Right below the mention of Women of Granite, there is a piece on a winner of the "Marilla M. Ricker Achievement Award." Marilla M. Ricker was another one of the women profiled in our book. Perhaps Barbara will blog about her one day soon. Until then, I will include this short piece from an October 1, 1905 article in the Railroad Telegrapher (St. Louis, MO), which reports on Ricker's "demand" for the right to run for a seat in Congress, and quotes Marilla as saying,
In the Constitution of the United States, Article first, Section second, reads: "No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained the age of twenty-five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen."Yay, Marilla! You go girl!
It lies right there in a nutshell. I am twenty-five, a citizen of the United States and a citizen of New Hampshire, and if any one takes issue on the sentence, "he shall be chosen" I refer him to the criminal code of the United States. It says he shall be punished, and not a word about her; still, I've seen many women in prisons. Unless he can be construed to mean she, the punishment for treason is limited exclusively to males. Shall the word he include woman in one set of laws and exclude her in another? I want to go to Congress, and there are no laws to prevent it. Why shouldn't I be nominated and elected? I need votes—-nothing else!
--Diane
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