I have been asked to direct especially my attention to the position of women in England. I hope you, as members of a republic, will be ashamed to hear that the monarchy of England gives its women citizens a great many rights which you deny to yours, that we have had those rights for so many years that nobody talks about them. When I am asked to give you testimony as to the smooth working of the women's vote in all local affairs, I am at a loss to know what to say, because it runs along so easily and naturally, so like breathing the air in a thoroughly healthy state of the lungs, that there is absolutely nothing to be said. Men and women vote on equal terms and the woman's vote is as much a matter of course as the man's. The local government of England is divided among a number of different bodies. We have the school boards, established in 1870, which have managed the elementary education of the country, now compulsory and free. They spend very large sums of the taxpayers' money and for them every woman who pays taxes has a vote. Any woman whom the electors choose is entitled to take a seat on them. There are at present not only hundreds of thousands of women voting for the school boards but there are 276 women sitting as representatives upon those of England alone. I myself have for nine years been a member of the school board of London, sitting for one of the great divisions called Hackney, which has 60,000 voters. My election committee was composed of men and women. Men worked for me very hard indeed!... The next great local governing bodies are the boards of guardians of the poor. These bodies spend annually about $127,000,000, which they raise from the taxpayers, men and women. These are huge organizations. Many of the workhouses contain over 1,000 persons; besides which, outside relief in money or food or medical aid is given. Every woman who is a taxpayer can vote for a member of these boards. Women are eligible to sit on them the same as men. There are nearly 1,000 women on the boards. Women may vote for the municipalities, for the town councils. I can not offer you any illustration of how the women's vote has improved them for the simple reason that when those councils were instituted in 1869 the Parliament of a monarchy was sufficiently large-minded to perceive that women ought to vote for them; that they have to pay their taxes and where a woman stands at the head of a household she is not only equally entitled to representation in regard to the spending of her money but also she is as much concerned with the work that the councils have to do as any man. This was so obviously just that women were given the right to vote on them and have exercised that right ever since.... The women vote as fully as the men do.