"If the divine law visits the sins of the parents upon the children, equally so does it transmit to them the virtues of the parents. Therefore if it is through woman's ignorant subjection to man's appetites and passions that the life current of the race is corrupted, then must it be through her intelligent emancipation that it shall be purified and her children rise up and call her blessed.... I am a full and firm believer in the revelation that it is through woman the race is to be redeemed. For this reason I ask for her immediate and unconditional emancipation from all political, industrial, social and religious subjection. It is said, 'Men are what their mothers made them,' but I say that to hold mothers responsible for the characters of their sons while denying to them any control over the surroundings of the sons' lives is worse than mockery, it is cruelty. Responsibilities grow out of rights and powers. Therefore before mothers can rightfully be held responsible for the vices and crimes, for the general demoralization of society, they must possess all possible rights and powers to control the conditions and circumstances of their own and their children's lives." The audience then listened with keen appreciation to the president's address, during which she said: "If I were asked what are the great obstacles to the speedy enfranchisement of women I should answer: There are three; the first is militarism, which once dominated the entire thought of the world and made its history. Although its old power is gone and its influence upon public thought grows constantly less, it still molds the opinions of millions of people and holds them to the old ideals of force in government and headship in the family. The second obstacle is the unconscious, unmeasured influence upon the estimate in which women as a whole are held that emanates from that most debasing of our evil institutions, prostitution.... The third great cause is the inertia in the growth of democracy which has come as a reaction following the aggressive movements that with possibly ill-advised haste enfranchised the foreigner, the negro and the Indian. Perilous conditions, seeming to follow from the introduction into the body politic of vast numbers of irresponsible citizens, have made the nation timid. These three influences, born of centuries of tradition, shape every opinion of the opponents of woman suffrage. Not an objection, argument or excuse can be urged against the movement which may not be traced to one of these causes."