A “Speech Before Congress”, a Speech for Now A bold title of a paper for an even bolder woman: Carrie Chapman Catt. Catt was born near Ripon, Wisconsin on January 9th, 1859. She paid for her own education at Iowa State College in a Freshman class that was eighty percent male, graduating valedictorian as the only female to walk the stage. Chapman Catt became a high school principal and the first superintendent of Mason City, Iowa by the age of twenty-three. She then went on to become a writer for a prominent Iowan newspaper before joining the women’s rights movement. She began serving her term as the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). She sadly had to step down due to her husband’s health problems. The movement and the NAWSA began to lose steam and validity. She came back in 1915; it was this term as president of the NAWSA …show more content…
This quotation illustrates how unsatisfied women are with the great “Americanisms” of democracy. Congress has to act now in order to keep its legitimacy, to keep women’s respect, and their tax dollars. There is no time to not act anymore, the nation is in dire need of unification. The nation, she adds, “does not wait for those who have a special interest to serve, nor a selfish reason for depriving other people of freedom” (Chapman Catt 66). The use of the “depriving” creates a sense of how the government is killing democracy. To further this concept, Catt quotes Thomas Jefferson’s famous saying, ‘“Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the people”’ (Chapman Catt qtd Jefferson 64). Chapman Catt, therefore, calls out the congressmen for not doing their job correctly. They are to serve based on what the people want, not their own motivations and beliefs. They can no longer use their powers to oppress half of the