Speeches

Jane Addams
categories: Speeches, U.S. House Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Testimony at a Hearing before the Committee on Rules of the U.S. House of Representatives - Dec. 3, 1913
December 3, 1913
Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I had the honor of appearing before you last August as woman voter when you very kindly received the delegation of woman voters who were meeting here in Washington. With your permission I will refer to a little discussion at that time and to a point which the committee made and which seemed to me at the moment well taken, that the Rules Committee had no power to appoint a committee on woman 's suffrage because of the fact that Congress did not […]
Ida Husted Harper
categories: Speeches, U.S. House Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Testimony at a Hearing before the Committee on Rules of the U.S. House of Representatives - Dec. 3, 1913
December 3, 1913
Gentlemen, this is not the time or place to enter into an argument on the merits or demerits of woman suffrage, and we shall use the valuable hours you have so graciously accorded us simply to ask that you will give us a committee of our very own, before which we may feel that we have a right to discuss this question. In making this request we ask you to decide, first, whether the issue of woman suffrage is sufficiently national in its character to justify a special committee for […]
Helen Hamilton Gardener
categories: Speeches, U.S. House Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Testimony at a Hearing before the Committee on Rules of the U.S. House of Representatives - Dec. 3, 1913
December 3, 1913
Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the Rules Committee, as I understand it, this hearing is not to be a forum for the discussion of the general question of woman suffrage but is to be confined to the one point for which this committee has appointed this time for discussion, namely, whether or not the Rules Committee shall recommend to Congress the appointment of a committee on woman suffrage for the House of Representatives, whose duty it shall be to give such of its time and attention to this question as […]
Carrie Chapman Catt
Speeches
Address at the 28th Annual NAWSA Convention - Jan. 25, 1896
January 25, 1896
We must learn to concentrate our forces, our workers, our money wherever we find a vulnerable spot, no matter where it is. We must never fail to win a victory, however small, by the division our forces. It is our duty now give assistance to Arizona and to Oklahoma in order to bring these Territories into the Union as Suffrage States. It is true the population is very small, and they will bring us but one member in the House, but they will add to our force two United States […]
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. […]
Carrie Chapman Catt
categories: Radio address, Speeches
Broadcast for the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs - July 10, 1939
July 10, 1939
The National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs commemorates a century today: 1839 - 1939. The most important thing that happened within that century was the organized Woman Movement and what it did. It utterly changed the foundation of human society. At the beginning of that century, the legal and social status of women was almost unbelievably restricted. For many previous centuries the theory had been accepted with practical universality that men were divively appointed to rule and women to obey and this was enforced by both Catholic and […]
Carrie Chapman Catt
categories: Radio address, Speeches
Women Voters - Are You Satisfied With? - June 23, 1939
June 23, 1939
The following transcript contains three versions of this National Broadcasting Company radio address. As prepared and given Equal citizenship and the vote were added to the program of the Woman Movement in 1848. That campaign began with practically the entire world against it; it closed seventy-two years later with an organization of two millions of women at work within it its ranks. Today, no woman is uneducated for want of schools and every woman citizen has a ballot in her hand. Mrs. [Eva vom Baur] Hansl asks me, as one […]
Carrie Chapman Catt
Speeches
Speech - Apr. 19, 1939
April 19, 1939
Beginning with the early prophets some three thousand years ago, great and wise men have continually condemned war with its cruel brutalities and have praised peace with its dignity and goodwill. From the pronouncements of the poets and philosophers of long ago, down through the ages to the scholars and statesmen of our own time, logic has steadfastly characterized the expressions of all peacemakers, but never those of the war mongers. The aim of peace is constructive and under its aegis, all great institutions of the world have been built. […]
Carrie Chapman Catt
categories: Radio address, Speeches
Radio Address for the 44th Birthday of the National Council of Jewish Women - Jan. 11, 1937
January 11, 1937
Catt gave this address as part of an international radio broadcast featuring 17 women from six European countries, Canada and the United States. The broadcast aired as a special edition of WJZ's "Let's Talk It Over" program and was sponsored by the National Council of Jewish Women in honor of its 44th anniversary and the 79th birthday of its founder, Mrs. Hannah G. Solomon. Each of the speakers addressed the general topic "Women's Place in World Progress Today." Could we see the nations as they actually are today, we would […]
Carrie Chapman Catt
Speeches
Address at the International Banquet of Farm Women - June 4, 1936
June 4, 1936
Excerpt It is not long, as time flies, since all schools, open to girls, taught the rudiments of education only. The first woman to graduate with degrees in the entire world were in the class of 1841 at Oberlin College, Ohio, and the women numbered three. The reason the world gave for the denial of education to women at that time was the opinion that women’s brains could not grasp higher learning, and even if they could, learning was inappropriate for women whose God appointed sphere was subservience. The aim […]