Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1916-09-09
PRESIDENT GIVES VIEWS
OF EQUAL SUFFRAGE ISSUE

| ATLANTIC CITY. N J.. September 8.
Following is the text of President
Wilson's address to the National Amer
| lean Woman Suffrage Association last
night:
Madam President, Ladies of the Asso
citation:
| Il have found it real privilege to be
here tonight and to listen to the adj
dresses which You have heard. Though
YOU may not all of you believe 1t, I
would a great deal rather hear some
body else speak than speak myself. but
l should feel that I was emitting
duty if ! did not address you tonight
and say some of the things that have
been in my thought as | realized the
approach of this evening and the duty
that would fall upon me.
THE astonishing thing about the
movement which you represent is not
| that it has grown so slowly. but that it
has grown rapidly. No doubt for
those who have been a long time in the
struggle. like your honored president
it seems a long and aTduous path that
| has been trodden, but when you think
of the cumulating force of this move
ment in recent decades you must agree
with me that it is one of the most as
tOn1ShlnS t1QcS IN modern history.
Two generations ago, no doubt
Madam President will agree with me in
saying it was a handful of women who
were fighting this cause. Now 1t is
great multitude of women who are
! fighting it And there are some inter-
esting historical connections which l
would like to attempt to point out to
you.
Cites Striking Fact
the history of the United States is that
at the outset it was a lawyers history.
Almost all of the questions to which
America addressed itself. say hun
bred years ago, were legal questions,
were questions of method, not questions
of what you were going to do with your
government, but questions of how you
were going to constitute your govern
ment-how you were going to balance
the powers of the states and the fed
eral government, how you were going
to balance the claims of property
gainSt the processes of liberty, how
you were going to make your govern
ments UP so as to balance the parts
against each other so that the legisla
ture would check the executive and
the executive the legislature and the
courts both of them put together.
Thehyhole conception of government
when the United States became ma
ton was a mechanical conception of
government, and the mechanical concep-
ton of government which underlay it
was the Newtonian theory of the uni
verse. If you pick up the Federalist
some parts of it read like 3 treatise on
astronomy instead of trea Use on gov
eminent. They speak of the centrifugal
and the centripetal forces, and locate the
President somewhere in rotating sys-
TEN. And the whole thing is calcula-
ton of power and an adjustment of
parts.
There was a time when nobody but a
lawyer could know enough to run the
government OF the United States, and
distinguished English publicist once re-
marked, speaking of the complexity OF
the American government, that it was
no proof of the excellence of the Amerf-
can Constitution that it had been sue
cessfully operated, because the Ameri-
cans could run any constitution. But
there have been a great many technical
difficulties in running it.
Something Happened"
And then something happened. A
great question arose in this country
which, though complicated with legal
elements, was at bottom human ques-
| ton, and nothing but question of
humanity. That was the slavery ques
! ton. and it is not significant that it
was then. and then for the first time,
that women became prominent in poll
| tics in America? Not many women.
Those prominent in that day are SO few
that you can almost name them over in
a brief catalogue, nevertheless they
| then began to play part in writing,
not only but in public speech, which
was q very novel part for women to
play in America, and after the civil war
had settled some of what seemed to be
| the most difficult legal questions of our
| system the life of the nation began not
| only to unfold but to accumulate.
| Life in the United States was a COM
| paratively simple matter at the time Of
| the civil war. There was none of that
| underground struggle which is now sc
manifest to those who look only little
| way beneath the surface Stories such
as Dr. Davis has told tonight were un-
sure of low wages. the agony Of obscure
an unremunerated toll did not exist
| in America in anything the same pro-
portions that they exist now. And as
our life has unfolded and accumulated, as
the contacts Of it have become hot. as
the populations have assembled in the
| cities, and the cool spaces of the coun-
| try have been supplemented by the fever
| ish urban areas, the whole nature of oul
| political questions has been altered
| They have ceased to be legal questions
{, They have more and more become social
| neutrality-suspicious. with regard to the
| relations of human beings to one another
mot merely their legal relations, but their
| moral and spiritual relations to one an
| other.
| And this has been most characteristic OF
| American life in the last few decades, and
|