Part 15 (1/2)

Mrs. ALLEN. I have made arrangements with Miss Anthony to say all that I feel it necessary for me to say at this time.

Mrs. SPENCER. I have been so informed.

REMARKS BY MRS. NANCY B. ALLEN, OF IOWA.

Mrs. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the Judiciary Committee: I am not a State representative, but I am a representative of a large cla.s.s of women, citizens of Iowa, who are heavy tax-payers.

That is a subject which we are very seriously contemplating at this time. There is now a pet.i.tion being circulated throughout our State, to be presented to the legislature, praying that women be exempted from taxation until they have some voice in the management of local affairs of the State. You may ask, ”Do not your husbands protect you? Are not all the men protecting you?” We answer that our husbands are grand, n.o.ble men, who are willing to do all they can for us, but there are many who have no husbands, and who own a great deal of property in the State of Iowa.

Particularly in great moral reforms the women there feel the need of the ballot. By presenting long pet.i.tions to the Legislature they have succeeded in having better temperance laws enacted, but the men have failed to elect officials who will enforce those laws. Consequently they have become as dead letters upon the statute-books.

I would refer again to taxes. I have a list showing that in my city three women pay more taxes than all the city officials included. Those women are good temperance women. Our city council is composed almost entirely of saloon men and those who visit saloons and brewery men. There are some good men, but the good men being in the minority, the voices of these women are but little regarded. All these officials are paid, and we have to help support them. All that we ask is an equality of rights. As Sumner said, ”Equality of rights is the first of rights.” If we can only be equal with man under the law it is all that we ask. We do not propose to relinquish our domestic circles; in fact, they are too dear to us for that; they are dear to us as life itself, but we do ask that we may be permitted to be represented. Equality of taxation without representation is tyranny.

REMARKS BY MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY, OF NEW YORK.

Miss ANTHONY: Mr. Chairman and gentlemen: Mrs. Spencer said that I would make an argument. I do not propose to do so, because I take it for granted that the members of this committee understand that we have all the argument on our side, and such an argument would be simply a series of plat.i.tudes and maxims of government. The theory of this Government from the beginning has been perfect equality to all the people. That is shown by every one of the fundamental principles, which I need not stop to repeat. Such being the theory, the application would be, of course, that all persons not having forfeited their right to representation in the Government should be possessed of it at the age of twenty-one. But instead of adopting a practice in conformity with the theory of our Government, we began first by saying that all men of property were the people of the nation upon whom the Const.i.tution conferred equality of rights. The next step was that all white men were the people to whom should be practically applied the fundamental theories. There we halt to-day and stand at a deadlock, so far as the application of our theory may go. We women have been standing before the American republic for thirty years, asking the men to take yet one step further and extend the practical application of the theory of equality of rights to all the people to the other half of the people--the women. That is all that I stand here to-day to attempt to demand.

Of course, I take it for granted that the committee are in sympathy at least with the reports of the Judiciary Committees presented both in the Senate and the House. I remember that after the adoption of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments Senator EDMUNDS reported on the pet.i.tion of the ten thousand foreign-born citizens of Rhode Island who were denied equality of rights in Rhode Island simply because of their foreign birth; and in that report held that the amendments were enacted and attached to the Const.i.tution simply for men of color, and therefore that their provisions could not be so construed as to bring within their purview the men of foreign birth in Rhode Island. Then the House Committee on the Judiciary, with Judge Bingham, of Ohio, at its head, made a similar report upon our pet.i.tions, holding that because those amendments were made essentially with the black men in view, therefore their provisions could not be extended to the women citizens of this country or to any cla.s.s except men citizens of color.

I voted in the State of New York in 1872 under the construction of those amendments, which we felt to be the true one, that all persons born in the United States, or any State thereof, and under the jurisdiction of the United States, were citizens, and ent.i.tled to equality of rights, and that no State could deprive them of their equality of rights. I found three young men, inspectors of election, who were simple enough to read the Const.i.tution and understand it in accordance with what was the letter and what should have been its spirit. Then, as you will remember, I was prosecuted by the officers of the Federal court, And the cause was carried through the different courts in the State of New York, in the northern district, and at last I was brought to trial at Canandaigua.

When Mr. Justice Hunt was brought from the supreme bench to sit upon that trial, he wrested my case from the hands of the jury altogether, after having listened three days to testimony, and brought in a verdict himself of guilty, denying to my counsel even the poor privilege of having the jury polled. Through all that trial when I, as a citizen of the United States, as a citizen of the State of New York and city of Rochester, as a person who had done something at least that might have ent.i.tled her to a voice in speaking for herself and for her cla.s.s, in all that trial I not only was denied my right to testify as to whether I voted or not, but there was not one single woman's voice to be heard nor to be considered, except as witnesses, save when it came to the judge asking, ”Has the prisoner any thing to say why sentence shall not be p.r.o.nounced?” Neither as judge, nor as attorney, nor as jury was I allowed any person who could be legitimately called my peer to speak for me.

Then, as you will remember, Mr. Justice Hunt not only p.r.o.nounced the verdict of guilty, but a sentence of $100 fine and costs of prosecution. I said to him, ”May it please your honor, I do not propose to pay it;” and I never have paid it, and I never shall. I asked your honorable bodies of Congress the next year--in 1874--to pa.s.s a resolution to remit that fine. Both Houses refused it; the committees reported against it; though through Benjamin F. Butler, in the House, and a member of your committee, and Matthew H.

Carpenter, in the Senate, there were plenty of precedents brought forward to show that in the cases of mult.i.tudes of men fines had been remitted. I state this merely to show the need of woman to speak for herself, to be as judge, to be as juror.

Mr. Justice Hunt in his opinion stated that suffrage was a fundamental right, and therefore a right that belonged to the State. It seemed to me that was just as much of a retroversion of the theory of what is right in our Government as there could possibly be. Then, after the decision in my case came that of Mrs.

Minor, of Missouri. She prosecuted the officers there for denying her the right to vote. She carried her case up to your Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court answered her the same way; that the amendments were made for black men; that their provisions could not protect women; that the Const.i.tution of the United States has no voters of its own.

Mrs. SPENCER. And you remember Judge Cartier's decision in my case.

Miss ANTHONY. Mr. Cartier said that women are citizens and may be qualified, &c., but that it requires some sort of legislation to give them the right to vote.

The Congress of the United States notwithstanding, and the Supreme Court of the United States notwithstanding, with all deference and respect, I differ with them all, and know that I am right and that they are wrong. The Const.i.tution of the United States as it is protects me. If I could get a practical application of the Const.i.tution it would protect me and all women in the enjoyment of perfect equality of rights everywhere under the shadow of the American flag.

I do not come to you to pet.i.tion for special legislation, or for any more amendments to the Const.i.tution, because I think they are unnecessary, but because you say there is not in the Const.i.tution enough to protect me. Therefore I ask that you, true to your own theory and a.s.sertion, should go forward to make more const.i.tution.

Let me remind you that in the case of all other cla.s.ses of citizens under the shadow of our flag you have been true to the theory that taxation and representation are inseparable. Indians not taxed are not counted in the basis of representation, and are not allowed to vote; but the minute that your Indians are counted in the basis of representation and are allowed to vote they are taxed; never before. In my State of New York, and in nearly all the States, the members of the State militia, hundreds and thousands of men, are exempted from taxation on property; in my State to the value of $800, and in most of the States to a value in that neighborhood. While such a member of the militia lives, receives his salary, and is able to earn money, he is exempted; but when he dies the a.s.sessor puts his widow's name down upon the a.s.sessor's list, and the tax-collector never fails to call upon the widow and make her pay the full tax upon her property. In most of the States clergymen are exempted. In my State of New York they are exempted on property to the value of $1,500. As long as the clergyman lives and receives his fat salary, or his lean one, as the case may be, he is exempted on that amount of property; but when the breath leaves the body of the clergyman, and the widow is left without any income, or without any means of support, the State comes in and taxes the widow.

So it is with regard to all black men. In the State of New York up to the day of the pa.s.sage of the fifteenth amendment, black men who were willing to remain without reporting themselves worth as much as $250, and thereby to remain without exercising the right to vote, never had their names put on the a.s.sessor's list; they were pa.s.sed by, while, if the poorest colored woman owned 50 feet of real estate, a little cabin anywhere, that colored woman's name was always on the a.s.sessor's list, and she was compelled to pay her tax. While Frederick Douglas lived in my State he was never allowed to vote until he could show himself worth the requisite $250; and when he did vote in New York, he voted not because he was a man, not because he was a citizen of the United States, nor yet because he was a citizen of the State, but simply because he was worth the requisite amount of money. In Connecticut both black men and black women were exempted from taxation prior to the adoption of the fifteenth amendment.

The law was amended in 1848, by which black men were thus exempted, and black women followed the same rule in that State.

That, I believe, is the only State where black women were exempted from taxation under the law. When the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments were attached to the Const.i.tution they carried to the black man of Connecticut the boon of the ballot as well as the burden of taxation, whereas they carried to the black woman of Connecticut the burden of taxation, but no ballot by which to protect her property. I know a colored woman in New Haven, Conn., worth $50,000, and she never paid a penny of taxation until the ratification of the fifteenth amendment. From that day on she is compelled to pay a heavy tax on that amount of property.

Mrs. SPENCER. Is it because she is a citizen? Please explain.

Miss ANTHONY. Because she is black.

Mrs. SPENCER. Is it because the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments made women citizens?