Speech at the National American Woman Suffrage Convention, November 30, 1913 (excerpts)

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Change in Political Presentment.

"We are on the eve of a new change in the presentment of politics." Miss Jane Addams declared in her address. "Just as there has been a change in the attitude of the political economists, philanthropists, criminologists, and leaders of education, there has now come a change in politics.

"The voter has been regarded merely as a unit in a political party; his loyalty to certain emblems, to marches, national music, and to certain other means employed by politicians to rouse his patriotism have been relied upon in the past. Now that is changing. The voter is being regarded as a human being, his wants and needs are considered, his condition considered.

"Let us take, for an example of this new idea, the government investigation, which cost three-fourths of a million dollars, of the condition of the immigrant; the half million dollars spent in studying the conditions of the women in industry. The government is getting at the facts of life, and this new development is called social sympathy. It can be translated into political action, and in the new idea of government the women will naturally take part. The movement cannot possibly go on without them."

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