U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting

Ida Husted Harper
categories: Speeches, U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Statement before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Woman Suffrage – Dec. 3, 1908
December 3, 1908
Gentlemen and members of the committee: Since the representatives of the National Woman Suffrage Association last appeared before this committee, two years ago, two nations of Europe have conferred the complete franchise on their women and one has practically granted municipal suffrage. Finland in 1906 enfranchised all women on exactly the same terms as men and made them eligible to all offices including the parliamentary. This measure was the result of great deliberation and careful procedure, decided upon by a carefully selected commission, passed by all the four chambers of […]
Belva Lockwood
categories: Speeches, U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Statement before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Woman Suffrage – Dec. 3, 1908
December 3, 1908
Gentlemen, you compose a committee, the last of 71 on the list, appointed and selected to discuss, consider, and report the matters referred to you, pertaining to the subject and object of your committee, “woman suffrage,” which you are supposed by your appointment not only to favor but thoroughly understand; a question that has been agitated before the country, and before the honorable body which you have the honor to represent, for the last half a century, and a question involving, according to the last United States Census, the welfare […]
Lucy Stone
categories: Speeches, U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Statement before the Senate Committee on Women Suffrage – Feb 20, 1892
February 20, 1892
I come before this committee with the sense which I always feel, that we are handicapped as women in what we try to do for ourselves by the single fact that we have no vote. This cheapens us. You do not care so much for us as if we had votes, so that we come always with that infinite disadvantage. But the thing I want to say particularly is that we have our immortal Declaration of Independence and the various bills of rights of the different States ( George Washington […]
Virginia Minor
categories: Speeches, U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Statement before the U.S. Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage - Jan. 24, 1889
January 24, 1889
Minor's remarks included a statement prepared by her husband, Francis Minor, who pleaded her case before the Supreme Court in 1875. Gentlemen, in 1884 the chairman of your committee (Mr. Cockrell) declared "that suffrage belonged entirely to the States so long as no class of citizens were disfranchised." I hold that women are a class of citizens in the different States who are disfranchised. But I am happy to say the Senator must have changed his opinion on that subject, because I notice that he has voted in Congress to […]
Susan B. Anthony
categories: Speeches, U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Statement before the Select Committee on Woman Suffrage, U.S. Senate - March 7, 1884
March 7, 1884
Miss ANTHONY. I wish I could state the avocations and professions of the various women who have spoken in our convention during the last three days. I do not wish to speak disparagingly in regard to the men in Congress, but I doubt if a man on the floor of either House could have made a better speech than some of those which have been made by women during this convention. Twenty-six States and Territories are represented with live women, traveling all the way from Kansas, Arkansas, Oregon, and Washington […]
Susan B. Anthony
categories: Speeches, U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Statement Before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary - Jan. 23, 1880
January 23, 1880
Mr. Chairman and gentlemen: Mrs. Spencer said that I would make an argument. I do not propose to do so, because I take it for granted that the members of this committee understand that we have all the argument on our side, and such an argument would be simply a series of platitudes and maxims of government. The theory of this Government from the beginning has been perfect equality to all the people. That is shown by every one of the fundamental principles, which I need not stop to repeat. […]
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
categories: Speeches, U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Statement before the U.S. Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage – April 2, 1888
April 2, 1888
Honorable gentlemen, for many successive years a class of women, fully comprehending the dignity of citizenship in a Republic, have appeared before committees of the House and Senate, praying that the national Constitution should be so interpreted or amended as to secure to the women of the nation all the rights, privileges, and immunities of citizens. During this discussion the basic principles of republican government, the Declaration of Independence, the national Constitution, have been thoroughly studied by us, until it may be truly said that the leaders in the suffrage […]
Frances Willard
categories: Speeches, U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
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 […]
Anna Howard Shaw
categories: Speeches, U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Statement before the U.S. Senate 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 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 our […]
Leonora O’Reilly
categories: Speeches, U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Statement to the Joint Committee of the Committee on Woman Suffrage and the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate - March 13, 1912
March 13, 1912
Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee: Yes; I have outdone the lady who went to work at 18 by five years. I have been a wage earner since I was a little over 13. I, too, know whereof I speak; that is the reason I do not want to play a bluff game with you any longer. You can not, or will not make laws for us; we must make laws for ourselves. We working women need the ballot for self-protection; that is all there is to it. We […]