Votes for Women by Mark Twain
“Ladies and Gentlemen, it is a small help that I can afford, but it is just such help that one can give as coming from the heart through the mouth. …Referring to woman’s sphere in life, I’ll say that woman is always right. For twenty-five years I’ve been a woman’s rights man. I have always believed, long before my mother died, that, with her gray hairs and admirable intellect, perhaps she knew as much as I did. Perhaps she knew as much about voting as I. I should like to see the time come when women shall help to make the laws. I should like to see that whip-lash, the ballot, in the hands of women. As for this city’s government, I don’t want to say much, except that it is a shame-a shame; but if I should live twenty-five years longer–and there is no reason why I shouldn’t–I think I’ll see women handle the ballot. If women had the ballot to-day, the state of things in this town would not exist. If all the women in this town had a vote to-day they would elect a mayor at the next election, and they would rise in their might and change the awful state of things now existing here.”
Excerpt from “Votes for Women”
Mark Twain
Speech at Hebrew Technical School for Girls
New York City, New York
January 20, 1901
