distributing the taxes.

Gentlemen, I am amenable to the gallows and the penitentiary, and
it is no more than right that I shall have a voice in framing the
laws under which I shall he rewarded or punished. Am I asking too
much of you as representative men of this great Government when I
ask you to let me have a voice in making the laws under which I
shall be rewarded or punished? It is written in the law of every
State in this Union that a person in the courts shall have a jury
of his peers, yet so long as the word "male" stands as it does in
the Constitutions of the United States and the States no woman in
any State of this Union can have a jury of her peers, I protest in
the name of justice against going into the court-room and
being compelled to run the gauntlet of the gutter and of the
saloon--yes, even of the police court and of the jail--as we are
compelled to do to select a male jury to try the interests of
women, whether relating to life, property, or reputation. So long
as the word "male" is in our constitutions just so long we can not
have a jury of our peers in any State in the Union.

I ask that the women shall have the right of the ballot that
they may go into our legislative halls and there provide for the
prevention rather than the cure of crime. I ask you on behalf of
the twelve hundred children under twelve years of age who are
in the poor-houses of Indiana, of the sixteen hundred in the
poor-houses of Illinois, and on that average in every State in
the Union, that you shall take the word "male" out of the
constitutions and allow the women of this country to sit in
legislative halls and provide homes for and look after the little
waifs of society. There are hundreds of moral questions to-day