To repair the damages of society seems to be the mission assigned to women, and we ask that the necessary implements shall be placed in their hands. But, you say, women can be appointed to see to these matters without voting. Yes, but they are not; and if they were, without the ballot they would be powerless to effect the improvements they might find necessary. If the women of this city had the right to vote, those on the board of charities, for instance, would not be compelled year after year to beg each member of every new council for the appointment of some women as city physicians, as scores of them have done for the past six or eight years. Had we the right to vote, do you suppose we should have to plead in vain before the two parties to place women in nomination for the school board? I want this amendment of the charter first, because it is right and just to women; second, that women may have a political fulcrum on which to plant their lever for everything they wish to secure through government; third, that the opinions of the women of this city may be respected, and there is no other way to secure respect but to have them counted with those of men in the ballot-box on every possible question which is carried to that tribunal; and fourth, to free the mothers from the cruel taunt of being responsible for the character of their grown-up sons while denied all power to control the conditions surrounding them after they pass beyond the dooryards of their homes. She continued by showing the good effects of woman's municipal suffrage in England, Canada and also in Kansas, and full suffrage in Wyoming; and closed with an earnest appeal for an amendment to the new charter which should confer the municipal franchise upon women. A few days later the board of trustees took final action on the charter, of which the Democrat and Chronicle said: "The amendment proposed by Miss Susan B. Anthony extending the suffrage to women was defeated, although by a close vote. Had there been a full meeting of the board it is a question whether it would not have been adopted, as several of the members who were not present last evening had expressed themselves as favorable."[78]