The Woman's Hour Persuasive Speech
The object of the life of an organized movement is to secure its aim. Necessarily, it must obey the
law of evolution and pass through the stages of agitation and education and finally through the
stage of realization. Such a period comes to every movement and is its crisis. In my judgment, that
crucial moment, bidding us to renewed consecration and redoubled activity has come to our cause.
I believe our victory hangs within our grasp, inviting us to pluck it out of the clouds and establish it
among the good things of the world.
If this be true, the time is past when we should say: “Men and women of America, look upon that
wonderful idea up there; see, one day it will come down.” Instead, the time has come to shout aloud
in every city, village and hamlet, and in tones so clear and jubilant that they will reverberate from
every mountain peak and echo from shore to shore: “The Woman's Hour has struck.”
The old belief, which has sustained suffragists in many an hour of discouragement, “woman
suffrage is bound to come,” must give way to the new, “The Woman's Hour has struck.” The change
is one of spirit!
What our great movement needs now is a “mobilization of spirit,”—the jubilant, glad spirit of victory.
Then let us sound a bugle call here and now to the women of the Nation: “The Woman's Hour has
struck.” Let the bugle sound from the suffrage headquarters of every State at the inauguration of a
State campaign. Let the call go forth again, and again and yet again.
The political emancipation of our sex calls you, women of America. Arise! Are you content that
others shall pay the price of your liberty? Women in schools and counting house, in shops and on
the farm, women in the home with babes at their breasts and women engaged in public careers will
hear.
They are neither cowards nor slackers. They will come. They only await the bugle call to learn that
the final battle is on.
