the total forgetfulness of the Congress of the United States to
the debt owed to the women of this nation during the war. You
have passed a pension bill upon which there has been much comment
throughout the nation, and yet, when an old army nurse applies
for a pension, a woman who is broken down by her devotion to the
nation in hospitals and upon the battle-field, she is met at the
door of the Pension Bureau by this statement, "the Government has
made no appropriation for the services of women in the war." One
of these women is an old nurse whom some of you may remember,
Mother Bickerdyke, who went out onto many a battle-field when she
was in the prime of life, twenty years ago, and at the risk of her
life lifted men, who were wounded, in her arms, and carried them
to a place of safety. She is an old woman now, and where is she?
What reward the nation bestowed to her faithful services? The
nation has a pension for every man who has served this nation,
even down to the boy recruit who was out but three months; but
Mother Bickerdyke, though her health has never been good since her
service then, is earning her living at the wash-tub, a monument to
the ingratitude of a Republic as great as was that when Belisarius
begged in the streets of Rome.

I bring up this illustration alone out of innumerable others
that are possible, to try to impress upon your minds that we are
forgotten. It is not from any unkindness on your part. Who would
think for one moment, looking upon the kindly faces of this
committee, that any man on it would do an injustice to women,
especially if she were old and feeble? But because we have no
right to vote, as I said, our interests are overlooked and
forgotten.