It is often said that we have too many voters; that the aggregate
of vice and ignorance among us should not be increased by giving
women the right of suffrage. I wish to remind you of the fact that
in the enormous immigration that pours to our shores every year,
numbering somewhere in the neighborhood of half a million, there
come, twice as many men as women. The figures for the last year
were two hundred and twenty-three thousand men, and one hundred
and thirteen thousand women.

What does this mean? It means a steady influx of this foreign
element; it means a constant preponderance of the masculine over
the feminine; and it means also, of course, a preponderance of the
voting power of the foreigner as compared to the native born. To
those who fear that our American institutions are threatened by
this gigantic inroad of foreigners I commend the reflection that
the best safeguard against any such preponderance of foreign
nations or of foreign influence is to put the ballot in the hands
of the American-born women, And of all other women also, so that
if the foreign-born man overbalances us in numbers we shall be
always in a preponderance on the side of the liberty which is
secured by our institutions.

It is because, as many of my predecessors have said, of the
different elements represented by the two sexes, that we are
asking for this liberty. When I was recently in the capitol of my
own State of New York, I was reminded there of the difference of
temperament between the sexes by seeing how children act when
coming to the doors of the capitol, which have been constructed so
that they are very hard to open. Whether that is because they want
to keep us women out or not I am not able to say; but for some