urged, and I am sure that you have considered this question; but
I only make the demand from the standpoint, not of sex, but of
humanity.

As a Northern woman, as a woman from Indiana, I know that we have
the intelligent, thinking, cultured, pure, patriotic men and
women with us. We have the women who are engaged in philanthropic
enterprises. We have in our own State the signatures of over 5,000
of the school teachers asking for woman's ballot. I ask you if the
United States Government does not need the voice of those 5,000
educated school teachers as much as it needs the voice of the
240 male criminals who are, on an average, sent out of the
penitentiary of Indiana every year, who go to the ballot-box upon
every question whatever, and make laws under which those school
teachers must live, and under which the mothers of our State must
keep their homes and rear their children?

On behalf of the mothers of this country I demand that their hands
shall be loosened before the ballot-box, and that they shall have
the privilege of throwing the mother heart into the laws that
shall follow their sons not only to the age of majority that only
has been made legal, but is never recognized, and so I ask you to
let the mothers carry their influence in protecting laws around
the footsteps of those boys, even after their hair has turned gray
and they have seats in the United States Congress. I ask you to
give them the power to throw protecting laws around those boys to
the very confines of eternity. This can be done in no indirect
way; it can not be done by the silent influence; it can not be
done by prayer. While I do not underestimate the power of prayer,
I say give me my ballot on election day that shall send pure