[41] Oregon gave suffrage to women in 1912 and Mrs. Duniway received

full recognition. See Oregon chapter.

[42] Mr. Blackwell, then 80 years old, used to rise early in the

morning and take a trolley ride of thirty or forty miles in various

directions to enjoy the beauties of nature. "Feeling unwilling to

return east without bathing in the Pacific," he said in one of his

letters, "and wishing to visit Astoria, the ancient American fur-post

so charmingly immortalized by Washington Irving, I left Portland after

the convention closed and had a beautiful voyage of nine hours down

the river to where it meets the ocean.... After an early morning

plunge into the big waves we chartered an auto and sped over the hard

sands to the fir-crowned cliffs."

[43] For results the following year see Oregon chapter.

CHAPTER VI.

NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1906.

The Thirty-eighth annual convention held in Baltimore Feb. 7-13, 1906,

was notable in several respects. It had gone into the very heart of

conservatism and a larger number of eminent men and women took part in

its proceedings than had ever before been represented on a single

program.[44] There were university presidents and professors, men and

women; office holders, men and women; representatives of other large

movements, men and women, and more distinguished women than had ever

before assembled in one convention. It was especially memorable

because of the presence on the platform together for the first and

only time of the three great pioneers, Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton

and Julia Ward Howe, and never to be forgotten by suffragists as the

last ever attended by Miss Anthony. Here was sung the Battle Hymn of

the Republic in the presence of the woman who wrote it, Mrs. Howe;

and the Star Spangled Banner in the home of its author, Francis Scott

Key.

The meetings were held in the beautifully decorated Lyric Theater with

appreciative and enthusiastic audiences. The arrangements had been

made by the Maryland Suffrage Association and its president, Mrs. Emma

Maddox Funck. Ministers of nearly all denominations asked blessings on

the various sessions and the best musical talent in the city gave its

services. The papers were most generous with space and fair and

friendly in their reports. Through the influence and efforts of Dr. M.

Carey Thomas, president of Bryn Mawr College, the remarkable

representation of Women's Colleges was secured. Baltimore's most

prominent woman, Miss Mary E. Garrett, was largely responsible for the

social prestige which is especially necessary to success in a southern

city. It was a convention long to be remembered by those who were so

fortunate as to be a part of it.

The convention opened on the afternoon of February 7 with Dr. Anna

Howard Shaw, president of the association, in the chair and was

welcomed by Mrs. Funck, who said in a graceful speech: "You have come

to the conservative South. Conservative--what a sweet-sounding word,

what an ark for the timid soul! So you must expect to find a good many

folks who mean well but who have not discarded their silver buckles

and ruffles, but nothing will more clearly indicate the development of

our people from provincialism and bigotry than their generosity of

spirit and kindly intent towards the gathering of our clans in this

convention. Most people have come to realize that to be a great nation

we must have that catholicity of spirit which embraces all ologies and

all isms.... From the suffrage pioneers we have learned the lessons of

fair play and equal rights."

Fraternal greetings were offered by Mrs. Albert L. Sioussat, president

of the State Federation of Women's Clubs; Mrs. Hattie Hull Troupe,

president of the Women's Twentieth Century Club of Baltimore; Mrs.

Rosa H. Goldenberg, president of the Maryland section Jewish Council

of Women, and Mrs. Mary R. Haslup, president of the Baltimore Woman's

Christian Temperance Union. As the vice-president of the association,

Dr. Annice Jeffreys Myers of Oregon, who was to respond, had been

delayed en route. Dr. Shaw took her place, saying in answer to certain

of the greetings: "In all my experience I have observed that those

people are most likely to have their prayers answered who do

everything they can to help God answer them; so while we may try by

prayer to bring about the highest good not only in the State but in

education and philanthropy, we hope to add to our prayers the

citizen's power of the ballot.... We have never had a more generous

welcome or a warmer hospitality offered to us and we thank you with

all our heart. Whatever may happen while we are here, nothing can take

away from us the beauty of the sunshine and the kindliness of your

welcome."

The first evening session was opened with prayer by the Rev. John B.

Van Meter, dean of the Woman's College, Baltimore, and music by a

chorus of two hundred voices under the direction of William R. Hall.

Governor Edwin Warfield made an eloquent address in which he said: "A

man who would not extend a welcome to such a body of women would not

be worthy the name of Maryland, which we consider a synonym of

hospitality. Our doors are always wide open to friends and strangers,

especially strangers. We are delighted to have you here. While I may

not agree with all your teachings, I recognize one fact, that there

never has been assembled in Baltimore a convention composed of women

who have been more useful in this country and who have done more for

the uplift of humanity. It was proper for you to come to Maryland, a

State that was named for a woman, whose capital was named for a woman

and whose motto is 'Manly deeds and womanly words.'" He paid glowing

compliments to the splendid public service of Maryland women and said

he would not have been elected Governor but for their kindly

influence. He declared that he had been almost persuaded by the

charming words of Mrs. Howe and said his wife was a "convert" and he

"had been voting as a proxy for some time." He believed "the final

solution of the question would be a referendum to the women

themselves."

Dr. Shaw could not resist saying when she rose to introduce the next

speaker: "So many have told us, as the Governor has, about being

proxy-voters, that we think it is time they should be relieved of

that role and have an opportunity to do their own voting while we

women attend to ours." Mayor Timanus was indisposed and the welcome

for the city was given by the Hon. William F. Stone, Collector of the

Port. He vied with the Governor in the warmth of his greeting and his

splendid tributes to women and acknowledged his indebtedness for "all

that he was or expected to be to his sainted mother and beloved wife,"

but, like the Governor, he could not give his full sanction to woman

suffrage. When he had finished Dr. Shaw said with her winning smile

and melodious voice: "We have the testimony of Governor Warfield and

of Collector Stone that the best each has been able to accomplish has

been due to the influence of good women. Now if a good woman can

develop the best in an individual man, may not all the good women

together develop the best in a whole State? I am glad of this strong

point in favor of enfranchising women."

Miss Anthony was to have presided at this meeting and in referring to

her absence on account of illness Dr. Shaw said: "I am not taking Miss

Anthony's place this evening--there is only one Susan B. Anthony, but

it is also true that there is only one Clara Barton and but one Julia

Ward Howe and these grand women we have with us." Miss Barton, who, in

her soft plum-colored satin with fichu of white lace, her dark hair

parted smoothly over her forehead, did not seem over sixty although

she was eighty-four, was enthusiastically received and said in part:

"What greater honor and what greater embarrassment than to be asked to

take ever so small a step on a platform that Susan B. Anthony had

expected to tread. As I stand here tonight my thoughts go back to the

time when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Miss Anthony were pioneers

struggling for this righteous cause. I think the greatest reforms, the

greatest progress ever made for any reforms in our country have been

along the lines on which they worked. Miss Anthony's has been a long

life. She has trod the thorny way, has walked through briars with

bleeding feet, but it is through a sweet and lovely way now and the

hearts of the whole country are with her. A few days ago some one said

to me that every woman should stand with bared head before Susan B.

Anthony. 'Yes,' I answered, 'and every man as well.' I would not

retract these words. I believe that man has benefited by her work as

much as woman. For ages he has been trying to carry the burden of

life's responsibilities alone and when he has the efficient help of

woman he will be grateful. Just now it is new and strange and men

cannot comprehend what it would mean but the change is not far away.

The nation is soon to have woman suffrage and it will be a glad and

proud day when it comes."

Mrs. Howe in the dignity of her eighty-seven years made a lovely

picture in a gown of mauve satin with a creamy lace scarf draped about

her head and shoulders. She was escorted to the front of the platform

by the Governor and said in her brief response: "Madam president and

you dear suffrage friends, and the rest of you who are going to become

suffrage friends before we leave this city, I give you thanks for this

friendly greeting. I am very, very glad to meet you all. I am not

going to preach a sermon but I have a text from the New Testament, a

question that the Lord asked when the crowd came to see him, 'What

came ye out to see? A reed shaken with the wind?' No, it was a prophet

that they came to see and hear. When you come to these suffrage

meetings you do not come to see reeds shaken by the wind. We do not

any of us claim to be prophets but you do come to hear a prophecy, a

very glad prophecy which some of us have believed in and followed for

years, and all the way of that following has been joyous and bright

though it has not been popular. I remember many years ago going with

Mrs. Livermore and Lucy Stone to a meeting in New England and the

report was sent out that 'three old crows were coming to disturb the

town with their croakings.' I can never forget that evening. When Mary

Livermore looked the audience over in her calm and dignified manner

they quieted down as if by magic. When reasonable measures are

proposed in a reasonable way there are always some people who will

respond and be convinced. We have no desire to put out of sight the

difficulties of government. When we talk about woman suffrage people

begin to remember how unsatisfactory manhood suffrage is, but I should

like to see what men would do if there was an attempt to take it away.

We might much improve it by bringing to it the feminine mind, which

in a way complements the masculine. I frankly believe that we have

half the intelligence and good sense of humanity and that it is quite

time we should express not only our sentiments but our determined will

to set our faces toward justice and right and to follow these through

the thorny wilderness if necessary--follow them straight, not to the

'bitter end,' for it will not be bitter but very sweet and I hope it

will come before my end comes."

For the second time Dr. Shaw had written her president's address but

although it was a statesmanlike document the audience missed the

spontaneity, the sparkle of wit, the flashes of eloquence that

distinguished her oratory above that of all others, and there was a

general demand that hereafter she should give them the spoken instead

of the written word. She complied and while it was a gain to the

audiences of her day and generation it was a great loss to posterity.

Even extended quotations can give little idea of this address which

filled over ten columns of the _Woman's Journal_.

For the first time in the history of our association we meet to

protest against the disenfranchisement of women in a State in

which the first public demand for a part in the conduct of our

government was made by a woman. It was in an impassioned appeal

to your Assembly, that in 1647 Mistress Margaret Brent demanded

"a part and voyce" as representative of the estate of her

kinsman, Lord Baltimore, whose name your city bears. Here Mary

Catherine Goddard published Baltimore's only newspaper through

all the severe struggle of the Revolutionary War, and it is

stated upon good authority that when Congress, then in session in

Baltimore, sent out the official Declaration of Independence,

with the names of the signers attached, it was published by

official order in Miss Goddard's paper; that her name was on the

sheet which was officially circulated throughout the country;

but, although a memorial sheet was afterwards placed in the Court

House, Miss Goddard's name was not left on it. This omission is

but one of many evidences that in the compilation of the world's

historic events it has been customary to overlook the part

performed by women.

Dr. Shaw took up the section on Labor in President Roosevelt's recent

message to Congress in which he recommended a thorough investigation

of the condition of women in industry, saying: "There is an almost

complete dearth of data on which to base any trustworthy conclusions,"

and then drawing this one: "The introduction of women into industry

is working change and disturbance in the domestic and social life of

the nation; the decrease in marriage and especially in the birth-rate

have been coincident with it." Dr. Shaw's comment was in part:

This is unquestionably true but it is also true that this has

been coincident with the wider discovery of gold and the

application of steam and electricity to mechanics ... and to draw

sweeping and universal conclusions in regard to a matter upon

which there is an "almost complete dearth of data" is never wise.

Is it true that there is a lower birth-rate among working women

than among those of the wealthy class? Are not the effects of

over-work and long hours in the household as great as are those

of the factory or the office? Is the birth-rate less among women

who are engaged in the occupations unknown to women of the past?

Or is the decline alike marked among those who are pursuing the

ancient occupations but under different conditions?... If

conditions surrounding their employment are such as to make it a

"social question of the first importance" it is unfortunate the

President had not seen that women should constitute at least a

part of any commission authorized to investigate it.

One can not but wish that with his expressed desire for "fair

play" and his policy of "a square deal" it had occurred to the

President that, if five million American women are employed in

gainful occupations, every principle of justice would demand that

they should be enfranchised to enable them to secure legislation

for their own protection. In all governments a subject class is

always at a disadvantage and at the mercy of the ruling class. It

matters not whether its name be Empire, Kingdom or Republic,

whether the rulers are one or many; and in a democracy there is

no way known for any class to protect its interests or to be

secure in its most sacred rights except through the power of the

ballot....

There had been about this time in high places an outburst of attacks

on woman suffrage and predictions as to its dangerous possibilities.

Dr. Shaw referred to their authors as Oracles and said: "The great

difficulty is that when one Oracle claiming to be divinely inspired

has laid down a specific line of conduct which if implicitly followed

would lead to the proper development of woman, the happiness of man,

the good of the family and the well-being of the State, another Oracle

also divinely enlightened lays out a different path by which these

ends may be secured, and then another and another until poor women if

they should try to follow these self-appointed divine revealers would

not only have to be hydra-headed to see these devious paths but

hydra-footed to walk in them." Referring to Cardinal Gibbons, she

said:

The Oracle of Baltimore tells us that the education and culture

of women are good up to a certain point, no further, but he

sagely fails to define the point, simply declaring that "too much

education of the head is apt to cool the heart; the cultivation

of the soul is too much neglected in the higher education; the

head and the heart and the body should all be educated together;

then they develop equally." There certainly can be no

disagreement among us as to the latter statement but why is it

more applicable to women than to men? The Oracle does not leave

us in doubt as to his view, for in response to the question,

"What do you think of the societies and club organizations which

attract women so largely just now?" he replies: "A society like

the Daughters of the American Revolution I heartily approve of,

for it tends to foster patriotism and keep it alive, but other

clubs of all kinds for women I strictly disapprove of."

The Oracle of Princeton, ex-President Cleveland, who has gained

the most notoriety for his heavy diatribes against women's clubs,

also admits that there are a few societies which it might be well

for women to encourage and keep alive--religious organizations

and those which administer to the needs of the heathen in a

foreign land. The Oracle of Brooklyn, Dr. Lyman Abbott, adds a

few more to the list and includes philanthropic, reform and

social clubs. Would it be unwomanly to ask why there should have

been such wide divergence in the Divine Illumination which each

Oracle received?

Dr. Shaw quoted from Mr. Roosevelt: "The President of the United

States does not absent himself from the country during the term of his

presidency, it is his domain. So should it be with woman; she is queen

of her empire and that empire is the home," and after reminding him

that the President's term lasts but four or eight years she asked:

"What do men mean by saying that women should remain contentedly in

their homes? They do not intend us to understand that we are never to

leave them, for they are frequently calling us forth when conditions

become so intolerable that even men can no longer endure them. Then

they call upon women to come out from the seclusion and protection of

their homes and aid them to 'save the city and the State.'" She

pointed out the difference between the time when the home was "a

protective and industrial center" and now when "the results of

electricity and steam have scattered the households," but in picturing

the advance that women had made in their own domain she said: "There

never was a time when there was as large a number of good

housekeepers and homemakers; when there was as much intelligence shown

in the scientific preparation of food; such knowledge of household

sanitation; such reverence for individual life; such painstaking study

of the needs and rights of childhood; when there was so much thought

given to the development of the finer and more permanent qualities of

character; when such good comradeship existed between children and

their parents; when marriage had so deep a spiritual and human meaning

as at the present time. The home ideal of today is the best the world

has yet known and it will continue to develop as larger freedom and

broader culture come to all who share in its life...."

The manner in which politics enters the modern home was pointed out

and the contempt which was shown for the political opinions of women

and then in a rousing appeal to women the speaker said: "A few days

since I was asked by a compiler of other people's thoughts to express

for him my opinion of the greatest need of American women and I

replied, 'self-respect.' ... The assumption that woman have neither

discernment nor judgment and that any man is superior in all the

qualities that make for strength, stability and sanity to any woman,

simply because he is a man and she is a woman, is still altogether too

common. The time has come when women must question themselves to learn

how far they are personally responsible for this almost universal

disrespect and then set about changing it."

Dr. Shaw told of the organization of the College Women's Equal

Suffrage League and asked: "Who can compute the loss sustained by our

country every year by the addition of unrestricted, ignorant and often

criminal male voters and the exclusion of the vast number of college

and high-school graduates through the disfranchisement of women? If

the stability of a government depends upon the morality and

intelligence of its voting citizens, how long can the foundations of

ours remain secure if we continue to enfranchise ignorance and vice

and disfranchise intelligence and virtue?" The action of Legislatures

in past years was depicted as "playing shuttlecock and battledore with

the amendment, passing it in one House to defeat it in another, in a

hypocritical desire to appear favorable and inspire us with hope in

order to retain the small amount of influence they think we possess,

and yet compelling us to begin the work all over again." After

reviewing the long struggle of American women for political freedom

she ended with an impassioned peroration of which only a portion can

be quoted:

No class of men in any nation have ever been compelled to wage

such an arduous and difficult struggle for their political

freedom. Through the influence of the Democratic party, without

an effort on their own behalf, white working men were

enfranchised; and by an Act of Congress under Republican

leadership the newly emancipated men slaves were protected in

their right of suffrage. The same Act placed in the Constitution

of the United States for the first time the word "male," which

robbed women of the protection guaranteed to every other class of

citizens in the most sacred right of citizenship--the right to a

voice in the Government.

Such is the boasted chivalry of the Land of Freedom, which has

left its women to strive against tradition, prejudice,

conservatism, self-interest, political power and in addition all

the forces of corruption combined, to secure the privilege which

was conferred upon vast numbers of men who never even demanded it

and many of whom knew nothing of its significance after it was

granted. I claim, and fear no contradiction, that the women of

this land are better qualified to exercise the suffrage with

intelligence, honesty and patriotism than were any other class of

citizens in the world at the time when it was conferred upon

them.

Must women, unaided, continue the struggle for forty years longer

until they have rounded out a century, assailing the bulwarks of

prohibitive constitutions in the forty-one States yet to be won?

Or will not some brave, consistent and freedom-loving President,

recognizing the duty the Government owes to the disfranchised

millions of patriotic women, recommend to Congress to submit an

amendment to the Federal Constitution forbidding disfranchisement

on account of sex? And will not the time speedily come when

Congress, recognizing the great injustice which was inflicted

upon the women of the land when by enfranchising a race of slave

men they riveted the fetters of disfranchisement upon educated

and patriotic women, redeem the nation from this stigma? It was

the most ungrateful and unjust act ever perpetrated by a republic

upon a class of citizens who had worked and sacrificed and

suffered as did the women of this nation in the struggle of the

Civil War only to be rewarded at its close by such unspeakable

degradation as to be reduced to the plane of subjects to

enfranchised slaves....

I stand here tonight to say that we have never known defeat; we

have never been vanquished. We have not always reached the goal

toward which we have striven, but in the hour of our greatest

disappointment we could always point to our battlefield and say:

"There we fought our good fight, there we defended the principles

for which our ancestors and yours laid down their lives; there

is our battlefield for justice, equality and freedom. Where is

yours?"

While the eminent speakers attracted the largest audiences that ever

had attended the conventions of the association, according to the

opinions of the older suffragists, the delegates themselves were

equally interested in the morning meetings devoted to the reports and

other business. The corresponding secretary, Miss Kate M. Gordon, a

keen student of politics and organization, in speaking of factors in

success, said: "There is great necessity for a personal acquaintance

between the leaders in our suffrage work in the States and the

prominent politicians in the States; the personal acquaintance also of

the editors and managers of our great public-opinion-forming

newspapers; a pleasant working relation in women's clubs and all

movements for better social conditions in our respective communities;

a more intimate acquaintance with the educational influences, the

teachers in our public schools and the college life of our

communities."

Miss Gordon made a special plea for cooperation in the efforts for

Child Labor legislation and she ended by saying: "But means and

methods for the future of our work pale into insignificance in the

need of the hour, which is Oregon. Funds for this campaign must be a

matter of conscience with every believer. In proportion to the

gratitude you feel for the comfortable position which women occupy

today, measure your contribution; no sacrifice can be too great at

this crucial moment in our onward history." Throughout the convention

the work in Oregon, where an amendment to the State constitution would

be voted on in November, was the uppermost thought. The treasurer made

a special appeal for funds; the chairman of the Press Committee told

of it; it was discussed and planned for in the business meetings and

different speakers referred in hopeful words to its probable success.

An amendment to the constitution abolishing proxies empowered to cast

the full vote to which the State was entitled and providing that

delegates present should cast only their own vote caused a spirited

discussion, with Mrs. Catt and eastern delegates in favor and Dr. Shaw

and western delegates opposed and was lost by a vote of 68 to 11. No

change of officers was made at this convention. Reports of Committees

on Libraries, Literature, Enrollment, Presidential Suffrage, etc.,

were presented by their chairmen. A lively discussion on the use of

the union label on literature, stationery, etc., resulted in an almost

unanimous decision to retain it. Very interesting reports of work in

the States were made by their respective presidents. Invitations for

the next convention were received from the Chamber of Commerce of

Wheeling, W. Va., the Chamber of Commerce, Bar Association and

Suffrage Club of Oklahoma City and the Commission for celebrating the

founding of Jamestown, Va.

Miss Antoinette Knowles (Cal.), chairman of the Committee on Church

Work, said that by standing for temperance many churches could be

obtained for meetings that would not be opened for those purely on

suffrage. She gave a list of orthodox churches which had been thus

secured; told of successful addresses she had made on the relation

between woman suffrage and temperance and urged the appointment of a

church committee in every State. The report of Miss Elizabeth J.

Hauser, headquarter's secretary, told of the usual large amount of

work, which included the distribution of 62,000 copies of the

quarterly publication, _Progress_; 106,753 pieces of literature and

many thousands of suffrage stamps, picture postals and souvenirs.

Speakers and fraternal delegates had been sent to a large number of

national conventions throughout the country and cordially received.

Many of these had adopted resolutions for woman suffrage including the

American Federation of Labor, National Association of Letter Carriers,

National Grange, National Council of Jewish Women, Supreme Commandery

Knights of Temperance, National Associations of Universalists and of

Spiritualists. The State conventions of various kinds that had

endorsed it were almost without number and excellent work had been

done at county fairs, granges, farmers' institutes, summer assemblies

and educational and religious societies. It was voted to make

_Progress_ the official organ of the association and issue it monthly.

The national headquarters in Warren, O., had been removed to a

spacious room on the ground floor of the county court house, formerly

used for a public library.

The chairman of the Press Committee, Mrs. Elnora M. Babcock, made her

last report, as the press work was henceforth to be done at the

national headquarters with its excellent staff and facilities. For

twelve years Mrs. Babcock had carried on this work, which in her

capable hands had reached an immense volume and become a leading

feature of the National Association. She reported that over 5,000

papers were now using the material sent out from the press bureau and

that it was very difficult to respond to all the calls for it. In

answer to the second broadside of former President Cleveland in the

_Ladies' Home Journal_, which refused to publish anything from anybody

on the other side, 2,000 copies of articles by different persons and

1,000 of the excellent refutation by Representative John F. Shafroth

of Colorado had been distributed. The report stated that Mrs. Ida

Porter Boyer, the efficient chairman of Pennsylvania, had been sent by

the National Association to supervise the press work of the Oregon

campaign. It urged that grateful recognition should be shown to papers

that favor woman suffrage saying: "Editors are called upon for help

and are not thanked for the kindness and good they do nearly as much

as they should be." The convention gave Mrs. Babcock a rising vote of

thanks for her long and faithful work.

The Executive Committee recommended in its Plan of Work that the

States work for a uniform resolution in favor of a Sixteenth

Amendment; that they endeavor to secure Initiative and Referendum

laws; that in each Legislature measures be introduced for full

suffrage or for some form of suffrage; that efforts be continued to

obtain equalization of property and intestate laws, also

co-guardianship of children; that the working forces of the

association be concentrated where there are State campaigns for

suffrage; that each club organize one new one and each individual

member secure one more; that all present lines of work be continued

and extended; that there be a more systematic and liberal distribution

of literature; that hearings be obtained before all kinds of

organizations. It was voted that "the Board of Officers consider the

propriety of recommending all the States to make a concerted effort to

secure Presidential suffrage for women in the election of 1908." But

one work conference was held, that on Press, Miss Hauser presiding.

One of the most important conferences of the week was that of State

presidents, at which each told of the most effective work within the

year, and the discussion which followed gave much practical and

helpful information.

At the second afternoon session Dr. Shaw read a number of letters from

Governors of the equal suffrage and other States answering favorably

an appeal from the California Suffrage Association that they would

appoint one or more women to the national commission soon to meet to

consider uniform marriage and divorce laws. She had emphasized this

necessity in her president's address. The report of Mrs. Florence

Kelley, chairman of the Committee on Industrial Problems Affecting

Women and Children, was heard with deep interest and feeling. As

executive secretary of the National Consumers' League for many years

and a close student of labor conditions, she spoke with accurate

knowledge when she told of the employment of children. A Baltimore

woman in her welcome to the convention had said that Maryland women

were satisfied with what they could secure by petition without the

ballot, and Mrs. Kelley, referring with fine sarcasm to the "sadly

modest results of their petitions," said:

Last night while we slept after our evening meeting there were in

Maryland many hundred boys, only nominally fourteen years old,

working all night in the glass-works; and here in Baltimore the

smallest messenger boys I have ever seen in any city were

perfectly free to work all night. No law was broken in either

case, for the women of Maryland have not yet by their right of

petition brought to the children of the State protection from

working all night. Here in this city children must go to school

until they are nominally twelve years old but outside of

Baltimore and three other counties there is no limit whatever to

the work of any child. Moreover, here in Baltimore where the law

nominally applies children are free to work at any age if they

have a dependent relative or if they are liable to become

dependent themselves!

It is five years since the first delegation of women went to

Atlanta to ask for legislation on behalf of the working children

of Georgia, carrying petitions with them, and they have gone in

vain every year since. Each year the number of women joining in

the protest has been greater and, alas, the number of little

girls under ten years old, who work in Georgia cotton mills all

night, has also been greater. The number of working children

grows faster than the number of petitioning women.... In New

York, where women can vote on school questions in the country

only, not in the city, children five, six, seven and eight years

old, who ought to be in the kindergarten and public schools, are

working in cellars and garrets, under the sweating system, sewing

on buttons and making artificial flowers. So many such children

are not in the schools that no city administration in the last

ten years has dared to make a school census; and we are striving

in vain, (all the philanthropic bodies), to induce the present

Tammany administration just to count the children of school age

but they dare not reveal the extent to which they are failing to

provide for them....

We Americans do not rank among the enlightened nations when we

are graded according to our care of our children. We have,

according to the last census, 580,000 who cannot read or write,

between the ages of ten and fourteen years, not immigrant but

native-born children, and 570,000 of them are in States where the

women do not even use their right of petition. We do not rank

with England, Germany, France, Switzerland, Holland or the

Scandinavian countries when we are measured by our care of our

children, we rank with Russia. The same thing is true of our

children at work. We have two millions of them earning their

living under the age of sixteen years. Legislation of the States

south of Maryland for the children is like the legislation of

England in 1844.... Surely it behooves us to do something at once

or what sort of citizens shall we have?

Miss Gertrude Barnum, secretary of the Women's National Trade Union

League, followed with an earnest address on Women as Wage Earners. She

began by saying that although this would be called a representative

audience, wage-earning women were not present. "A speaker should have

been chosen from their ranks," she said. "We have been preaching to

them, teaching them,'rescuing' them, doing almost everything for them

except knowing them and working with them for the good of our common

country. These women of the trade unions, who have already learned to

think and vote in them, would be a great addition, a great strength to

this movement. The working women have much more need of the ballot

than we of the so-called leisure class. We suffer from the insult of

its refusal; we are denied the privilege of performing our obligations

and we have as results things which we smart under. The working women

have not only these insults and privations but they have also the

knowledge that they are being destroyed, literally destroyed, body and

soul, by conditions which they cannot touch by law...." Miss Barnum

discussed "strikes," the "closed shop," conditions under which factory

women work, the domestic problem, the trade unions, and said: "I hope

that this body, which represents women from all over the country, will

take this matter back to their respective States and cities and try to

make the acquaintance of this great half of our population, the

working people. You must bring them to your conferences and

conventions and let them speak on your platform. They will speak much

better for themselves than you can get any one to speak for them...."

An animated discussion took place, many of the delegates asking

sympathetic questions. Mrs. Ella S. Stewart (Ill.) followed with a

delightfully caustic address on Some Fallacies; Our Privileges. The

reporters were so carried away by her "sweetness and beauty" that they

almost forgot to make notes of her speech, of which one of them said:

"She picked up Grover Cleveland, Lyman Abbott and other

anti-suffragists from the time of Samuel Johnson and figuratively spun

them around her finger, to the joy of the audience." In paying her

tribute to chivalry she said: "Of what benefit was the chivalry of the

knights toward their ladies of high degree to the thousands of peasant

women and wives of serfs hitched up with animals and working in the

fields? Of no more value now is the protection given to the wives and

daughters of the rich by men who are grinding down and taking

advantage of those of the poor. In Chicago women have no vote except

once in four years for a trustee of the State university, yet every

day if we try to take a street car we are overrun and trampled down by

men who get on the cars before they stop, and when we finally limp in

we see them comfortably seated reading the papers while we dangle from

the straps. We are crowded in stores and smoked in restaurants; in

fact the only place of late where I was not crowded was at the polls

when I went to cast my vote!"

Mrs. Mary E. Craigie (N. Y.) closed the session with a serious,

impressive address on Our Real Opposition; Ignorance and Vice, the

Silent Foe. She pointed out the "indirect alliance between the

anti-suffragists and the vicious elements, opponents of all reform,

fearful that if women vote good will prevail over evil." "The chief

foes of woman suffrage," she said, "are the saloon keepers, scum of

society, barred from fraternal organizations, social clubs and even

from some of the insurance societies."

The Biography of Miss Anthony contains this paragraph.[45]

When Miss Anthony had visited President M. Carey Thomas, of Bryn

Mawr College, and Miss Mary E. Garrett the last November she had

talked of the approaching convention, expressed some anxiety as

to its reception in so conservative a city and urged them to do

what they could to make it creditable to the National Association

and to Baltimore. They showed much interest, asked in what way

they could be of most assistance and talked over various plans.

Both belonged to old and prominent families in that city, Miss

Garrett had the prestige of great wealth also, and Dr. Thomas of

her position as president of one of the most eminent of Women's

Colleges. Miss Anthony was desirous of having the program in some

way illustrate distinctly the new type of womanhood--the College

Woman--and eventually Dr. Thomas took entire charge of one

evening devoted to this purpose, which will ever be memorable in

the history of these conventions. A day or two after Miss

Anthony's visit she received a letter from Miss Garrett saying:

"I have decided--really I did so while we were talking about the

convention at luncheon yesterday--that I must open my house in

Baltimore for that week in order to have the great pleasure of

entertaining you and Miss Shaw under my own roof and to do

whatever I can to help you make the meeting a success."

At a good-bye reception given for Miss Anthony in Rochester the

evening before she left home for Baltimore she took cold and

immediately after reaching Miss Garrett's she became very ill and was

under the care of physicians and trained nurses. On the second night,

however, the College Evening for which elaborate preparations had been

made, she summoned the will power for which she had always been noted,

rose from her bed, put on a beautiful gown and went to the convention

hall. Quoting again from the Biography: "When she appeared on the

stage and the great audience realized that she actually was with them

their enthusiasm was unbounded. She was so white and frail as to seem

almost spiritual but on her sweet face was an expression of ineffable

happiness; and it was indeed one of the happiest moments of her life

for it typified the intellectual triumph of her cause."

The Baltimore _American_ thus began its account: "With the great

pioneer suffrage worker, Susan B. Anthony, on the platform, surrounded

by women noted in the college world for their brilliant attainments,

as well as those famed for social work and in other professions, and

with a large audience, the session of the woman suffrage convention

opened last evening in the Lyric Theater. If the veteran suffragist

thought of more than the pleasure of the event it must have been the

contrast of this occasion with the times past, when, unhonored and

unsung, she fought what must have often seemed a losing fight for

principles for which the presence of these women proclaimed

victory.... It had been announced as 'Colloge evening' but it might

just as well have been called 'Susan B. Anthony evening,' for, while

the addresses dealt with various phases of the woman question, all

evolved into one strong tribute to Miss Anthony."

The following remarkable program was carried out:

COLLEGE EVENING

February 8, 1906

_Presiding Officer_

Ira Remsen, Ph.D., LL.D., _President of Johns Hopkins University_.

_Ushers_

Students of the Woman's College of Baltimore in Academic Dress.

_Addresses_

Mary E. Woolley, A.M., Litt.D., L.H.D., _President of Mount

Holyoke College_.

Lucy M. Salmon, A.M., _Professor of History_, _Vassar College_.

Mary A. Jordan, A.M., _Professor of English_, _Smith College_.

Mary W. Calkins, A.M., _Professor of Philosophy and Psychology_,

_Wellesley College_.

Eva Perry Moore, A.B., _Trustee Vassar College_; _President of

the Association of Collegiate Alumnae_ (_over three thousand

college women_).

Maud Wood Park, A.B. (_Radcliffe College_), _President of the

Boston Branch of the Equal Suffrage League in Women's

Colleges and Founder of the League_.

M. Carey Thomas, Ph.D., LL.D., _President of Bryn Mawr College_.

A tribute of gratitude from representatives of Women's Colleges.

What has been accomplished for the higher education of women by

Susan B. Anthony and other woman suffragists.

The statement is sometimes questioned that all of the advantages which

women enjoy today had their inception in the efforts of the pioneers

suffragists. The addresses made on this occasion by some of the most

distinguished women educators of the country certainly should sustain

this claim so far as the higher education is concerned. It seems a

sacrilege to use only brief quotations from these important

contributions to the literature of the movement for woman suffrage.

PRESIDENT WOOLLEY: It will not be possible in the limited time

given to the representatives of colleges for women to do more

than suggest what has been accomplished for the higher education

of women by Miss Anthony and other suffragists, but it is a

pleasure to have this opportunity to add our tribute of

appreciation....

At a meeting called in 1851 at Seneca Falls, N. Y., to consider

founding a People's College, Miss Anthony, Lucy Stone and Mrs.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton were determined that the constitution and

by-laws should be framed so as to admit women on the same terms

as men and finally carried their point. The college, however,

before it was fairly started was merged in Cornell University.

Five years later Miss Anthony's lecture on "Co-education" brought

that subject most forcibly to the attention of the public.... It

was no part of Miss Anthony's plan to have work given to women

for which they were not fitted but rather that they should be

prepared to do well whatever they attempted. There were not to be

two standards of efficiency, one for the man and another for the

woman. "Think your best thoughts, speak your best words, do your

best work, looking to your own conscience for approval," was her

charge to women forty years ago.... The higher education of women

should be added to the list of causes for which she and other

women struggled. She has lived to see the work of her hands

established in the gaining of educational and social rights for

women which might well be called revolutionary, so momentous have

been the changes....

It seems almost inexplicable that changes surely as radical as

giving to women the opportunity to vote should be accepted today

as perfectly natural while the political right is still viewed

somewhat askance.... The time will come when some of us will look

back upon the arguments against the granting of the suffrage to

women with as much incredulity as that with which we now read

those against their education. Then shall it be said of the

woman, who with gentleness and strength, courage and patience,

has been unswerving in her allegiance to the aim which she had

set before her, "Give her of the fruit of her hands and let her

own works praise her in the gates."

PROFESSOR SALMON: The personal experience will perhaps be

pardoned if it is considered representative of the possibly

changing attitude of other college women toward the subject. The

natural stages in the development seem to have been, opposition,

due to ignorance; rejection, due to conscientious disapproval;

indifference, due to preoccupation in other lines of work;

acceptance, due to appreciation of what the work for equal

suffrage has accomplished. It has been a work positive rather

than negative, active rather than destructive, and thus it is

coming to appeal to the judgment and reason of college women.

They are coming to realize that they have been taught by these

pioneers, both by precept and example, to look at the essential

things of life and to ignore the unessential and for this they

are grateful....

The college woman is beginning to wonder whether it is worth

while to reckon the mint, anise and cummin while the weightier

matters of the law are forgotten. For a larger outlook on life we

are all indebted to Miss Anthony, to Mrs. Howe and to their

colleagues. We are indebted to them in large measure for the

educational opportunities of today. We are indebted to them for

the theory, and in some places for the reality, of equal pay for

men and women when the work performed is the same. We are

indebted to them for making it possible for us to spend our lives

in fruitful work rather than in idle tears. We are indebted to

these pioneer women for the substitution of a positive creed for

inertia and indifference. From them we also inherit the weighty

responsibility of passing on to others, in degree if not in kind,

all that we have received from them.

Professor Jordan, after considering the woman's college, said: "The

suffragists lent us Maria Mitchell and they felt severely the loss

they sustained in her increasing absorption in the class room and in

the requirements of modern scientific work. When we had taken Maria

Mitchell they turned to us in friendship, Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Julia

Ward Howe, Miss Anthony, Miss Elizabeth Peabody, Mrs. Cady Stanton,

Lucy Stone, Mrs. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Lois Anna Green, Mary

Dame--and never failed to stir our minds with their urgent appeals for

our thoughtful consideration of the causes they presented and the

interest they took for granted. The last was their strong point. They

simply implicated us in whatever was good and true. Their enthusiasm

was infectious and we 'caught' it--to our own lasting spiritual

benefit.... I do not believe that I was over-fanciful when I used to

feel that Lucy Stone and you, Miss Anthony, looked at us as if you

would say, 'Make the best of your freedom for we have bought it with a

great price.'"

PROFESSOR CALKINS: I wish to indicate this evening the definite

form in which I think the gratitude of all college women might be

expressed to Miss Anthony and to the other leaders of the equal

suffrage movement for their service to the cause of women's

education. In other words, I wish to ask what have these veteran

equal suffrage leaders a right to expect from university and

college students, and in particular from the students and

graduates of our women's colleges?... Equal suffragists, if I may

serve as interpreter, demand just this, that women trained to

scientific method shall make equal suffrage an object of

scientific analysis and logic and ask of college women that they

cease being ignorant or indifferent on the question; that they

adopt, if not an attitude of active leadership or of loyal

support, at least a position of reasoned opposition or of

intelligent hesitation between opposing arguments. To ask less

than this really is an insult to a thinking person, man or

woman.... The student trained to reach decisions in the light of

logic and of history will be disposed to recognize that, in a

democratic country governed as this is by the suffrage of its

citizens and given over as this is to the principle and practice

of educating women, a distinction based on difference of sex is

artificial and illogical, and thus suspicious.... For myself, I

believe that the probabilities favor woman suffrage.

MRS. MOORE: The women of today may well feel that it is Miss

Anthony who has made life possible to them; she has trodden the

rough paths and by unwearied devotion has opened to them the

professions and higher applied industries. Through her life's

work they enjoy a hundred privileges denied them fifty years ago;

from her devotion has grown a new order; her hand has helped to

open every line of business to women. She has spoken at times to

thousands of girls on the public duties of women.... Her life

story must epitomize the victorious struggle of women for larger

intellectual freedom in the last century.... The world does move.

Those who are aware of the great and beneficent changes made in

the laws relating to the rights of property, in the civil and

industrial laws pertaining to women and children, may estimate

the good accomplished by these pioneers.

MRS. PARK: I suppose it is true that all through history

individual women have been able, sometimes by cajolery, sometimes

by personal charm, sometimes by force of character, to get for

themselves privileges far greater than any that the most radical

advocates of woman's rights have yet demanded. But in the case of

Miss Anthony and the other early suffragists all that force of

character was turned not to individual ends, not to getting large

things for themselves, but to getting little gains, step by step,

for the great mass of other women; not for the service of

themselves but for the service of the sex and so of the whole

human race.... The object of the College Women's League is to

bring the question of equal suffrage to college women, to help

them realize their debt to the women who have worked so hard for

them and to make them understand that one of the ways to pay that

debt is to fight the battle in the quarter of the field in which

it is still unwon; in short, to make them feel the obligation of

opportunity.

PRESIDENT THOMAS: In the year 1903 there were in the United

States 6,474 women studying in women's colleges and 24,863 women

studying in co-educational colleges. If the annual rate of

increase has continued the same, as it undoubtedly has, during

the past three years, there are in college at the present time

38,268 women students. Although there are in the United States

nearly 1,800,000 less women than men, women already constitute

considerably over one-third of the entire student body and are

steadily gaining on men. This means that in another generation or

two one-half of all the people who have been to college in the

United States will be women; and, just as surely as the seasons

of the year succeed one another or the law of gravitation works,

just so surely will this great body of educated women wish to use

their trained intelligence in making the towns, cities and States

of their country better places for themselves and their children

to live in; just so surely will the men with whom they have

worked side by side in college classes claim and receive their

aid in political as well as home life. The logic of events does

not lie. It is unthinkable that women who have learned to act for

themselves in college and have become awakened there to civic

duties should not care for the ballot to enforce their wishes.

[Illustration: PIONEERS OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON. Born, 1815.

LUCY STONE. Born, 1818.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY. Born, 1820.

LUCRETIA MOTT. Born, 1793.

MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT Born, 1846.]

The same is true of every woman's club and every individual woman

who tries to obtain laws to save little children from working

cruel hours in cotton mills or to open summer gardens for

homeless little waifs on the streets of a great city. These

women, too, are being irresistibly driven to desire equal

suffrage for the sake of the wrongs they try to right.... It

seems to me in the highest degree ungenerous for women like these

in this audience, who are cared for and protected in every way,

not to desire equal suffrage for the sake of other less fortunate

women, and it is not only ungenerous but short-sighted of such

women not to desire it for their own sakes. There is nothing

dearer to women than the respect and reverence of their children

and of the men they love. Yet every son who has grown up

reverencing his mother's opinion must realize, when he reaches

the age of twenty-one, with a shock from which he can never

wholly recover, that in the most important civic and national

affairs her opinion is not considered equal to his own....

I confidently believe that equal suffrage is coming far more

swiftly than most of us suspect. Educated, public-spirited women

will soon refuse to be subjected to such humiliating conditions.

Educated men will recoil in their turn from the sheer unreason of

the position that the opinions and wishes of their wives and

mothers are to be consulted upon every other question except the

laws and government under which they and their husbands and

children must live and die. Equal suffrage thus seems to me to be

an inevitable and logical consequence of the higher education of

women. And the higher education of women is, if possible, a still

more inevitable result of the agitation of the early woman

suffragists....

We who are guiding this educational movement today owe the

profoundest debt of gratitude to those early pioneers--Elizabeth

Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe and, above and beyond

all, to Susan B. Anthony. Other women reformers, like other men

reformers, have given part of their time and energy. She has

given to the cause of women every year, every month, every day,

every hour and every moment of her whole life and every dollar

she could beg or earn, and she has earned thousands and begged

thousands more.

Turning to the honored guest of the evening Dr. Thomas said:

To most women it is given to have returned to them in double

measure the love of the children they have nurtured. To you, Miss

Anthony, belongs by right, as to no other woman in the world's

history, the love and gratitude of all women in every country of

the globe. We, your daughters in the spirit, rise up today and

call you blessed.

In those far-off days when our mothers' mothers sat contented in

the darkness, you, our champion, sprang forth to battle for us,

equipped and shining, inspired by a prophetic vision of the

future like that of the apostles and martyrs, and the heat of

your battle has lasted more than fifty years. Two generations of

men lie between the time when, in the early fifties, you and Mrs.

Stanton sat together in New York State, writing over the cradles

of her babies those trumpet calls to freedom that began and

carried forward the emancipation of women--and the day eighteen

months ago when that great audience in Berlin rose to do you

honor, thousands of women from every country in the civilized

world, silent, with full eyes and lumps in their throats, because

of what they owed to you. Of such as you were the lines of the

poet Yeats written:

"They shall be remembered forever,

They shall be alive forever,

They shall be speaking forever,

The people shall hear them forever."

Miss Anthony was profoundly moved. This wonderful scene--the

magnificent audience in one of the oldest and most conservative of

cities; this group of the most distinguished women educators; the

president of one of the leading universities of the world in the

chair; the large number of college women in the audience, free,

independent, equipped for life's highest work--represented the

culmination of what she had striven for during half a century. Her

Biography gives this account: "After the applause had ended there was

a moment of intense silence and then, as Miss Anthony came forward,

the entire audience rose and greeted her with waving handkerchiefs,

while tears rolled down the cheeks of many who felt that she would

never be present at another convention. 'If any proof were needed of

the progress of the cause for which I have worked,' she said, in

clear, even tones, distinctly heard by all, 'it is here tonight. The

presence on the stage of these college women, and in the audience of

all those college girls who will some day be the nation's greatest

strength, will tell their own story to the world. They give the

highest joy and encouragement to me. I am not going to make a long

speech but only to say thank you and good night.' It was all she had

the strength to say but she never would publicly confess it."

Interesting State reports, conferences and addresses filled the

mornings, afternoons and evenings of this unparalleled week. The

Initiative and Referendum was presented by an acknowledged authority,

George H. Shibley of Washington, director of the department of

representative government in the bureau of economic research. He

congratulated the association on having endorsed the new experiment

that would rapidly further the woman suffrage cause, in which he had

long believed. The system of questioning candidates and publishing

their replies, developed by the Anti-Saloon League, was now being used

with great success, he said, by many organizations. He described the

carefully worked-out system in detail and declared that this, with the

Initiative and Referendum, would terminate "machine" rule in politics,

and whatever did this would promote the advance of woman suffrage. The

address called forth an animated discussion in which it was shown that

when women questioned a candidate they had no constituency back of

them to influence his answers.

A valuable conference was opened with a comprehensive paper by Mrs.

Mary Kenney O'Sullivan (Mass.), prominently identified with the

women's trade unions, on the best methods of securing from Congress

the submission of the Federal Suffrage Amendment. The question, if

each State should secure an endorsement from its Legislature of a

uniform resolution calling for this submission would it not influence

Congress and also compel favorable recommendation in the national

platforms of the dominant political parties, was unanimously answered

in the affirmative.

Miss Hauser, the new chairman, presided over the press conference,

which was opened with a paper by Miss Jane Campbell, a veteran

suffragist, president of the Philadelphia County Suffrage Club of 600

members, on The Unbiased Editor, which bristled with the humorous

sarcasm in which she was unsurpassed. She said in the course of it:

"As the result of close observation I may state that the calm,

judicial mind of the unbiased editor is never more in evidence than

when he bends his energies to a consideration of the woman

question--that is, the woman question in reference to politics. Then

he is on sure ground and he always is actuated by a desire to serve

the best interests of women. Does it come under his ken that a woman

has the temerity to suggest even in faint tones the advisability and

feasibility, the common sense and justice of being allowed to cast a

ballot, then the opportunity of the unbiased editor has come and the

rash claimant is admonished in fatherly, protecting tones to 'Remember

that only in the Home'--he always spells home with a capital in this

connection--'should a woman be in evidence.' He almost weeps when he

pictures the dire consequences that would inevitably result should

women enter the uncleanly pool of politics. Chivalry would become

extinct--chivalry being the guiding principle, according to the

unbiased editor, on which men act--and then would tired men no longer

give up their seats in trolley cars to masculine women and no longer

would they accord equal pay for equal work, as they chivalrously do

now!"

Turning her shafts on Mr. Bok, editor of the _Ladies' Home Journal_,

and ex-President Cleveland's articles in it, Miss Campbell evoked so

much laughter and applause that Miss Hauser became anxious as to the

effect on the representatives of the press who were there and called

on Mrs. Upton to calm the tempestuous waters, who offered some "golden

precepts" for dealing with editors, among them the following: "Keep

the paper fully informed of all suffrage news. If there is something

unpleasant in it and the reporter tells you that the editor and not

himself is responsible for it, smile and believe him. Take the

reporter into your confidence and let him absorb the impression that

you trust him implicitly. The result will be that you and your cause

will get the best of it. In a word, treat the newspaper reporter as

you would any other gentleman and in the long run you will profit by

it. If you are the press representative of your local organization try

to have from time to time items of news pertaining to matters other

than that of woman suffrage. Use the telephone lavishly and let your

home be a sort of stopping place for the reporter in his routine work.

When you present such an attitude toward the press the editors cannot

find it in their hearts to refuse if you want a little space for

yourself and your cause." The Baltimore _Evening Herald_ commented:

"From the foregoing it will be observed that in the dark and devious

avocation of working the unsophisticated editor, Mrs. Upton is truly a

past mistress, entitled to wear the regalia and jewels of the

superlative degree."

Mrs. May Arkwright Hutton of Idaho told of the excellent results of

woman suffrage on the politics of that State. Mrs. Lucia Ames Mead,

chairman of the Committee on Peace and Arbitration, gave her usual

able report describing her extensive work during the past year, which

neither in this or any other year was exceeded by that of any one

individual. After her return from the International Peace Congress in

London she succeeded in having the presidents of the suffrage

associations in fifteen States appoint supervisors of peace work and

others were about to do so. The educational authorities in every State

had been requested to arrange celebrations for May 18, the anniversary

of the first Hague Conference, and she should notify the suffrage

clubs to do this. Equal suffragists will aid the cause of justice for

themselves in the nation by working also for justice between the

nations. The abolition of war will do more than anything else to make

women respected and influential. It will substitute moral force for

brute force, reason for passion and will forever remove one of the

most popular arguments against giving political power to those who are

incapable of military service."

Mrs. Isabel C. Barrows (Mass.), the well known writer on social and

economic subjects, took part in the symposium that followed. Miss

Alice Stone Blackwell presided over the conference on What the Home

Needs for its Protection--Women on Health Boards, School Boards and in

the Police Department, and these subjects were considered by Mrs.

Susan S. Fessenden (Mass.), Mrs. Upton and Mrs. Barrows. It closed

with a paper by the Rev. Marie Jenney Howe on Woman's Municipal Vote.

One of the most important evening sessions was devoted to the question

of Municipal Government, with Dr. William H. Welch, Professor of

Pathology in Johns Hopkins University, presiding. A leading feature

was the address of the Hon. Frederick C. Howe of Cleveland, O., The

City for the People. He reviewed the mismanagement and political

corruption of the large cities, "controlled by great financial

interests and yet filled with eager, energetic people, struggling to

organize a good democratic movement of humanity focused on a

democratic ideal." In voicing the hope for the future he said:

There is an upward movement in all our cities. We are endeavoring

to work out democracy and are doing amazingly well. When it is

possible to organize the ideals of this new democratic movement

it will be a city not for men alone but for men and women. It is

business which has made our cities take the illogical position

that women should not participate in municipal affairs as the

chief corrective of the evils which underlie most of our

municipal problems. I believe in woman suffrage not for women

alone, not for men alone, but for the advantage of both men and

women. Any community, any society, any State that excludes half

of its members from participating in it is only half a State,

only half a city, only half a community. So, you see, woman

suffrage does not interest me so much because woman is a taxpayer

or because of justice as because of democracy; because I believe

in the fullest, freest, most responsible democracy that it is

possible to create. The city of the people will be a man and

woman city. It will elect its officials for other than party

reasons and will keep men and women in office who give good

service.

The Hon. Rudolph Blankenburg, Philadelphia's noted reformer, who was

to speak on Municipal Regeneration, was detained at home and his wife,

Mrs. Lucretia L. Blankenburg, president of the Pennsylvania Suffrage

Association, told of the big campaign of the preceding autumn for

better government in that city and the important part women had in it

and said: "The men claimed that the women helped them a great deal but

when the day came for the jubilation after the election, not a woman

was invited to sit on the platform or to take part in the jubilee,

except in the audience. In one of our suburbs the successful people

gave a banquet and they did condescend to invite the women who had

helped them win the election to sit in the gallery after the banquet

and hear the speeches.... We are to have an election very soon and

when I left home to come to this convention our city party was holding

meetings in churches and halls and parlors and the chairman of the

committee chided me for deserting my 'home work.' I told her that it

was a greater work to try to get the right to vote and increase my

influence."

The Hon. William Dudley Foulke, president of the National Civil

Service Commission, spoke informally on An Object Lesson in Municipal

Politics, describing the revolution of the citizens against the

corrupt government of his home city, Richmond, Ind., and the valuable

assistance rendered by the women, and, as always, demanding the

suffrage for them.

It was at this meeting that Miss Jane Addams of Hull House, Chicago,

made the address on The Modern City and the Municipal Franchise for

Women, which was thenceforth a part of the standard suffrage

literature. Quotations are wholly inadequate.

It has been well said that the modern city is a stronghold of

industrialism quite as the feudal city was a stronghold of

militarism, but the modern cities fear no enemies and rivals from

without and their problems of government are solely internal.

Affairs for the most part are going badly in these great new

centres, in which the quickly-congregated population has not yet

learned to arrange its affairs satisfactorily. Unsanitary

housing, poisonous sewage, contaminated water, infant mortality,

the spread of contagion, adulterated food, impure milk,

smoke-laden air, ill-ventilated factories, dangerous occupations,

juvenile crime, unwholesome crowding, prostitution and

drunkenness are the enemies which the modern cities must face and

overcome, would they survive. Logically their electorate should

be made up of those who can bear a valiant part in this arduous

contest, those who in the past have at least attempted to care

for children, to clean houses, to prepare foods, to isolate the

family from moral dangers; those who have traditionally taken

care of that side of life which inevitably becomes the subject of

municipal consideration and control as soon as the population is

congested. To test the elector's fitness to deal with this

situation by his ability to bear arms is absurd. These problems

must be solved, if they are solved at all, not from the military

point of view, not even from the industrial point of view, but

from a third, which is rapidly developing in all the great cities

of the world--the human-welfare point of view....

City housekeeping has failed partly because women, the

traditional housekeepers, have not been consulted as to its

multiform activities. The men have been carelessly indifferent to

much of this civic housekeeping, as they have always been

indifferent to the details of the household.... The very

multifariousness and complexity of a city government demand the

help of minds accustomed to detail and variety of work, to a

sense of obligation for the health and welfare of young children

and to a responsibility for the cleanliness and comfort of other

people. Because all these things have traditionally been in the

hands of women, if they take no part in them now they are not

only missing the education which the natural participation in

civic life would bring to them but they are losing what they have

always had.

The Sunday afternoon service was held in the Lyric Theater, whose

capacity was taxed with an audience "representing every class of

society, every creed and no creed," according to the Baltimore papers.

It was preceded by a half-hour musical program by Edwin M. Shonert,

pianist, and Earl J. Pfonts, violinist. The Rev. Antoinette Brown

Blackwell made the opening prayer; the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw read the

Scripture lesson and gave the day's text: "Be strong and very

courageous; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord thy

God is with thee whithersoever thou goest." The Battle Hymn of the

Republic was beautifully read by the Rev. Olympia Brown and sung by

Miss Etta Maddox, the audience joining in the chorus. Mrs. Maud

Ballington Booth gave the principal address on the work of the

Volunteers of America for the men and women in prisons and after they

are discharged. At its beginning she said: "I have never before stood

on the platform with these leaders in the struggle for woman suffrage

but I sympathize with any movement whose motive is, like theirs, the

uplifting of humanity." Her beauty, her sweet voice and her rare

eloquence made a deep impression on the audience, who responded with a

generous collection for her Hope Halls. The meeting closed with the

congregational singing of America and the benediction by the Rev.

Marie Jenney Howe. All of the women ministers occupied the pulpits of

various churches in the morning or evening, and, according to the

reporter for the _News_, "astonished the large congregations which

assembled to do them honor with their facility of expression and the

soundness of their logic!"[46]

The resolutions offered by Henry B. Blackwell, chairman of the

committee, covered a wide and rather unusual range of subjects,

showing the broad scope of the work of the association and expressing

its pleasure at the world-wide indications of progress. Deep regret

was expressed for the death of the friends of the cause during the

year, among them George W. Catt of New York, husband of Mrs. Carrie

Chapman Catt; Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell of New York; Mrs. Jane H.

Spofford of Maine; Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller of Maryland; Mrs.

Sarah M. Perkins of Ohio; John K. Wildman of Pennsylvania, and Speaker

Frederick S. Nixon of the New York Legislature.

Fraternal greetings were brought from the Ladies of the Maccabees by

Mrs. Melva J. Caswell, State Commander of the District of Columbia,

Maryland and Delaware; from the National W. C. T. U., by Miss Marie C.

Brehm, president for Illinois, and from the American Purity Alliance

by its president, Dr. O. Edward Janney of Baltimore. A letter was read

by Mrs. Mary Bentley Thomas (Md.), from Governor Warfield expressing

his thanks for the opportunity of meeting so many distinguished women

and his enjoyment of the convention. Letters and telegrams were read.

A letter of greeting was sent to Mrs. Ellen Clark Sargent, a veteran

suffragist of San Francisco, and letters to Miss Laura Clay and Mrs.

Harriet Taylor Upton, regretting their absence. A special vote of

appreciation was given to Dr. and Mrs. William Funck and a letter of

thanks was sent to Dr. Thomas and Miss Garrett for their part in the

unsurpassed success of the convention.

A comprehensive report of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance,

organized in Berlin in 1904, was given by its president, Mrs. Carrie

Chapman Catt, showing that "the agitation throughout Europe for a

broader democracy has naturally opened the way for the discussion of

woman suffrage and the subject is being considered as never before in

Europe." [See Chapter on the Alliance.] The Evening with Women in

History was opened by Mrs. Catt, who said: "One idea is the mainspring

of the opposition to woman suffrage--that women are by nature of the

inferior sex. Even Darwin, so scientific that he tried to see all

things fairly, entertained this unjust view. When women have had the

same inspiration and opportunity as men their work has been equal in

merit."

The program assuredly showed no inferiority of mental power. Mrs.

Belle de Rivera (N. Y.) depicted Women of Genius, quoting Sappho,

Margaret of Navarre, Vittoria Colonna, Angelica Kauffman and others

eminent in the annals of history. A newspaper report said of Mrs.

Oreola Williams Haskell (N. Y.): "The thoroughness of her address gave

the lie to any intimation of frivolity made by her youth and beauty,

the pink crepe de chine dress and the giddy pink bow in her fluffy

brown hair." In discussing Women in Politics she said that, "even

though debarred from Parliaments and Congresses women will take part

in politics because political situations and public events vitally

affect their lives" and concluded:

The student, remembering the laws that strove to make women

nonentities, the tremendous force of adverse public opinion, the

lack of training and preparation, must repudiate forever the

usual query of the scoffer. "Why have there not been more eminent

women?" and in amazement ask himself, "How does it happen that

there have been any?" To those women who would do great things,

who sigh for the old days, when the political queen ruled from

the salon or the throne, we may say that today woman stands on

the threshold of a broader and more real political life than she

has ever known. In the future there may be no Sarah Jennings or

Mme. de Maintenons, but when to the million-and-a-quarter of the

women of our time, who in the United States, in Australia and in

New Zealand are exercising the mighty power of the ballot as

fully and freely as their brothers, we shall be able to add other

enfranchised women of the world, we will have a mighty political

sisterhood, free to realize their patriotic dreams and powerful

to bring about better conditions for humanity.

Miss Campbell described in an able and interesting manner Women

Scholars of the Middle Ages. Miss Brehm pictured Heroes and Heroines.

Mrs. Maud Nathan, who had as a subject Women Warriors, according to

the reporter, "remarked as she took off her long white kids that she

could not handle it with gloves." Declaring that she did not approve

of war, she said that nevertheless whenever there was a fight for

municipal reform in New York she was in the thick of it. After showing

how women had led wars and fallen in battles she concluded:

In the middle ages, when the electors were called upon to defend

their cities at the point of the bayonet, we can understand why

men considered that women should be debarred from the privilege

of citizenship; but today our cities are not walled, our foes

are not without the gates trying to scale the walls. The enemies

are within, often found sitting in high places. Today citizens

are called upon to fight, not warriors, but vice and corruption

and low standards. Are not our mothers quite as capable as our

fathers to wage warfare against these, the enemies in our midst?

When I was in The Hague last summer I visited the only kind of

battleground which any intelligent, progressive, self-respecting

nation ought to show with pride.... There in the peaceful little

House in the Wood national disputes are settled, not by

sacrificing the lives of thousands of innocent, helpless young

men, not by creating thousands of widows and orphans, but by

threshing out all matters relating to the dispute in a rational,

calm, judicial and honorable way.... It seemed to me that this

20th century battleground, this quiet, peaceful House in the

Wood, augured well for a new era, one in which our swords will

indeed be turned into ploughshares and our spears into pruning

hooks, and the angels of peace and righteousness will hover over

us.

The social features of the convention were of an unusually interesting

character. The Garrett family mansion had been closed for the winter

but Miss Garrett opened it completely, invited as home guests Miss

Anthony, Mrs. Howe, Miss Addams, Dr. Thomas and other distinguished

visitors and gave a series of entertainments that conferred on the

convention a prestige which added much to its influence in that

conservative city. In order that its representative men and women

might meet the officers and delegates Miss Garrett had a luncheon and

dinner every day, the formal invitations reading: "To meet Miss Susan

B. Anthony and Governor and Mrs. Warfield"; "To meet Miss Anthony and

the speakers of the College Evening," etc.,--on each invitation Miss

Anthony's name preceding those of the other guests of honor. All of

the speakers on the College Women's evening were her house guests and

after the meeting she gave a large reception. To quote again from the

Biography: "No one present will ever forget the picture of Miss

Anthony and Mrs. Howe sitting side by side on a divan in the large bay

window, with a background of ferns and flowers. At their right stood

Miss Garrett and Dr. Thomas, at their left Dr. Shaw and the line of

eminent college women, with a beautiful perspective of conservatory

and art gallery.... There was nothing in the closing years of Miss

Anthony's life that offered such encouragement and hope as to see

women possessing the power of high intellectual ability, wealth and

social position taking up the cause which she had carried with patient

toil through poverty and obscurity to this plane of recognition."

While Miss Anthony was a guest in the home of Miss Garrett she and Dr.

Thomas asked her what was the greatest service they could render to

advance the movement for woman suffrage. She answered that the

strongest desire of her later years had been to raise a large fund for

the work, which was constantly impeded for the lack of money, but her

impaired health had prevented it. This need was frequently discussed

during the week, and before the convention closed they promised her

that they would try to find a number of women who, like themselves,

were unable to take an active part in working for woman suffrage but

sincerely believed in it, who would be willing to join together in

contributing $12,000 a year for the next five years to help support

the work and to show in this practical way their gratitude to Miss

Anthony and her associates and their faith in the cause.[47]

The officers, speakers and delegates accepted invitations of President

Remsen to visit Johns Hopkins University and received every possible

attention; to a special exhibit at the Maryland Historical Art

Gallery; to a handsome afternoon tea at the Arundel Club, welcomed by

its president, Mrs. William M. Ellicott; to a large reception by the

Baltimore Woman Suffrage Club and to other pleasant functions.

The report of Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton called attention to the

receipts of $2,000 for 1893 and $12,150 during the past year, a period

of thirteen years during which she had been treasurer. "The fact that

nowadays the association always has funds," she said, "gives us a

standing with the bankers and business men which works largely to our

credit." She spoke of the bequests, which had been put at interest,

and told of persons who refused to contribute a dollar while they

remained unspent. It was the hope of the officers, she said, that they

could be used for campaigns and other emergencies and that

contributions should pay the running expenses, which was now nearly

accomplished. The disbursements during the year, including money

advanced for the Oregon campaign, had been $16,565, the amount above

receipts being taken from the bequests.

The College Women's meeting took place on Thursday and Miss Anthony

was unable to attend the convention the next day. "At the Saturday

morning session," the Biography relates, "Dr. Shaw expressed the great

regret of all at her enforced absence and their gratitude for the

excellent care she was receiving at the home of Miss Garrett; but when

the afternoon session opened, in she walked! She had learned that the

money was to be raised at this time and she knew she could help, so

she conquered her pain and came. When contributions were called for

she was first to respond and holding out a little purse she said: 'I

want to begin by giving you my purse. Just before I left Rochester my

friends gave me a birthday party and made me a present of eighty-six

dollars. I suppose they wanted me to do as I liked with the money and

I wish to send it to Oregon.'" Under this inspiration the pledges soon

reached $4,000. Afterwards Miss Anthony's seventeen five dollar gold

pieces were sold for $10 each, and later some of them for $25.

Miss Anthony was not able to leave the house for the next two days, to

her great sorrow. The leading feature of the Monday evening session

was to be an address by Mrs. Howe but she also was too ill to appear,

and realizing the intense disappointment this would be to the audience

Miss Anthony made another heroic effort and took her place on the

platform. The Rev. Herbert S. Bigelow came from Cincinnati to give an

address on The Power of an Idea, in which he said: "If the world were

never again to get another new idea, progress would be at an end....

The birth and growth and struggle and triumph of one great idea after

another--this is the story of human progress. For more than half a

century the men and women who championed the idea of woman suffrage

were made the butt of ridicule, yet in the light of history how

ridiculous are the enemies of this idea. Fifty years ago no American

college but Oberlin was open to women. Now a third of the college

students in the United States are women." Mrs. Fessenden of Boston

spoke eloquently on The Mount of Aspiration, and Mrs. Lydia A. Coonley

Ward of Chicago represented the strong, practical side in her address

on The Nearest Duty. Miss Alice Henry of Melbourne gave an interesting

account of woman suffrage in Australia, where women now possessed the

complete franchise, which had been followed by very advanced laws.

It was not supposed that Miss Anthony would be able to speak, but,

stimulated by the occasion and longing no doubt to say what she felt

might be her last words, she came forward near the close of the

meeting. A report of the occasion in the New York _Evening Post_ said:

The entire house arose and the applause and cheers seemed to last

for ten minutes. Miss Anthony looked at the splendid audience of

men and women, many of them distinguished in their generation,

with calm and dignified sadness. "This is a magnificent sight

before me," she said slowly, "and these have been wonderful

addresses and speeches I have listened to during the past week.

Yet I have looked on many such audiences and in my lifetime I

have listened to many such speakers, all testifying to the

righteousness, the justice and the worthiness of the cause of

woman suffrage. I never saw that great woman, Mary

Wollstonecraft, but I have read her eloquent and unanswerable

arguments in behalf of the liberty of womankind. I have met and

known most of the progressive women who came after her--Lucretia

Mott, the Grimke sisters, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone--a

long galaxy of great women. I have heard them speak, saying in

only slightly different phrases exactly what I heard these newer

advocates of the cause say at these meetings. Those older women

have gone on and most of those who worked with me in the early

years have gone. I am here for a little time only and then my

place will be filled as theirs was filled. The fight must not

cease; you must see that it does not stop."

There were indeed Miss Anthony's last words to a woman suffrage

convention and they expressed the dominant thought which had directed

her own life--the fight must not stop!

The address of Mrs. Howe was read at a later session by her daughter,

Mrs. Florence Howe Hall, who expressed her mother's extreme

disappointment at not being able to be present in person and said:

"She regarded this convention as probably the last she should attend

and she hoped to clasp hands with many whom she has known in former

years and with many whom she has not known. She has heard with joy of

its success and sends you her affectionate greeting and glad

congratulations." In the course of this scholarly address Mrs. Howe

said:

I can well recall the years in which I felt myself averse to the

participation of women in political life. The feminine type

appeared to me so precious, so indispensable to humanity, that I

dreaded any enlargement of its functions lest something of its

charm and real power should therein be lost. I have often felt as

if some sudden and unlooked for revelation had been vouchsafed to

me, for at my first real contact with the suffragists of, say,

forty years ago, I was made to feel that womanhood is not only

static but also much more dynamic, a power to move as well as a

power to stay. True womanliness must grow and not diminish, in

its larger and freer exercise. Whom did I see at that first

suffrage meeting, first in my experience? Lucy Stone, sweet faced

and silver voiced, the very embodiment of Goethe's "eternal

feminine"; William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Thomas

Wentworth Higginson, noble advocates of human freedom; Lucretia

Mott, eloquent and beautiful in her holy old age. What did I

hear? Doctrine which harmonized with my dearest aspirations,

extending as it did the hope which I had supposed was for an

elect and superior few to all the motherhood of the human race.

The new teaching seemed to me to throw the door open for all

women to come up higher, to live upon a higher plane of thought

and to exercise in larger and more varied fields the talents,

wonderful indeed, to which such limited scope had hitherto been

allowed. I felt, too, that the new freedom brought with it an

identity of interest which formed a bond of sisterhood and that

the great force of cooperation would wonderfully aid the

promotion of objects dear to all true women alike....

I have sat in the little chapel in Bethlehem in which tradition

places the birth of the Saviour. It seems fitting that it should

be adorned with offerings of beautiful things but while I mused

there a voice seemed to say to me, "Look abroad! This divine

child is no more, he has grown to be a man and a deliverer. Go

out into the world. Find his footsteps and follow them. Work, as

he did, for the redemption of mankind. Suffer as he did, if need

be, derision and obloquy. Make your protest against tyranny,

meanness and injustice!"

The weapon of Christian warfare is the ballot, which represents

the peaceable assertion of conviction and will. Society

everywhere is becoming converted to its use. Adopt it, oh, you

women, with clean hands and a pure heart! Verify the best word

written by the apostle; "In Christ Jesus there is neither bond

nor free, neither male nor female, but a new creature," the

harbinger of a new creation!

On the last evening Senorita Carolina Holman Huidobro told of The

Women of Chili and Argentina in the Peace Movement. Mrs. Mead spoke on

The World's Crisis, and, with an unsurpassed knowledge of her subject,

pointed out the vast responsibility of the United States in the cause

of Peace and Arbitration, saying in part: "Protected by two oceans,

with not a nation on the hemisphere that dares to attack her; with not

a nation in the world that is her enemy, rich and with endless

resources, this most fortunate nation is the one of all others to lead

the world out of the increasing intolerable bondage of armaments. If

the United States will take a strong position on gradual, proportional

disarmament the first step may be made toward it at the second Hague

conference soon to be held.... Of all women the suffragists should be

alert and well informed upon these momentous questions. Our battle cry

today must be 'Organize the world!' War will cease when concerted

action has removed the causes of war and not before."

Mrs. Pauline Steinem, an elected member of the Toledo (O.) school

board, showed convincingly the need for Women's Work on Boards of

Education. Miss Harriet May Mills (N. Y.) made a clear, logical

address on The Right of Way, and Mr. Blackwell (Mass.) discussed from

his knowledge of politics The Wooing of Electors.

In closing the convention Dr. Shaw expressed the hope that if it had

brought no other truth to the people of Baltimore it had shown that

women want the ballot as a means for accomplishing the things that

good men and women wish to accomplish. She made an earnest appeal for

a deeper interest in the highest things of life and more consecrated

work for all that contributes to the progress of humanity.

* * * * *

In order to have the usual hearings before committees of Congress on

the submission of a woman suffrage amendment to the Federal

Constitution a large delegation went to Washington on February 14, the

next day after the convention closed, and the hearing was held the

morning of the 15th, Miss Anthony's birthday. She was not able to

attend, greatly to her own disappointment and that of the older

speakers, whose inspiration she had been for so long on these

occasions. She had arranged the first one ever held in 1869 and had

missed but two in thirty-seven years.

The hearing before the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage took place

in the Marble Room, as usual, Senator Augustus O. Bacon of Georgia in

the chair and Dr. Shaw presiding. The speakers were Senorita Huidobro

of Chili; Mrs. Elizabeth D. Bacon, president of the Connecticut

Suffrage Association; Mrs. Mary Bentley Thomas (Md.); the Rev.

Antoinette Brown Blackwell (N. J.); Miss Anne Fitzhugh Miller (N. Y.);

Mrs. Upton, Mrs. Steinem and Mrs. Fessenden.

The hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, the Hon. John J.

Jenkins (Wis.), chairman, was in charge of Mrs. Florence Kelley, first

vice-president of the association. Mrs. Blankenburg told of the

herculean efforts of over 2,000 women at the last November election of

Philadelphia. Mrs. Harriet A. Eager spoke of the work of a woman's

Committee of Moral Education in Boston where there was no law

prohibiting the circulation of any kind of literature. They went to

the Legislature for such a law with a petition from 32,000 of the

representative women of Massachusetts and stayed there six weeks

working for it only to have it refused. She told how the women of the

State petitioned fifty-five years for a law giving mothers equal

guardianship of their children and pointed out the helpless position

of women without political power.

Miss Kate M. Gordon of New Orleans, corresponding secretary of the

association, began: "My message this morning was particularly for the

southern members of the committee but I shall have to ask others

present to carry it to them, as I do not believe any of them are here

although seven are members." She protested against the attitude of

southern members of Congress toward woman suffrage and expressed the

deep resentment of southern women at their classification with the

disfranchised, saying that their men more than all others should feel

the responsibility of lifting them from their present humiliating

position. Mrs. Ella S. Stewart, president of the Illinois Suffrage

Association, based her argument on simple justice, and said in

conclusion: "Your power is absolute and your responsibility

correspondingly great. Humiliating as it is for me to beg for what is

mine from strangers, I would a thousand times rather be a defrauded

mendicant than to hold in my hand the rights, the destiny and the

happiness of millions of human beings and have the heart to deny their

just claims."

Mrs. Mary Kenney O'Sullivan (Mass.) spoke "as one representing

3,000,000 women who have been forced out of the home through

necessity," and said in the course of her strong speech: "I know that

the working women of this country are not receiving the highest wages

because they have not a vote. Right here in Washington, in your big

bindery of the Government, a trade to which I gave the larger part of

my life, the women who do equal work with the men do not receive equal

pay. The Government more than any other employer has taken advantage

of women of my class because they have not a vote.... The workmen,

more than any other men, even more than those who are supposed to be

statesmen, have seen the necessity for women to have a vote. Ever

since 1890 the convention of the American Federation of Labor has

unanimously adopted a resolution favoring woman suffrage. I do not

believe that any one will deny that the workingmen are the thinking

men of the country. I am asking you, in the name of the women I

represent at least, to do for us what our working brothers are trying

to do--give us our rights."

Mrs. Lucia Ames Mead said in the course of a long address: "The man

who talks about home today as if it still gave ample opportunity for

woman's productive activity as it once did, is talking about a

condition which is as obsolete as the conditions before we had

railroads and telegraphs. Woman's educational opportunities and

productive capacity are so altered as to require her political status

to be altered.... There is a class of women who do not need to earn

their living and have a large leisure. They are not idle, they are as

active as fireflies, but they are not obliged to be productive as

every human being should be.... They have more time than men to study

and to apply the principles of justice and mercy and to do that

preventive, educational work which is a better defense of country than

a squadron of battleships. The suffrage has done much to develop man;

the woman of leisure needs it to develop her; the working woman needs

it to obtain salutary conditions under which to earn her living; the

woman working for reforms needs it so as to accomplish in a year what

otherwise she may wait for twenty-five years of pleading and

'influence' to obtain."

Miss Alice Stone Blackwell began her address: "We are not here to ask

you to extend suffrage to women but to give to the State Legislatures

an opportunity to vote on it, and probably some practical

considerations should be offered to show that public sentiment has

arrived at a point where it seems to be timely and worth while that

this question should be submitted to them. We would like to convince

you that this is only right. If three-fourths of them are not prepared

to give us suffrage, we shall not get it. If three-fourths of them are

prepared, then public sentiment has arrived at a point where we ought

to have it." She reviewed the advance of the movement and said: "We

could keep this committee here until next week reading to them

testimony from representative men and women as to the good results of

woman suffrage where it is in operation." The unimpeachable testimony

which she then presented from the equal suffrage States filled several

pages of the printed record.

Introducing Mrs. Kelley, Chairman Jenkins had spoken of her father,

William D. Kelley, known as the Father of the House, and she said:

It is quite true that my father, Judge Kelley of Pennsylvania,

came to Congress in the year in which President Lincoln was first

elected and for twenty-five years he patiently introduced at

every session a resolution preliminary to a hearing for the woman

suffragists. Through all that period of ridicule, when the

hearings were not conducted so respectfully or in so friendly a

manner as this one has been, he continued to introduce that

resolution. In 1890 death removed him from the House of

Representatives and I come here as the second generation. I

assure you that I and the rest of the women throughout the

country will come from generation to generation, just so long as

it is necessary. Next year my oldest son will vote and that

generation will take up the task on behalf of the enfranchisement

of the women of this country.... Every time we come there is some

gain to record, but, between the times, at least 1,000,000 new

immigrants have come into this country who will have to be

brought to the American way of thinking about women before they

will vote to give the ballot to those who are born here and whose

forefathers have asked that we be enfranchised.

It is an ignominious way to treat us, to send us to the Chinaman

in San Francisco, to the enfranchised Indians of other western

States, to the negroes, Italians, Hungarians, Poles, Bohemians

and innumerable Slavic immigrants in Pennsylvania and other

mining States to obtain our right of suffrage. There yet remain

forty-three States in which women are not enfranchised and it

looks as if it might take us a hundred years, at the present rate

of progress, before we can relieve you and your successors from

these annual hearings. What we are asking today is that you shall

take a short cut and not oblige our great-grandchildren to come

here and ask for a Federal Amendment.

Although the women received courteous treatment and a respectful

hearing from both committees no report was made by either, and the

only advantage gained was that as usual thousands of franked copies of

the hearings were sent to the national suffrage headquarters to be

distributed throughout the States.

* * * * *

For some time arrangements had been under way to celebrate the

birthday of Miss Anthony in the city where this had been so often done

and which she loved above all others. By carefully conserving her

strength she was able to attend the evening ceremonies in the Church

of Our Father (Universalist) where many suffrage conventions had been

held and where six years before, at the age of 80, she had resigned

the presidency and laid down the gavel for the last time. Letters of

congratulation were read from President Roosevelt, Vice-President

Fairbanks, members of Congress and other prominent men; from Mrs.

Russell Sage, Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick

and other eminent women, and from organizations in this and other

countries. Well known men and women brought their greetings in person.

To quote again from her Biography:

"On account of her extreme weakness it was not expected that Miss

Anthony would speak but at the close of the evening she seemed to feel

that she must say one last word, and rising, with a tender, spiritual

expression on her dear face, she stood beside Miss Shaw and explained

in a few touching words how the great work of the National

Association had been placed in her charge; turning to the other

national officers on the stage she reached out her hand to them and

expressed her appreciation of their loyal support, and then, realizing

that her strength was almost gone, she said: 'There have been others

also just as true and devoted to the cause--I wish I could name every

one--but with such women consecrating their lives'--here she paused

for an instant and seemed to be gazing into the future, then dropping

her arms to her side she finished her sentence--'failure is

impossible!' These were the last words Miss Anthony ever spoke in

public and from that moment they became the watchword of those who

accepted as their trust the work she laid down." One month later to

the day she was laid to rest with her loved ones.

FOOTNOTES:

[44] Part of Call: Never have we had so much cause to issue a

thanksgiving proclamation. Never has it been so easy to love our

enemies, for they have combined to fight for us in their courses.

The inevitable logic of events is with us. All over the world

intelligent women are interested in securing better protection for

their homes and their children.... They are called upon to take part

in civic affairs, and social and economic conditions force them into

the world's broad field of battle where there is no place for

non-combatants. The time has gone by for subterfuge and

indirection.... The American Republic settles its questions in the

light of day at the ballot box. No one, man or woman, has ever lost

influence by the possession of power. We do not ask the ballot simply

as a right, though if it be a right it cannot be rightfully denied us;

we do not ask it as a privilege, though if it be a privilege it must

be ours unless we admit the existence of a privileged class. We demand

it because it is a duty and one which no good citizen has a right to

shirk.

If you are indifferent come and be convinced. What we ask is not

revolutionary but is the reasonable and just demand of every being

living under a democratic form of government. If you are opposed, come

and let us reason together, consider our points of agreement and waive

for a moment those of difference.... Let us have the truth for

authority and we shall not need authority for truth....

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, Honorary President.

ANNA HOWARD SHAW, President.

FLORENCE KELLEY, Vice-President-at-Large.

KATE M. GORDON, Corresponding Secretary.

ALICE STONE BLACKWELL, Recording Secretary.

HARRIET TAYLOR UPTON, Treasurer.

LAURA CLAY, } Auditors.

ANNICE JEFFREYS MYERS, }

[45] Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, by Ida Husted Harper, Volume

III, page 1383.

[46] The clergymen of the city gave cordial assistance to the

convention and among those who opened different sessions with prayer

were the Reverends Dr. Van Meter of the Woman's College; George

Scholl, D.D., Lutheran Church; Lloyd Coblentz, St. Paul's Reformed

Church; John Y. Dobbins, Grace M. E. Church; E. L. Watson, Harlem Park

M. E. Church; Alfred R. Hussey, First Independent Church; Peter

Ainslee, Christian Temple; Oliver Huckel, Associate Congregational

Church; Rabbi Adolf Guttmacher, Madison Avenue Temple; Marshall V.

McDuffie, North Avenue Baptist Church; Ezra K. Bell, First English

Lutheran Church; Edward W. Wroth, All Saints' Episcopal Church.

[47] Although Miss Anthony lived only one month longer every day was

made happy by the thought that those who would carry on the work would

have the great assistance of this fund. A committee was formed the

following summer with Miss Garrett as chairman and Dr. Thomas as

treasurer and the work of securing subscriptions was begun on Miss

Anthony's birthday the next year, 1907. By May 1 the $60,000 had been

subscribed and put at the disposal of the national board of officers.

The sum was completed by a subscription of $20,000 from "a friend" and

not until after the death of Mrs. Russell Sage, who had headed the

list with $5,000, was it known that she was the donor. Mrs. Sage had

made generous subscriptions at other times. The full list of donors

will be found in Miss Anthony's Biography, page 1401.

CHAPTER VII.

NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1907.

The six preceding chapters have described at length and in detail the

annual conventions of the National American Woman Suffrage Association

in order to show that those who took part in them were the

representative women and men of the day. Their addresses, reports of

committees, resolutions adopted and other proceedings demonstrate the

wide scope of the activities of this organization, which from 1869 was

the foundation and the bulwark of the vast movement to obtain equality

of rights for women. The Thirty-ninth convention met in Music Hall,

Fine Arts Building, Chicago, Feb. 14-19, 1907, and received a cordial

welcome to the State of Lincoln, who in 1836 was almost the first

public man in the United States to declare in favor of suffrage for

women.[48] Lorado Taft's bust of Susan B. Anthony, its pedestal

draped in the Stars and Stripes, adorned the platform and a portrait

of Lucy Stone looked down on the speakers in serene benediction. The

national president, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, was in the chair and

addresses of welcome were made for Illinois by Mrs. Ella S. Stewart,

president of the State Equal Suffrage Association; for the churches by

the Right Rev. Samuel E. Fallows, Presiding Bishop of the Reformed

Episcopal Church; for the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union

by Mrs. Susanna M. D. Fry, its corresponding secretary. Mrs. Fannie J.

Fernald, president of the Maine Suffrage Association, and Mrs. Mary S.

Sperry, president of that of California, responded and in introducing

them Dr. Shaw said: "These responses from the Atlantic and the Pacific

Coasts represent greetings from all the women between them." The

presidents of the Chicago North Side, the South Side and the Evanston

Political Equality Clubs were presented and received with applause.

Bishop Fallows expressed the wish that what he should say could be

voiced by the ministers of all the churches in the land and said: "I

am proud that from the period of the Civil War and a little before,

when the cause of the emancipation of the slave was the foremost

question of the time and was only settled by the horrors of a long

struggle--from that time I espoused the cause of woman suffrage. I

hope there will be no need to fight for it as we fought during those

long years but at least there should be a war of words until women

have the power to deposit a ballot, until they have complete

enfranchisement. Your case is just; yours is a righteous cause. I

cannot help believing that the exercise of the suffrage by women is

necessary to the welfare and growth of the nation. Your cause stands

for the home; it stands for political purity, for civic righteousness,

for everything that is for the betterment of the State, and I should

be guilty of high treason to my deepest convictions if I did not bid a

hearty God-speed to your efforts until every State shall recognize the

equality of woman before the great law of civic redemption, as God has

recognized her right before the great law of human redemption."

The appointment of the usual committees was followed by a symposium on

Municipal Suffrage, at this time a vital issue in Chicago, as a

spirited campaign was in progress to secure a clause giving it to

women in the new city charter which a convention was preparing.[49]

Mrs. Ellen M. Henrotin was to preside but she yielded to Mrs. Florence

Kelley, who had to leave the city, and later took Mrs. Kelley's place

in presiding over the symposium on Industrial Conditions. Professor

Sophonisba Breckinridge (Ky.), of Chicago University, gave an able

address on Municipal Housekeeping, saying in the course of it:

In all the things that make the city a good place in which to

work, the woman is as much concerned as any one. When it comes to

the questions which affect women, she has of course a peculiar

ability to speak, a peculiar responsibility and an obligation to

assume every right necessary to carry out that responsibility. It

is incumbent upon her to secure the power to move in the most

direct way upon the obstacles which lie in her path in the

controlling of conditions.... It is to the housekeeper that I

want to call your attention, rather than to the working woman.

She has to decide how she will use her time, energy and money to

promote the life, health, comfort and welfare of her family. The

little group must live in a house. If she resides in a city, it

is a matter of concern what shall be the structure of it, whether

made of material endangering the household or not; if in an

apartment house, she is concerned in the regulations under which

such houses are built and controlled, in the fire escapes, the

sort of gas, the dimensions of the apartments, the order of the

rooms, the plumbing, etc.

It is obvious that today no woman can be a competent housekeeper

unless she has an intelligent knowledge of these subjects. She

must exercise a control over the ordinances and have something to

say about the men who make these ordinances and who enforce them.

She has not the power she needs as a housekeeper unless she feels

that the officials of the city are as much responsible to her,

although they are not chosen by her alone, as are the domestic

servants whom she does select. Her collective responsibility is

just as great as her individual responsibility.... Women cannot

stop either at the bottom or the top by asking for Municipal

suffrage. If woman is going to be a complete housekeeper she must

be a member of a political group and that leads to the demand for

Municipal, State and Federal suffrage.

Miss Kate M. Gordon (La.) told of the remarkable work the women of New

Orleans had been able to do with their taxpayers' right to vote on

matters of special taxation. "If the women of one part of the country

more than another need the suffrage," she declared, "it is those of

the South." The Chicago _Tribune_ commented: "As Miss Gordon sat down

all the women clapped, many waved handkerchiefs and the applause

continued several minutes." Mrs. Lilla Day Monroe described the

excellent effects of the Municipal suffrage enjoyed by all women in

Kansas, the only State where it existed in full. She called attention

to the fact that the next day, February 15, would be the 20th

anniversary of its granting by the Legislature. Miss Anna E. Nicholes

of Chicago spoke on The Ballot for Working Women, saying in part:

The women who work in our city have a special claim to Municipal

enfranchisement, inasmuch as they not only help create Chicago's

wealth but are subject to the industrial conditions regulated by

the city voters....

Legislation is becoming more and more industrial in its aspect.

Abating sweating and its evils, inspection of toilets, hygienic

conditions in shops are now matters frequently controlled by our

city fathers. Women are more and more coming into the industrial

field. The 5,000,000 now gainfully employed in the United States

represent one-fifth of the total number of wage-earners and this

number are non-voters. This is a serious handicap to labor in its

efforts to secure humane industrial legislation.... To these

working women this matter of suffrage is an economic question--a

bread-and-butter necessity. It is a fact, acknowledged by many

large employers of labor and stated also by Carroll D. Wright in

Government bulletins, that one of the leading reasons for the

preference of women wage-earners to men is that they can be

secured more cheaply. Employers are frank in acknowledging that

the women work for less, that they are more reliable, more

temperate, less inclined to strike and more faithful.

It was quite as much for the industrial opportunity as for

maintaining personal liberty that Lincoln insisted on the

necessity of enfranchising the negroes. Such prominent economists

as the Webbs of England, Carroll D. Wright and Richard T. Ely of

our own country state that woman's lack of the ballot is one of

the determining causes in placing her in the ranks of the cheap

laborer with all its attending evils. So placed she becomes a

menace in industry and drags down the wages of the men. At the

last convention of the American Federation of Labor this

necessity of the ballot for the working woman was recognized when

the resolution was adopted stating that woman would never come

into the full wage scale until she came into her full rights of

citizenship.... To the large body of women in our city who have

to shift for themselves as completely as men do Municipal

suffrage would mean a higher rating industrially, a fairer

compensation for their labor and more possible living conditions.

Mrs. Kelley, who, as executive secretary of the National Consumers'

League for years and before that as State Factory Inspector of

Illinois, had an unsurpassed knowledge of the conditions that affect

women and children, gave a scathing review of the failure of Congress

to enact protective laws and of the reactionary decisions of Supreme

Courts. "Do we ask what this has to do with Municipal suffrage?" she

inquired and answered:

If we are not to be given power to help determine our own laws by

electing men to Congress in the larger field of the republic; and

if, one by one, the States are to repeal or annul the legislation

that once gave some slender protection to women and youth, there

remains at least the city. It should be our immediate demand that

in all matters of the life of a city we shall have a word. The

greatest numbers of working people are in the cities. If our

boards of health, our school boards, our street-cleaning

departments, our water boards--if all these local bodies which

have most to do with the health of working people, as with the

health of other people, in the great centers of population--can

be given the additional stimulus which comes from the lively

interest of women, (both those who support themselves and those

who have more leisure), then a very large proportion of the

working women can have more adequate care for life and health and

the children will have education beyond that which we have as yet

achieved.

Does any one here believe that if the women had power to make

themselves felt in the administration of school affairs we should

have 80,000 children on half-time in New York City? Truly, if the

mothers of these school children, as well as their fathers, spoke

in the elections, the interest in the schools would be quite a

different one. Does any one believe that if the women of this

community could make themselves felt more effectively than by

"persuasion," if they could make their will felt, we should have

such a smoky sky as characterizes Chicago? Does any one believe

that we should have to boil all the water before we dared to

drink it? It would make a vast difference if women in American

cities could enforce their will and conscience by the ballot

instead of by the indefinitely slow work of persuasion.

The first evening was devoted to a more extended welcome and to the

president's address. On behalf of the city Dr. Howard S. Taylor

represented Mayor Edward F. Dunne and in an eloquent speech he

reviewed the various epochs in the country's history. "Take, for

instance," he said, "the first chapter, when the old Liberty Bell

clanged out to the world the doctrine that 'all men are created equal

and endowed with certain inalienable rights to life, liberty and the

pursuit of happiness, and to secure these rights governments are

established among men deriving their just powers from the consent of

the governed.' There is no casuistry, however dextrous, that can take

woman out of that charter." He referred to pioneer days and the heavy

part borne by women and said: "But when the foundations had been

established and the pioneer fathers got down to writing the

constitutions they left the pioneer mothers out." He spoke of the time

in the '50's when "the Government invited the people from all over the

world to come and help us settle our political, social and commercial

questions but did not invite American mothers, sisters, wives and

daughters." "Then came the Civil War," he said, "and the large part

taken in it by women and when the war was over the Government made the

great army of emancipated slaves citizens and gave the men the ballot

but forgot the patriotic white women of the country." "I know," he

said in conclusion, "that if the women of Chicago and Illinois were

enfranchised the corruption of the city council and the Legislature

would be much less than it is. We should have a higher state of morals

among public men and better laws on the statute books."

When the speaker finished Dr. Shaw observed: "We ought to thank Mayor

Dunne for substituting a man like Dr. Taylor for himself." This

brought Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch to her feet to say: "Mayor

Dunne would have made just as good a suffrage speech as Dr. Taylor."

"I did not intend any reflection on the Mayor," answered Dr. Shaw with

a quiet smile, "but I think he showed excellent judgment."

The Chicago Woman's Club of over a thousand members, a recognized

force in the great city, sent its greetings through its president,

Mrs. Gertrude E. Blackwelder. Mrs. Minnie E. Watkins, as president of

the State Federation of Women's Clubs, gave a welcome in the name of

its membership of 294 clubs and told of the increasing growth of

suffrage sentiment among them. "Through the work of our Industrial,

Civil Service and Legislative Committees," she said, "we have learned

our need of the ballot." The Rev. Charles R. Henderson, Professor of

Sociology, an earnest suffragist, welcomed the convention, saying in

part:

As I am to represent the University of Chicago, it will not do

for me to make a speech on either side. No one person can

represent the sentiments of four hundred men, who all the time

are in an attitude of friendly hostility to anything that comes

up. I think, however, there is one point of sympathy with us who

are engaged in the work of investigation, trying to get beyond

the frontier of present knowledge of all the sciences. It is

this: As soon as anything comes to be in the possession of the

majority, it loses interest for us; as long as there is something

to do, we are interested in it. When the effort for woman

suffrage is a thing of the past, then the people will take care

of it. Our duty is to make the public sentiment and let some one

else put it into legal form....

They say that women cannot manage the great questions of

government. That has yet to be submitted to the final scientific

test of experiment. As a matter of fact, today the one highest,

finest, noblest task of society, if not of government, is the

task of education and the inculcation of religion and of ideals;

and in this land, which in most respects leads all lands, woman

has the first word in this matter, as hers is the strongest and

the wisest word, and her influence, her thought and her character

lead upward and on. I need not, in this presence, argue the

question.

I do not speak merely for the University of Chicago. I am proud

to belong to a university of letters, a republic that has its

branches in all parts of the civilized world. And I am glad that,

from the time I started to learn to read, in my own education in

this Middle West, from my childhood with my mother, through the

church, the Sunday school, the elementary and secondary schools,

the college and now the university, I have seen women side by

side with men, sharing the same teaching and having the same

teachers. That is what we stand for in the Middle West.... The

foundation of our institutions throughout the West is this

fundamental law, not to be changed, that if there is any

advantage to be had, women shall have it now and forever.

Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, national recording secretary, and Miss

Jane Campbell, secretary of the Pennsylvania Association, responded.

The Hon. Oliver W. Stewart spoke on The Logic of Popular Government.

He pointed out that there has been a steady movement of mankind toward

government by the people for the people and said in part:

In our own country we can see this growth clearly. Take the

election of the President. There was at first no thought that the

people should elect him but do you not see how quickly they

assimilated the machinery which was provided? We have not changed

the machinery but we have changed the spirit, so that instead of

the electoral college deliberating and choosing a President, it

is scarcely more than a stenographer to take the dictation of the

public. The people have absorbed the power themselves, and you

can write it as true that they do not surrender any power which

they have acquired as the result of their own struggles. If any

change should come it would be to give the people a more direct

voice rather than a more indirect voice. Take the change in the

convention system toward direct primaries. Do you not see how, in

spite of politicians, the people have been writing direct primary

laws? It is a part of the general movement toward popular

government....

There is a steady drift in this direction the world over and it

would be an anomalous condition if that movement could exist and

there could be at the same time a retrograde movement as to the

rights of women.... I have grown philosophical with reference to

the temporary defeats that we suffer. The thing to do is to

commiserate those who bring about the defeats. I look at the

black disgrace with which they will live in history who said they

would die for their own rights and yet were tyrants enough to

deny the rights of others.... The hour is quickly coming when the

genius of our government, where it is true to itself, will have

to give the ballot to womankind. May that day come speedily!

This was Dr. Shaw's 60th birthday and many pleasant references had

been made to it by the delegates. She began her president's address by

saying: "We have never before been more enthusiastic than today.

Victory has not come in the United States but we are not working for

ourselves alone. Wherever freedom comes to any woman that is our

victory and when the new constitution of Finland granted absolute

equality to its woman citizens, that was our victory." Municipal

suffrage had been given to the women of Natal, South Africa, she said:

"and now at the foot of Mt. Ararat, where the ark rested, the

Catholicos, or High Priest of that conservative people and religion,

the Armenians, has issued an edict that the women of the church shall

not only have a voice in the election of its officers but also shall

be eligible to official position." She referred to the recent defeat

of the suffrage amendment in Oregon and said: "All honor to those

37,000 men who voted for it; their descendants will not be ashamed of

their fathers' act. There are today organizations of Sons and

Daughters of the American Revolution and there will some day be one of

'Sons and Daughters of the Evolution of Women's Freedom,' but there

will never be one of the Tories who fought against that Revolution or

this Evolution," and she continued:

This year I took for my motto those splendid words: "Truth loses

many battles but always wins its war." We did not win save as

those who fight for the truth are always the people who win.

There never was, there never will be greater defeat in any human

life than the victory which comes to the man or woman who is

fighting against the truth, and there never can be a greater

victory to any human soul than the fact that it is fighting for

the truth, whether it wins or not.... This has been a year of

victory in that more women have been enfranchised than in any

preceding year. We have the largest membership that we have ever

had. We come together in hope and in the firm determination that

we will fight it out on this line if it takes all summer and all

the summers of our life, and then the battle will not be finished

unless the victory is absolutely won for all women.... While we

have cause to rejoice we have also cause for sorrow. As an

organization it has been the saddest year we have known or ever

can know, for there has gone out from among us the visible

presence of her who was our leader for over fifty years, and I

have just come with others directly from the home in Rochester

where we attended the funeral services of the dear sister Mary,

who was the first of the two to enter the movement and was always

the faithful co-worker and home-maker. Both have folded their

hands in rest since our last convention. Each gave her whole life

to the cause of woman and each in passing away left all she had

to this cause. The sorrow is ours, the peace and the triumphal

reward of loving service are theirs. I hope we shall spend no

time in mourning and turning to the past but with our faces

toward the future, strengthened by the inspiration we have

received from our great leader, go on fighting her battle and

God's battle until the complete victory is won.

With two exceptions this was the only national convention during the

thirty-nine years that had not been animated by the presence of Miss

Anthony and the second day--February 15, her 87th birthday--was

largely devoted to her.[50] There were three reports on Memorials. One

was presented by Mrs. May Wright Sewall (Ind.) for the Executive

Committee of the National Council of Women and contemplated a bust to

be executed in marble by the sculptor, Adelaide Johnson, who had made

the one in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. A second was presented

by Mrs. Mary T. Lewis Gannett of Rochester, N. Y., for an Anthony

Memorial Building for the women students of the university of that

city, who had been admitted largely through the effort of Miss

Anthony. [Life and Work, page 1221.] A third was for a $100,000

Memorial Fund for the work of the National American Association. The

report of the committee for this third fund, which was presented by

Mrs. Avery, stated that the nearness of success for woman suffrage now

depended on securing the money to do the necessary work of propaganda,

organization, publicity, etc., and that the most fitting memorial to

Miss Anthony would be a fund of not less than $100,000 to be used

exclusively for "the furtherance of the woman suffrage cause in the

United States in such amounts and for such purposes as the general

officers of the association shall from time to time deem best." It

also provided that the officers should be permitted to select eleven

women to act as trustees of this fund, six of whom should be from the

official board. This report was unanimously adopted. Mrs. Upton, the

national treasurer, at once appealed for pledges and the delegates

responded with about $24,000. The business committee of the

association elected as its six members Dr. Shaw, Mrs. Avery, Mrs.

Upton, Miss Blackwell, Miss Gordon and Miss Clay. Mrs. Henry Villard

of New York; Mrs. Pauline Agassiz Shaw of Boston and Miss Jane Addams

of Chicago were the only others selected.[51]

According to the custom for a number of years Miss Lucy E. Anthony was

requested to present in the name of the association framed portraits

of Miss Anthony to various institutions--in this instance to Hull

House and the Chicago Political Equality League. Telegrams were

received from the Mayor of Des Moines, Ia.; from the Utah Council of

Suffrage Women; from the Interurban Woman Suffrage Council of Greater

New York, saying they had observed the day by opening headquarters,

and from a number of other sources telling that the birthday was being

celebrated in ways that would have been pleasing to Miss Anthony.

The evening memorial services were beautiful and impressive. Mason

Slade at the organ rendered the great chorus--Guilmant;

Cantilene--Wheeldon; Marche Militaire--Schubert. The Rev. Mecca Marie

Varney of Chicago offered prayer. During the evening Miss Marie Ludwig

gave an exquisite harp solo and Mrs. Jennie F. W. Johnson sang with

deep feeling Tennyson's Crossing the Bar, a favorite poem of Miss

Anthony's. A telegram of greeting from the International Woman

Suffrage Alliance was sent through its president, Mrs. Carrie Chapman

Catt. A tribute of an intimate and loving nature was paid by Miss

Emily Howland of Sherwood, a friend of half a century, in which she

said: "The first time I ever met Miss Anthony was at an anti-slavery

meeting in my own shire town of Auburn, N. Y., which was broken up by

a mob and we took refuge with Mrs. Martha Wright, a sister of Lucretia

Mott." She spoke of Miss Anthony's "genius for friendship" and quoted

the lines: "The bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the daring."

Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery gave a number of instances during their

travel in Europe which showed Miss Anthony's strong humanitarianism.