The nation needs its women-needs the work of their hands and their hearts and their minds. - Jeannette Rankin

How can people in other countries who are trying to grasp our plan of democracy avoid stumbling over our logic when we deny the first steps in democracy to our women? May they not see a distinction between the government of the United States and the women of the United States?

For seventy years, the women leaders of this country have been asking the government to recognize this possibility. Every great woman who stands out in our history-Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Clara Barton, Mary Livermore, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frances Willard, Lucy Stone, Jane Addams, Ella Flagg Young, Alice Stone Blackwell, Anna Howard Shaw, Mrs. Catt-all have asked the government to permit women to serve more effectively the national welfare. All have felt that the energy, the thought, and the suffering that was spent in trying to obtain permission to serve directly should as quickly as possible be turned to the actual service.

It is time for our old political doctrines to give way to the new visions