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Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Senate:
I have seldom felt so proud of being a representative of the people as now, when it gives me an opportunity to advocate acause which can not be represented or defended in this chamber by those directly and particularly affected by it, owing tothe leven of prejudice that the beliefs and ideas of the past have left in the mind of modern man. The cause of female suffrageis one sure to strike a sympathetic chord in every unprejudiced man, because it represents the cause of the weak who, deprivedof the means to defend themselves, are compelled to throw themselves upon the mercy of the strong.
But it is not on this account alone that this cause has my sympathy and appeals to me. It has, besides, the irresistible attractionof truth and justice, which no open and liberal mind can deny. If our action as legislators must be inspired by the eternalsources of right, if the laws passed here must comply with the divine precept to give everybody his due, then we can not denywoman the right to vote, because to do otherwise would be to prove false to all the precepts and achievements of democracyand liberty which have made this century what may be properly called the century of vindication.
Female suffrage is a reform demanded by the social conditions of our times, by the high culture of woman, and by the aspirationof all classes of society to organize and work for the interests they have in common. We can not detain the celestial bodiesin their course; neither can we check any of those moral movements that gravitate with irresistible force towards their centerof attraction: Justice. The moral world is governed by the same laws as the physical world, and all the power of man beingimpotent to suppress a single molecule of the spaces required [3]for the gravitation of the universe, it is still less able to prevent the generation of the ideas that take shape in the mindand strive to attain to fruition in the field of life and reality.
It is an interesting phenomenon that whenever an attempt is made to introduce a social reform, in accordance with modern ideasand tendencies and in contradiction with old beliefs and prejudices, there is never a lack of opposition, based on the maintenanceof the statu quo, which it is desired to preserve at any cost. As was to be expected, the eternal calamity howlers and false prophets of evilraise their fatidical voices on this present occasion, in protest against female suffrage, invoking the sanctity of the homeand the necessity of perpetuating customs that have been observed for many years.
Frankly speaking, I have no patience with people who voice such objections. If this country had not been one of the few privilegedplaces on our planet where the experiment of a sudden change of institutions and ideals has been carried on most successfully,without paralyzation or retrogre