You ask me why I am inclined to be practical in my view of this
question. In the first place, speaking from my own standpoint, I
ask you to let me have a voice in the laws under which I shall
live because the older empires of the earth are sending in upon
our American shores a population drawing very largely from
the asylums, yes, from the penitentiaries, the jails, and the
poor-houses of the Old World. They are emptying those men upon
our shores, and within a few months they are intrusted with the
ballot, the law-making power in this Republic, and they and their
representatives are seated in official and legislative positions.
I, as an American-born woman, to-day enter my protest at being
compelled to live under laws made by this class of men very
largely, and myself being rendered utterly incapable of the
protection that can only come from the ballot. While I would not
have you take this right or privilege from those men whom we
invite to our shores, I do ask you, in the face of this immense
foreign immigration, to enfranchise the tax-paying, intelligent,
moral, native-born women of America.

Miss Anthony. And foreign women, too.

Mrs. Gougar. Miss Anthony suggests an amendment, and I indorse it
most heartily, and foreign women too, because if we let a foreign
man vote I say let the foreign woman vote. I am in favor of
universal suffrage.

Gentlemen, I ask this as a matter of justice; I ask it because it
is an insult to the intelligence of the present to draw the sex
line upon any right whatever. I know there are many objections