Search results for suffrage, all
Carrie Chapman Catt
categories: Lecture, Speeches
Suffrage and Militancy - April 17, 1913
April 17, 1913
April 17, 1913. Suffrage and Militancy I am not militant in theory or practice. I believe in arbitration as a substitute for war; courts, as a substitute for street brawls; arbitration as a substitute for strikes. Reason, and not physical force to my mind is the standard of true civilization. I believe in education, persuasion, agitation and political warfare as the means which ought to be employed to gain and establish political reforms. I have no sympathy per se for law breaking and incendiaries. The suffrage situation in Great Britain […]
Anna Howard Shaw
categories: Speeches, U.S. House Committee/Subcommittee Meeting/Hearing
Statement at a Hearing before the Select Committee on Woman Suffrage - Feb. 18, 1902
February 18, 1902
Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, in closing what we women have to say to you this morning in our own behalf, I am not going to make an argument, but to recall to your minds again, as Miss Anthony did in the beginning, that for thirty-two years we have been coming before your honorable body asking 36 that your committee shall report to the honorable Senate of the United States a bill for a sixteenth amendment to the Constitution. Miss Anthony gave you the reasons why we want […]
Florence Kelley
Speeches
Child Labor & Women's Suffrage - July 22, 1905
July 22, 1905
We have, in this country, two million children under the age of sixteen years who are earning their bread. They vary in age from six and seven years (in the cotton mills of Georgia) and eight, nine and ten years (in the coal-breakers of Pennsylvania), to fourteen, fifteen and sixteen years in more enlightened states. No other portion of the wage earning class increased so rapidly from decade to decade as the young girls from fourteen to twenty years. Men increase, women increase, youth increase, boys increase in the ranks […]
Carrie Chapman Catt
Written Works
Why the Southeastern States of the U.S. Refused Suffrage to Women - 1920
When the 19th Amendment finally takes its place as part of the Constitution, the suffrage ratification map will show a white nation with a big black spot in the South East. For many a year to come, students of history and democracy the world around will ask in wonder – why did these states refuse suffrage to women? The answer is a sensitive sore subject; it is one Americans do not talk about, read about or think about if they can avoid it. In fact, it is the greatest gawkiest […]
Carrie Chapman Catt
categories: Radio address, Speeches
Radio Address on the History of the Suffrage Movement - 1939
January 1, 1939
A century ago no organization existed anywhere in the world to urge the correction of the wrongs visited upon women by the laws and customs of the entire world. In 1839, most women were married and at the marriage ceremony all property the woman might possess or ever acquire, even to her hairpins and shoelaces, passed to the possession of her husband. Should she earn wages, she was not legally permitted to collect and spend them. Although the property, nevertheless, stood in her name, she could not make a will. […]
Mary Jane Coggeshall
Speeches
Suffrage Club: "Men Tramps vs. Women Tramps" - c. 1894
January 1, 1894
We have often wondered why there is such a scarcity of women tramps. If men tramps are a necessary result of the present industrial condition, and if the number of men and women are about the same, why is it that where there are a thousand men asking charity, there are not ten women? The number of occupations open to men are vastly greater, the wages better, the oppo1tunity to go from one place to another greatly in favor of men. We are everlastingly told that men support women. While […]
Carrie Chapman Catt
Speeches
What Have Women Done With Suffrage - undated
January 1, 1922
I am asked continually whether I am satisfied with woman suffrage now that it is achieved? Yes, I am because I see what I expected to see. I had learned before 1920 that there is no short cut to the millennium. I knew that women would be disappointed with politics. And they are. I have heard of no woman who is disappointed enough to want to go back with the paupers, insane and criminals who compose the disfranchised classes. They are disappointed nevertheless, frankly, outspokenly disappointed. They are disappointed first […]
Mary Jane Coggeshall
Speeches
Iowa Equal Suffrage Association Convention – Nov. 9, 1905
November 9, 1905
There is a great problem confronting the women of Iowa today. The same kind of a problem that has given unrest to men and women ever since governments began. It is this: How to obtain political freedom. The Declaration of Independence is slowly and painfully being interpreted alright. It required 100 years and the blood of a nation to teach us that all men were created equal. Is it a wonder that it has taken even longer to convince us that all men and women were created equal. It is […]
Frances Willard
categories: Speeches, U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting/Hearing
Statement before the U.S. Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage – April 2, 1888
April 2, 1888
I suppose these honorable gentlemen think that we women want the earth, when we only want half of it. That is just exactly where we stand. We call their attention to the fact—I do not know whether it has been brought out here this morning, but it is a fact—that our brethren have encroached upon the sphere of woman. They have very definitely marked out that sphere, and then they have proceeded with their incursion by the power of invention. They have taken away the loom and the spinning-jenny, and […]
Amelia Jenks Bloomer
Speeches
Woman's Suffrage IV / A Principle of All Free Governments - c. 1870
January 1, 1870
Originally written between 1852-1853 and delivered a number of times over the years, Bloomer delivered this version after 1870. It is a principle of all free governments that the people rule. Each member of the community, in theory at least, is supposed to give assent to the constitution and laws to which he is subject—or at least it is supposed that these were made by a majority of the people. And this assent is given according to forms previously prescribed. The people vote directly upon the adoption of the constitution, […]