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More than 40 speeches - considered among the greatest of all time - comprise this marvelous collection. All the works you'll hear are unabridged, and the most contemporary are live recordings. Included are speeches by Susan B. Anthony, Joan of Arc, Winston Churchill, Jefferson Davis, Amelia Earhart, and John F. Kennedy.

American suffragette Susan B. Anthony delivered this speech countless times during the 1880s. In it, she explains the direct correlation between disenfranchisement and poverty. She describes how giving working class men the vote had led to consistent improvements in legislation protecting working class people. Anthony makes a compelling case that self-supporting working-class women, however, still faced major disparities in rights across the board because they lacked “the ballot, that symbol of perfect equality.”

In November 1872, Anthony was arrested in Rochester, NY, for illegally voting in the United States election. As a local newspaper wrote, “Voting illegally in her case means simply voting, for it is held that women cannot lawfully vote at all.” She was indicted and held for trial in early 1873. During March and April 1873, Anthony delivered an address titled “Is It a Crime for a US Citizen to Vote?” in 29 villages and towns of Monroe County, NY.

After voting in the 1872 presidential election, suffragette Susan B. Anthony was arrested and charged with a $100 fine. She refused to pay it, instead embarking on a speaking tour around the US to advocate for women’s legal right to vote. In this fiery speech she memorably stated, “It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens... who formed the Union.” Anthony argued that the fight for women’s right to vote was also a fight for their right to personhood in the eyes of the state, something women were finally granted nearly 50 years later.

At three years of age Susan, who was very bright and quick, learned her letters and also some words, while on a visit at her grandmother’s. When she was a little older, she attended a district school, and then a private school conducted in the Anthony home. Susan was a very successful teacher, and often she grew indignant to see that men who did not do their work so well as she received four times as much pay. Equal pay for equal work was one of the rights that she began to demand for her fellow women from that time on.

The late 19th Century was a time of liberation. After the collapse of empires, people of all creeds demanded their equality. We begin with two speeches that represent the old order, by Bismarck. Between the two speeches he went from being Prussia’s last Minister President to being the Germany’s first Chancellor. A statesman in the oldest mold, he argues for nationalist dominance against forces temporal and religious.