Henry (Tex.) and Mrs. Kelley as to whether Congress has the power to
coerce a State through a Federal Amendment into giving women the right
to vote. Representative Edwin Y. Webb (N. C.) asked if the majority of
women wanted to vote and she answered that there was not the slightest
doubt of it, that as reasoning beings women could not help desiring a
full share in the Government under which they live. Representative
Goebel (O.) said that at any time man might be called on to uphold the
laws and the Constitution and asked: "Do you think that woman is
physically and temperamentally fitted to give any return to the
Government for any privilege she might have in the exercise of her
right as a citizen?" Mrs. Kelley answered: "Yes, I think we have
always done it. We pay taxes, we teach the children to obey the laws,
we fill their hearts with patriotism, but the principal thing is that
we furnish the army at the risk of our own lives. Every time an army
has been called for in the United States it has been the sons of
American women on the whole who have carried the weapons and every son
has been born at the risk of his mother's life. Her service is a very
much greater contribution than the two or three years of the son's
carrying a gun or perhaps dying of typhoid fever while in the
service."
Miss Clay could not keep silent but asked if they realized how much
the order of society depended on the teaching and the restraining
influence of women, on their power to maintain decency of life, not
alone by their presence but also by their high ideals of law and
society. "When they are recognized as voting citizens," she said,
"their idea of civic duty will reach a still higher point and they
will have power to see that it is enforced." Members of the committee
began to bring forward the stock misrepresentations about the voting
of women in Colorado, which called Mr. Rucker to his feet with
statistics to show that women voted in quite as large a proportion as
men; that, instead of men's controlling the women's votes, women often
controlled the men's; that in the hundreds of cases of election frauds
only one or two women had been implicated; that less than 15 per cent.
of the so-called "ostracized" women go to the polls.
In closing Chairman Parker said: "I wish to render the thanks of the
committee for this large and representative audience, which is almost
an American Congress. I am all the more pleased and interested to find
such strong presentations by those whom I might call, possibly without
offense, 'Daughters of the American Congress,' two of whom claim an
acquaintance with this committee that goes back at least as far as any
of us. I wish to offer all of you our thanks for the earnest
consideration that you seem to have given to the great problems,
industrial and social, as well as those of the family, which confront
us all, and in comparison with which the political powers and actions
of this country are but as nothing. Those who think and work for the
good of the family, the home, the workshop, the farm and the school
are those to whom the American Congress always owes its thanks."
* * * * *
Although the speakers who addressed these committees represented the
very highest of American womanhood; although it was conceded that
their arguments had never been exceeded in logic, directness and
force; although there was no doubt that they represented a large
proportion of the women of the country in the homes, colleges,
professions and trades, yet this committee, like that of the Senate,
ignored the petitions and the hearing completely and made no report
whatever, either favorable or unfavorable.
FOOTNOTES:
[65] Part of Call: During the past year women have voted for the first
time in Norway at a Parliamentary election, for the first time in
Denmark at the Municipal elections, for the first time in Victoria at
an election for the State Parliament. This year a woman has been
nominated as a member of the Municipal Council in Paris, a woman is
filling the office of Mayor in one English city and a number are
serving as aldermen in others. In our own country women are voting for
the first time in Michigan on questions of local taxation, while in
Washington, Oregon, South Dakota and Oklahoma, suffrage amendments to
the State constitutions are pending. From Chicago, radiating north,
east, south and west, there is going out an influence which is making
the social settlements centers of political influence. In Spokane, New
York and Baltimore, political settlements are under way. From one of
the great press centers of the world, New York City, suffrage
propaganda is travelling through all civilized countries, and in its
New York headquarters the National American Woman Suffrage Association
is receiving news of an unprecedented rising suffrage sentiment from
men and women belonging to all the great nations of the earth.
Our cause is universal, its majesty is intrinsic, its logic is
unanswerable, its success is sure. Let the women of America come
together in this year 1910 consecrated anew to the superb hope for
humanity which lies in a full democracy.
ANNA HOWARD SHAW, President.
RACHEL FOSTER AVERY, First Vice-President.
FLORENCE KELLEY, Second Vice-President.
FRANCES SQUIRE POTTER, Corresponding Secretary.
ELLA S. STEWART, Recording Secretary.
HARRIET TAYLOR UPTON, Treasurer.
LAURA CLAY, }
ALICE STONE BLACKWELL, } Auditors.
[66] Mrs. Catt's original plan required each State to tabulate the
signers according to their lines of work but this was not fully
carried out. Miss Minnie J. Reynolds, in charge of the Writer's
Section, published a long and interesting report in the _Woman's
Journal_. Simply the names of distinguished writers, men and women,
who had signed, filled a solid column and yet she said: "The work on
this section was absurdly fragmentary. In the city of Washington Miss
Nettie Lovisa White had obtained the names of sixty, including the
most prominent newspaper correspondents."
[67] See History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II, page 91.
[68] Washington ministers who opened various sessions with prayer were
the Reverends U. G. B. Pierce, Samuel H. Woodrow, John Van Schaick and
William I. McKenney.
[69] Names of committee: Present--Representatives Sterling, Moon,
Diekema, Goebel, Denby, Howland, Nye, Clayton, Henry, Brantley, Webb
and Carlin; absent--Terrell, Reid, Malby, Higgins.
CHAPTER XI.
NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1911.
The national convention which met in Louisville, Ky., Oct. 19-25,
1911, might well be called a "jubilee" meeting, for it celebrated two
of the most important victories yet won for woman suffrage in the
United States--the adoption of State amendments by a majority of the
voters in Washington in November, 1910, and in California in October,
1911, giving the same franchise rights to women as possessed by
men.[70] The sessions were held in the large De Molay Commandery Hall
but it was far too small for the evening audiences. This was a new
experience for Louisville but it rose finely to the occasion. A
message to the _Woman's Journal_ said: "Enthusiasm for equal suffrage
runs high in Louisville this week as women from all parts of the
country throng its spacious streets morning, afternoon and evening for
the annual convention.... Altogether it is a most inspiring and
encouraging convention and we are daily excited with news of the good
prospects of more campaign States and more victories in the very near
future.... We all have votes-for-women tags on our baggage, yellow
badges and pins, California poppies and six-star buttons on our
dresses and coats and dainty votes for women butterflies on our
shoulders, and as we go about in dozens or scores or hundreds the
onlookers receive the fitting psychological impression and we find
them thinking of us as victors and conquerors."
The opening of this convention, with Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, the
national president, in the chair, was a proud moment for Miss Laura
Clay, who was one of the organizers of the Kentucky Equal Rights
Association in 1888 and had been continually its president. In her
address of greeting she said:
We welcome you with hearts tender with the remembrance of the
past, when two of the great historic figures which have made this
convention possible gave their labors to Kentucky. In the early
fifties, Lucy Stone, in the vigor and freshness of her lovely
youth and enthusiasm for high ideals, spoke in the cities and
towns on both sides of the Ohio River; and in 1881 she held in
Louisville a convention of the American Woman Suffrage
Association. She established the _Woman's Journal_, which is now
edited, with all the noble moral principles and polished literary
ability which have characterized it throughout, by her daughter,
Alice Stone Blackwell, who is with us today. In 1879 that other
heroic woman, Susan B. Anthony, made a tour through central
Kentucky and left an enduring monument of her visit in the Equal
Rights Association of Richmond, Madison County, which has had the
longest continuous existence of any woman suffrage society in the
State....
We welcome you with hearts strong with hope for the future. The
glorious victories that we have had inspire us and in all the
harbingers of hope we see none greater than the Men's Leagues for
Woman Suffrage. These prove to us that the men of our country are
preparing to extend equal political rights to women, who, since
the time when this vast continent was a wilderness, have stood
side by side with them in the heroic labors which have made it
blossom like the rose with the fairest civilization the world has
ever known. In the great International Alliance Congress at
Stockholm men of many nations formed themselves into a Suffrage
League, and the Men's League of California did grand service in
the glorious victory in their State. This noble land extends from
California across the continent to Virginia where the latest
league of men has just been formed. We see in this generous
cooperation of the men of our nation a better exposition of the
legend on Kentucky's shield, "United we stand, divided we fall,"
when man and woman shall clasp hands and become a truer
realization of the vision of the poet and the patriot.
Mrs. Patty Blackburn Semple, president of the Louisville Woman's Club,
in offering its welcome, said: "When the Woman's Club was organized
three subjects were tabooed--religion, politics and woman suffrage. We
kept to the resolution for awhile but gradually we found that our
efforts in behalf of civic improvements and the correcting of
outrageous abuses were handicapped at every turn by politics. Last
year an appeal came to the Woman's Club--to the women of
Louisville--to take our schools out of politics. It was a gigantic
fight but we won. As the climax of our struggle we spent the greater
part of election day at the polls and I think at the close of that day
every one of us had exhausted all the joys of 'indirect influence,'
which is supposed to satisfy every craving of the female heart. Our
club will be twenty-one years old in November, and--we want to vote!
We will make you most heartily welcome and most of us will also
welcome the principles for which you stand."
Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch (Ills.), first vice-president of the
National Association, in responding said: "Now we know definitely that
all the things we have heard about Kentucky are true; we have met her
brave women and handsome colonels. While we remember all the tradition
of the past we live in the present. Kentucky is proud of what her men
named Clay have done in the past but it is a pleasure to us to know
that today when Kentucky wants anything done she appeals to a woman
who is either Clay by name or Clay by blood." Another chivalry is
coming into the world besides that felt by a strong man for a
beautiful woman. It is that felt by strong women for their weaker and
less fortunate sisters. It is the chivalry foreshadowed by Spenser in
The Faerie Queene, in Britomart, the noble knight, herself a woman, who
rescued Amoretta and devoted herself to the help of all weak and
helpless women."
Assistant District Attorney Omar E. Garwood of Denver, a founder and
the secretary of the Men's Defense League, to refute the
misrepresentations of the practical working of woman suffrage in
Colorado, was introduced and outlined its work. Mrs. Alexander Pope
Humphrey was presented and gave a cordial invitation to a reception
for the convention at her home, Truecastle, at the close of the
afternoon session, which was as cordially accepted. Mrs. Ben Hardin
Helm, a sister of Mrs. Abraham Lincoln, was greeted and expressed her
sympathy with the work of the association.
After these pleasant ceremonies at the morning session the convention
immediately proceeded to business and listened to the reports from the
various committees. That of the new corresponding secretary, Mrs. Mary
Ware Dennett, gave a graphic illustration of the rapid increase in the
size and scope of the work in her department. After describing the
demands from almost every State and saying that the correspondence had
doubled during the past year while the output of literature had
tripled, she continued:
The correspondence with Canada has been very interesting and has
steadily increased and we have sent a good deal of literature to
British Columbia, Ontario and Nova Scotia. Literature and letters
have gone to Switzerland, Finland and even Japan, in answer to
requests, the Japanese correspondent being in the midst of
writing a book on the rights of women, because, as he quaintly
put it, he believed there was "undoubtedly a truth in it." We
have a steadily increasing stream of requests for suitable
programs for study clubs, also a sudden spurt of requests for
suffrage speakers from the Federation of Women's Clubs. The
example of the last Biennial, when woman suffrage appeared for
the first time on the official program of the Federation, has
precipitated almost an epidemic of suffrage meetings in the State
federations and local clubs.
The Official Board of the association has made a serious
recommendation to the State officers to push the plan of
political district organization as the best and most systematic
and reliable way of preparing for the submission of a suffrage
amendment. A leaflet giving the details of the plan has been
published and widely distributed and it has been accepted as
scheduled or in modified form in ten States, in most of which the
name Woman Suffrage Party has been adopted, following the example
of New York City, which was the first to adapt the enrollment
work long ago established by the National Association to the
needs of modern political action.... The National office prepared
reports of the work of the association for the meeting of the U.
S. National Council of Women and for the congress of the
International Suffrage Alliance in Stockholm. We have established
an exchange of propaganda with the International Shop in London.
At the suggestion of Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt we have cooperated
with the Women's Enfranchisement League of Cape Colony, South
Africa, by asking a large number of American women writers to
send copies of their books to an exhibition and sale there of
women's work.
Since our last convention there have been two annual meetings of
the House of Governors, the first in Kentucky, at which Miss
Laura Clay obtained a hearing and presented our cause in a most
admirable address; the second in New Jersey, at which a hearing
was obtained for Dr. Shaw, who was accorded every courtesy and
received with heartiest enthusiasm by the Governors and
afterwards by their wives. In Kentucky Governor Wilson was
largely instrumental in securing the hearing; in New Jersey,
although the governor is also a Wilson, he is unfortunately an
"anti," but by the efforts of Governor Shafroth of Colorado, a
place on the program was made for Dr. Shaw.
Two valuable compilations have been made, one showing how many
times and when and what sort of suffrage bills have been
introduced into Legislatures in the last ten years, and the other
showing the exact procedure necessary for amending the
constitutions of the various States. Under the direction of Mrs.
Catharine Waugh McCulloch, our legal adviser, a series of
questions on the legal status of women has been printed and sent
with letters to the various States. The returns will be published
in pamphlet form. At the suggestion of Miss Clay, letters were
sent to all members of Congress urging their effort to include
women as electors in the bill providing for the direct election
of U. S. Senators. Copies of _Hampton's Magazine_ for April were
sent to special lists of people in Wisconsin, Kansas and
California, which contained Mrs. Rheta Childe Dorr's article on
Colorado Women Voters.
We have published 30,000 copies of the "What to Do" leaflet,
which have been sent out gratis, some States applying for 3,000
at once; California sent for 10,000 and evidently learned "What
to Do" effectively. We issued 45,000 of the little convention
seals and the supply has hardly held out. The drawing for the
seal was the contribution of Miss Charlotte Shetter of New
Jersey. Through the equally generous cooperation of Mrs. Helen
Hoy Greeley of New York we have been able to give free of charge
for use on letters 13,000 "suffrage stamps." Another bit of
cooperation in both labor and money was that between headquarters
and Mrs. Raymond Brown, president of the Woman Suffrage Study
Club, who with members of her association addressed and sent to
about a thousand presidents of suffrage clubs all over the
country two copies of Miss Blackwell's striking editorial in
answer to Richard Barry's slanderous statements about Colorado,
together with a note asking each president to send one copy to
the editor of the _Ladies' Home Journal_, in which Barry's
article had appeared, with her own personal protest, and the
other to the editor of some paper in her vicinity. The result was
a perfect avalanche of protests to the editor of the unfortunate
magazine.
The treasurer's report was divided between Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton,
who had resigned the office, and Miss Jessie Ashley, her successor,
and it showed the receipts from all sources, January, 1910, to
January, 1911, to have been $43,844; the disbursements, $34,838.
Pledges were made at this convention to the amount of $12,251,
including $1,000 from Mrs. George Howard Lewis of Buffalo; $1,000 from
Mrs. Donald Hooker of Baltimore, and $3,000 by Dr. Shaw from a
contributor not named.
Miss Agnes E. Ryan, business manager of the _Woman's Journal_,
reported the many changes made in the paper during the year since it
became the official organ of the association and the removal of its
offices from Beacon Street to 585 Bolyston Street in the building with
the Massachusetts and Boston woman suffrage associations and the New
England Woman's Club. The advertising had increased from $256 a year
to $852 and the circulation from 4,000 to nearly 15,000. The methods
by which the increase had been obtained were described. The contract
with the association was renewed.
Miss Caroline I. Reilly gave her first report as chairman of the Press
Committee in the course of which she said:
The annual reports of the National Press Bureau formerly made by
Miss Elizabeth J. Hauser, who so long and ably conducted this
department, had reached so high a standard and the foundation
laid by her was so substantial and solid that it was possible for
us to meet the new conditions and increased volume of work with
systematic and business-like methods. Then came Mrs. Ida Husted
Harper, with her literary ability and historical knowledge, to
open a new field for suffrage propaganda through the magazines,
the great syndicates and Sunday papers in the large cities. Thus
you will see that when the present chairman took charge of the
bureau it had been so splendidly developed by her predecessors
that she found only hard work and plenty of it.
During the eighteen months since the last convention the records
show that we have written 5,584 letters. We are in constant
receipt of letters from all over the world written in various
languages, the majority containing inquiries regarding suffrage
methods in this country and what has been accomplished by our
enfranchised women.... We have furnished material for one hundred
magazine articles, which have appeared in various periodicals....
Our list of newspaper syndicates has increased to nine, some of
which are international, and since the last convention we have
furnished them 1,314 articles, many by special request. Every
one of these syndicates asked for detailed accounts of this
convention, together with personal sketches of the officers and
speakers. The Associated Press has sent out suffrage news as
occasion warranted and has solicited our cooperation.... Last
December we resumed the weekly press bulletin and since then we
have mailed 31,200. These weekly items are regularly mailed to
press chairmen and newspapers in forty-one States, also to
Canada, Alaska and Cuba, and every day brings requests for more.
A number of monthly pamphlets issued by women's clubs use them.
Papers devoted to the labor movement publish them regularly and
very often give helpful suggestions. The bureau is impressed with
the fact that in future the farm papers should receive serious
consideration.... One of these, with a circulation of nearly
400,000 has offered us space for suffrage articles to be supplied
regularly and this work should be carefully looked after,
especially in agricultural States like Kansas and Wisconsin,
where campaigns are now in progress.
We have responded to fifty requests from schools and colleges for
information to be utilized in debates, lectures and school
magazines.... The records show that we have replied to 1,214
adverse editorials and letters in papers from Maine to California
and secured space in New York City papers for 2,163 notices and
articles without any charge to us. We have received and read
62,519 clippings gathered for us by the press clipping bureau,
9,163 of them cut from New York papers alone. Representatives of
newspapers and magazines from the following countries have come
to us for material: Australia, Finland, Alaska, France, Germany,
England, Sweden, Norway, Japan, Wales, Denmark, Russia, Italy,
Mexico, Spain, Holland, Hawaii, South America and Canada, as well
as from nearly every State in the Union. A number of Sunday
papers in the large cities are devoting weekly space to suffrage
departments, beginning by publishing the press items and
gradually expanding.... Some of the more serious magazines have
recently solicited our cooperation, notably the _Literary Digest_
and the _American Review of Reviews_, whose political editor
called personally a few days ago and requested that we send him
regularly such suffrage news as we may have at hand, that the
items may be embodied in reports of the world's political news.
Another important feature of the work of the bureau consists in
furnishing material to press chairmen and others to be used in
answering attacks on suffrage in their local papers.
Miss Reilly complimented the work of the press chairmen in the States,
speaking especially of Mrs. D. D. Terry of Little Rock, who furnished
material to seventy-five papers in Arkansas and to a syndicate
reaching the weekly papers of the southwest.
A conference was held in the afternoon on the Proper Function of the
National Association, led by Dr. M. Carey Thomas of Bryn Mawr and Dr.
Anna E. Blount of Chicago. The first evening of the convention was
designated as Jubilee Night and Dr. Shaw said in beginning her
president's address: "The eighteen months which have elapsed since our
last convention have been permeated with suffrage activity. Never in
an equal length of time has there been such rapid progress in the
enlistment of recruits and the development of active service. By an
aggressive out-of-door campaign the message has been carried to a not
unwilling people. Never was there a more signal example of manly
loyalty to womanhood than in the three-to-one vote for woman suffrage
in Washington in 1910. Following close upon it comes the signal
victory of California, where as never before were the friends and foes
of woman's freedom so equally lined up. Wherever vice, corruption and
cupidity held sway, there the vote for woman suffrage was weak.
Wherever refinement, education, industry and self-respecting manhood
and womanhood dwelt, there the vote in favor of women was strong.
These are the battles in this war for justice which have been
victorious. Others have been and are being fought at the present time
with equal courage."
Graphic accounts were given of the successful campaign in Washington,
where the amendment was carried in every county, by Mrs. Caroline M.
Smith of Seattle, Mrs. E. A. Shores of Tacoma and Mrs. May Arkwright
Hutton of Spokane; and of the one in California by Mrs. Elizabeth Lowe
Watson, president of the State Suffrage Association, and J. H. Braly,
president of the Political Equality League. Later Miss Frances Wills
of Los Angeles; Miss Florence Dwight of Pasadena; Mrs. Mary E.
Ringrose, Mrs. Mary S. Sperry of San Francisco, former State
president, and Mrs. Rose French were introduced. Mrs. Watson in an
eloquent address showed how their success was the culmination of the
campaign of 1896 and the result of the years of hard and constant work
between that time and the present.
When Mr. Braly began speaking he presented, the association with the
State flag of California, saying: "The grizzly bear is the king of all
American beasts. On the flag, you see, he has a beautiful golden star
above his head--the star of hope that brought our Pilgrim fathers
across the sea finally coming to rest over the Golden State. There
that star of hope and progress and freedom hung for more than sixty
years, until Oct. 10, 1911, when it flamed forth with a wondrous
brilliancy and started all the bells of heaven ringing." He predicted
that Oregon, Arizona and Nevada would soon follow the example of
California and said: "Then the star will cross the Rocky Mountains and
in will come the States of the Middle West!" Continuing the story the
speaker said:
In January, 1910, the last meeting of the last suffrage society
in Southern California was held in the parlor of the Angeles
Hotel in the city of Los Angeles. The women were discouraged and
dispirited. I rode home alone in my car, my heart weeping and
praying a prayer ten miles long, that being the distance to my
home in Pasadena. That night I had a vision. I saw in panorama a
future glory of my beloved State. I saw well-kept cities and
churches filled with devout worshippers; I saw thousands of
bright-faced, happy children going to clean schoolhouses and
romping and laughing in their playgrounds. I saw, oh, so many
sweet and happy homes! I saw no saloons, no drunken men, no
places of vice. I saw men and women, husbands and wives, going up
to the ballot booths, laughing and chatting as they went and
placing their ballots in the boxes. Everything seemed beautiful.
The vision passed and I said to myself, "There it is--the women
of California will have the ballot and the blessings and glory
will follow."
Now we come to the beginning of the movement that has had much to
do in the enfranchisement of the women of California. I trust you
will entirely lose sight of the speaker and see only the great
cause away out in the West. A man sat in his room one night with
pencil and paper before him. He began to write names of big men
who ought to take an interest in the pending suffrage campaign.
He wrote down about one hundred names and the next day started
out alone to see them. Then followed two months of patient,
personal work and about seventy good men and true had signed the
league membership form, which read as follows: "The undersigned
hereby associate themselves together under the name and style of
the Political Equality League of California for the purpose of
securing political equality and suffrage without distinction on
account of sex." On April 5, 1910, they met around a banquet
table and organized the league. Then followed earnest,
enthusiastic, impromptu speaking by many of the members....
Mr. Braly told of going to Washington to the national convention,
visiting suffrage headquarters in New York and returning home in June,
when "immediately the league's Board of Governors, consisting of nine
men, met and proceeded to add to it nine splendid women. Headquarters
were fitted up and business began." He described the vigorous work of
their Legislative Committee with the result that every member from the
nine southern counties went to the Legislature pledged to vote for
submitting a suffrage amendment.
Saturday morning was partly occupied by a conference on How to Reach
the Uninterested, in which fifteen members from as many States took an
animated part; and by one on Propaganda, led by Mrs. Grace Gallatin
Seton (Conn.) and Miss Mary Winsor (Penn.). Throughout all the daytime
sessions valuable and interesting reports on the work in the different
States were read. The proposed new constitution was vigorously
discussed whenever the time permitted. The delegation from Illinois
came with a request that the national headquarters be removed to
Chicago but the convention decided to have them remain in New York.
The College Equal Suffrage League held a business meeting in the
Seelbach Hotel at ten o'clock followed by a luncheon for college and
professional women. The president of the League, Dr. M. Carey Thomas,
president of Bryn Mawr College, was toast mistress and Dr. Shaw and
Miss Jane Addams were guests of honor. One especially enjoyable
feature was Miss Anita C. Whitney's account of the excellent work done
by the College League of California in the recent campaign. [For all
the above California reports see chapter for that State in Volume VI.]
The report of the National Congressional Committee by its chairman,
Miss Emma M. Gillett, a lawyer of Washington, D. C., showed a decided
advance in political work over all preceding years. She had placed on
her committee Mrs. Upton, Mrs. Elizabeth King Ellicott (Md.), Miss
Mary Gray Peck (N. Y.), Mrs. Katharine Reed Balentine (Me. and Cal.)
and Miss Belle Kearney (Miss.). State presidents were invited to
cooperate and lists of the nominees for Congress in their States were
sent to them. The Democratic National Committee furnished the names of
its nominees; the Republican National Committee practically refused to
do so. Letters asking their opinion on woman suffrage were sent to 378
Democratic and 293 Republican candidates; 135 of the former and 88 of
the latter answered; 93 Democrats and 65 Republicans were in favor of
full or partial suffrage for women; 13 of the former and one of the
latter were opposed; 29 and 23 non-committal. The letters received
were almost without exception of a pleasant nature. The District
Suffrage Association paid a stenographer and rent of headquarters for
the work of sixteen months. Contributions of only $214 were received
for it, $100 from U. S. Senator Isaac Stevenson of Wisconsin.
The report on official endorsements of conventions showed the usual
large number, political, religious, agricultural, labor, etc. Mrs.
Dennett estimated that such endorsements had now been given by
organizations representing 26,000,000 members.
Mrs. Pauline Steinem, chairman of the Committee on Education, reported
sub-committees in sixteen States working for suitable text books,
encouraging the placing of women on school boards, organizing mothers'
and parents' clubs, offering prizes for essays on woman suffrage,
encouraging methods of self-government in schools, etc. The chairman
for New Jersey announced that Governor Woodrow Wilson approved of
School suffrage and that State Senator Joseph S. Frelinghuysen,
president of the State Board of Education, recommended it in his last
report.
College Women's Evening, as always, attracted one of the largest
audiences of the week. In the course of an address on What Women Might
Accomplish with the Franchise, Miss Jane Addams said:
Sydney Webb points out that while the wages of British working
men have increased from 50 to 100 per cent. during the past sixty
years the wages of working women have remained stationary. The
exclusion from all political rights of five million working women
in England is not only a source of industrial weakness and
poverty to themselves but a danger to English industry. Working
women can not hope to hold their own in industrial matters where
their interests may clash with those of their enfranchised fellow
workers or employers. They must force an entrance into the ranks
of responsible citizens, in whose hands lies the solution to the
problems which are at present convulsing the industrial world.
Much of the new demand for political enfranchisement arises from
a passionate desire to reform the unsatisfactory and degrading
social conditions which are responsible for so much wrong doing.
The fate of all the unfortunate, the suffering, the criminal, is
daily forced upon woman's attention in painful and intimate ways.
It is inevitable that humanitarian women should wish to vote
concerning all the regulations of public charities which have to
do with the care of dependent children and the Juvenile Courts,
pensions to mothers in distress, care of the aged poor, care of
the homeless, conditions of jails and penitentiaries, gradual
elimination of the social evil, extended care of young girls,
suppression of gambling, regulation of billboard advertising and
other things.
Perhaps the woman who leads the domestic life is more in need of
the franchise than any other. One could easily name the
regulations of the State that define her status in the community.
Among them are laws regulating marriage and divorce, defining the
legitimacy of children, defining married women's property rights,
exemption and homestead laws which protect her when her husband
is bankrupt. Then there are the laws regulating her functions as
mother to her children.
Dr. Thomas, who presided, spoke on What Woman Suffrage Means to
College Women. Only fragmentary newspaper reports are available but
she said in beginning: "We are entering an age of social
reconstruction and general betterment and no class today are spending
more of their strength and energy to eradicate the wrongs which have
resulted from a defective system that denies woman her rights, than
the class of women who have received a college education. These
efforts, however, amount to little as long as the franchise is denied
compared to what is in the reach of possibility. Our efforts have been
rewarded to a great extent but until woman has come into her own and
is recognized and treated as a citizen of the State on an equal
footing with man, our work will continue to be a mere scratching on
the surface. Between 30 and 40 per cent. of the college women today
are supporting themselves. It is the educated woman who is making the
fight for equality and our hope lies in education, the education of
both men and women."
Dr. Shaw presided over the Sunday afternoon meeting at which four
notable addresses were made. Miss Mary Johnston's subject was Wanted,
an Architect, and in eloquent words she showed how woman might be
developed physically, mentally and spiritually, with the conclusion:
"She can do what she wills and now the thing above all others to be
desired is that she wills to act. The time has passed when
indifference on her part will be tolerated. Women must rouse
themselves to action, the crying needs of the hour demand it. With the
ballot in our hands and with the will to produce better conditions our
achievements will be unsurpassed." Professor Sophonisba Breckinridge,
dean of the Junior College of Women in Chicago University, considered
with keen analysis woman suffrage in its relation to the interests of
the wage-earning woman. The Rev. Caroline Bartlett Crane (Mich.)
presented A New Phase of Home Rule for Cities, saying in conclusion:
"Politics at its best is a noble profession in which we earnestly
desire to engage. Woman's age-long experience in home-making and
mothering of children has fitted her for politics just as well as have
man's activities in trade fitted him."
Dr. Shaw introduced Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, Chief of the Government
Bureau of Chemistry, as "the man who is trying to get us women a fair
chance to live," and he jokingly answered that in view of the swift
advance of the woman suffrage movement it was a question whether men
would continue to have a chance to live. His topic was Woman's
Influence in Public Affairs, "which," he said, "are the summing up of
private affairs." In his address he said:
I am not a newcomer myself. My first suffrage address was made in
1877. I believe it is almost useless to work on us old folks. The
reforms in our politics and ethics must begin with the children.
Educate them to the right and justice of woman suffrage even
before they are born. Instill the idea in them at school; see
that they get the proper kind of an education. Women have done
wonders in securing our splendid system of public schools....
Women have intellect enough and some to spare. What we want is
more ethics. A sense of justice and right is just as important to
this country as intellectual strength. Women have the instinct of
right. I have never known an organized body of women to be on the
wrong side of a public question, although as individuals women
sometimes get the wrong point of view, just as men are prone to
do. I want equal suffrage because it is right. I want it also
because it would have a great effect on woman's influence in
public affairs and would help powerfully to get the right thing
done. The very fact that woman had the vote would be a
restraining and elevating influence. The women have been a tower
of strength to every official in this country who has tried to do
his duty. Take the question of pure food: I could tell you by the
hour of the support that I have had from women and women's
organizations. I should despair if I thought that the women did
not stand for pure food.
We have in this country problems which I almost fear to face.
Among them is the great problem of the relation between the
wage-earner and the capitalist; that of the distribution of the
necessities of life; that of the congestion in the cities and
depopulation of the country districts. These and many others will
take all the wisdom and sympathetic insight of men and women
together to solve them. I am glad that men are to have the help
of women. They are just entering on their career of greater
usefulness in public affairs. With the ballot in their hands they
will be endowed with a power much stronger than they have ever
had before and they will wield it, I am sure, on the side of
right and justice.
Sunday evening the officers of the association were "at home" to
delegates, speakers and friends in the parlors of the Hotel Seelbach.
Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, who, to the great happiness of suffragists
on several continents, had entirely recovered her health, was now
making a trip around the world in the interest of the International
Woman Suffrage Alliance, of which she was president. At one session a
letter from her was read, dated at Kimberly, South Africa, which was
enthusiastically received. It said in part:
At the very moment that you will be planning the work for the
sixty-third year of the American suffrage campaign, the
suffragists of this new-east of all nations will be sitting in
their first national convention at Durban, the metropolis of
Natal. The movement here is young but is wholly unlike the
beginnings of the campaigns in England and America, for our
revered pioneers fought their battle against the prejudice and
intolerance of their time for the women of the whole world. These
women are beginning at the very point where we of the older
movements find ourselves today. The old-time arguments are not
heard and here, as everywhere, expediency and political advantage
are the causes of opposition.
No two cities could be more unlike than Louisville and Durban.
The latter lies in a tropical country with its buildings buried
in masses of luxuriant and brilliant flora, all unfamiliar to
American eyes. The delegates will look out upon the placid waters
of the Indian Ocean and will ride to and fro from their meetings
in rickshas drawn by Zulus in the most fantastic dress
imaginable, the chief feature being long horns bound upon the
head. In Louisville it will be autumn, in Natal it will be
spring. Yet, dissimilar as are the scenes of these two
conventions, the women composing them will be actuated by the
same motives, inspired by the same hopes and working to the same
end. The rebellion fomented in that little Seneca Falls
convention has overspread the wide earth and from the frigid
lands above the North Polar Circle to the most southerly point of
the Southern Temperate Zone, the mothers of our race are
listening to the new call to duty which these new times are
uttering. It is glorious to be a suffragist today, with all the
hard times behind us and certain victory before.
May wisdom guide us to do the right thing; may love unite us; may
charity temper our differences and may we never forget the
obligations we owe the blessed pathfinders of our movement who
made the present position of our cause possible!
The election resulted in several changes in the board of officers. Dr.
Shaw was re-elected. Mrs. McCulloch declined to stand for re-election
as first vice-president and Miss Gordon as second and Miss Addams and
Professor Breckinridge were chosen. For corresponding secretary Mrs.
Dennett was re-elected. Mrs. Stewart withdrew as recording secretary
and Mrs. Susan W. Fitzgerald (Mass.) was elected. Miss Ashley was
re-elected treasurer. Mrs. Robert M. LaFollette was elected first
auditor and Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw (N. Y.) second. Later Mrs.
LaFollette declined to serve and Mrs. Katharine Dexter McCormick was
appointed by the board.
In all preceding conventions there had been such unanimity in the
choice of officers that the secretary had been able to cast the
informal ballot for the election. This new division of sentiment was
frequently illustrated during the meetings and indicated that an
element had come into the movement, which, as usual with newcomers,
wanted a change to accord with its ideas. This was particularly
noticeable in the discussion of the proposed new constitution but the
differences of opinion were peaceably adjusted by compromise.
After the election Mrs. McCormick, who had recently come into close
touch with the National Association, spoke on the Effect of Suffrage
Work on Women Themselves, saying in part: "So much attention has been
given to the growth and development of the movement for woman suffrage
that the effect on the women themselves has been lost sight of or has
been little considered but today it is becoming clear that the cause
of suffrage is more valuable to the individual woman than she is to
the cause. The reason is that this movement has the great though
silent force of evolution behind it, impelling it slowly forward;
whereas the individual is largely dependent for her development on her
own powers and especially on those expressions of life with which she
brings herself into contact. The woman suffrage movement offers the
broadest field for contact with life. It offers cooperation of the
most effective kind with others; it offers responsibility in the life
of the community and the nation; it offers opportunity for the most
varied and far-reaching service. To come into contact with this
movement means to some individuals to enter a larger world of thought
than they had known before; to others it means approaching the same
world in a more real and effective way. To all it gives a wider
horizon in the recognition of one fact--that the broadest human aims
and the highest human ideals are an integral part of the lives of
women."
The report of the Committee on Church Work by its chairman, Mrs. Mary
E. Craigie, (N. Y.) began: "It is estimated that there is in the
United States a total church membership of 34,517,317 persons. It
would mean a great deal to the woman suffrage cause if this great
organized force, representing the most thoughtful and influential men
and women of every community, could be brought to endorse it and work
for it. The experiences of this committee seem to prove that in the
transition taking place in the world of religious thought this is the
most propitious time to obtain such support." She gave a resume of the
splendid work that had been done by the branch committees in the
various States, the religious gatherings that had been addressed,
often resulting in the adoption of a resolution for woman suffrage,
and the hundreds of letters sent to ministers asking for sermons
favorable to the cause, which were many times complied with. She
closed by saying: "It needs neither figures nor argument to establish
the fact that church attendance and church worship are in a condition
of decline. It is a critical period in the history of the church,
which is changing from the exercise of power to the employment of
influence, and the appeals that are coming to the churches are for
service from the men and women who are their real strength. The church
is not appreciating the resources that are lying dormant, when
two-thirds of its membership--the women--are left powerless to carry
on the moral and social reform work, because, as a disfranchised class
having no political status, they are not counted as a potential
force."
Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates (R. I.), chairman, made the report on
Presidential suffrage. The report of the Committee on Peace and
Arbitration, Mrs. Lucia Ames Mead (Mass.), chairman, spoke of the Ginn
Endowment of a million dollars for the World's Peace Foundation and of
Mr. Carnegie's great gift of ten million dollars, creating a fund to
secure the peace of the world. It told of the vast work that was being
done for peace by the women in the various States and said: "The world
for the first time has seen the head of a great government declare
that all questions between nations can be peacefully settled.
President Taft's noble effort to secure treaties with other nations,
to ensure arbitration between them of every justiciable question,
should command the gratitude of every patriotic woman. I had hoped to
felicitate you on the ratification of these treaties by the necessary
two-thirds of the Senate, but in chagrin and disappointment I must
instead appeal to you to endeavor instantly to create such public
sentiment as shall result in December in the acceptance of the
treaties without amendment. If they are thus ratified they will be
secured not only with Great Britain and France but certainly Germany,
and I have no doubt Japan and most other nations will agree to
identical treaties."
Miss Florence H. Luscomb (Mass.) gave an interesting report of the
Sixth Congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance held in
Stockholm in June, 1911. [See chapter on the Alliance.] Mrs. Agnes M.
Jenks, proxy for the president of the New Hampshire association, asked
assistance in getting a clause for woman suffrage in the new
constitution to be made for that State. Conferences were held
throughout the week on legislative work, district organization,
publicity, raising money and other branches of the vast activities of
the association. The convention Monday afternoon adjourned early in
order that the members might enjoy the hospitality of the Woman's Club
of Louisville at a "tea" in their attractive rooms, and at another
time take the beautiful Riverside Drive. One evening was devoted to
light entertainment with two suffrage monologues by Miss Marjorie
Benton Cooke; a suffrage slide talk by Mrs. Fitzgerald; a clever
speech portraying the results if women voted, by Miss Inez Milholland
(N. Y.) and the sparkling play, How the Vote Was Won, read by Miss
Fola La Folette. A striking address was given one afternoon by Mrs. T.
P. O'Connor, an American woman but long a resident of England and
Ireland, who took for her subject, Let Our Watchword be Unity.
One of the most valuable contributions to the convention was Mrs.
McCulloch's report as Legal Adviser. This was the result of a list of
forty-four questions sent to presidents of State suffrage
associations, Woman's Christian Temperance Unions, Federations of
Clubs and leading lawyers, followed up by many letters. One of these
questions related to the guardianship of children, of which she said:
The subject of the guardianship of children could have been
treated a century ago in a few words. The father of the
legitimate child was his sole guardian and the mother had no
authority or right concerning their child except such as the
husband gratuitously allowed her. She had, however, all the
duties which the husband might put upon her. This meant that the
husband decided about the children's food, clothing, medicine,
school, church, home, associates, punishments, pleasures and
tasks and that he alone could apprentice a child, could give him
for adoption and control his wages. Many mothers were kept in
happy ignorance of such unjust laws because their husbands
voluntarily yielded to them much of the authority over the
children but this was not so in all families and many mothers
took cases to Supreme Courts, protesting against the absolute
paternal power. When mothers learned what this sole guardianship
meant they urged legal changes. Our present guardianship laws,
very few alike, show how women, each group alone in their own
States, have struggled to mitigate the severest evils of sole
fatherly guardianship, especially of the child's person. This to
mothers was more important than the guardianship of the child's
property.
Perhaps the greatest suffering came from the father's power to
deed or to bequeath the guardianship to a stranger and away from
the mother. Most of the States now allow a surviving mother the
sole guardianship of the child's person with certain conditions.
Six States have not yet thus limited the father's power and in
those where the guardianship is not specifically granted to the
surviving mother, the father's sole power of guardianship covers
his child even if yet unborn.
The report gave a thorough digest of these guardianship laws filling
eight printed pages and this and Mrs. McCulloch's digest of other laws
were printed in the _Woman's Journal_ and the Handbook of the
convention.
Miss Alice Henry presented greetings from the National Womens' Trade
Union League; Miss Caroline Lowe from the Women's National Committee
of the Socialist Party; Mrs. A. M. Harrison from the State Federation
of Woman's Clubs; Mrs. Charles Campbell of Toronto from the Canadian
Woman Suffrage Association; Mrs. W. S. Stubbs, wife of the Governor,
and Mrs. William A. Johnston, wife of the Chief Justice and president
of the State Suffrage Association, from Kansas. A letter of love and
good wishes with regrets for her absence was ordered sent to Mrs. Catt
and one of affectionate sympathy to Mrs. Susan Look Avery (Ky.) for
the death of her son, which prevented her attendance. During the
convention Mrs. Lida Calvert Obenchain, author of Aunt Jane of
Kentucky, and Miss Eleanor Breckenridge, president of the Texas
Suffrage Association, were introduced and said a few words. A telegram
of greeting was read from Mrs. Caroline Meriwether Goodlett, a founder
of the Daughters of the Confederacy.
The resolutions were presented by the chairman, Miss Bertha Coover,
corresponding secretary of the Ohio Suffrage Association, the
committee as usual consisting of one member from each State
delegation. They urged the ratification of the Arbitration Treaties in
the form desired by President Taft; expressed sympathy with Finland in
its struggle for liberty; endorsed the proposed Federal Amendment for
the election of U. S. Senators by popular vote and demanded that women
should have part in this vote; endorsed the campaign for pure food and
drugs; called for the same moral standard for men and women and the
same legal penalties for those who transgress the moral law; asked the
Government to erect a colossal statue of Peace at the entrance to the
Panama Canal, and there were others on minor points. Greetings and
appreciation were sent to "the justice-loving men of Washington and
California, whose example will be an inspiration to the men of other
States." Memorial resolutions were adopted for prominent suffragists
who had died during the year, among them Thomas Wentworth Higginson,
Dr. Emily Blackwell, Ellen C. Sargent, William A. Keith, the artist;
Samuel Walter Foss, the poet; Lillian M. Hollister, Elizabeth Smith
Miller, Eliza Wright Osborne and Dr. Annice Jeffreys Myers.
There was a long resolution of thanks for the courtesy and hospitality
received in Louisville, which included the clergymen who opened the
sessions with prayer, the musicians, who gave their services, the
press committees, the hostesses and others.[71]
On the last evening with a large audience present Mrs. Desha
Breckinridge spoke on The Prospect for Woman Suffrage in the South.
"Although Kentuckians are wont to boast that within these borders is
the purest Anglo-Saxon blood now existing, the spirit of their
ancestors has departed," she said, and continued:
Since 1838 Kentucky has retrograded. An effort to obtain School
suffrage for a larger class of women has brought about a
reactionary measure. Kentucky women at present have no greater
political rights than the women of Turkey--for we have none at
all--but the action of certain male politicians in defeating the
School suffrage measure in the last two Legislatures has really
been of advantage to the movement. It has put not only women but
the progressive men of the State into fighting trim.... The
opposition of the non-progressive element has made of this "scrap
of suffrage" a live, political issue. It is likely to be carried
in the next Legislature by the determination of the better men of
the State even more than of the women, and the fight made against
it has gone far to convince both that the full franchise should
be granted to women. The action of the Democratic party, when
leadership in it is resumed by the best element, shows a
realization that the wishes of the women of the State are to be
reckoned with and that the friendship of the women, which may be
gained by so simple an act of justice in their favor, is a
political asset of no small importance. It is quite possible that
the party in Kentucky and throughout the South may eventually
realize that by advocating and securing suffrage for women it may
bind to itself for many years to come, through a sense of
gratitude and loyalty, a large number of women voters, just as
the Republican party since the emancipation of the negro has had
without effort the unquestioning loyalty of thousands of negro
voters; although the women would never vote so solidly as do the
negroes, because they would represent a much more thoughtful and
independent body....
After showing what had been the results in the South from admitting a
great body of illiterate voters she said:
A conference of southern women suffragists at Memphis a few years
ago, in asking for woman suffrage with an educational
qualification, pointed out that there were over 600,000 more
white women in the southern States than there were negroes, men
and women combined. If the literate women of the South were
enfranchised it would insure an immense preponderance of the
Anglo-Saxon over the African, of the literate over the
illiterate, and would make legitimate limitation of the male
suffrage to the literate easily possible....
Conditions of life in the South have made and kept Southerners
individualists. The southern man believes that he should
personally protect his women folk and he does it. He is only now
slowly realizing that, with the coming of the cotton mills and
other manufactories and with the growth of the cities, there has
developed a great body of women, young girls and children who
either have no men folk to protect them or whose men folk,
because of ignorance and economic weakness, are not able to
protect them against the greed and rapacity of employers or of
vicious men. It is a shock to the pride of southern chivalry to
find that women are less protected by the laws in their most
sacred possessions in the southern States than in any other
section of the Union; that the States which protect their women
most effectively are those in which women have been longest a
part of the electorate....
In the community business of caring for the sick, the incurable,
the aged, the orphaned, the deficient and the helpless, women of
the South bear already so important a part that to withdraw them
from public affairs would mean sudden and widespread calamity.
Women in the South are in politics, in the higher conception of
the word. "Politics," says Bernard Shaw, "is not something apart
from the home and the babies--it is home and the babies." Women
have long since gotten into politics in the South in the sense
that they have labored for the passage and enforcement of
legislation in the interest of public health, the betterment of
schools and the protection of womanhood and childhood--for the
preservation, in short, "of home and the babies."
Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst of England, received an ovation when she rose
to speak and soon disarmed prejudice by her dignified and womanly
manner. She began by pointing out the fallacy that the women of the
United States had so many rights and privileges that they did not need
the suffrage and in proof she quoted existing laws and conditions that
called loudly for a change. She then took up the situation in Great
Britain and explained how many years the women had tried to get the
franchise by constitutional methods only to be deceived and spurned by
the Government. She told how at last a small handful of them started a
revolution; how they had grown into an army; how they had suffered
imprisonment and brutality; how the suffrage bill had again and again
passed the second reading by immense majorities and the Government had
refused to let it come to a final vote. "We asked Prime Minister
Asquith to give us a time for this," she said. "For eight long hours
in a heavy frost some of the finest women in England stood at the
entrance to the House of Commons and waited humbly with petitions in
their hands for their rulers and masters to condescend to receive them
but the House adjourned while they stood there. The next day, while
they waited again, there was an assault by the police, acting under
instructions, that I do not like to dwell upon outside of my own
country."
Dr. Shaw made the closing address, eloquent with hope and courage for
the future and, as always, the final blessing at the convention as the
benediction is at church.
In summing up the week the _Woman's Journal_ said: "Only those who
attended our national convention at Louisville can understand how
really wonderful it was. For hospitality, for good management, for
beautiful cooperation and self-effacement, the Kentucky women set a
standard that will long be remembered and will be very hard to equal
in the future. It made hard work easy and all work a joy. The
gratitude of the National Association is theirs forever. They gave
much to us, did we give anything to them? Here we can only say we
trust that we did and accept with confidence what one of the State's
great women said many times: 'This convention has done wonders for
Kentucky; it has surpassed my hopes.'"
FOOTNOTES:
[70] Part of Call: Within the year the State of Washington has
completed its work of fully enfranchising its adult citizens. Before
the convention assembles, California will no doubt have accepted the
idea of true democracy. We also rejoice because the Legislatures of
Kansas, Wisconsin, Oregon and Nevada have voted to submit the question
to their electors. Many States, however, still refuse to allow the
voters to pass upon the question of giving political independence to
women. Since the purpose of the National American Woman Suffrage
Association is "to secure the right to vote to women citizens of the
United States," we have called this national convention of
suffragists. From every State will come delegates, who will bring with
them the growing spirit of rebellion against injustice....
We call upon every public-spirited woman to come and help devise
methods of carrying on the fight, to strengthen the fire of revolt, to
show by overwhelming numbers and determined earnestness that women
will no longer be satisfied to be treated with political contempt by
the legislators who are supposed to represent them.... Do your part to
inspire our workers with courage, determination, fervor and
consecration; to arouse them to put forth their full strength, even to
the utmost sacrifice, to obtain universal recognition of the truth
that every adult citizen should have a voice in the government of a
free country.
ANNA HOWARD SHAW, President.
CATHARINE WAUGH MCCULLOCH, First Vice-President.
KATE M. GORDON, Second Vice-President.
MARY WARE DENNETT, Corresponding Secretary.
ELLA S. STEWART, Recording Secretary.
JESSIE ASHLEY, Treasurer.
LAURA CLAY, }
ALICE STONE BLACKWELL, }Auditors.
[71] Of the press the _Woman's Journal_ said: "The Louisville papers
gave the convention full and fair reports and the _Herald_ and _Times_
had editorials declaring woman suffrage to be inevitable. Colonel
Henry Watterson in the _Courier-Journal_ struggled between a sincere
desire to be courteous and hospitable to a convention of distinguished
women meeting in his city and an equally sincere belief that woman
suffrage would be a bad thing. A rousing editorial in favor of it
appeared in Desha Breckinridge's paper, the _Lexington Leader_.
CHAPTER XII.
NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1912.
The Forty-fourth annual convention, which met in Witherspoon Building,
Philadelphia, Nov. 21-26, 1912, celebrated three important victories.
At the general election in the early part of the month, Oregon,
Arizona and Kansas had amended their constitutions and conferred equal
suffrage on women by large majority votes and the result in Michigan
was still in doubt. It was the sentiment of the country that the
eastward sweep of the movement was now fully under way. There was a
new and vibrant tone in the Call and in the speeches and
proceedings.[72] The _Woman's Journal_ said in its account: "Another
new feature was the enormous crowds that turned out at the convention.
Evening after evening, in conservative Philadelphia, ten or a dozen
overflow meetings had to be held for the benefit of the people who
could not possibly get into the hall. At the Thanksgiving service on
Sunday afternoon, not only was the great Metropolitan Opera House
filled to its capacity but for blocks the street outside was jammed
with a seething crowd, eager to hear the illustrious speakers. It
looked more like an inauguration than like an old-fashioned suffrage
meeting."
There was a great out-door rally in Independence Square at the
beginning, such as had been witnessed many times on this historic spot
conducted by men but never before in the hands of women. Miss
Elizabeth Freeman was manager of this meeting, assisted by Miss Jane
Campbell, the Rev. Caroline Bartlett Crane, Mrs. Camilla von Klenze,
Mrs. Teresa Crowley and Miss Florence Allen. From five platforms over
forty well-known speakers demanded that the principles of the
Declaration of Independence signed in the ancient hall close by should
be applied to women and that the old bell should ring out liberty for
all and not for half the people. Mrs. Otis Skinner read the Women's
Declaration of Rights, which had been written by Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage in 1876 and
presented at the great centennial celebration in that very square,[73]
and a little ceremony was held in honor of Mrs. Charlotte Pierce of
Philadelphia, the only one then living who had signed it, with a
remembrance presented by Mrs. Anna Anthony Bacon.
The convention was noteworthy for the large number of distinguished
speakers on its program. On the opening afternoon, after a moment of
silent prayer in memory of Lucretia Mott, the welcome of the city was
extended by the widely-known "reform" Mayor Rudolph Blankenburg, who
pointed out the vast field of municipal work for women and expressed
his firm conviction of their need for the suffrage. He was followed
with a greeting by Mrs. Blankenburg, a former president of the State
Suffrage Association. Its formal welcome to the delegates was given by
the president, Mrs. Ellen H. Price, who said in part: "We hope that
you will feel at home in Pennsylvania, for the idea that has called
this organization into being--that divine passion for human
rights--actuated the great founder of our Commonwealth in setting up
his 'holy experiment in government.'" After regretting that a State
founded on so broad a conception had not applied it to women Mrs.
Price said:
We welcome you in the name of William Penn, who, antedating the
Declaration of Independence by nearly a century, enunciated in
his Frame of Government the truth that the States of today are
coming very rapidly to acknowledge: "Any Government is free to
the people under it when the laws rule and the people are a party
to those laws; anything more than this (and anything less) is
oligarchy and confusion." We welcome you in the name of our only
woman Governor, Hannah Penn, who, as we are told, for six years
managed the affairs of the infant colony wisely and well.
We welcome you in the name of the patriots who placed on our
Liberty Bell the injunction, "Proclaim Liberty throughout the
Land to all the Inhabitants Thereof"; in the name of those
ancestors of ours (yours and mine) who here gave up their lives
in that struggle to establish the principle that "taxation
without representation is tyranny" for a nation; in the name of
those uncompromising agitators who delivered their message of
liberty even at the risk of life itself, till the shackles fell
from a race enslaved; in the name of Lucretia Mott, that gentle,
that queenly champion of the downtrodden and oppressed, that
inspired preacher whose motto, "Truth for Authority, not
Authority for Truth," should be the watchword of every soul that
seeks for freedom.
We welcome you in the name of the pioneers in the education of
women, of those who gave us the first Medical College for Women,
Ann Preston, Emily Cleveland, Hannah Longshore, whose daughter is
here today--our honorary president, Lucretia L. Blankenburg, wife
of the chief executive of this city, to whose eloquent words of
welcome you have just listened; in the name of the first
president of our State association, of whom the poet Whittier
wrote: "The way to make the world anew is just to grow as Mary
Grew." We welcome you in the name of our national president, the
Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, who, although a citizen of the world,
comes back to her Pennsylvania home to get fresh strength and
courage.
Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw, a national officer, made a graceful response
for the association. Fraternal greetings were given by Mrs. Barsels,
from the Pennsylvania Woman's Christian Temperance Union; by Mrs.
Branstetter of Oklahoma from the National Socialist Party; by Mrs.
Campbell McIvor of Toronto from the Canadian Woman Suffrage
Association and later by Miss Leonora O'Reilly from the New York
Women's Trade Union League.
Miss Laura Clay, chairman of the Membership Committee, announced the
admission of nine new societies to the National Association. There
were 308 delegates in attendance. Mrs. Mary Ware Dennett,
corresponding secretary and chairman of the Literature Committee, said
in the course of her report:
We are often asked at headquarters and by mail what the national
headquarters is for and what it does. The briefest answer that
can be given is that we furnish ammunition for the suffrage
fight. The ammunition is of many sorts, from money, leaflets and
buttons to historical data, slide lectures and advice on
organization.... One decided advantage in making headquarters
more useful to visitors has been the enlargement of the main
office. A partition was removed which gave us a large, light room
where all our publications are accessible for consultation or
purchase, all the chief suffrage periodicals of the world are on
file, the gallery of eminent suffragists is on exhibition and all
the various kinds of supplies, like buttons, pennants, posters,
etc., are shown. It serves as reference library as well, for
beside the History of Woman Suffrage, the Life of Susan B.
Anthony and the bound volumes of the _Woman's Journal_, there is
a collection of books on interests allied to suffrage, which have
been selected and approved by the board. These are also on
sale.... During the summer of 1912 a questionnaire was sent to
the States and the answers tabulated and printed in a folder
showing conclusively the status of each regarding headquarters,
press, membership, finance, political district, legislative and
Congressional work. There is an increasing demand for suffrage
facts rather than for suffrage argument. It was in response to
this demand that it became necessary to appoint an editor for the
literature department. Fully half of the publications needed
revising and bringing up to date and new compilations of data
were urgently needed. Mrs. Frances Maule Bjorkman, a trained
newspaper and magazine writer, was chosen and has filled the
position admirably.
Mrs. Dennett gave a detailed account of the pamphlets, speeches,
leaflets, plays, magazine articles, etc., published by the
association--250 kinds of printed matter--and said:
We have published over 3,000,000 pieces of literature in this
year and our total receipts from literature and supplies have
been $13,000, or $746 over the cost of the printing and purchase.
Our record month was September, when our receipts were more than
the entire receipts for the whole year of 1909. If we count our
unsold stock and our uncollected bills as assets, we have a net
gain for the year of $3,578. About $700 worth of literature has
been sold in the office, the remainder having been ordered by
mail.
Through the courtesy of the Illinois association and the
generosity of Miss Addams and Miss Breckinridge, who paid for the
rent and service, a sub-station for the supply of literature was
established at the Chicago headquarters in April. The sales at
this western branch have been $1,924. It would seem well worth
while to continue this service for western customers. Also for
their benefit Mrs. McCormick made a gift of a sample copy of
every one of our new publications to the presidents of State
associations in eighteen of the western States, as a means of
bringing them in closer touch with the national office.... Aside
from our own literature we have been grateful for a very
serviceable congressional document, thousands of which have been
distributed in the last few months, the speech of Congressman
Edward T. Taylor of Colorado. It proved a successful and timely
campaign document and we are indebted not only to Mr. Taylor but
to a most efficient volunteer worker in Washington--Mrs. Helen H.
Gardener--who gave unstinted personal service in seeing that the
documents were obtained and franked when needed....
[Illustration: COURT HOUSE OF WARREN, OHIO
Headquarters of the National American Woman Suffrage Association from
1903 to 1910--on the ground floor.]
[Illustration: HOME OF SUSAN B. ANTHONY IN ROCHESTER, N. Y.
Headquarters of the National American Woman Suffrage Association until
1895.]
The convention accepted the recommendation of the board that it should
issue a monthly bulletin of facts and figures to be sent to every
paying member, thus establishing a real bond between the association
and its thousands of members. The report of the Press Bureau by its
chairman, Miss Caroline I. Reilly, showed remarkable progress in
public sentiment as expressed by the newspapers. It said in part:
The winning of California last year wrought so complete a change
in the work of the national press bureau that it was like taking
up an entirely new branch. Before that victory our time was
employed in furnishing suffrage arguments, replying to adverse
editorials and letters published in the newspapers and writing
syndicate articles. Now this department has resolved itself into
a bureau of information, news being the one thing required. Each
week we send to our mailing list 2,000 copies of the press
bulletin, giving brief items relative to suffrage activities the
world over. These go into every non-suffrage State in the Union,
to Canada, Cuba and England, and the demand for them increases
daily. Almost every mail brings letters from newspapers asking to
be placed on the regular mailing list.... Since the winning of
the four States on November 5, newspapers and press associations
from all over the United States have written us asking for help
to establish woman suffrage departments. The time has come when
our question is a paying one from a publicity point of view, ...
We now have twenty syndicates on our list and are no longer
obliged to write the articles ourselves but simply furnish the
information which their own writers work up. These syndicates are
both national and international and cover all of this country as
well as some foreign countries. An interesting thing happened
last week, when the representative of a European press syndicate
came and said that he had been sent to America for the sole
purpose of reporting the woman movement in the United States, the
subject being regarded a vital one by the press of Europe.
Special suffrage editions seem to be more popular than almost
anything else and appeals come to us from all over the Union to
help on them.... During the past year we have received and
answered over 3,000 communications. The Italian papers have been
on our mailing list for some time, also many French and Hebrew
papers.... The editors and associate editors of twelve Italian
newspapers in New York are enrolled in the city suffrage
organization.
Miss Alice Stone Blackwell made an extended report of the _Woman's
Journal_ since it became the official organ of the National American
Association in June, 1910, and had been published under its auspices.
The expenses had increased and funds had not been supplied to meet
them. Committees of conference were appointed and eventually the
deficit was paid and the paper was returned to Miss Blackwell, who
offered the free use of its columns to the association. The report of
the treasurer, Miss Jessie Ashley, was not encouraging. Under the old
regime the year always closed with a balance in the treasury but this
indebtedness to the _Woman's Journal_ left the association $5,000 in
debt.[74] As its work broadened the expense became heavier and the
income although far larger than ever before was not sufficient. During
the past year it had contributed $18,144 to campaigns in eight States.
A very large part of this amount was paid by Dr. Shaw from a fund
given to her personally for the purpose by Mrs. Quincy A. Shaw of
Boston. At this time and later she gave to Dr. Shaw to be used for
campaigns according to her judgment $30,000 and the name of the donor
was not revealed until after her death in 1917.
The first evening of the convention was devoted to the president's
address and the stories of the successful campaigns for suffrage
amendments at the November elections, related by Mrs. William A.
Johnston and Miss Helen N. Eaker for Kansas and Mrs. M. L. T. Hidden
for Oregon. No one being present from Arizona Dr. Shaw told of the
victory there. Mrs. Clara B. Arthur and Mrs. Huntley Russell described
the situation in Michigan, where the indications were that the
amendment would be lost by fraudulent returns. Dr. Shaw's speech, as
usual, was neither written nor stenographically reported but this
floating paragraph was found in a newspaper:
In all times men have entertained loftier theories of living than
they have been able to formulate into practical experience. We
Americans call our government a republic but it is not a republic
and never has been one. A republic is not a government in which
one-half of the people make the laws for all of the people. At
first the government was a hierarchy in which only male church
members could vote. In the process of evolution the qualification
of church membership was removed and the word "taxpayer"
substituted. Later that word was stricken out and all white men
could vote. Then followed the erasure of the word "white" and now
all male citizens have the ballot. The next measure is obvious
and it is not a revolutionary one but the logical step in the
evolution of our government. I believe thoroughly in democracy,
the extension of the franchise to all men, for all have a right
to a voice in the making of the laws that govern them, and no
nation has a right to place before any of its people an
insuperable barrier to self-government. We would make no outcry
against an educational standard, the necessary age limit, a
certain term of residence in any place--in fact there is no
regulation women would object to that applied to all citizens
equally. I make no criticism of the policy of the country in
giving all men the ballot. The men are all right so far as they
go--- but they go only half way. The United States has subjected
its women to the greatest political humiliation ever imposed upon
the women of any nation. German women are governed by German men;
French women by French men, etc., but American women are ruled by
the men of every country and race in the world.... I do not
belong to any political party and I have too much self-respect to
ally myself with any party until my opinion is of enough
importance to be counted at the polls.
The delegates heard reports from the chairmen of various
committees--Ways and Means, Dr. M. Carey Thomas; Enrollment, Mrs. Jean
Nelson Penfield; Presidential Suffrage, Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates;
Laws for Women, Miss Mary Rutter Towle (D. C.). Mrs. Lucia Ames Mead
made her usual comprehensive report as chairman of the Peace and
Arbitration Committee. Mrs. Mary E. Craigie in her report of seven
printed pages on the extensive and successful efforts of her Committee
on Church Work told of a circular letter that had been sent to
thousands of clergymen throughout the country asking for a special
sermon in support of woman suffrage on Mothers' Day. It pointed out
that in the vast moral and social reform work of the churches their
women members are denied the weapon of Christian welfare, the ballot,
while the forces of evil are fully enfranchised and the influence of
the churches is thus essentially weakened.
Mrs. William Kent, in her report as chairman of the Congressional
Committee, said that it had not been necessary to request members to
introduce a resolution for a Federal Suffrage Amendment as six were
offered by as many Representatives of their own volition. Senator
Works of her own State of California had been glad to present it. She
told of the "hearings" before the committees of the two Houses on
March 13, when the National Association sent representatives to
Washington. The preceding day a reception for the speakers was given
in her home and many of the guests became interested who had been
indifferent. In May the Congressional Committee sent out cards for a
"suffrage tea" in her house to the wives of Senators and
Representatives; many were present and interesting addresses were
made.
Among the resolutions submitted by the chairman of the committee, Mrs.
Raymond Brown, and adopted were the following:
We reaffirm that our one object and purpose is the
enfranchisement of the women of our country.
We call upon all our members to rejoice at the winning of the
School vote by the women of Kentucky and at the full
enfranchisement of four more States, Kansas, Oregon, Arizona and
Michigan[75]; and in the fact that at the last election the
electoral vote of women fully enfranchised was nearly doubled,
and to rejoice that all the political parties are now obliged to
reckon with the growing power of the woman vote; and be it
resolved
That this association believes in the settlement of all disputes
and difficulties, national and international, by arbitration and
judicial methods and not by war.
That we commend the action of those State Federations of Women's
Clubs which have founded departments for the study of political
economy and we congratulate those clubs which have endorsed our
movement to gain the ballot for all women.
That we deeply deplore the exploiting of the children of this
country in our labor markets to the detriment and danger of
coming generations; that we commend the action of Congress in the
creation of a National Children's Bureau and President Taft's
appointment of a woman, Miss Julia Lathrop, as head of the
bureau.
That we commend the efforts of our National Government to end
the white slave traffic; that we urge the passage in our States
of more stringent laws for the protection of women; that we
demand the same standard of morals for men and women and the same
penalties for transgressors; that we call upon women everywhere
to awake to the dangers of the social evil and to hasten the day
when women shall vote and when commercialized vice shall be
exterminated.
A unique feature of the convention was Men's Night, with James Lees
Laidlaw of New York, president of the National Men's League for Woman
Suffrage of 20,000 members, in the chair and all the speeches made by
men. Miss Blackwell said editorially in the _Woman's Journal_: "From
the very beginning of the equal rights movement courageous and
justice-loving men have stood by the women and have been invaluable
allies in the long fight that is now nearing its triumph but never
before have been actually organized to work for the cause. Men old and
young, men of the most diverse professions, parties and creeds, spoke
with equal earnestness in behalf of equal rights for women." The
speakers were the Hon. Frederick C. Howe, Judge Dimner Beeber,
president of the Pennsylvania League; A. S. G. Taylor of the
Connecticut League; Joseph Fels, the Single Tax leader; Julian Kennedy
of Pittsburgh; George Foster Peabody of New York; the Rev. Wm. R. Lord
of Massachusetts; Jesse Lynch Williams, J. H. Braly of California and
Reginald Wright Kauffman. The last named, whose recently published
book, The House of Bondage, had aroused the country on the "white
slave traffic," discussed this question as perhaps it never before had
been presented in public and he found a sympathetic audience.
The Rev. James Grattan Mythen, of the Prince of Peace Church,
Walbrook, Md., made a strong demand for the influence of women in the
electorate, in which he said: "Whatever wrongs the law allows must not
be laid entirely at the door of paid public servants whom by the
franchise we employ to do our public will. Where there are criminals
in public office they represent criminals. They represent the active
criminals whose debased ballots put them in office, and they represent
the passive criminals whose ballot was not cast to keep them out!
'That ye did it not' merits as great a condemnation as 'That ye did
it.' What is needed in politics is the reassertion of the moral
ideal, and as men we know that this moral ideal has been, is now and
always will be the possession of womankind. For this reason men ought
to demand that women come into the body politic and bring with them
the same moral standard that they hold for themselves in the home, in
the Church, in the hospitals, in the great reform movements which are
voiced by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and all other
endeavors for righteousness that are always championed by women."
This was not the time and place arranged for taking a collection but
the enthusiasm was so great that Mr. Fels started the ball rolling and
$2,000 were quickly subscribed. Later at the regular collection the
amount was increased to $6,908. Among the largest pledges were those
of Miss Kate Gleason of Rochester, N.Y., for $1,200; Mrs. Oliver H.P.
Belmont, $1,000; Mrs. Bowen of Chicago, $600; New York State
Association, $600; Pennsylvania State Association, $500; Miss Emily
Howland, $300. The treasurer, Miss Ashley, stated that the receipts
from April 1 to November 1 had been $55,197.
Dr. Shaw had telegraphed the congratulations of the association to the
Governors of the four victorious States and telegrams of greetings to
the convention were read from Governors Oswald West of Oregon; George
P. Hunt of Arizona; W.R. Stubbs of Kansas; and Chase S. Osborn of
Michigan. Greetings were received from Miss Martina G. Kramers of
Holland, editor of the international suffrage paper; the U.S. National
Council of Women, and from Mrs. Champ Clark and her sister, Mrs. Annie
Pitzer of Colorado, sent through Miss Nettie Lovisa White of
Washington. Telegrams of congratulation were sent to the State
presidents, Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway of Oregon and Mrs. Frances W.
Munds of Arizona, and of sympathy to the Rev. Olympia Brown and Miss
Ada L. James for the defeat in Wisconsin.
It was voted to continue the national headquarters in New York. There
was a flurry of discussion over a proposed amendment to the
constitution changing the present method of voting, which allowed the
delegates present to cast the entire number of votes to which the
State was entitled by its paid membership. The convention finally
adopted the amendment that hereafter the delegates present should
cast only their individual votes. The election resulted in a change of
but two officers. Professor Breckinridge and Miss Ashley did not stand
for re-election and Miss Anita Whitney of California was chosen for
second vice-president and Mrs. Louise De Koven Bowen of Chicago for
second auditor.
A serious controversy arose during the convention in regard to the
deviation of some of the national officers from the time-honored
custom of non-partisanship. It had always been the unwritten but
carefully observed law of the association that no member of the board
should advocate or work for any political party. Mrs. George Howard
Lewis, a veteran suffragist of Buffalo, N.Y., sent a resolution to the
convention declaring that officers of the association must remain
non-partisan and Mrs. Ida Husted Harper presented it and led the
contest for it. Dr. Shaw announced before it was discussed that the
board recommended that it should not pass.
Women had taken a larger part in the political campaign which had just
ended than ever before and one of the officers and many of the
delegates present had spoken and worked for the Progressive party
because of the suffrage plank in its platform. Other members had done
the same for the Socialist and Prohibition parties for a like reason.
As a result, while the resolution had some warm support it was
defeated by a vote of ten to one, although it applied only to the
officers and left individual members free. The consequences of this
vote soon began to be realized by the board and the delegates and in
the official resolutions was one which said: "The National American
Suffrage Association reaffirms the position for which it always has
stood, of being an absolutely non-partisan, non-sectarian body." When
asked for an interpretation the officers answered that "the
association must not declare officially for any political party."[76]
One of the most enjoyable evenings of the convention was the one in
charge of the National College Equal Suffrage League, the program
consisting of a debate between groups of clever speakers, each
with one or more university degrees, half of them posing as
anti-suffragists, with Dr. Thomas, president of Bryn Mawr College and
of the league, in the chair. A suffrage meeting which touched high
water mark was that of Sunday afternoon, when the immense opera house
was filled to overflowing and literally thousands stood on the outside
in the intense cold and listened to speakers who were hastily sent out
to address them. Dr. Shaw presided. The meeting was opened with prayer
by the Rt. Rev. Philip Mercer Rhinelander and the music was rendered
by the choir, under its director, Samuel J. Riegel, with the audience
joining. An eloquent address was given, the Democracy of Sex and
Color, by Dr. W.E. Burghardt Du Bois, and one by Miss Addams on the
Communion of the Ballot, the necessity for cooperative work by men and
women, in which she said: "Take a still graver subject. Everywhere
vice regulation is coming up for government action. The white slave
traffic is international and it goes on from city to city. I ask you,
in the name of common sense, is it safe or wise or sane to entrust to
men alone the dealing with this age-long evil? Our laws are superior
to those of most European countries. In England, because women have
been obliged to appeal to the pity of men against these evils, (for
the appeal to chivalry seems to have fallen), there is a disposition
to divide into two camps, men in one and women in the other. Any sex
antagonism thus engendered arises because these grave moral questions
have not been taken up by men and women together. By debarring women
from suffrage, we are failing to bring to bear on these questions that
vast moral energy which dwells in women.... Whenever there is a great
moral awakening it is followed by an extension of the movement for
women's rights. The first wave came with the anti-slavery agitation;
the second with the prohibition movement and Frances Willard, and now
there is coming all over the world this irresistible movement of
government to take up great social and industrial questions."
The very fine address of Miss Julia Lathrop, Chief of the National
Children's Bureau, on Woman Suffrage and Child Welfare filled over
five columns of the _Woman's Journal_ and contained a sufficient
argument for the enfranchisement of women if no other ever had been or
should be made. "My purpose," she began, "is to show that woman
suffrage is a natural and inevitable step in the march of society
forward; that instead of being incompatible with child welfare it
leads toward it and is indeed the next great service to be rendered
for the welfare and ennoblement of the home. A little more than
one-third of all the people in this country, something over 29,500,000
in actual numbers, are children under the age of fifteen--that is,
still in a state of tutelage; and it is of unbounded importance that
nothing be done by the rest of us which will injure this budding
growth. So it is right to judge in large measure any proposed change
in our social fabric by its probable effect on that dependent third of
the race to whom we are pledged, for whose succession it is the work
of this generation to prepare. What we propose is to give universal
suffrage to women."
Answering the question, "Do we propose a mad revolution?" she traced
the development in the position of woman, every step of which was
condemned at the time as a dangerous innovation. "It was a revolution
when women were given equal property rights over their goods and equal
rights over their children," she said. "We must blush that there are
States in this country where that revolution is still to be
accomplished. I have heard an old Illinois lawyer describe the early
efforts to secure equal property rights for women in that State and
the constant objection that such laws would destroy the family, that
there could be no harmony unless the ownership were all in one person
and that person the man. It was feared then, as now, that women would
become tyrannical and unbearable if they were allowed too much
independence. Do children suffer because their mothers own property?"
She pointed out the necessity for woman's political influence on
humanitarian movements and said: "Suffrage for women is not the final
word in human freedom but it is the next step in the onward march,
because it is the next step in equalizing the rights and balancing the
duties of the two types of individuals who make up the human race."
Miss Lathrop showed the need of legislation for all social reforms and
how the experience of women beginning with domestic duties carried
them forward to a sense of their obligations in community life and a
fitness for it. Referring to the uneducated women she said: "The
ignorant vote is not the working vote. Working women in great
organized factories have been having, since they began that work, an
education for the suffrage. They are not the ignorant voters nor are
wives of workingmen; at least, they know in part what they need to
safeguard themselves and their homes. The ignorant vote is the
complacent, blind vote of men and of the feminine 'influence' that
moves them, which disregards the real problems of setting safe and
wholesome standards of life and labor and education and spends its
strength in looking backward, insisting upon precedents without seeing
that, good and enduring as they may be, all precedents must be daily
retranslated into the setting of today. "Women must vote for their own
souls' good," she said, "and they must vote to protect the family. The
newer conception of the family is one which depends upon giving to
both parents the fullest expression on all those matters of common
concern."
The address closed with a fine peroration--Pass on the Torch! In the
evening the officers of the association gave a largely attended
reception to delegates and friends in the banquet hall of Hotel
Walton.
The closing night of the convention was one long to be remembered.
There was the same vast, eager audience: Dr. Shaw presided and on the
platform was the distinguished Apostle of Peace, winner of the Nobel
prize, Baroness Bertha von Suttner, and Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, just
returned from a two-years' trip around the world. The meeting was
opened by the Rt. Rev. James Henry Darlington, bishop of central
Pennsylvania, whose brief address was of great value to the cause. He
congratulated the American people on the fact that four more States
had been added to the ever-growing list of those which had given the
suffrage to women and he called upon all observers to notice that no
State which had once voted in woman suffrage had ever voted it out.
Once in use, local opposition to it ceased by reason of the
self-evident good results. He offered congratulations to those who
were humble privates in the ranks and to the famous and brave leaders
who organized the victories. "As the Elizabethan and Victorian eras
are the most distinguished for philanthropic, literary and economic
advancement in the whole history of Great Britain, though the Kings
were many and the Queens were few in the long line," he said, "so no
man need be ashamed to follow feminine leadership when it means
advancement in every good word and work," and he offered
congratulations to little children of the future generations of this
and all lands. "When our anti-suffrage sisters throw aside their
complacency and selfish ease," he said, "to strive side by side with
men to formulate and pass necessary laws to protect and develop the
bodies, minds and souls of our present little children and all that
are to come through the passing centuries, then will dawn a new day
for humanity."
Brief addresses were made by Mrs. Blankenburg, Miss Jane Campbell and
Professor Breckinridge of Chicago University. Miss Crystal Eastman
gave a graphic account of why the amendment failed in Wisconsin and
Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, State president, told in her inimitable way
of the campaign that failed in Ohio. Baroness von Suttner made a
magnificent plea for the peace of the world and asked for the
enfranchisement of women as an absolutely necessary factor in it. The
dominant note of Mrs. Catt's speech was the great need for political
power in the hands of women to combat the social evil, which she had
found intrenched in the governments of every country. These last two
addresses, which carried thrilling conviction to every heart, were
made without notes and not published.
* * * * *
From the early days of the National Suffrage Association its
representatives had appeared before committees of every Congress to
ask for the submission of an amendment to the Federal Constitution and
during many years this "hearing" took place when the annual convention
met in Washington. As it was to be held elsewhere this year and at a
time when the Congress was not in session a delegation of speakers had
gone before the committees the preceding March by arrangement of Mrs.
William Kent, chairman of the association's Congressional Committee.
At the hearing before a joint committee of the Senate Judiciary and
Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage March 13 six of the members were
present: Senators Overman (N. C.), chairman; Brandegee (Conn.);
Bourne (Ore.); Brown (Neb.); Johnston (Ala.); Wetmore (R. I.). Senator
John D. Works of California, who had introduced the resolution in the
Senate, presented Dr. Anna Howard Shaw as "one of the best known and
most distinguished of those connected with the movement for the
enfranchisement of women." As she took charge of the hearing she said
in part:
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee, this is the
forty-third year that the women suffragists have been represented
by delegations appointed by the national body to speak in behalf
of resolutions which have been introduced to eliminate from the
Constitution of the United States in effect the word "male," to
eliminate all disqualifications for suffrage on account of sex.
The desire of our association is not so much to put on record the
opinions of this committee in regard to woman suffrage as to
plead with it to give a favorable report, so that the question
can come before the Congress, be discussed on its merits and then
submitted to the various States for ratification. The Federal
Constitution guarantees to every State a republican form of
government--that is, a government in which the laws are enacted
by representatives elected by the people--and we claim that it
has violated its own principle in refusing to protect women in
their right to select their representatives, so we are asking for
no more than that the Constitution shall be carried out by the U.
S. Government. As the president of the National Suffrage
Association, I stand here in the place of a woman who gave sixty
years of her life in advocacy of that grand principle for which
so many of our ancestors died, Miss Susan B. Anthony. There is
not a woman here today who was at the first hearing, nor a woman
alive today who was among those that struggled in the beginning
for this fundamental right of every citizen. I now introduce Mrs.
Susan Walker Fitzgerald of Massachusetts. It has been said that
women cannot fight. Mrs. Fitzgerald's father was an Admiral of
the Navy and if she can not fight her father could.
Mrs. Fitzgerald spoke at length in the interest of the home and the
family, showing the evolution that had taken place until now "the
Government touches upon every phase of our home life and largely
dictates its conditions while at the same time the woman is held
responsible for them and is working with her hands tied behind her
back and she asks the vote in order to do her woman's work better."
Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw of New York spoke beautifully of the desire of
the mothers of the rising generation that their daughters should not
have to enter the hard struggle for the suffrage and pictured the need
for the highest development of the womanly character. Mrs. Elsie Cole
Phillips of Wisconsin showed the standpoint of the so-called working
classes, saying in part:
The right to vote is based primarily on the democratic theory of
government. "The just powers of government are derived from the
consent of the governed." What does that mean? Does it not mean
that there is no class so wise, so benevolent that it is fitted
to govern any other class? Does it not mean that in order to have
a democratic government every adult in the community must have an
opportunity to express his opinion as to how he wishes to be
governed and to have that opinion counted? A vote is in the last
analysis an expression of a need--either a personal need known to
one as an individual as it can be known to no one else, or an
expression of a need of those in whom we are
interested--sister-women or children, for instance. The moment
that one admits this concept of the ballot that moment
practically all of the anti-suffrage argument is done away
with.... Is it to strengthen the hands of the strong? Oh, no; it
is to put into the hands of the weak a weapon of self-protection.
And who are the weak? Those who are economically
handicapped--first of all the working classes in their struggle
for better conditions of life and labor. And who among the
workers are the weak? Wherever the men have suffered, the women
have suffered more.
But I would also like to point out to you how this affects the
homekeeping woman, the wife and mother, of the working class,
aside from the wage-earning woman. Consider the woman at home who
must make both ends meet on a small income. Who better than she
knows whether or not the cost of living advances more rapidly
than the wage does? Is not that a true statement in the most
practical form of the problem of the tariff? And who better than
she knows what the needs of the workers are in the factories?
Take the tenement-house woman, the wife and mother who is
struggling to bring up a family under conditions which constantly
make for evil. Who, better than the mother who has tried to bring
up six or seven children in one room in a dark tenement house,
knows the needs of a proper building? Who better than the mother
who sees her boy and her girl playing in the streets knows the
need of playgrounds? Who better than a mother knows what it means
to a child's life--which you men demand that she as a wife and a
mother shall care for especially--who, better than she, knows the
cruel pressure that comes to that child from too early labor in
what the U. S. census report calls "gainful occupations"?
There is a practical wisdom that comes out of the pressure of
life and an educational force in life itself which very often is
more efficient than that which comes through textbooks of
college.... The ignorant vote that is going to come in when women
are enfranchised is that of the leisure-class woman, who has no
responsibilities and knows nothing of what life means to the rest
of the world, who has absolutely no civic or social
intelligence. But, fortunately for us, she is a small percentage
of the women of this land, and fortunately for the land there is
no such rapid means of education for her as to give her the
ballot and let her for the first time feel responsibilities....
Now the time has come when the home and the State are one. Every
act, every duty of the mother in the home is affected by
something the State does or does not do, and the only way in
which we are ever going to have our national housekeeping and our
national child-rearing done as it should be is by bringing into
the councils of the State the wisdom of women.
James Lees Laidlaw of New York was introduced as president of the
National Men's League for Woman Suffrage and after stating that such
leagues were being organized throughout the country he spoke of the
great change that had taken place in the status of women and said:
Most important of all is the change of woman's position in
industrial, commercial and educational fields. We are all
familiar with the exodus of millions of women from the home into
the mill and the factory. Today they may enter freely into
business either as principal or employee. I was astonished to
hear reported at a recent meeting of the Chamber of Commerce in
New York that in the commercial high schools of that city, where
a business education is given, 85 per cent. of the pupils are
girls. We have today a great body of intelligent citizens with
many interests in the Government besides their primary interests
as mothers and home-keepers. If men are not going to take the
next logical step they have made a great mistake in going thus
far. Why give women property rights if we give them no rights in
making the laws governing the control and disposition of their
property and no vote as to who shall have the spending of tax
money? Why give women the right to go into business or trades,
either as employees or employers, without the right to control
the conditions surrounding their business or trades? Why train
women to be better mothers and better housekeepers and refuse
them the right to say what laws shall be passed to protect their
children and homes? Why train women to be teachers, lawyers,
doctors and scientists and say to them: "Now you have assumed new
responsibilities, go out into the world and compete with men,"
and then handicap them by depriving them of political expression?
Women now have the opportunity for equal mental development with
men. Is it right or is it politically expedient that we should
not avail ourselves of their special knowledge concerning those
matters which vitally affect the human race?...
Mrs. Ella S. Stewart, president of the Illinois Suffrage Association
and member of the national board, contrasted the old academic plea for
the ballot with the modern demand for it to meet the present
intensely utilitarian age and continued: "Today we know that the
ballot is just a machine. In fact it impresses us as being something
like the long-distance telephone which we in this scientific age have
grown accustomed to use. We go into the polling booth and call up
central (the Government) and when we get the connection we deliver our
message with accuracy and speed and then we go about our business.
Women have been encouraged during the past to have opinions about
governmental matters and there is no denying that we do have opinions.
If we could submit to you today the list of bills which the
Federations of Women's Clubs of the various States have endorsed and
for which they are working you would know that women have a large
civic conscience and an intelligent appreciation of the measures which
affect both women and the homes. They have been encouraged to have
these opinions but to try to influence legislation only in indirect
ways. Today, being practical and scientific, we are asking ourselves
all the time why should we be limited to expressing our opinion on
governmental affairs in our women's clubs? Why should we breathe them
only in the prayer meeting or in the parlors of our friends? Why not
directly into the governmental ear--the ballot box? Why do we not go
into that long-distance telephone booth, get connection with central,
and then know that our message has been delivered in the only place
where it is recorded. The Government makes no record whatever of the
opinions which we express in our women's clubs and our prayer
meetings."
Mrs. Caroline A. Lowe of Kansas City, Mo., spoke in behalf of the
7,000,000 wage-earning women of the United States from the standpoint
of one who had earned her living since she was eighteen and declared
that to them the need of the ballot was a vital one. She gave
heart-breaking proofs of this fact and said:
From the standpoint of wages received we wage earners know it to
be almost universal that the men in the industries receive twice
the amount granted to us although we may be doing the same work.
We work side by side with our brothers; we are children of the
same parents, reared in the same homes, educated in the same
schools, ride to and fro on the same early morning and late
evening cars, work together the same number of hours in the same
shops and we have equal need of food, clothing and shelter. But
at 21 years of age our brothers are given a powerful weapon for
self-defense, a larger means for growth and self-expression. We
working women, because we find our sex not a source of strength
but a source of weakness and a greater opportunity for
exploitation, have even greater need of this weapon which is
denied to us. Is there any justice underlying such a condition?
What of the working girl and her employer? Why is the ballot
given to him while it is denied to us? Is it for the protection
of his property that he may have a voice in the governing of his
wealth, of his stocks and bonds and merchandise? The wealth of
the working woman is far more precious to the welfare of the
State. From nature's raw products the working class can readily
replace all of the material wealth owned by the employing class
but the wealth of the working woman is the wealth of flesh and
blood, of all her physical, mental and spiritual powers. It is
not only the wealth of today but that of future generations which
is being bartered away so cheaply. Have we no right to a voice in
the disposal of our wealth, the greatest that the world
possesses, the priceless wealth of its womanhood? Is it not the
cruelest injustice that the man whose material wealth is a source
of strength and protection to him and of power over us should be
given the additional advantage of an even greater weapon which he
can use to perpetuate our condition of helpless subjection?...
The industrial basis of the life of the woman has changed and the
political superstructure must be adjusted to conform to it. This
industrial change has given to woman a larger horizon, a greater
freedom of action in the industrial world. Greater freedom and
larger expression are at hand for her in the political life. The
time is ripe for the extension of the franchise to women.
We do not come before you to beg of you the granting of any
favor. We present to you a glorious opportunity to place
yourselves abreast of the current of this great evolutionary
movement.
Mrs. Donald Hooker of Baltimore gave striking instances of the
conditions in that State regarding the social evil, of the hundreds of
virtuous girls who every year are forced into a life of shame, of the
thousands of children who die because mothers have no voice in making
laws for their protection. "There was never a great act of injustice,"
she said, "that was not paid for in human life and happiness. A great
act of injustice is being perpetrated by denying women the right to
vote."
Miss Leonora O'Reilly, a leader among the working women of New York,
made an impassioned plea that carried conviction. "I have been a
wage-earner since I was thirteen," she said, "and I know whereof I
speak. I want to make you realize the lives of hundreds of girls I
have seen go down in this struggle for bread. We working women want
the ballot as our right. You say it is not a right but a privilege.
Then we demand it as a privilege. All women ought to have it,
wage-earning women must have it." After plainer speaking than the
committee had ever heard from a woman she concluded: "You may tell us
that our place is in the home. There are 8,000,000 of us in these
United States who must go out of it to earn our daily bread and we
come to tell you that while we are working in the mills, the mines,
the factories and the mercantile houses we have not the protection
that we should have. You have been making laws for us and the laws you
have made have not been good for us. Year after year working women
have gone to the Legislature in every State and have tried to tell
their story of need in the same old way. They have gone believing in
the strength of the big brother, believing that the big brother could
do for them what they should, as citizens, do for themselves. They
have seen time after time the power of the big interests come behind
the big brother and say to him, 'If you grant the request of these
working women you die politically.'
"It is because the working women have seen this that they now demand
the ballot. In New York and in every other State, we plead for shorter
hours. When the legislators learn that women today in every industry
are being overspeeded and overworked, most of them would, if they
dared, vote protective legislation. Why do they neglect the women? We
answer, because those who have the votes have the power to take the
legislator's political ladder away from him, a power that we, who have
no votes, do not have.... While the doors of the colleges have been
opened to the fortunate women of our country, only one woman in a
thousand goes into our colleges, while one woman in five must go into
industry to earn her living. And it is for the protection of this one
woman in every five that I speak...."
Mrs. Jean Nelson Penfield, chairman of the Woman Suffrage Party of New
York numbering 60,000 members, said in part:
In the few moments given me I will confine myself to the handicap
women have found disfranchisement to be in social-service work.
It is supposed by many that because our so-called leisure women
have been able to do so much apparently good community betterment
work without the ballot we do not need it. I should like to ask
you to remember that the important thing is not that women
succeed in this kind of work but that where they do succeed it is
at tremendous and needless expenditure of energy and vital
strength and at the cost of dignity and self-respect.
The dominant thought in the world today is that of conservation;
the tendency of the whole business world is toward economy. How
to lessen the cost of production; how to improve the machinery of
business so as to reduce friction--these are the questions that
are being asked not only in the business world but in the affairs
of state. No intelligent man in this scientific day would try to
do anything by an indirect and wasteful method if he could
accomplish his purpose by a direct and economic method. Even the
bricklayer is taught how to handle his bricks so that the best
results may be secured at the least possible expenditure of time
and energy. Women alone seem to represent a great body of energy,
vitality and talent which is unconserved, unutilized and
recklessly wasted. If a man wants reforms he goes armed with a
vote to the ballot box and even to the Legislature with that
power of the vote behind him; but if women want these things they
are asked to take the long, questionable, roundabout route of
personal influence, of petition, of indirection. Women have
accomplished a great deal in this way but it has required a long
time.... Take, for instance, one class of work--the establishment
of manual training, domestic science, open-air schools, school
gardens and playgrounds--all once just "women's notions" but now
established institutions. Women have had to found and finance and
demonstrate them before municipalities would have anything to do
with them, but when city or State adopts these institutions the
management is immediately and entirely taken out of the hands of
women and placed in the hands of men....
Among thinking women there is a growing consciousness of being
cut off, shut out from the civic life in which they have an equal
stake with men. We ask you to recognize that the time is here for
you to submit an amendment to the States for ratification which
will give women the influence and power of the suffrage.
In closing Dr. Shaw asked that her association might have some printed
copies for distribution and was assured that it might have fifteen or
twenty thousand if it desired them. She also urged that the committee
would report the resolution to the Senate for discussion and as a
third request said: "We are told that men are afraid to grant women
suffrage lest fearful results should come to the Government and to the
women. We have asked for years that Congress would appoint a committee
to investigate its practical working in the States where it
exists--there are now six of them--and we are entirely willing to risk
our case on that investigation. We feel that its results would be
such that we would not have to come here much longer and take up your
time with our arguments on the subject."
Franklin W. Collins of Nebraska spoke in opposition, presenting his
case in a series of over fifty questions but not attempting to answer
any of them. Among the questions were these: If woman by her ballot
should plunge the country into war, would she not be in honor bound to
fight by the side of man? Will the ballot in the hands of women pour
oil on the troubled domestic waters? Has not this movement a strong
tendency to encourage the exodus from the land of bondage, otherwise
known as matrimony and motherhood? Is it not true that every
free-lover, socialist, communist and anarchist the country over is
openly in favor of female suffrage?
The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage sent from its
bureau in New York a letter of "earnest protest" against the amendment
signed by its president, Mrs. Arthur M. Dodge. Its auxiliary in the
District of Columbia sent another of greater length signed by its
chairman, Mrs. Grace Duffield Goodwin, which not only protested
against a Federal Amendment but against the granting of woman suffrage
by any method.
* * * * *
Six members of the House of Representatives had introduced the
resolution for a Federal Suffrage Amendment--Raker of California;
Lafferty of Oregon; Mondell of Wyoming; Berger of Wisconsin; and
Taylor and Rucker of Colorado. The hearing before the Judiciary
Committee proved to be of unusual interest. Sixteen of this large
committee of twenty-one were present and a reason given for the
absence of the others. They were an imposing array as they sat in a
semi-circle on a raised platform. The chairman, Judge Henry D. Clayton
of Alabama, treated the speakers as if they were his personal guests,
assured them of all the time they desired and at the close of the
hearing was photographed with Miss Addams and Mrs. Harper. Instead of
listening in a perfunctory way the members of the committee showed
much interest and asked many questions. Miss Jane Addams, first
vice-president of the National American Suffrage Association, presided
and in presenting her with words of highest praise Representative
Taylor said that all who had introduced the resolution would be
pleased to speak in support of it at any time and that personally he
wished to put in the record a statement of the results of woman
suffrage in Colorado during the past eighteen years with a brief
mention of 150 of the wisest, most humane and progressive laws in the
country for the protection of home and the betterment of society,
which the women of Colorado had caused to be put upon its statute
books.
Miss Addams called the attention of the committee to the fact that
more than a million women would be eligible to vote for the President
of the United States in November. She named the countries where women
could vote, saying: "America, far from being in the lead in the
universal application of the principle that every adult is entitled to
the ballot, is fast falling behind the rest of the world," and
continued:
As I have been engaged for a good many years in various
philanthropic undertakings, perhaps you will permit me, for only
a few moments, to speak from my experience. A good many women
with whom I have been associated have initiated and carried
forward philanthropic enterprises which were later taken over by
the city and thereupon the women have been shut out from the
opportunity to do the self-same work which they had done up to
that time. In Chicago the women for many years supported school
nurses who took care of the children, made them comfortable and
kept them from truancy. When the nurses were taken over by the
health department of the city the same women who had given them
their support and management were excluded from doing anything
more, and I think Chicago will bear me out when I say that the
nurses are not now doing as good work as they did before this
happened. I could also use the illustration of the probation
officers who are attached to the juvenile court. For a number of
years women selected and supported these probation officers.
Later, when the same officers, paid the same salary, were taken
over by the county and paid from the county funds, the women who
had been responsible for the initiation and beginning of the
probation system and for the early management of the officers,
had no more to do with them and at the present moment the
juvenile court has fallen behind its former position in the
juvenile courts of the world. I think the fair-minded men of
Chicago will admit that it was a disaster when the women were
disqualified by their lack of the franchise to care for it. The
juvenile court has to do largely with delinquent and dependent
children and there is no doubt that on the whole women can deal
with such cases better than men because their natural interests
lie in that direction. I could give you many other examples....
So it seems fair to say that if women are to keep on with the
work which they have done since the beginning of the world--to
continue with their humanitarian efforts which are so rapidly
being taken over into the Government, and which when thus taken
over are often not properly administered, women themselves must
have the franchise....
Introducing Representative Raker Miss Addams said smilingly that while
the women speakers were allowed ten minutes the men were to have but
five. Judge Raker of California referred to the fact that he had
pledged himself to this Federal Amendment when he was first a
candidate for Congress eight years before and said: "This matter, as
it appears to me, has passed beyond the question of sentiment; it has
passed beyond the question of advisability; it has passed beyond the
question of whether or not women ought to participate in the vote for
the benefit of the home or the benefit of the State. As I view it it
is a clean-cut question of absolute right and upon that assumption I
base my argument--that we today are depriving one-half of the
intelligence, one-half of the ability of this republic from
participating in public affairs and that from the economic standpoint
of better laws, better homes, better government in the country, the
city, the State and the nation, we need our wives', our sisters' and
our mothers' votes and assistance."
"May I introduce one of my own fellow townswomen, Miss Mary E.
McDowell," said Miss Addams, "who has had what I may call a
distressing life in the stockyards district of Chicago for many years,
and she will tell you what she thinks of the franchise for women."
Miss McDowell said in part:
We are all together very human, it seems to me, both men and
women, and it is because we are human, because this is a human
proposition and not a woman proposition, that I am glad to speak
for it and believe in it so firmly. Giving the vote to women is
not simply a woman's question, it has to do with the man, the
child and the home. Women have always worked but within much less
than a century millions of women and girls have been thrust out
of the home into a man-made world of industry and commerce. We
know that in the United States over 5,500,000, according to the
census of 1900, are bread winners.... Do we not see that the
working women must be given every safeguard that workingmen have
and now as they stand side by side with men in the factory and
shop they must stand with them politically? The ballot may be but
a small bit of the machinery that is to lift the mass of
wage-earning women up to a higher plane of self-respect and
self-protection but will it not add the balance of power so much
needed by the workingmen in their struggle for protective
legislation, which will in the end be shared by the women? Today
women are cheap, unskilled labor and will be until organization
and technical training and the responsibility of the vote in
their hands develop a consciousness of their social value....
The vote and all that it implies will awaken this sense of value.
It will give to the wage-earning woman a new status in industry,
for men will help to educate her when she is a political as well
as an industrial co-worker. As man gave strength to the
developing of the institution of the home so woman must be given
the opportunity to help man humanize the State. This can be done
only when she has the ballot and shares the responsibility.
Representative A. W. Lafferty of Oregon said in his brief five
minutes: "I believe it is not only practicable but that it would be
profitable to the United States to extend equal suffrage to men and
women. We have had here this morning a practical demonstration of the
ability of the women of this country to participate intelligently in
the discussion of public questions. I think that we could not make a
mistake in placing the ballot in the hand that rocks the cradle.
Having only the best interests of this republic at heart, I believe it
would be a good thing if fifty of the mothers of this country were in
the House of Representatives today and I wish that at least
twenty-five of them were in the Senate. You should consider, as
lawyers, as statesmen and as historians that in the history of the
civilized world in monarchies women have participated in the
Government; it is a shame that in a republic like ours, the best form
of government that has ever yet been established, women can not, under
the present law, actively participate in it."
The address which Representative Edward T. Taylor put into the
_Congressional Record_ on this occasion was also printed in a pamphlet
of forty pages and until the end of the movement for woman suffrage
was a standard document for distribution by the National Association.
He said in the introduction:
I want to recite in a plain, conversational way some of my
personal experiences and individual observations extending over a
period of thirty years of public life, during nearly nineteen
years of which we have had equal suffrage in Colorado....
When I came to Congress I did not realize and I have not yet been
able fully to understand the deep-seated prejudice, bias and even
vindictiveness against woman suffrage and the astounding amount
of misinformation there is everywhere here in the East concerning
its practical operation. I have been equally amazed and indignant
at the many brazen assertions I have seen in the papers and heard
that are perfectly absurd and without the slightest foundation in
fact, and I have had many heated discussions on the subject
during the past three years. When I hear men and women who have
never spent a week and most of them not an hour in an equal
suffrage State attempt to discuss the subject from the standpoint
of their own preconceived prejudices and idle impressions, I feel
like saying: "May the Lord forgive them for they know not what
they do." Let me say to them and to my colleagues in the House
that it will not be ten years before the women of this country
from the Pacific to the Atlantic will have the just and equal
rights of American citizenship.[77]
Since coming here I have been frequently asked by friends what we
think of woman suffrage in Colorado, and when I tell them that it
is an unqualified success and that I doubt if even five per cent.
of the people of the State would vote to repeal it, they ask me
what it has accomplished. I believe it is generally conceded by
enlightened people that the laws of a State are a true index of
its degree of civilization. I will, therefore, give a brief
catalogue of some of the most important of the 150 legislative
measures that have been either introduced by the women or at the
request of the various women's organizations and enacted into
law.