. Maud Nathan, Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, New York. In introducing Mrs. Gilman Miss Anthony said quaintly: "This is one of the Beecher tribe," referring to her relationship, and she said of Dr. Shaw, the last speaker, "She will wind us up!" In telling of the first congressional hearing on woman suffrage ever granted--in 1869--she said: "Of all those who spoke here then I am the only one living today and I shall not be able to come much longer." Her words were prophetic, as this was the last hearing she ever attended. Each speaker considered the question from a different standpoint: Miss Mills showed that the high schools everywhere were graduating more girls than boys and women were increasing in the colleges at a higher ratio than men and said: "If only you would fix an educational qualification for the franchise we might hope to attain it." Mrs. Swift described the great campaign that had been made by California women for the suffrage in 1896 and yet they could not now even vote for school officers and she told of the unjust laws for women. Mrs. Boyer spoke for the millions of women wage-earners and declared that the present form of government was a sex-aristocracy. Mrs. Gilman said that to have intelligent men there must be educated mothers and that America could be made greater but not out of little people. Mrs. Harper reviewed the Senate hearings of the past, the favorable and unfavorable reports and the many times when no reports were made and said: "We represent no vested interests, no constituency: we cannot help or harm you politically; we can only appeal to you in the name of abstract justice." Mrs. Blatch, American by birth, told of the feelings of women arriving in this country by steamer and seeing the men land from the steerage who would soon have the right of suffrage which was denied to women born in the United States. Mrs. Watson Lister was introduced as representing over 800,000 women voters in Australia and said in part: "It seems very odd to me to come to America to speak on self-government. In Australia woman suffrage is not an experiment but a long experience and one effect has been to disprove all the things that were said against it." Dr. Shaw spoke of the hardships women had endured to make this country what it is and of the injustice of denying them any voice in its government.