requiring the assistance of the moral element of womanhood to help
make the laws under which we shall live.

Gentlemen, the political party that lives in the future must fight
the moral battles of humanity. The day of blood is passed; the
day of brain and heart is upon us; and I ask you to let the moral
constituency that resides in woman's nature be represented. Let
me say right here that I do not believe that there is morality in
sex, but the social customs have been such that woman has been
held to a higher standard. May the day hasten when the social
custom shall hold man to as high a moral standard as it to-day
holds woman.

This is the condition of things. The political party that presumes
to fight the moral battles of the future must have the women in
its ranks. We are non-partisan, as has been well said by my friend
from Indiana [Mrs. Sewall.] We come Democrats, Republicans, and
Greenbackers, and I expect if there were a half dozen other
political parties some of us would belong to them. We ask this
beneficent action upon your part because we believe that the
intelligence and the justice of the hour is demanding it. We
do not want a political party action. We want you to keep this
question out of the canvass. We ask you in the name of justice and
humanity alone, and not on the part of party.

I hold in my hand a petition sent from one district in the State
of Illinois with the request that I bear it to you. Out of three
hundred electors the names of two hundred stand in this petition
that I shall leave in your hands. In this list stand not the
wife-whippers, not the drunkards, not the dissolute, but