International Woman Suffrage Conference.

White Ribbon, Volume 8, Issue 96, 1 May 1903, Page 12

International Woman Suffrage Conference.

DECLARATION OP PRINCIPLES.

1. That men and women are bom equally free and independent members of the human race; equally endowed with talents and intelligence, and equally entitled to the free exercise of their individual rights and liberty. 2. That the natural relation of the sexes is thai of interdependence and co-operation, and that a repression of the rights of one inevitably works injury to the other and to the whole race.

3. That in all lands, those laws, creeds, and customs which have tended to restrict women to a position of dependence, to discourage their mental training, to repress the development of their natural gifts, and to subotdinate their individuality, have been based upon false theories, and have produced an artificial and unjust relation of the sexes in modern society. 4 That self-government in the home and the State should be the inalienable right of every normal adult, and in

consequence no individual woman can “owe obedience’’ to any individual man, as prescribed by old marriage forms, nor can w T omen as a whole owe obedience to men as a whole, as prescribed by modern governments. 5. That the refusal to recognise women as individual members of society, entitled to the right of self-government, has resulted in social, legal, and economic injustice to them, and has intensified the existing economic disturbances throughout the world.

6. That governments which impose taxes and laws upon their women citizens without giving them the right of

consent, or dissent, which is granted to men citizens, exercise a tyranny inconsistent with just government. 7. That the ballot is the only legal and permanent means of defending the rights to “ life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness ” pronounced inalienable by the American Declaration of Indepen dence, and accepted a> inalienable by

all civilised nations; therefore, women should be vested with all rights and privileges of electors in a representative form of government.

8. That the rapidly developing intelligence of women, resulting from new educational opportunities, and the important position in the economic world into whicn women have been forced by the commercial changes of the last halfcentury, call for the immediate consideration of this problem by the nations of the world.

Susan B. Anthony, Chairman , United States. Vida Goldstein, Secretary , Australia. Florence Fenwick Miller, England. Antonie Stolle, Germany. Emmy Evald, Sweden. Caroline Holman Huidobro, Chile. Gudrun Drewsen, Norway. Rachael Foster Avery, United States. Anna H. Shaw, United States. Carrie Chapman Catt, United State* [Advt]