We frequently hear it said that women will not vote if they have

the opportunity; or, if permitted to vote, such an inconsiderable

number will exercise the privilege that it will not be worth

while to encumber the electoral system by granting it. In all

matters in which women have an interest, as large a percentage

vote as of the other sex. They have the same interest in all

which pertains to good government. They have exercised the

privilege of voting not in a careless and indifferent manner but

in a way reflecting credit on their good sense and judgment.

I know women who have exercised the fullest political rights for

a period of more than twenty years. They have taken the deepest

interest in the political affairs of the Territory and young

State. Neither in their homes nor in public places have they lost

one womanly quality; but their minds have broadened and they

have become more influential in the community in which they live.

During these years I have never heard of any unhappiness brought

into the home on account of women's exercising their political

rights. A fair and unbiased test of this question has been made

by the people of Wyoming, and no unprejudiced man or woman who

has seen its workings, can now raise a single honest objection.

Where women have voted, the family relation has not been

destroyed, men have loved them none the less, the mountains have

not been shaken from their foundations, nor have social

earthquakes or political convulsions taken place....

In order that women shall be more influential citizens of the

State and better qualified to raise noble men and women to fight

the battles of life, and to carry out the true purpose of this

republic, they must possess the full rights of citizenship.

At the close of his speech the Senator was presented with a large

basket of roses from the delegates.

Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.) spoke on The Right of a Citizen to

a Trial by a Jury of His Peers, showing that women never have

possessed this right; that in many criminal cases, such as seduction

and infanticide, women could better understand the temptations than

could men; that the feminine heart, the maternal influence, are needed

in the court-room as well as in the home. Mrs. Lida A. Meriwether

(Tenn.) spoke in a keen, sarcastic but humorous manner of The Silent

Seven, "the legally mute"--minors, aliens, paupers, criminals,

lunatics, idiots and women.

The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw took for her subject Women vs. Indians, and

reviewed the suffrage amendment campaign in South Dakota the previous

year. In an address brimming and bubbling over with wit, satire and

pathos, she showed how much greater consideration the Indians received

from the men of that State than did women. She told how 45 per cent.

of the votes cast the preceding year were for male Indian suffrage and

only 37 per cent. for woman suffrage; how Indians in blankets and

moccasins were received in the State convention with the greatest

courtesy, and Susan B. Anthony and other eminent women were barely

tolerated; how, while these Indians were engaged in their ghost

dances, the white women were going up and down the State pleading for

the rights of citizens; how the law in that State gives not only the

property but the children to the husband, in the face of all the

hardships endured by those pioneer wives and mothers. She suggested

that the solution of the Indian question should be left to a

commission of women with Alice Fletcher at its head, and said in

closing: "Let all of us who love liberty solve these problems in

justice; and let us mete out to the Indian, to the negro, to the

foreigner, and to the woman, the justice which we demand for

ourselves, the liberty which we love for ourselves. Let us recognize

in each of them that One above, the Father of us all, and that all are

brothers, all are one."

The Moral and Political Emergency was presented by Mrs. Emma Smith

DeVoe (S. D.). Henry B. Blackwell and Mrs. Alice M. A. Pickler

described the South Dakota Campaign. Representative J. A. Pickler was

introduced by Miss Anthony as the candidate who, when told that if he

expressed his views on woman suffrage he would lose votes, expressed

them more freely than ever and ran ahead of his ticket; and his wife

as the woman who bade her husband to speak even if it lost him the

office, and who was herself the only Congressman's wife that ever took

the platform for the enfranchisement of women.

Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby took for her subject Ibsen's drama, A Doll's

House, and discussed its ethical problems, closing with the sentence:

"As long as the fighting qualities of woman remain, there is a chance

for the nation to make a robust, steady progress; but if these die out

and woman willingly surrenders herself for the sake of selfish ease to

the dominance of man, civilization is arrested and true manhood

becomes impossible." The convention ended with a scholarly address by

Wm. Lloyd Garrison (Mass.) on The Social Aspect of the Woman Question.

The present officers were re-elected. Mrs. Lucia E. Blount (D. C.),

chairman of the committee appointed to push the claim of Anna Ella

Carroll, reported that a great deal of work had been done by Mr. and

Mrs. Melvin A. Root of Michigan, Mrs. Colby and herself. Every

possible effort had been made but the prospect was that Congress would

do nothing for Miss Carroll. Miss Frances E. Willard brought an

invitation from Mrs. Harrison to the National Council of Women and the

members of all its auxiliary societies to attend a reception at the

White House, which was accepted by the convention. Mrs. Ellen M.

Henrotin presented in the name of Mrs. Bertha Honore Palmer an

official invitation to the association to meet in Chicago during the

Columbian Exposition, promising a hall which would seat five thousand.

Miss Anthony announced that she had engaged permanent headquarters for

the association in the Wimodaughsis club building, which action was

ratified. It was decided to give especial attention to suffrage work

in the Southern States during the year. The wives of the two senators

from Wyoming, Mrs. Warren and Mrs. Carey, occupied seats on the

platform.

Mrs. Blake reported the work done by the Platform Committee in having

suffrage resolutions endorsed by a large number of Labor Unions. Miss

Sara Winthrop Smith had been equally successful in Granges and

branches of the Knights of Labor. Dr. Frances Dickinson, Dr. Lucy

Waite, Mrs. Corinne S. Brown and Mrs. Colby had visited the National

Convention of Locomotive Engineers and secured the endorsement of a

suffrage petition. They obtained also the cordial approval of T. V.

Powderly and the Knights of Labor, and of Samuel Gompers and the

Federation of Labor. The Illinois Trade and Labor Assembly endorsed

their petition. All of these bodies circulated suffrage petitions

among their members, as also did the Illinois Farmers' Mutual Benefit

Association and the Grand Army Posts, a number of which were reported

as heartily recommending the enfranchisement of women. Signatures

representing millions of voters were thus obtained.[84]

In addition to the resolutions adopted by the convention bearing

directly on suffrage, there was a demand for women on school boards

and as physicians, matrons and managers in all public institutions

containing women and children; and for a revision of the laws on

marriage and property.

On Sunday afternoon a great audience assembled for the closing

exercises. The sermon was given by the Rev. Caroline J. Bartlett from

the text, "The night is far spent, the day is at hand." It had been

said on the preceding Sunday that the sermon of Miss Hultin could not

be equalled. The verdict now was that the honors must be evenly

divided.

FOOTNOTES:

[82] A complete report of the able addresses made by specialists in

these subjects was prepared by the new corresponding secretary, Mrs.

Rachel Foster Avery, and placed by Miss Anthony in the large libraries

of the country.

[83] The Central National Society for Women's Suffrage; the Women's

Franchise Leagues of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bedford, Bridgeport,

Leicester, Nottingham and York; the Bristol Woman's Temperance

Association; the International Arbitration and Peace Society; the

Woman Councillors' Society; the Women's Federal Association of Great

Britain.

[84] The funds necessary for this work were furnished by J. W.

Hedenberg of Chicago, who also made a personal appeal to many of these

bodies; but he claimed possession of the petitions, and for some

reason never permitted them to be presented to Congress.

CHAPTER XII.

NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION AND HEARINGS OF 1892.

The Twenty-fourth annual woman suffrage convention, held in the Church

of Our Father, Washington, D. C., Jan. 17-21, 1892, was preceded by

the usual services at three o'clock on Sunday afternoon. The text of

the sermon, by the Rev. Mila Tupper, was "Think on these things" and

it was devoted to a lofty consideration of "success through the moral

power of ideals." Unexpectedly the congressional hearings were set for

Monday morning, which called to the Capitol both Mrs. Elizabeth Cady

Stanton and Miss Susan B. Anthony, president and vice-president of the

association. The convention was called to order by the Rev. Anna

Howard Shaw, and Mrs. Caroline McCullough Everhard (O.) was made

chairman _pro tem_. Twenty-six States were represented by seventy-six

delegates, the reports showed a year of unprecedented activity and

there were requests from every State for speakers and organizers. The

treasurer reported receipts for the past year, $3,830.

The executive sessions throughout the convention were spirited and

interesting. After some discussion it was decided to carry the work

into the Southern States, and also to appropriate money and workers

for Kansas, where it was likely that an amendment for full suffrage

soon would be submitted. It was voted to accept the space offered at

the Columbian Exposition, to furnish and decorate a booth, circulate

literature, etc. The motion to have the next meeting in Chicago during

the Fair renewed the question of holding alternate conventions in some

other city besides Washington, but the measure was defeated.

Mrs. Stanton introduced a resolution in favor of keeping the World's

Fair open on Sunday, which was advocated and opposed with great

earnestness. The majority of opinion evidently was in favor of opening

the gates on Sunday but many felt that the subject was not germane to

the purposes of the association, while others were conscientiously

opposed to Sunday opening. Finally, in the midst of the controversy

Mrs. Stanton withdrew her resolution, saying that she had offered it

largely for the sake of discussion. Miss Shaw presented a resolution

opposing the sale of intoxicating liquor on the Fair Grounds, saying

that she did so as a matter of conscience and in order that it might

go on record. It was voted to call an international suffrage meeting

at Chicago during the Columbian Exposition. Miss Anthony urged more

systematic organization, special efforts with the Legislatures, the

securing of a Woman's Day at all Chautauqua Assemblies, county fairs,

camp meetings, etc.

At the earnest request of Mrs. Stanton, who had now reached the age of

seventy-six, she was permitted to retire from the presidency, and Miss

Anthony, aged seventy-two, was elected in her place. The Rev. Anna

Howard Shaw was made vice-president-at-large. Lucy Stone, who was now

seventy-four, begged to be released as chairman of the executive

committee, which was then abolished, the duties being transferred to

the business committee consisting of all the officers of the

association. Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Stone were made honorary

presidents.

This was Mrs. Stanton's last appearance at a national convention after

an attendance of forty years, but she never failed to take an active

interest in the proceedings and to send her speech to be read by Miss

Anthony. This also was the last time Lucy Stone appeared upon the

national platform, as she died the next year, and Miss Anthony alone,

of this remarkable trio of women, was left to carry forward the great

work.

The addresses of this convention were up to the high standard of those

which had preceded them during the past years, and no organization in

existence, of either men or women, can show a more brilliant record of

oratory. As Mrs. Stanton, Lucy Stone and Miss Anthony came on the

platform the first evening they were enthusiastically applauded. The

mental and physical vigor of Mrs. Stanton was much commented upon as

in a rich and resonant voice she read the speech which she had that

morning delivered before the Judiciary Committee of the House. It was

entitled The Solitude of Self, and is considered by many to be her

masterpiece.

Lucy Stone discussed The Outlook with clear vision. She contrasted the

woman of the past, her narrow life, her limited education, her

inferior position, with the educated, ambitious, independent woman of

to-day, and urged that the latter should be equal to her

opportunities, lay aside all frivolous things and labor unceasingly to

secure for her sex an absolute equality of civil and political rights.

In the half-humorous address of Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller (Md.)

on The Golden Rule, she said:

I am firmly convinced that our present powerless--I may almost

say ignominious--position arises not so much, as many aver, from

the lukewarmness of our own sex as from the supreme and absolute

indifference of men. With a few honorable exceptions, men do not

care one iota whether we vote or not....

Now if only men would take to betting on this question of woman

suffrage, if we could open it up as a field of speculation, if we

could manipulate it by some sort of patent process into stocks or

bonds and have it introduced into Wall Street, we should very

soon find ourselves emancipated. I keep on hoping that, by some

fortuitous chance, fate may eventually execute for us as

brilliant a _coup d'etat_ as did General Butler for the colored

slaves when he made them contraband of war, so that we shall just

tumble into freedom as they did very soon thereafter. Until then

let us trust in God, keep our powder very dry and our armies well

drilled and disciplined.

In an inspiring address on The True Daughters of the Republic, Mme.

Clara Neymann (N. Y.) pointed out the splendid material progress of

our country under the guidance of men, and urged that women should be

the power to lift it up to an equally exalted spiritual plane. The

paper of Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby (D. C.) on Wyoming, in which as a

Territory women had voted for twenty years and as a State for two

years, presented a most convincing array of statistics proving the

benefits of equal suffrage. Ex-Governor John W. Hoyt of Wyoming came

to the platform and corroborated these statements, paying a fine

tribute to the political influence of women. He was followed by Mrs.

Lida A. Meriwether (Tenn.), whose reputation as a humorist was fully

sustained in her clever portrayal of Dreams that Go by Contraries.

Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt (N. Y.) gave a brilliant address on The

Mission of a Republic.

In discussing The Value of Organizations for Women, Mrs. Elizabeth

Lyle Saxon (La.) said:

Among the various organizations of women the suffrage society

must rank first, for its demands have reached out and embraced

every reform which comes under the head of right, justice or

charity; and I am firmly persuaded that if the demand for the

ballot, the full right of citizenship, had not been made the

foundation of all other advantages, our organization would have

fallen apart and drifted into the more conservative and popular

lines along which less courageous women have successfully

worked....

Financial independence has been gained by many women, who, proud

of their own success, never try to benefit others, and fail to

comprehend the debt they owe to the brave, unselfish ones who

first made demands for them and who never ceased their efforts

until one after another the barriers were removed and

opportunities secured for thousands which they never could have

found themselves. It was this stanch band of pioneers, defying

criticism, scorn and hate, who forced open college doors, invaded

the law courts and stubbornly contested every inch of ground so

persistently held by fraud or force from the daughters of the

great republic....

Organized as women now are, they could pour such an overwhelming

moral influence into the political life of the country as to

become its saving grace; for when women vote they will show good

men, who have weakly shrunk from political duty, that they have a

moral and clean constituency to stand with them.

The platform proceedings of the convention closed with Miss Shaw's

splendid delineation of The Injustice of Chivalry.

Every suffrage convention for the last twelve years had been preceded

by a handsome reception at the Riggs House. This well-known and

commodious hotel had been the convention headquarters, and it also had

been the winter home of Miss Anthony, where she remained as a guest of

the proprietor, C. W. Spofford, and his wife, being thus enabled to do

a vast amount of congressional and political work, such as never has

been done since. The hotel now had passed into other hands and the

Washington _Post_, in speaking of this matter, said: "The delegates

feel like lost sheep without Mrs. Spofford's hospitality at the Riggs

House, which has always been headquarters for suffragist and all

women's conventions. Probably no one but those in the inner circle

will ever know just how much Mrs. Spofford has done for the

advancement of women in every direction. Whatever was hers was at the

disposal of the leaders, and in the absence of so much assistance it

is appreciated more nearly at its real worth."

[Illustration: MRS. ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.

Honorary President of National-American Woman Suffrage Association.]

The new club house of Wimodaughsis was opened for a reception to the

delegates by the District W. S. A., with Miss Anthony, Lucy Stone,

Mrs. Stanton, Henry B. Blackwell, and Miss Shaw, president of

Wimodaughsis, as guests of honor. All made clever little speeches

toward the close of the evening, which were supplemented with remarks

by Senator Joseph M. Carey (Wy.), Representatives J. A. Pickler (S.

D.), Martin N. Johnson (N. D.) and the Rev. Dr. Corey of the

Metropolitan church.

The hearing on January 17 was held for the first time before a

Judiciary Committee of the House, the majority of which was

Democratic.[85] The Washington _Star_ said: "The new members of the

committee were apparently surprised at receiving such a talk from a

woman and there was the most marked attention on the part of every one

present. Their surprise was still greater when they found that Mrs.

Stanton was not a phenomenal exception, but that every woman there

could make an argument which would do credit to the best of public

men."

The hearing before the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage was held the

morning of February 20. Four of the greatest women this nation ever

produced addressed this committee, asking for themselves and their sex

a privilege which is freely granted without the asking to every man,

no matter how humble, how ignorant, how unworthy, who is not included

within the category of the insane, the idiotic, the convicted

criminal--Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone,

Isabella Beecher Hooker. Mrs. Stanton (N. Y.) gave her address, The

Solitude of Self, in place of the old arguments so many times

repeated, saying in part:

The point I wish plainly to bring before you on this occasion is

the individuality of each human soul--our Protestant idea, the

right of individual conscience and judgment--our republican idea,

individual citizenship. In discussing the rights of woman, we are

to consider, first, what belongs to her as an individual, in a

world of her own, the arbiter of her own destiny, an imaginary

Robinson Crusoe with her woman Friday on a solitary island. Her

rights under such circumstances are to use all her faculties for

her own safety and happiness.

Secondly, if we consider her as a citizen, as a member of a

great nation, she must have the same rights as all other

members, according to the fundamental principles of our

Government.

Thirdly, viewed as a woman, an equal factor in civilization, her

rights and duties are still the same--individual happiness and

development.

Fourthly, it is only the incidental relations of life, such as

mother, wife, sister, daughter, which may involve some special

duties and training. In the usual discussion in regard to woman's

sphere, such men as Herbert Spencer, Frederick Harrison and Grant

Allen uniformly subordinate her rights and duties as an

individual, as a citizen, as a woman, to the necessities of these

incidental relations, some of which a large class of women never

assume. In discussing the sphere of man we do not decide his

rights as an individual, as a citizen, as a man, by his duties as

a father, a husband, a brother or a son, some of which he may

never undertake. Moreover he would be better fitted for these

very relations, and whatever special work he might choose to do

to earn his bread, by the complete development of all his

faculties as an individual. Just so with woman. The education

which will fit her to discharge the duties in the largest sphere

of human usefulness, will best fit her for whatever special work

she may be compelled to do.

The isolation of every human soul and the necessity of

self-dependence must give each individual the right to choose his

own surroundings. The strongest reason for giving woman all the

opportunities for higher education, for the full development of

her faculties, her forces of mind and body; for giving her the

most enlarged freedom of thought and action; a complete

emancipation from all forms of bondage, of custom, dependence,

superstition; from all the crippling influences of fear--is the

solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life.

The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the

government under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to

believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief factor;

a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn her

bread, is because of her birthright to self-sovereignty; because,

as an individual, she must rely on herself....

To throw obstacles in the way of a complete education is like

putting out the eyes; to deny the rights of property is like

cutting off the hands. To refuse political equality is to rob the

ostracized of all self-respect, of credit in the market place, of

recompense in the world of work, of a voice in choosing those who

make and administer the law, a choice in the jury before whom

they are tried, and in the judge who decides their punishment.

Shakespeare's play of Titus and Andronicus contains a terrible

satire on woman's position in the nineteenth century--"Rude men

seized the king's daughter, cut out her tongue, cut off her

hands, and then bade her go call for water and wash her hands."

What a picture of woman's position! Robbed of her natural rights,

handicapped by law and custom at every turn, yet compelled to

fight her own battles, and in the emergencies of life to fall

back on herself for protection....

How the little courtesies of life on the surface of society,

deemed so important from man towards woman, fade into utter

insignificance in view of the deeper tragedies in which she must

play her part alone, where no human aid is possible!

Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like

individual responsibility. Nothing adds such dignity to character

as the recognition of one's self-sovereignty; the right to an

equal place, everywhere conceded--a place earned by personal

merit, not an artificial attainment by inheritance, wealth,

family and position. Conceding then that the responsibilities of

life rest equally on man and woman, that their destiny is the

same, they need the same preparation for time and eternity. The

talk of sheltering woman from the fierce storms of life is the

sheerest mockery, for they beat on her from every point of the

compass, just as they do on man, and with more fatal results, for

he has been trained to protect himself, to resist, to conquer....

In music women speak again the language of Mendelssohn,

Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, and are worthy interpreters of their

great thoughts. The poetry and novels of the century are theirs,

and they have touched the keynote of reform in religion, politics

and social life. They fill the editor's and professor's chair,

plead at the bar of justice, walk the wards of the hospital,

speak from the pulpit and the platform. Such is the type of

womanhood that an enlightened public sentiment welcomes to-day,

and such the triumph of the facts of life over the false theories

of the past.

Is it, then, consistent to hold the developed woman of this day

within the same narrow political limits as the dame with the

spinning wheel and knitting needle occupied in the past? No, no!

Machinery has taken the labors of woman as well as man on its

tireless shoulders; the loom and the spinning wheel are but

dreams of the past; the pen, the brush, the easel, the chisel,

have taken their places, while the hopes and ambitions of women

are essentially changed.

We see reason sufficient in the outer conditions of human beings

for individual liberty and development, but when we consider the

self-dependence of every human soul, we see the need of courage,

judgment and the exercise of every faculty of mind and body,

strengthened and developed by use, in woman as well as man....

With the earnest persuasiveness for which she had been noted nearly

half a century, Lucy Stone (Mass.) said:

I come before this committee with the sense which I always feel,

that we are handicapped as women in what we try to do for

ourselves by the single fact that we have no vote. This cheapens

us. You do not care so much for us as if we had votes, so that we

come always with that infinite disadvantage.

But the thing I want to say particularly is that we have our

immortal Declaration of Independence and the various bills of

rights of the different States (George Washington advised us to

recur often to first principles), and in these nothing is clearer

than the basis of the claim that women should have equal rights

with men. A complete government is a perfectly just

government....

What I desire particularly to impress upon this committee is the

gross and grave injustice of holding thirty millions of women

absolutely helpless under the Government. The laws touch us at

every point. From the time the girl baby is born until the time

the aged woman makes her last will and testament, there is not

one of her affairs which the law does not control. It says who

shall own the property, and what rights the woman shall have; it

settles all her affairs, whether she shall buy or sell or will or

deed....

Persons are elected by men to represent them in Congress and the

State Legislatures, and here are these millions of women, with

just the same stake in the Government that men have, with a class

interest of their own, and with not one solitary word to say or

power to help settle any of the things which concern them.

Men know the value of votes and the possession of power, and I

look at them and wonder how it is possible for them to be willing

that their own mothers, sisters, wives and daughters should be

debarred from the possession of like power. We have been going to

the Legislature in Massachusetts longer than Mrs. Stanton has

been coming here. We asked that when a husband and wife make a

contract with each other, as for instance, if the wife loan the

husband her money, the contract should be considered valid just

as it would be between any other parties--for now in case the

husband fails in business, she can not get her money--and the

Legislature very kindly gave us leave to withdraw. Then we asked

that when a man dies and the wife is left alone, with the whole

burden of life on her shoulders, the law might give her more than

forty days in which to stay in her home without paying rent. But

we could not defeat one of our legislators, and they cared not a

cent for our petition and less than a cent for our opinion; and

so when we asked for this important measure they gave us leave to

withdraw.

They respect the wants of the voter, but they care nothing about

the wants of those who do not have votes. So, when we asked for

protection for wives beaten by their husbands, and that the

husband should be made to give a portion of his earnings to

support the minor children, again we had leave to withdraw....

I can think of nothing so helpless and humiliating as the

position of a disfranchised person. I do not know whether I am

treading on dangerous toes when I say that, after the late war

the Government in power wished to punish Jefferson Davis, and it

considered that the worst punishment it could inflict upon him

was to take away his right to vote. Now, the odium which attached

to him from his disfranchisement is just the same as attaches to

women from their disfranchisement. The only persons who are not

allowed to vote in Massachusetts are the lunatics, idiots, felons

and people who can not read and write. In what a category is this

to place women, after one hundred years and at the close of this

nineteenth century? And yet that is history. In Massachusetts we

are trying to get a small concession--the right to vote in the

cities and towns in which we live in regard to the taxes we have

to pay. In 1792, in Newburyport, Mass., it was not thought

necessary to give women education. At that time there were no

schools for girls; the public money was not so used, and when one

man said he had five daughters, and paid his taxes like other

men, and his girls were not allowed to attend school, and that

they ought to give the girls a chance, another man said, "Take

the public money and educate shes? Never!"

Remember this was one hundred years ago. Some of the fathers

urged that the girls should be educated in the public schools,

and so the men--God forgive them!--said, "We will let the girls

go in the morning between 6 and 8 o'clock, before the boys want

the schoolhouse." Just think of the time those girls would have

to rise in order to have a little instruction before the boys got

there! This plan did not work well, and the teacher was directed

not to teach females any longer. Every descendant of those men

now feels ashamed of them; and I think that in one hundred years

the children of the men who are now letting us come here, year

after year, pleading for suffrage, will feel ashamed. Men would

rather lose anything than their votes; they would fight for their

right of suffrage, and if anybody attempted to deprive them of it

there would be war to the knife and the knife to the hilt. We

come here to carry on our bloodless warfare, praying that the

privilege granted in the foundation of the Government should be

applied to women....

What we look forward to is part of the eternal order. It is not

possible that thirty millions of women should be held forever as

lunatics, fools and criminals. It is not possible, as the years

go on, that each person should not at least have the right to

look after his or her own interests. As the home is at its best

when the father and mother consult together in regard to the

family interests, so it is with the Government. I do not think a

man can see from a man's point of view all the things that a

woman needs, or a woman from her single point of view all the

things that a man needs. Now men have brought their best, and

also brought their worst, into the Government, and it is all

here, but the thing you have not at all is the qualities which

women possess, the feminine qualities. It has been said that

women are more economical, peaceful and law-abiding than men, and

all these qualities are lacking in the Government today.... But

whether this be so or not, it is right that every class should be

heard in behalf of its own interest....

Now, gentlemen, I hope you will try to make this case your own.

It is simple justice and fair play, and it is also a fundamental

principle of the Government. Here we are trying to have a

complete republic, and yet there are twelve millions of

disfranchised adults. I believe that among the great people--and

by the people I do not mean men, but men and women, the whole

people--nothing creates such disrespect for a fundamental

principle as not to apply it. The Government was founded upon the

principle that those who obey the laws should make them, and yet

it shuts out a full half. As long as this continues to be done,

it certainly tends to create disrespect for the principle itself.

Do you not see it? Why not reach out a hand to woman and say,

"Come and help us make the laws and secure fair play"?

At the close of this argument Miss Anthony said: "We have with us one

not so old in our cause as Mrs. Stone--I never call myself old because

I shall be young until the crack of doom--and that is Mrs. Hooker, a

sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher. The world has

always made special place for the family of Beechers."

Mrs. Hooker (Conn.) spoke very briefly, saying: "You all know those

old Jewish words in the Decalogue, 'Honor thy father and thy mother

that thy days may be long in the land that the Lord thy God giveth

thee.' If we want to help the republic, if we want to perpetuate the

institutions our fathers brought across the water, we must honor the

mothers equally with the fathers in the Government. To-day the laws

compel our sons the moment they are twenty-one to come to us and say:

'My mother, I owe you much; sometimes I think all that is good in me

has come from you, but to-day you will retire and I will rule. I will

no longer listen to your counsel; but I will make the laws for you and

my sisters, and you must obey them. Henceforth I am your ruler.' Now,

friends, a Government can not last long which teaches its sons

disrespect to its mothers. It is in line with our principles that we

recognize the mother element in the Government as well as in the

family."

Miss Anthony closed the hearing with a strong appeal for a report from

the committee which should recommend Congress to submit a Sixteenth

Amendment and allow the women of the country to carry their case to

the State Legislatures. The committee seemed much impressed by the

arguments, but evidently there was no change of opinion.[86]

A hearing was granted February 17 by the House Judiciary Committee,

with delegates present from twenty-six States. Addresses were made in

part as follows:

MRS. CHAPMAN CATT: ... You know that in these modern years there

has been a great deal of talk about natural rights, and we have

had an innumerable host of philosophers writing books to tell us

what natural rights are. I believe that to-day both scientists

and philosophers are agreed that they are the right to life, the

right to liberty, the right to free speech, the right to go where

you will and when you please, the right to earn your own living

and the right to do the best you can for yourself. One of the

greatest of those philosophers and writers, Herbert Spencer, has

accorded to woman the same natural rights as to man. I believe

every thoughtful man in the United States to-day concedes that

point.

The ballot has been for man a means of defending these natural

rights. Even now in some localities of the world those rights are

still defended by the revolver, as in former days, but in

peaceable communities the ballot is the weapon by means of which

they are protected. We find, as women citizens, that when we are

wronged, when our rights are infringed upon, inasmuch as we have

not this weapon with which to defend them, they are not

considered, and we are very many times imposed upon. We find that

the true liberty or the American people demands that all citizens

to whom these rights have been accorded should have that

weapon....

MRS. LIDA A. MERIWETHER (Tenn.): "Oh, Caesar, we who are about to

die salute you!" was the gladiators' cry in the arena, standing

face to face with death and with the Roman populace. All over

this fair city, youth and beauty, freshness and joy, stand with

welcoming hands, calling you to all pleasures of ear and eye, of

soul and sense. But here, into the inner sanctuary of your

deepest, gravest thought, come, year after year, a little band of

women over whose heads the snows of many winters and of many

sorrows have sifted. Here "we who are about to die salute you."

We do not come asking for gifts of profit or preferment for

ourselves; for us the day for ban or benison has almost passed.

But we ask for greater freedom, for better conditions for the

children of our love, whom we shall so soon leave behind. In the

short space allowed each petitioner we have not time to ask for

much. But in my State the grandmothers of seventy are growing

weary of being classed with the grandsons of seven. They fail to

find a valid reason why they should be relegated to perpetual

legal and political childhood.

Years ago, when the bugle call rang out over this unhappy land,

as the men rallied to the standard of their State, we, the wives

and mothers, who had no voice in bringing about those cruel

conditions, were called to give up our brightest and best for

cannons' food. We furnished the provisions, ministered on the

battlefield, nursed in the hospital; we, equally with our

brothers, regarded "our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor"

only as gifts held in trust to spend and be spent for home and

State. And to-day when we see the wayfaring man, who probably

hails from a penal institution of the Old World, who honors no

home, no country and no political faith, freely enjoying the

right to say who shall make and who shall enforce the laws by

which we women are governed, we grow weary of being classed as

perpetual aliens upon our nation's soil.

The honest, industrious, bread-winning women of Tennessee do not

enjoy the knowledge that the pauper of their State is their

political superior. Four years ago we saw it practically

demonstrated that when a great moral issue was at stake the male

pauper could cast his ballot without hindrance from the penal

code, but if the widow or the single woman, who earned and owned

property and paid her quota of the tax for his support, should

attempt to cast a counteracting ballot, her penalty would be fine

or imprisonment.

Year after year we have journeyed to the Mecca of the

petitioner--the legislative halls. There we have asked protection

for our boys from the temptation of the open saloon; we have

asked that around our baby girls the wall of protection might be

raised at least a little higher than ten years; we have asked for

reform schools for boys, where they should not be thrown in daily

contact with old and hardened criminals. Year after year we have

pleaded for better conditions for the children to whom we have

given the might of our love, the strength and labor of our lives;

but in not one instance has that prayer been granted. And at last

we have found the reason why. A senator in a sister State said to

a body of petitioners: "Ladies, you won't get your bill, but your

defeat will be a paying investment if it only teaches you that

the politician, little or big, is now, always was, and always

will be, the drawn image, pocket edition, safety valve and

speaking-trumpet of the fellow that voted him in."

Gentlemen, we ask your help to the end that not we, perhaps, but

the daughters and granddaughters whom we leave behind, may be

counted with "those that voted him in."

MRS. JEAN BROOKS GREENLEAF (N. Y.): Soon after I came to

Washington to make it my home for two years, one clear, bright

morning I drove up to this Capitol with a friend. As we ascended

the hill on the left we warmly expressed our admiration for the

beautiful structure within whose walls we are now standing, and

were enthusiastic in our admiration for those who so nobly

planned that, with the growth of the nation, there could be a

commensurate outstretching of its legislative halls without loss

to the dignity of the whole. We drove slowly around the front and

commenced the descent on the opposite side, when I called to the

driver to stop in order that we might feast our eyes on the

inspiring view which lay before us. There rose Washington

Monument so simple yet so grand, and I recalled the fact that in

its composition it fitly represented the Union of the States. My

heart swelled and my eyes overflowed as I thought of the grand

idea embodied in this Government, the possibilities of this

country's future. The lines of "My country, 'tis of thee," rose

to my lips, but they died there.

Whence came my right to speak those words? True I was born here;

true I was taught from my earliest youth to repeat the glorious

words of Thomas Jefferson, Roger Sherman and other patriots; but

when I grew to womanhood I had to learn the bitter lesson that

these words applied only to men; that I simply counted as one in

the population; that I must submit to be governed by the laws in

the selection of whose makers I had no choice; that my consent to

be governed would never be asked; that for my taxation there

would be no representation; that, so far as my right to "life,

liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" was concerned, others must

judge for me; that I had no voice for myself; that I was a woman

without a country, and only on the plane of political equality

with the insane, the idiot, the pauper, Indians not taxed, the

criminal, and the unnaturalized foreigner.

Honorable gentlemen, women come here annually to ask that these

wrongs be righted. To-day we have come again to entreat that, as

you have extended this building to meet the needs of the people,

you will extend your thought of the people and make it possible

that the principle underlying the Government of this country may

be embodied in a law which will make the daughters of the land

joint heirs with the sons to all the rights and privileges of an

enfranchised people. In the name of the women of the State of New

York, I ask it.

MISS ALICE STONE BLACKWELL (Mass.): Except where there is some

very strong reason to the contrary, it is generally admitted that

every man has a right to be consulted in regard to his own

concerns. The laws which he has to obey and the taxes he has to

pay are things that do most intimately concern him, and the only

way of being directly consulted in regard to them, under our form

of government, is through the ballot. Is there any very good

reason why women should not be free to be consulted in this

direct manner? Let us consider a few of the reasons which are

generally given against this freedom of women, and see whether

they are good.

It is said that women do not need to vote, because they are

virtually represented by their husbands, fathers and brothers.

The first trouble with this doctrine of virtual representation is

that it is not according to numbers. I know a man who had a wife,

a widowed mother, four unmarried daughters and five unmarried

sisters. According to this theory his vote represented himself

and all those eleven women. Yet it counted but one, just the same

as the vote of his next-door bachelor neighbor without a female

relative in the world.

Then, again, suppose that all the women in one family do not

think alike. A member of our Massachusetts Legislature had two

daughters. One was a suffragist, the other was so much opposed

that she used to burn the _Woman's Journal_ as soon as it came in

the house. How was that man to represent both his daughters by

his single vote on the suffrage question? Instead of two

daughters he might have had three, one a Republican, one a

Democrat and the other a Prohibitionist. How could he have

represented all of them by his one vote unless he had voted

"early and often?"

Again, in order to represent the women of his family a man may

have to go without representation himself. There was a case of an

old gentleman in Chicago, a Greenbacker, who had three daughters,

all of whom were Republicans. When election day approached his

three daughters said to him that he was the natural

representative of their family--he had always told them so, and

they fully agreed with him--and they pointed out to him how very

wrong it would be, when that family consisted of three

Republicans and only one Greenbacker, with but one ballot to

represent the family, that it should be cast for the Greenback

candidate. The old gentleman was conscientious and consistent

and, although he was a man of strong Greenback convictions, he

actually voted the Republican ticket in order to represent his

daughters. It was the nearest he could come to representing them

under this theory. But did it give that family any accurate or

adequate representation? Evidently not. The Greenback candidate

was entitled to one vote from that family, and he did not get it;

and the Republican candidate was entitled to three ballots, and

he got only one. And then, in order to represent his daughters,

that chivalrous father had to go without any representation

himself. It is evident that the only fair way to get at public

sentiment in such a case is for each member of the family to have

one vote, and thus represent himself or herself.

Another proof that women are not virtually represented is to be

found in the laws as they actually exist. These one-sided laws

were not made because men meant to be unjust or unkind to women,

but simply because they naturally looked at things mainly from

their own point of view. It does not indicate any special

depravity on the part of men. I have no doubt that if women alone

had made the laws, those laws would be just as one-sided as they

are to-day, only in the opposite direction.

It is said that if women are enfranchised, husbands and wives

will vote just alike, and you will simply double the vote and

have no change in the result. Then, in the next breath, it is

said that husbands and wives would vote for opposing candidates,

and then there would be matrimonial quarrels. If they vote just

alike there will be no harm done, and this good may be done--the

women will be broadened by a knowledge of public affairs, and

husband and wife will have a subject of mutual interest in which

they can sympathize with each other. In cases where husband and

wife do not think alike as to who will make the best selectmen,

for instance, you will admit that is hardly sufficient to cause

them to quarrel; but if they should think differently on very

many other points, they would quarrel anyway, so that politics

would not make much difference with them.

Then it is said that women do not want to vote, and in proof it

is said they do not vote generally for school committeemen where

allowed to do so. We all know that the size of the vote cast at

any election is just in proportion to the amount of interest that

election calls forth. At a Presidential election nearly all the

voters turn out; in an ordinary State election only about half;

at a municipal election only a small fraction of the men take the

trouble to vote. The Troy _Press_ states that at a recent

election in Syracuse for a board of education, out of about 3,000

qualified voters only 40 voted.

Then, it is said that this movement is making no progress; that

while the movements along other lines are largely succeeding,

there has been no advance along this line. Twenty-five years ago,

with insignificant exceptions, women could not vote anywhere.

To-day they have school suffrage in twenty-three States, full

suffrage in Wyoming, municipal suffrage in Kansas, and municipal

suffrage for single women and widows in England, Scotland and

most of the British provinces. The common sense of the world is

slowly but surely working toward the enfranchisement of women.

MRS. ANNIE L. DIGGS (Kan.): You remember the time when the

theoretical objection was often urged that if the suffrage was

given to women, men would cease to show them the proper respect.

For instance, the weighty argument was made that they would not

raise their hats when they met women on the street, and that they

would not give up their seats in the cars. But, gentlemen, you

should just see how they take off their hats to us in Kansas, and

how every man of them gets up and offers us his seat when we come

into a street car!

It was also urged that if the ballot were put into the hands of

women it would be detrimental to the interests of the home. There

is not a man in the State to-day who would venture to go before a

Kansas audience and urge that objection. There is not a man there

who would be willing to jeopardize his political, social or

business interests by casting any kind of obloquy upon the women

who have exercised the right of the elective franchise for the

last five years. This is the result of success. We have Municipal

Suffrage. One little ounce of fact outweighs whole tons of

theory....

THE REV. ANNA HOWARD SHAW (Penn.): Yesterday I noticed in a

report of our hearing before the Judiciary Committee of the House

the headline, "Appeals to Deaf Ears". And I said, "Has it come to

this, that when earnest and sincere women of this great country

make an appeal to the heads of the Government it is dubbed an

'Appeal to Deaf Ears'?" Time was when the British Government

thought our ancestors had not sufficient merit in their cause to

be heard, and when they made an "appeal to deaf ears". But the

time came when those ears were unstopped and they heard, and what

they heard was the cry of victory by a free people. We may be

appealing to deaf ears to-day, but the time is coming when it

will not be so. Men will hear and, hearing, they will answer,

because ultimately men desire the right. If I were asked what I

conscientiously believe the real condition of the hearts of most

men to be, I should say they are positively ignorant in regard to

the justice of this matter, and if it could be brought properly

before them, they would stand on the side of justice and right

for women.

Therefore I desire only to say that I know from my travels all

over the country, conferring with the intelligent women to bring

before them this great principle, that the good work is going on.

It may be deafness yesterday and partial hearing to-day, but it

will be full hearing to-morrow. To-day we may be blind to the

truth; to-morrow we shall see the whole truth. We may not have

another centennial before we shall see justice for all human

kind.

You know, gentlemen, that this Government exists for only three

things, and in those every woman is as much interested as every

man. It exists for the administration of justice, for the

protection of person and property, and for the development of

society. Just as you and all men have persons and property to

protect, so we women have. We are because of our nature and

because it seems as if the Almighty had intended it should be so,

more interested than men in the development of society. Wherever

there is any movement for the uplifting of society you will find

women in the forefront. There never has been any great movement

in this nation when women have not stood side by side with the

noblest and truest men.

We do to-day nine-tenths of the philanthropic work, nine-tenths

of the church work, and form three-fourths of the church

membership. We are the teachers of the young; we are the mothers

of the race. If you want the noblest men you must have the

noblest mothers. "Eye hath not seen, nor hath ear heard, nor hath

it entered into the heart of man to conceive" the kind of men and

women God had in view when He created man in His own likeness and

gave to male and female dominion over the world, to subdue it and

to bring out of it the best things.

You who talk of a great Government in which the voice of God is

heard must remember that, if "the voice of the people is the

voice of God," you never will know what that is until you get the

voice of the people, and you will find it has a soprano as well

as a bass. You must join the soprano voice of God to the bass

voice in order to get the harmony of the Divine voice. Then you

will have a law which will enable you to say, "We are a people

justly ruled, because in this nation the voice of the people is

the voice of God, and the voice of the people has been heard."

Mrs. Ellen M. Bolles (R. I.) said in the course of her remarks: "The

conditions surrounding women to-day are quite different from what they

were in the days of our grandmothers. Women are becoming property

earners and owners, as they were not in those former times before they

began asking for the ballot. Twenty-five per cent. or more of the

women of this country are property owners. Nearly nine-tenths of the

laws are made for the protection of property and of those who own it

and who earn wages. Now it seems to me that this twenty-five per cent.

of the women should have a voice in the making of laws for the

protection of their property and of their right to earn a living...."

Mrs. Colby thus closed her address on Wyoming: "Having thus shown that

the twenty-two years' experience of woman suffrage has been

satisfactory to the citizens of Wyoming; that it has conduced to good

order in the elections and to the purity of politics; that the

educational system is improved and that teachers are paid without

regard to sex; that Wyoming stands alone in a decreased proportion of

crime and divorce; and that it has elevated the personal character of

both sexes--what possible good is there left to speak of as coming to

that State from woman suffrage save its position as the vanguard of

progress and human freedom. Not the Bartholdi statue in New York

harbor, but Wyoming on the crest of the continent, the first true

republic, represents Liberty enlightening the world."

Short addresses were made also by Mrs. Caroline McCullough Everhard,

Mrs. Mary Jewett Telford, the Rev. Mila F. Tupper, Mrs. Marble, Dr.

Frances Dickinson, Miss H. Augusta Howard, Mrs. Saxon, Mrs. Hannah J.

Bailey, Mrs. Evaleen L. Mason and Mrs. Olive Pond Amies.[87]

The _Post_, in an account of the Senate hearing, said: "Miss Anthony

called attention to Senator Hoar as the gentleman who had presented

the first favorable suffrage report to the Senate in 1879. Everybody

shouted "Stand up," and as he retired deeper into his leather chair

they continued to cry, "Up, up!" It was a tableau when the Senator

found his feet, and at the same time was confronted with a round of

applause and a volley of white handkerchiefs waved at him in

Chautauqua style. He capped the climax by moving at once a favorable

report. Laurel wreaths and bouquets would have been Senator Hoar's

portion if they had been available, but the women all assured him

afterward of their sincere appreciation. The hearing was held in the

ladies' reception room, which was completely filled."

These matchless arguments had no effect upon the Democratic members of

the committee, but Senator Warren of Wyoming made a favorable report

for himself, Senators Hoar of Massachusetts, Quay of Pennsylvania and

Allen of Washington, which concluded by saying: "The majority of the

members of this committee, believing that equal suffrage, regardless

of sex, should be the legitimate outgrowth of the principles of a

republican form of government, and that the right of suffrage should

be conferred upon the women of the United States, earnestly recommend

the passage of the amendment submitted herewith."

Senators Vance of North Carolina and George of Mississippi filed the

same minority report which already had done duty several times,

although the former was said to have declared that the speeches of the

women surpassed anything he ever had heard, and that their logic, if

used in favor of any other measure, could not fail to carry it.

FOOTNOTES:

[85] David B. Culberson, Tex.; William C. Oates, Ala.; Thomas R.

Stockdale, Miss.; Charles J. Boatner, La.; Isaac H. Goodnight, Ky.;

John A. Buchanan, Va.; William D. Bynum, Ind.; Alfred C. Chapin, N.

Y.; Fernando C. Layton, O.; Simon P. Wolverton, Penn.; Case Broderick;

Kan.; James Buchanan, N. J.; George W. Ray, N. Y.; H. Henry Powers,

Vt.

[86] Zebulon B. Vance, N. C.; John G. Carlisle, Ky.; J. Z. George,

Miss.; George F. Hoar, Mass.; John B. Allen, Wash.; Matthew S. Quay,

Penn.; Francis E. Warren, Wyo.

[87] After the convention had adjourned Miss Sara Winthrop Smith

(Conn.) made an argument on Federal Suffrage before the Judiciary

Committee of the House. See Chap. I for general statement of position

taken by its advocates.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1893.

At the close of the Twenty-fifth annual meeting the Washington

_Evening News_ said: "There will be an exodus from Washington during

the next three days--an exodus of some of the intellectually powerful

and brilliant women who participated in what was agreed to be the

brightest and most successful convention ever held by the National

Suffrage Association. Whatever may be the opinion of the world at

large upon the feasibility or desirability of granting the franchise

to women, none who attended their annual reunion of delegates or

listened to the addresses of their orators and leaders, can deny that

the convention was composed of clever, sensible and attractive women,

splendidly representative of their sex and of the present time."

After complimentary notices of the leading members, it continued:

"'One very pleasant thing connected with our business committee is the

beautiful relations existing among its members,' said one of the

officers the other evening. 'We all have our opinions and they often

differ, but we are absolutely true to each other and to the cause. We

are most of us married, and all of us have the co-operation of our

husbands and fathers. Of the business committee of nine, six are

married. For the past two years we have had one man on our board, the

Hon. Wm. Dudley Foulke, but as a rule men have not the time and

thought to give this subject, as they are engaged in more remunerative

employment.' The self-control and good-nature prevailing even in the

heated debate on the religious liberty interference resolution have

already been alluded to in our columns."

Miss Susan B. Anthony presided over the convention, Jan. 16-19, 1893,

held in Metzerott's Music Hall and preceded by the usual religious

services Sunday afternoon. The sermon was given by the Rev. Annis F.

Eastman (N. Y.), an ordained Congregational minister, from the text in

Isaiah, "Take away the yoke."

The memorial service, which was of unusual impressiveness, opened with

the reading by Miss Anthony of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton's tribute

to the distinguished dead of the past year who advocated equality of

rights for women--George William Curtis, John Greenleaf Whittier,

Ernestine L. Rose, Abby Hutchinson Patton and others.[88] Of Mr.

Curtis she said:

If the success of our cause could be assured by the high

character of the men who from the beginning have identified

themselves with it, woman would have been emancipated long ago. A

reform advocated by Garrison, Phillips, Emerson, Alcott, Theodore

Parker, Gerrit Smith, Samuel J. May and George William Curtis

must be worthy the consideration of statesmen and bishops.

For more than one generation Mr. Curtis maintained a brave

attitude on this question. As editor of _Harper's Magazine_, and

as a popular lecturer on the lyceum platform, he was ever true to

his convictions. Before the war his lecture on Fair Play for

Women aroused much thought among the literary and fashionable

classes. In the New York Constitutional Convention in 1867, a

most conservative body, Mr. Curtis, though a young man and aware

that he had but little sympathy among his compeers, bravely

demanded that the word "male" should be stricken from the

suffrage article of the proposed constitution. His speech on that

occasion, in fact, philosophy, rhetoric and argument never has

been surpassed in the English language. From the beginning of his

public life to its close Mr. Curtis was steadfast on this

question. _Harper's Magazine_ for June, 1892, contains his last

plea for woman and for a higher standard for political

parties....

Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose, exiled from Poland on account of her religious

faith, married an Englishman and came to America, where she was one of

the first and most eloquent of the women who spoke on the public

platform. In 1836 she circulated petitions for the property rights of

married women, in company with Mrs. Paulina Wright (Davis), and

presented them to the New York Legislature. For forty years she was

among the ablest advocates of the rights of women, lecturing also on

religion, government and other subjects. Mrs. Abby Hutchinson Patton

was lovingly referred to, the last but one of that family who had sung

so many years for freedom, not only for the negro but for woman.

Whittier, the uncompromising advocate of liberty for woman as well as

for man, was eulogized in fitting terms.

The Hon. A. G. Riddle (D. C.) offered a fine testimonial to Francis

Minor and Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, saying: "Mr. Minor was the first to

urge the true and sublime construction of that noble amendment born of

the war. It declares that all persons--not simply males--born or

naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States and

of the State wherein they reside. Those who are denied or are refused

the right to exercise the privileges and franchises of citizenship are

less than citizens. Those who still declare that women may not vote,

simply write 'falsehood' across that glorious declaration." General

Butler, as a leading member of the House Judiciary Committee, in a

matchless argument had asserted the right of women to vote under the

Fourteenth Amendment,[89] and used all his influence to secure

suffrage for women. Miss Anthony said in part:

The good of this hour is that it brings to the knowledge of the

young the work of the pioneers who have passed away. It seems

remarkable to those standing, as I do, one of a generation almost

ended, that so many of these young people know nothing of the

past; they are apt to think they have sprung up like somebody's

gourd, and that nothing ever was done until they came. So I am

always gratified to hear these reminiscences, that they may know

how others have sown what they are reaping to-day.

One of the earliest advocates of this cause was Sally Holly, the

daughter of Myron Holly, founder of the Liberty Party in the

State of New York, and also founder of Unitarianism in the city

of Rochester. Frederick Douglass will say a few words in regard

to Sally Holly, and of such of the others as he may feel moved to

speak; and I want to say that when, at the very first convention

called and managed by women, Elizabeth Cady Stanton read her

resolution that the elective franchise is the underlying right,

there was but one man to stand with her, and that man was

Frederick Douglass.

Mr. Douglass (D. C.) told of attempting to speak in Buffalo against

slavery in 1843, when every hall was closed to him and he went into an

abandoned storeroom:

I continued from day to day speaking in that old store to

laborers from the wharves, cartmen, draymen and longshoremen,

until after awhile the room was crowded. No woman made her

appearance at the meetings, but day after day for six days in

succession I spoke--morning, afternoon and evening. On the third

day there came into the room a lady leading a little girl. No

greater contrast could possibly have been presented than this

elegantly dressed, refined and lovely woman attempting to wend

her way through that throng. I don't know that she showed the

least shrinking from the crowd, but I noticed that they rather

shrank from her, as if fearful that the dust of their garments

would soil hers. Her presence to me at that moment was as if an

angel had been sent from Heaven to encourage me in my

anti-slavery endeavors. She came day after day thereafter, and at

last I had the temerity to ask her name. She gave it--Sally

Holly. "A daughter of Myron Holly?" said I. "Yes," she answered.

I understood it all then, for he was amongst the foremost of the

men in western New York in the anti-slavery movement. His home

was in Rochester and his dust now lies in Mt. Hope, the beautiful

cemetery of that city. Over him is a monument, placed there by

that other true friend of women, Gerrit Smith of Peterboro....

I have seen the Hutchinson family in a mob in New York. When

neither Mr. Garrison, Mr. Phillips nor Mr. Burleigh, nor any one

could speak, when there was a perfect tempest and whirlwind of

rowdyism in the old Tabernacle on Broadway, then this family

would sing, and almost upon the instant that they would raise

their voices, so perfect was the music, so sweet the concord, so

enchanting the melody, that it came down upon the audience like a

summer shower on a dusty road, subduing, settling everything.

I can not add to the paper which Mrs. Stanton has sent. After

her--silence. Your cause has raised up no voice so potent as that

of Elizabeth Cady Stanton--no living voice except yours, Madame

President.

How delighted I am to see that you have the image of Lucretia

Mott here [referring to her marble bust on the stage]. I am glad

to be here, glad to be counted on your side, and glad to be able

to remember that those who have gone before were my friends. I

was more indebted to Whittier perhaps than to any other of the

anti-slavery people. He did more to fire my soul and enable me to

fire the souls of others than any other man. It was Whittier and

Pierpont who feathered our arrows, shot in the direction of the

slave power, and they did it well. No better reading can now be

had in favor of the rights of woman or the liberties of man than

is to be found in their utterances....

Miss Clara Barton (D. C.) spoke in a touching manner of the great

service rendered to humanity by Dr. Harriet N. Austin, who assisted

Dr. James C. Jackson to establish the "Home on the Hillside," the

Dansville (N. Y.) Sanitorium. Henry B. Blackwell told of John L.

Whiting, "a power and a strength to the Massachusetts Suffrage

Association for many years, one of those rare men not made smaller by

wealth, and always willing to give himself, his mind, his heart, his

money, to help the cause of woman." The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw said in

part:

I have been asked to speak a word of Mrs. Ralph Waldo Emerson. It

has been said by some people that we have wrongfully quoted Mr.

Emerson as being on our side. His biographers appear to have put

in his early statements and forgotten to include his later

declarations, which were all in favor of the enfranchisement of

women.

I was once sent to Concord by the Massachusetts society to hold a

meeting. The churches were closed against suffrage speakers and

there was not money enough to pay for a hall. Mrs. Ralph Waldo

Emerson heard the meeting was to be given up, and she sent a

message to the lady having the work in charge, saying: "Shall it

be said that here in Concord, where the Revolutionary war began,

there is no place to speak for the freedom of women? Get the best

hall in town and I will pay for it." So on that occasion and on

another Mrs. Emerson paid for the hall and sent a kind word to

the meeting, declaring herself in favor of the suffrage for

women, and stating that her husband's views and her own were

identical on this question. She had the New England trait of

being a good wife, a good mother and a good housekeeper, and Mr.

Emerson's home was a restful and blessed place. We sometimes

forget the wives of great men in thinking of the greatness of

their husbands, but Mrs. Emerson was as great in her way as Mr.

Emerson in his, and no more faithful friend to woman and to

woman's advancement ever has lived among us.[90]

A word as to the Rev. Anna Oliver, the first woman to enter the

theological department of Boston University. She was much beloved

by her class. She was a devoted Christian, eminently orthodox,

and a very good worker in all lines of religious effort. After

Miss Oliver graduated she was ambitious to become ordained, as

all women ought to be who desire to preach the gospel; and so

after I had graduated from the theological school, the year

following, we both applied to the conference of the Methodist

Episcopal Church for admission. Miss Oliver's name beginning with

O and mine with S, her case was presented first. She was denied

ordination by Bishop Andrews. Our claims were carried to the

general conference in Cincinnati, and the Methodist Episcopal

Church denied ordination to the women whom it had graduated in

its schools and upon whom it had conferred the degree of bachelor

of divinity. It not only did this, but it made a step backwards;

it took from us the licenses to preach which had been granted to

Miss Oliver for four years and to myself for eight years.

But Miss Oliver was earnest in her efforts, and so she began to

preach in the city of Brooklyn, and with great courage bought a

church in which a man had failed as a minister, leaving a debt of

$14,000. She was like a great many other women--and here is a

warning for all women. God made a woman equal to a man, but He

did not make a woman equal to a woman _and_ a man. We usually try

to do the work of a man and of a woman too; then we break down,

and they say that women ought not to be ministers because they

are not strong enough. They do not get churches that can afford

to send them to Europe on a three months' vacation once a year.

Miss Oliver was not only the minister and the minister's wife,

but she started at least a dozen reforms and undertook to carry

them all out. She was attacked by that influential Methodist

paper, the _Christian Advocate_, edited by the Rev. Dr. James M.

Buckley, who declared that he would destroy her influence in the

church, and so with that great organ behind him he attacked her.

She had that to fight, the world to fight and the devil to fight,

and she broke down in health. She went abroad to recover, but

came home only to die.[91]

The death of those less widely known was touchingly referred to by

women of the different States. Miss Anthony closed the services by

saying: "I am just informed that we must add to this list the revered

name of Abby Hopper Gibbons, of four-score-and-ten, who with her

father, Isaac T. Hopper, formed the Women's Prison Association, and

who has stood for more than the allotted years of man the sentinel on

the watch-tower to guard unfortunate women and help them back into

womanly living."

At the first evening session Miss Anthony, in her president's address,

answered the question, "What has been gained by the forty years'

work?" She called attention to the woman who had preached the day

before, ordained by an orthodox denomination; to the women alternate

delegates to the late National Republican Convention; to the

recommendation of Gov. Roswell P. Flower that women should be

delegates to the approaching New York Constitutional Convention. She

pointed out rapidly many other straws showing the direction of the

wind, saying: "Wendell Phillips said what he wanted to do on the

abolition question was to turn Congress into an anti-slavery debating

society. That is what we have done with every educational, industrial,

religious and political body--we have turned them all into debating

societies on the woman question."

U. S. Senator Joseph M. Carey (Wy.) sent a letter reaffirming his

conviction that the granting of full political rights to women would

be for the best interests of the country. Mr. Blackwell sketched the

successive extensions of suffrage to women, and set forth the special

importance of their trying to secure the Municipal and the

Presidential franchises, both of which could be granted by the

Legislature. Mrs. Ellen Battelle Dietrick (Mass.) read an able paper

on The Best Methods of Interesting Women in Suffrage, in which she

said:

The truth is, the American woman has been so pleasantly soothed

by the sweet opiate of that high-sounding theory of her

"sovereignty," that until very recently she could not be aroused

to examine the facts. Forty years ago the voices of a few crying

in the wilderness began to prepare the way for the present

awakening....

The deliverance of woman must have as its corner-stone

self-support. The first step in this direction must be to explode

the fallacy that marriage is a state of being supported. As men

are most largely the gatherers of money, it is mistakenly assumed

that they are most largely the creators of wealth. The man goes

abroad and gives his daily labor toward earning his board and

clothes; but what he actually receives for his work can neither

be eaten nor worn. It does nothing whatever until he puts it into

his wife's hands, and upon her intelligence, energy and ability

depend how much can be done through the using of it. Not until

her labor in transforming raw material, in cooking, sewing, and

rendering a house habitable, is joined to his, can a man be said

to have really received anything worth having. He begins, she

completes, the making of their joint wealth. Their dependence is

mutual; the position of the one who turns the money into usable

material by her labor being equally important, equally valuable,

with that of him who turned his labor into money; and this must

be fully recognized if woman is ever to come into her true

relation to man. She supports him exactly as he supports her, and

this is equally the case with the wife who herself produces

directly, or the one who gives her time and intelligence to

direct the production of others....

Closely allied to the fallacy that man supports woman is the

fallacy that man protects woman, and has a right to control her

by virtue of this protection. There was a period in the world's

transition from savagery to civilization when mankind had so

little conception of the mutuality of human interests that war

was a perpetual condition of society. Originally women also were

fighters; just as the lioness or tigress is as capable as her

mate of self-defense and protection of her young, so the savage

woman, when necessity required, was equally capable of conducting

warfare in the same cause. But long before men had given up

killing each other for the better business of trading with and

helping each other woman had ceased to be a fighter. She was the

first to see the advantages of peace, both because she was the

earliest manufacturer and trader and because it cost her more in

the production of every soldier than it cost man. Instinct

directed her toward peace long before reason made it possible for

her to explain why she hated war, and she hated it as an

occupation for herself long before it occurred to her to despise

it as an occupation for man. To-day the love of peace and hatred

for war which she is rapidly spreading through the world is the

real protector of woman; she is a self-protector by virtue of

this proclivity, and, as war is equally the enemy of man, here

again woman gives to man as much as she receives. Whatever force

the argument based on the right of soldiers to rule may once have

had is rapidly passing away. The era of the destroyer is dying,

the epoch of the Creator is coming in....

The subjugation of woman doubtless arose from an honest desire of

man to protect her. His mistake lay in assuming that his mind and

will could do private and public duty for both. Woman's mistake

lay in assuming that she might with safety permit man's mind and

will to discharge the duties nature meant to be fulfilled by her

own. Unhappily nature has a way of allowing the human race to

learn by its own experience, even though the lesson consume ages

of time; and she has also a rule that unused faculties and

functions fall into a state of atrophy. It was by such a

substitution of masculine for feminine will that woman fell so

far behind him whom she originally led in the race, industrial

and intellectual. If they are ever to march side by side as true

comrades and free partners, it must be by a voluntary resumption

of independence in feminine mind and will. In this man can assist

by stimulating her spirit of independence, or he can discourage

it by a contrary course, but the final result lies with woman

herself. She alone can free herself from the habits of thought

and action engendered by thousands of years of slavery.

The steps toward the emancipation of women are first

intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great

strides in the first two of these stages already have been made

by millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely

carrying them towards the last.

In the address of Mrs. Ruth C. D. Havens (D. C.) on The Girl of the

Future, which was greatly enjoyed, she said:

The training and education of the girl of the present have seldom

been discussed except from one standpoint--her suitable

preparation for becoming an economical housekeeper, an

inexpensive wife, a willing and self-forgetful mother, a cheap,

unexacting, patient, unquestioning, unexpectant, ministering

machine. The girl's usefulness to herself, to her sex and race,

her preferences, tastes, happiness, social, intellectual or

financial prosperity, hardly have entered into the thought upon

this question....

If woman would be a student, a scientist, a lecturer, a

physician; if she would be a pioneer in a wilderness of scoffers

to make fair roads up which her sex might easily travel to equal

educational and legal rights, equal privileges and pay in fields

of labor, equal suffrage--she must divide her eager energies and

give the larger half to superior homekeeping, wifehood and

motherhood, in order that her new gospel shall be received with

any respect or acceptance. And probably no class of women have

been such sticklers for the cultivation of all woman's modest,

unassuming home duties as have been the great, ambitious teachers

on this suffrage platform....

But this will not be the training of the girl of the future. It

is not the sort of preparation to which the boy of the present is

urged. "Jack of all trades, good at none" is the old epithet

bestowed upon a man who thus diffuses his energies. You do not

expect a distinguished lawyer to clean his own clothes, a doctor

to groom his horse, a teacher to take care of the schoolhouse

furnace, a preacher to half-sole his shoes. This would be

illogical, and men are nothing if not logical. Yet a woman who

enters upon any line of achievement is invariably hampered, for

at least the early years, with the inbred desire to add to the

labor of her profession all the so-called feminine duties, which,

fulfilled to-day, are yet to be done to-morrow, which bring to

her neither comfort, gain nor reputation, and which by their

perpetual demand diminish her powers for a higher quality of

work....

Everywhere there is too much housekeeping. It is not economy of

time or money for every little family of moderate means to

undertake alone the expensive and wearing routine. The married

woman of the future will be set free by co-operative methods,

half the families on a square, perhaps, enjoying one luxurious,

well-appointed dining-room with expenses divided _pro rata_. In

many other ways housekeeping will be simplified. Homes have no

longer room for people--they are consecrated to things. Parlors

and bedrooms are full of the cheap and incongruous or expensive

and harmonious belongings of a junk shop. Plush gods hold the

fort. All the average house needs to make it a museum is the

sign, "Hands off." ...

The girl of the future will select her own avocation and take her

own training for it. If she be a houseworker, and many will

prefer to be, she will be so valuable in that line as to command

much respect and good wages. If she be an architect, a jeweler,

an electrical engineer, she will not rob a cook by mutilating a

dinner, or a dressmaker by amateur cutting and sewing, or a

milliner by creating her own bonnet. The house helper will not be

incompetent, because the development and training of woman for

her best and truest work will have extended to her also, and she

will do housework because she loves it and is better adapted to

it than to any other employment. She will preside in the kitchen

with skill and science.

The service girl of the future will be paid perhaps double or

treble her present wages, with wholesome food, a cheerful room,

an opportunity to see an occasional cousin and some leisure for

recreation. At present this would be ruinous, and why? Because

too frequently the family has but one producer. The wife, herself

a consumer, produces more consumers. Daughters grow up around a

man like lilies of the field, which toil not, neither do they

spin. Every member of every family in the future will be a

producer of some kind and in some degree. The only one who will

have the right of exemption will be the mother, for a child can

hardly be born with cheerful views of living whose mother's life

has been, for its sake, a double burden. From this root spring

melancholy, insanity, suicide. The production of human souls is

the highest production of all, the one which requires most

preparation, truest worth, gravest care and holiest consecration.

If the girl of the future recognizes this truth, she will have

made an advance indeed. But apart from the mother every member of

the family should be a material producer; and then there will be

means sufficient for the producer in the kitchen to get such

remuneration for her skill as will eliminate the incompetent,

shirking, migratory creature of today....

I hardly need say to this audience that the girl of the future

will vote. She will not plead for the privilege--she will be

urged to exercise the right, and no one will admit that he ever

opposed it, or remember that there was a time when woman's ballot

was despised and rejected of men. She will not be told that she

needs the suffrage for her own protection, but she will be urged

to exercise it for the good of her country and of humanity. It

will not be known that the Declaration of Independence was once a

dead letter. No one will believe that it ever was declared that

the Constitution did not protect this right. It will be

incredible that women were once neither people nor citizens, _and

yet were the mothers, and in so much the creators, of the men who

governed them_.

Mrs. Mary S. Lockwood (D. C.), member-at-large of the World's Fair

Board of Lady Managers, read a carefully prepared statement of the

methods and aims of that body, which began: "The Board of Lady

Managers owe their existence to Susan B. Anthony and her co-workers.

It was these women who went before Congress and not only asked but

demanded that women should have a place in the management of this

Columbian Exposition--and they got it"![92] She closed as follows:

I have been greatly impressed as I have come into this hall from

day to day, and have looked upon the sweet representative face in

marble of Lucretia Mott and the benign, glorified face of Mrs.

Stanton, with Susan B. Anthony as the central figure of the trio,

and have thought of the years they have lifted up their voices

praying they might see the glory of the coming of the Lord; and I

have felt if only I could bring before them the sheaves which we

are gathering from the women of the earth for this great

exposition; if only I could show them how their work has put the

women of this nation in touch with the women of every other

country, awakening them to new aspirations, new hopes, new

efforts, to whom the dawn of a brighter day is visible--these

pioneers would say, "Our eyes are indeed opened; a handful of

corn planted on the top of the mountain has been made to shake

all Lebanon."

Miss Mary H. Williams (Neb.) reported that, as chairman of a committee

for this purpose, she had sent letters to forty-nine Governors of

States and Territories; twenty-one replies had been received--nine in

favor of full suffrage for women, two of school suffrage only, three

were totally opposed and the others made evasive replies. The nine in

favor were Governors Barber of Wyoming, Routt of Colorado, Mellette of

South Dakota, Winans of Michigan, Thomas of Utah, Burke of North

Dakota, Humphrey of Kansas, Colcord of Nevada, Knapp of Alaska. All of

these were Western men and all Republicans but Winans. Tillman of

South Carolina and Willey of Idaho favored school suffrage alone.

Stone of Mississippi and Fleming of West Virginia answered "no". Gov.

James E. Boyd of Nebraska was opposed, although he would allow women

to vote on school questions. Governor Boyd's election had been

contested on the ground that his father had not been properly

naturalized.

Gov. Thomas M. Holt of North Carolina replied: "I am utterly opposed

to woman suffrage in any shape or form. I have a wife and three

daughters, all married, who are as much opposed to women going into

politics as I am, and they _reflex_ the sentiment of our Southern

women generally."

Gov. Francis P. Fleming of Florida gave nine reasons why he was

opposed, but concluded: "The above objections would not as a rule

apply to church or school elections, and as women are usually much

more pious than men and take more interest in church matters, I am

inclined to think it would be well for them to vote at church

elections, and am not aware of any particular objection to their

voting at school elections."

The address of Mrs. Orra Langhorne (Va.) was read by her niece, Miss

Henderson Dangerfield. It gave a charming picture of the oldtime

Southern woman, her responsible social position, her care for her

great household in her own small world; described how she was

handicapped by tradition and lack of intellectual training; depicted

the changed conditions since the war and her gradual awakening to the

demands of modern life and the need of larger rights.

Lucy Stone was not able to be present and a letter from her was read

by her husband, Mr. Blackwell:

DEAR FRIENDS:--Wherever woman suffragists are gathered together

in the name of equal rights, there am I always in spirit with

them. Although unable to be present in person, my glad greeting

goes to you, every one, to those who have borne the heat and

burden of the day, and to the strong, brave, younger workers who

have come to lighten the load and help bring the victory. The

work still calls for patient perseverance and ceaseless endeavor;

but we have every reason to rejoice when there are so many gains

and when favorable conditions abound on every hand. The end is

not yet in sight, but it can not be far away. The road before us

is shorter than the road behind.

This was her last message to the association. She passed away in

October of this year, having labored nearly half a century for the

enfranchisement of women.

Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, in an address entitled Comparisons Are

Odious, showed the contrast between the Government's treatment of the

Sioux Indians, exempted from taxation and allowed to vote, and of

law-abiding, intelligent women in the same section of the country,

compelled to pay taxes and not allowed to vote.[93] Miss Elizabeth

Upham Yates closed the evening with a brilliant address.

Before adjourning Miss Anthony read Gov. Roswell P. Flower's

certificate appointing her a member of the Board of Managers of the

State Industrial School at Rochester, N. Y. She took considerable

satisfaction in pointing out that it referred to her as "him," because

she had always contended that, if the masculine pronoun in an official

document is sufficient to send a woman to the jail or the gallows, it

is sufficient to enable her to vote and hold office.

On the last evening, the Hon. Carroll D. Wright, U. S. Commissioner of

Labor, delivered a valuable address on The Industrial Emancipation of

Women, in which he said:

Until within a comparatively recent period, woman's subjection to

man has been well-nigh complete in all respects, whether such

subjection is considered from a social, political, intellectual

or even a physical point of view. At first the property of man,

she emerged under civilization from the sphere of a drudge to

that of a social factor and, consequently, into the liberty of

cultivating her mental faculties....

Industrial emancipation, using the term broadly, means the

highest type of woman as the result, the word "industrial"

comprehending in this sense all remunerative employment. The

entrance of woman into the industrial field was assured when the

factory system of labor displaced the domestic or hand labor

system. The age of invention, with the wonderful ramifications

which invention always has produced, must be held accountable for

bringing woman into a field entirely unknown to her prior to that

age. As an economic factor, either in art, literature or

industry, she was before that time hardly recognizable. With the

establishment of the factory system, the desire of woman to have

something more than she could earn as a domestic or in

agricultural labor, or to earn something where before she had

earned nothing, resulted in her becoming an economic factor, and

she was obliged to submit to all the conditions of this new

position. It hardly can be said that in the lower forms of

industrial pursuits she superseded man, but it is true that she

supplemented his labors....

Each step in industrial progress has raised her in the scale of

civilization rather than degraded her. As a result she has

constantly gone up higher and gained intellectual advantages,

such as the opening to her of the higher institutions of

learning, which have in turn equipped her for the best

professional employment. The moral plane of the so-called

workingwoman certainly is higher than that of the woman engaged

in domestic service, and is equal to that of any class of women

in the community....

As women have occupied the positions of bookkeepers, telegraphers

and many of what might be called semi-professional callings, men

have entered engineering, electrical, mechanical and other

spheres of work which were not known when women first stepped

into the industrial field. As the latter have progressed from

entire want of employment to that which pays a few dollars per

week, men, too, have progressed in their employments, and

occupied larger fields not existing before....

Woman is now stepping out of industrial subjection and coming

into the industrial system of the present as an entirely new

economic factor. If there were no other reasons, this alone would

be sufficient to make her wages low and prevent their very rapid

increase.... The growing importance of woman's labor, her general

equipment through technical education, her more positive

dedication to the life-work she chooses, the growing sentiment

that an educated and skilful woman is a better and truer

companion in marriage than an ignorant and unskilful one, her

appreciation of the value of organization, the general uplifting

of the principle of integrity in business circles, woman's

gradual approach to man's powers in mental achievement also, her

possible and probable political influence--all these combined,

working along general avenues of progress and evolution, will

bring her industrial emancipation, by which she will stand on an

equality with man in those callings in life for which she may be

fitted. As she approaches this equality her remuneration will be

increased and her economic importance acknowledged....

If woman's industrial emancipation leads to what many are pleased

to call "political rights," we must not quarrel with it. It is

not just that all other advantages which may come through this

emancipation shall be withheld simply because one great privilege

on which there is a division of sentiment may also come.

One of the greatest boons which will result from the industrial

emancipation of woman will be the frank admission on the part of

the true and chivalric man that she is the sole and rightful

owner of her own being in every respect, and that whatever

companionship may exist between her and man shall be as

thoroughly honorable to her as to him.

Miss Harriet May Mills (N. Y.) gave a paper on The Present Political

Status of Woman, which showed the trained mind and logical method of

thought one would expect from a graduate of Cornell University. The

last address of the convention was given by the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw,

entitled The America Undiscovered by Columbus. This, like so many of

Miss Shaw's unsurpassed lectures, will be lost to posterity because

unwritten and not stenographically reported.

In her report as vice-president-at-large Miss Shaw announced that she

had given during the year 215 lectures for which she had received pay,

twenty-five of these for suffrage associations and the rest for

temperance and literary organizations, but on every occasion it had

been a suffrage lecture. In addition she had given gratuitously to the

service of this cause lectures which at her regular price would have

amounted to $1,265. She also related the following incident: "I was

present at the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union in Denver,

and Miss Willard introduced me as a fraternal delegate from the

National Suffrage Association. I made my little speech and the whole

convention arose and waved their handkerchiefs at the message sent by

this body. One woman jumped to her feet and moved that a telegram be

returned from that convention, giving its sisterly sympathy. Miss

Willard got up and said, 'Shoo, ladies; this is different from what it

was in Washington in 1881, when you refused to let me have Miss

Anthony on my platform. Things are coming around, girls.'"

The corresponding secretary, Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery, announced that

thirty-three State associations were auxiliary to the national. Miss

Adelaide Johnson was introduced as the sculptor who had modeled the

fine busts of Lucretia Mott, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony, which were

on the platform. Miss Laura Clay reported on the work that had just

been commenced in the Southern States, which she considered a most

hopeful field. In the discussion on Press Work, when it was proposed

that the association start an official paper, Miss Anthony said with

much feeling: "I had an experience in publishing a paper about

twenty-five years ago and I came to grief. I never hear of a woman

starting a suffrage paper that my blood does not tingle with agony for

what that poor soul will have to endure--the same agony I went

through. I feel, however, that we shall never become an immense power

in the world until we concentrate all our money and editorial forces

upon one great national daily newspaper, so we can sauce back our

opponents every day in the year; once a month or once a week is not

enough.

The resolutions presented by the chairman, Mrs. Dietrick, were adopted

without dissent,[94] except the last:

WHEREAS, The Constitution of the United States promises

noninterference with the religious liberty of the people; and

WHEREAS, Congress is now threatening to abridge the liberties of

all in response to ecclesiastical dictation from a portion of the

people; therefore,

_Resolved_, That this association enters a protest against any

national attempt to control the innocent inclinations of the

people either on the Jewish Sabbath or the Christian Sunday, and

this we do quite irrespective of our individual opinions as to

the sanctity of Sunday.

_Resolved_, That we especially protest against this present

attempt to force all the people to follow the religious dictates

of a part of the people, as establishing a precedent for the

entrance of a most dangerous complicity between Church and State,

thereby subtly undermining the foundation of liberty, so

carefully laid by the wisdom of our fathers.

This precipitated the discussion as to the opening of the World's Fair

on Sunday which had been vigorously waged during two preceding

conventions without resulting in definite action. It was now continued

during three sessions and then, by majority vote, indefinitely

postponed. Mrs. Avery, chairman of the Columbian Exposition

Committee,[95] closed her report as follows: "As we are to be

represented in so many ways during the World's Fair--i. e., at the

World's Congress of Representative Women, in the Suffrage Congresses,

in the meetings to be held in the auditorium of the Woman's Building,

in the program to be presented by us for the approval of the Committee

on General Meetings of the Board of Lady Managers--I would strongly

urge against attempting to hold a separate Suffrage Congress, either

national or international, during the Exposition." This was agreed to.

The Congressional Committee, through Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton,

reported that 375 letters had been sent to members of Congress asking

for an expression on the question of woman suffrage. Of those who

responded fifty-nine were in favor of full suffrage; twenty-five of

qualified suffrage; sixty-five wholly opposed. The remainder did not

reply, although stamps were enclosed. This committee also arranged for

the printing, purchasing and distributing of 23,000 copies of the

Senate and House hearings. The report concluded: "The time has come

when women wanting legislation must proceed exactly as men do who want

it. No man procures an office for himself or a friend, nor does any

man or association get an Act passed, unless the claim is persistently

pressed, not only upon the members of the committee in charge of it

but upon his friends and acquaintances in Congress. There is no use in

supposing the justice or right of a question, without persistent work,

is going to bring about a reform."[96]

Mrs. Colby, chairman of the Committee on Federal Suffrage, appointed

to urge the legal right of women to vote for Representatives under the

U. S. Constitution, reported that she had sent a copy of Francis

Minor's argument to every member of the Judiciary Committee of the

House of Representatives, with a personal letter asking for an

opinion, and that not one replied. Petitions were sent from twenty

States, including suffrage associations, temperance societies,

granges, etc. Letters asking an opinion were written to nineteen

Senators who were considered friendly to the enfranchisement of women,

and only one answered, Joseph N. Dolph of Oregon. Miss Sara Winthrop

Smith (Conn.) opened the discussion.[97]

The motion of Miss Alice Stone Blackwell to amend the constitution so

that it would not be obligatory to hold every annual convention in

Washington, was amended by Mrs. Avery to the effect that "the annual

delegate convention shall be held in Washington during the first

session of each Congress, in order to influence national legislation;

the meeting of the alternate conventions to be left an open question."

Miss Anthony was greatly opposed to holding any of the national

meetings outside of Washington, and in a forcible speech she said:

The sole object, it seems to me, of this organization is to bring

the combined influence of all the States upon Congress to secure

national legislation. The very moment you change the purpose of

this great body from National to State work you have defeated its

object. It is the business of the States to do the district work;

to create public sentiment; to make a national organization

possible; and then to bring their united power to the capital

and focus it on Congress. Our younger women naturally can not

appreciate the vast amount of work done here in Washington by the

National Association in the last twenty-five years. The delegates

do not come here as individuals but as representatives of their

entire States.

We have had these conventions here for a quarter of a century,

and every Congress has given hearings to the ablest women we

could bring from every section. In the olden times the States

were not fully organized--they had not money enough to pay their

delegates' expenses. We begged and worked and saved the money and

the National Association paid the expenses of delegates from

Oregon and California in order that they might come and bring the

influence of their States to bear upon Congress.

Last winter we had twenty-three States represented by delegates.

Think of those twenty-three women going before the Senate

committee, each making her speech, and showing these Senators the

interest in all these States. We have educated at least a part of

three or four hundred men and their wives and daughters every two

years to return as missionaries to their respective localities. I

shall feel it a grave mistake if you vote in favor of a movable

convention. It will lessen our influence and our power; but come

what may, I shall abide by the decision of the majority.

Miss Anthony was strongly supported by Miss Shaw, Mrs. Colby, Mrs.

Louisa Southworth, Mrs. Rosa L. Segur, Mrs. Olivia B. Hall, Mrs. Jean

Brooks Greenleaf and others.

Mrs. Claudia Quigley Murphy (O.) expressed the sentiment of the other

side in saying:

It seems better to sow the seed of suffrage throughout the

country by means of our national conventions. We may give the

people mass meetings and district and State conventions and

various other things, but we can never give them anything as good

as the national convention. We must get down to the unit of our

civilization, which is the individual voter or person. We have

worked for twenty-five years here among the legislators at

Washington; we have gone to the halls of Congress and to the

Legislatures, and we have found the average legislator to be but

a reflex of the sentiment of his constituents. If we wish

representation at Washington we can send our delegation to the

halls of Congress this year and next year, the same as we have

done in the past. This great convention does not go to Congress;

it sends a committee.... Let us get down to the people and sow

the seed among them. It is the people we want to reach if we

expect good results.

The amendment was warmly advocated by Mr. and Miss Blackwell, Miss

Clay, Mrs. Dietrick, Mrs. Esther F. Boland and others. It was finally

adopted by a vote of 37 yeas, 28 nays.

Among the many excellent State reports that of Kansas, prepared by

Mrs. Laura M. Johns and read by Miss Jennie, daughter of

Representative Case Broderick, was of special interest, as a suffrage

campaign was imminent in that State and the National Association had

resolved to contribute speakers and money. It spoke of the great

canvass of thirty conventions the previous year, with Mrs. Johns as

chairman and a large corps of speakers from outside and inside the

State; of their cordial reception by the Republican State Convention;

of the benefits of Municipal Suffrage; and ended with an earnest

appeal for the friends to rally to the support of Kansas.

Brief remarks were made by the wives of Representatives John G. Otis

of Kansas and Halbert S. Greenleaf of New York. Letters of greeting

were received from Mrs. Annie Besant of England, and many others.

Bishop John F. Hurst, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in regretting

that it was impossible to accept the invitation to address the

convention, said: "I have the fullest sympathy with your work and have

had for many years. I believe that every year brings nearer the great

achievement when women will have the right of the ballot if they

please to use it."

FOOTNOTES:

[88] Bishop Phillips Brooks, who declared himself unequivocally for

woman suffrage, died the week following the convention.

[89] See History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 482.

[90] For other instances see Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, pp.

132, 251.

[91] The Rev. Anna Oliver left $1,000 to the National Suffrage

Association.

[92] For the part of Miss Anthony and others in securing this board,

see Chap. XIV.

[93] As Mrs. Chapman Catt spoke always without MS., it is impossible

to give extracts from her speeches, which were among the ablest made

at the national conventions.

[94] _Resolved_, That without expressing any opinion on the proper

qualifications for voting, we call attention to the significant facts

that in every State there are more women who can read and write than

the whole number of illiterate male voters; more white women who can

read and write than all negro voters; more American women who can read

and write than all foreign voters; so that the enfranchisement of such

women would settle the vexed question of rule by illiteracy, whether

of home-grown or foreign-born production.

_Resolved_, That as all experience proves that the rights of the

laboring man are best preserved in governments where he has possession

of the ballot, we therefore demand on behalf of the laboring woman the

same powerful instrument, that she may herself protect her own

interests; and we urge all organized bodies of working women, whether

in the field of philanthropy, education, trade, manufacture or general

industry, to join our association in the endeavor to make woman

legally and politically a free agent, as the best means for furthering

any and every line of woman's work.

_Resolved_, That in all States possessing School Suffrage for women,

suffragists are advised to organize in each representative district

thereof, for the purpose of training and stimulating women voters to

exercise regularly this right, using it as a preparatory school for

the coming work of full-grown citizenship with an unlimited ballot. We

also advise that women everywhere work for the election of an equal

number of women and men upon school boards, that the State in taking

upon itself the education of children may provide them with as many

official mothers as fathers.

WHEREAS, Many forms of woman suffrage may be granted by State

Legislatures without change in existing constitutions; therefore,

_Resolved_, That the suffragists in every State should petition for

Municipal, School and Presidential Suffrage by statute, and take every

practicable step toward securing such legislation.

_Resolved_, That we urge all women to enter protest, at the time of

paying taxes, at being compelled to submit to taxation without

representation.

[95] Rachel Foster Avery, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Stone Blackwell,

Ellen Battelle Dietrick, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, the Rev. Florence

Kollock, Lida A. Meriwether, the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, May Wright

Sewall, Mrs. Leland Stanford, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Jane

H. Spofford, Harriet Taylor Upton.

[96] During the years when Mrs. Upton's father, the Hon. Ezra B.

Taylor of Ohio, was in Congress, she made it her especial business to

press this matter upon the members. At least two favorable reports

were due to her efforts, and the association greatly missed her

congressional work when she left Washington.

[97] The arguments for Federal Suffrage are contained in Chapter I.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1894.

The Call for the Twenty-sixth annual convention contained this

paragraph of hope and joy: "The Government's recognition of women on

the Board of Managers for the World's Columbian Exposition; the

World's Congress of Representative Women--the greatest convocation of

women ever assembled; their participation in the entire series of

Congresses; the gaining of Full Suffrage in Colorado--all give to our

demand for equality for women unprecedented prestige in the world of

thought."

The meetings were held in Metzerott's Music Hall, Washington, D. C.,

Feb. 15-20, 1894. An excellent summary of the week was given by the

secretary, Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, in the _Woman's Journal_, of

which she was editor:

Over the platform was draped a large suffrage flag, bearing two

full stars for Wyoming and Colorado, and two more merely outlined

in gold for Kansas and New York, which have equal suffrage

amendments now pending and hope to add their stars to the galaxy

next November. Instead of "Old Glory," the equal rights banner

might be called "New Glory." Beside it hung the American flag,

the great golden flag of Spain with its two red bars, the crimson

flag of Turkey with its crescent and star, and the British

flag--these last three in honor respectively of Senorita Catalina

de Alcala of Spain, Madame Hanna Korany of Syria and Miss

Catherine Spence of Australia, who were on the program. At one

side the serene face of Lucy Stone looked down upon the audience.

On the afternoon of the memorial service the frame of the

portrait was draped with smilax, entwining bunches of violets

from South Carolina, and beneath stood a jar of great white

lilies....

Kansas and New York divided the interest of the convention, and

the importance of the two campaigns was ably presented by the

respective State presidents, stately Mrs. Greenleaf and graceful

Mrs. Johns. The appeals of the former were warmly supported by

Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake, and of the latter by Mrs. Annie L.

Diggs. Mrs. Johns is a strong Republican, and Mrs. Diggs an

equally ardent Populist, but they were perfectly agreed in their

devotion to the woman suffrage amendment and in their desire

that help should be given to the Kansas campaign. Both are small

women of gentle and feminine aspect, though known as mighty

workers; and when Mrs. Diggs, a soft-voiced, bright-eyed morsel

of humanity, said in presenting the needs of the Kansas Equal

Suffrage Association, "Mrs. Johns is our president, and I am

vice-president; she is the gentle officer, I am the savage one;

my business is to frighten people"--the audience roared with

laughter. The New York women generously declared that they would

carry the financial burden of their own campaign and would ask no

outside help except in speakers and sympathy. This left the field

clear for Kansas and more than $2,200 were raised at one session

towards the expenses of the campaign....

The two delegates from Colorado, Mrs. Ellis Meredith and Mrs.

Hattie E. Fox, were the objects of much interest and of hearty

congratulations. They seemed very happy over their recent

enfranchisement, as they well might be. Mrs. Meredith, who is

very small, looked up brightly at a tall Maryland lady, who was

congratulating her, and said, "I feel as tall as you." These two

ladies looked just like other women and had developed no horns or

hoofs or other unamiable and unfeminine characteristics in

consequence of their having obtained the right to vote.... The

Southern women have distinguished themselves in the national

suffrage conventions during the last few years. This year, on

"presidents' evening," among a number of brilliant addresses that

of Mrs. Virginia D. Young of South Carolina fairly brought down

the house....

A beautiful silk flag, bearing the two suffrage stars, was

presented to Miss Anthony in honor of her seventy-fourth

birthday, on the first evening of the convention, a gift from the

enfranchised women of Wyoming and Colorado. One of these women

had been called upon to act as a judge of elections and had

received three dollars for her services. She spent two dollars on

shoes for her little boy and sent the third dollar as her

contribution toward the suffrage flag.

It was a pleasure to see the gathering of the clans--so many good

and able and interesting women assembled together to report their

work for equal rights and to plan more for the future. One with a

pleasant, honest face and wistful brown eyes, had been lecturing

in the interest of the amendment in the country districts of New

York, riding from village to village in an open sleigh, with the

thermometer many degrees below zero, and speaking sometimes in

unwarmed halls. She did not expect to take a day's rest until the

6th of next November, and then if the amendment carried, she said

quietly, she should be willing to lie down and die....

It is pleasant also to note the increasing number of bright,

sensible, earnest young women coming from all parts of the

country to aid the older workers and to close up their thinning

ranks. The sight would be a revelation to that Massachusetts

legislator who was lately reported as saying that the petitioners

who had been asking for suffrage for so many years were fast

dying off, and soon there would be none left. He would have seen

how greatly he was reckoning without his host--or his hostesses.

A sound and righteous reform does not die with any leader,

however beloved.

The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw pronounced the invocation at the opening

session. In the course of her president's address Miss Susan B.

Anthony said:

For the twenty-sixth time we have come together under the shadow

of the Capitol, asking that Congress shall take the necessary

steps to secure to the women of the nation their right to a voice

in the national government as well as that of their respective

States. For twelve successive Congresses we have appeared before

committees of the two Houses making this plea, that the

underlying principle of our Government, the right of consent,

shall have practical application to the other half of the people.

Such a little simple thing we have been asking for a quarter of a

century. For over forty years, longer than the children of Israel

wandered through the wilderness, we have been begging and praying

and pleading for this act of justice. We shall some day be

heeded, and when we shall have our amendment to the Constitution

of the United States, everybody will think it was always so, just

exactly as many young people believe that all the privileges, all

the freedom, all the enjoyments which woman now possesses always

were hers. They have no idea of how every single inch of ground

that she stands upon to-day has been gained by the hard work of

some little handful of women of the past.

This was Miss Anthony's birthday and Mrs. Chapman Catt concluded her

little speech in presenting a silk flag by saying: "And now, our

beloved leader, the enfranchised women of Wyoming and Colorado, upon

this the seventy-fourth anniversary of your life--a life every year of

which has been devoted to the advancement of womankind--have sent this

emblem and with it the message that they hope you will bear it at the

head of our armies until there shall be on this blue field not two

stars but forty-four. They have sent it with the especial wish that

its silent lesson shall teach such justice to the men of the State of

New York that in November they will rise as one man to crown you, as

well as their own wives and daughters, with the sovereignty of

American citizenship."

For a few moments Miss Anthony was unable to reply and then she said:

"I have heard of standard bearers in the army who carried the banner

to the topmost ramparts of the enemy, and there I am going to try to

carry this one. You know without my telling how proud I am of this

flag and how my heart is touched by this manifestation." Large boxes

of flowers were sent her from Georgia and South Carolina, a telegram

of greeting was received from ex-Governor and Mrs. Routt of Colorado,

and there were many other pleasant remembrances.

The convention was welcomed by the Hon. John Ross, commissioner of the

District of Columbia. Miss Catherine H. Spence of South Australia said

in speaking of the suffrage there: "This country was not only the

birthplace of the Australian ballot, by which you now vote in the

United States, but it was the birthplace of woman suffrage, because

six years before the Municipal Franchise was granted to women in

England it was in effect in the towns and cities in South Australia."

At a later session Miss Spence gave a practical illustration of what

is known as proportional representation. Miss Windeyer also

represented the women electors of Australia.

In response to Mrs. Young, bearing the greetings of South Carolina,

Miss Anthony said with much feeling:

I think the most beautiful part of our coming together in

Washington for the last twenty-five years has been that more

friendships, more knowledge of each other, have come through the

hand-shakes here than would have been possible through any other

instrumentality. I shall never cease to be grateful for all the

splendid women who have come up to this great center for these

twenty-six conventions, and have learned that the North was not

such a cold place as they had believed; I have been equally glad

when we came down here and met the women from the sunny South and

found they were just like ourselves, if not a little better. In

this great association we know no North, no South, no East, no

West. This has been our pride for all these years. We have no

political party. We never have inquired what anybody's religion

is. All we ever have asked is simply, "Do you believe in perfect

equality for women?" This is the one article in our creed.

Senator Joseph M. Carey of Wyoming and Representative Lafayette Pence

of Colorado referred with great pride to the enfranchisement of the

women of their respective States. Mrs. Johns was introduced by Miss

Anthony as "the general of the Kansas army;" Mrs. Greenleaf as the

Democratic nominee for member of the N. Y. Constitutional Convention;

Mrs. Henry as the woman who received 4,500 votes for Clerk of the

Supreme Court of Kentucky. Miss Anthony's spicy introductions of the

various speakers were always greatly relished by the audiences.

No more impressive or beautiful memorial service ever was held than

that in remembrance of Lucy Stone. The principal address was made by

Mrs. Julia Ward Howe (Mass.), in the course of which she said:

In all action taken under her supervision, Mrs. Stone was most

careful that the main issue should be constantly presented and

kept in view. While welcoming every reform which gave evidence of

the ethical progress of the community, she yet held to woman

suffrage, pure and simple, as the first condition upon which the

new womanhood should base itself. Efforts were often made to

entangle suffrage with the promise of endless reforms in various

directions, but firm as Cato, who always repeated his words that

Carthage should be destroyed, Lucy Stone always asked for

suffrage because it is right and just that women should have it,

and not on the ground of a swiftly-coming millennium which should

follow it....

When Lucy Stone first resolved to devote her life to the

rehabilitation of her sex, to what a task did she pledge herself!

The high road to reform which she held so dear was not even

measured before her. The ground was covered with a growth of

centuries. Could this small hand that held a sickle hope to cut

down those forests of time-honored prejudice and superstition?

What had she to work with? A silver voice, a winning smile, the

great gift of a persuasive utterance. What had she to work from?

A deep and abiding faith in divine justice and in man's ability

to follow its laws and to execute its decrees.

The prophetic sense of good to come, vouchsafed to her in the

morning of life, did not forsake her at its close. Her mind was

of a very practical cast and in her many days of labor her eyes

were always fixed upon her work. But when her work was taken from

her, she saw at once the heavens open before her and the eternal

life and light beckoning to her to go up higher. With a smile she

passed from the struggle of earthly existence to the peace of the

saints made perfect. Here she was still debarred the right to

cast her ballot at the polls, but lo, in the blue urn of heaven

her life was received, one glowing and perfect vote for the

rights of women, for the good of humanity, for the Kingdom of God

on earth.

A few sentences may be given as the key-note of the eulogy of the Hon.

Wm. Dudley Foulke (Ind.): "Her career, while different from that of

most women, was characterized throughout by entire and consistent

womanliness. Among the many admirable qualities that she possessed, it

is difficult to single out the one for which she will hereafter be

best remembered, but as dauntless moral courage is a rarer quality

perhaps than any other, it seems to me that this will remain her

brightest jewel."

In the address of Mrs. Josephine K. Henry (Ky.) she referred to the

marriage of Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell as follows:

Their matrimonial contract is the grandest chart of the absolute

equality of man and woman that has ever been made, and it throws

a new halo of consecration and sanctity around the institution of

marriage. It has not yet been written in our ecclesiastical and

civil codes that every woman shall retain and dignify her own

name through life, but civilization is preparing now to issue

this edict. The coming woman will not resign her name at the

marriage altar, and it will be told in future years of these two

great souls who were the first to recognize the dignity of human

individuality. The domestic life of this couple who set up the

standard of absolute equality of husband and wife was an

exquisite idyl, fragrant with love and tenderness, a poem whose

rhythm was not marred, a divine melody that rose above the

discords and dissensions of domestic life upon the lowlands where

man is the ruler and woman the subject.

In the touching tribute of Miss Laura Clay (Ky.) she said: "Lucy Stone

is one of those who paid what must be paid for liberty or for any high

good of humanity. She made sacrifices and did things that none of us

to-day would be called upon to do, did them bravely, did them without

shrinking, did them almost without knowing that she was doing anything

which would call forth the blessing, the gratitude of the human race."

Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.) referred more especially to the

domestic qualities, saying:

When the gift of a little child came it was more to her than all

else beside. For a while the world centered in that tiny cradle,

and the hand which rocked that cradle had rather perform this

gentle office than rule the world. It will ever be thus. With the

true woman, dearer than wealth or fame is the touch of baby

hands, sweeter than the applause of multitudes is the ripple of a

baby's laughter. As the years passed by, the mother gave more of

her life to the public, but always with the thought of the young

girl who was growing up beside her and making of her home the

dearest and most sacred spot.

This part of the memorial services appropriately closed with the

tender reminiscences of forty-five years of married life, by the

husband, Mr. Blackwell.

Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (N. Y.) sent an eloquent tribute to the

memory of Lucy Stone, Leland Stanford, George W. Childs, Elizabeth

Oakes Smith and Elizabeth Peabody. After reciting the contributions of

each in the cause of woman, she closed with these words from The

Prince of India in reference to the last great record: "There is thy

history and mine, and all of little and great and good and bad that

shall befall us in this life. Death does not blot out the records.

Everlastingly writ, they shall be everlastingly read; for the shame of

some, for the glory of others."

Mrs. Lucretia L. Blankenburg of Philadelphia told of the loyalty to

women of Mr. Child's paper, the _Public Ledger_, and of his many

benefactions. Frederick Douglass gave the offering of his eloquence

and ended as follows:

It is not alone because of the goodness of any cause that men can

safely predicate success. Much depends on the character and

quality of the men and women who are its advocates. The Redeemer

must ever come from above. Only the best of mankind can afford to

support unpopular opinions. The common sort will drift with the

tide. No good cause can fail when supported by such women as were

Lucretia Mott, Abby Kelly, Angelina Grimke, Lydia Maria Child,

Maria W. Chapman, Thankful Southwick, Sally Holly, Ernestine L.

Rose, E. Oakes Smith, Elizabeth Peabody and the noble and gifted

Lucy Stone. Not only have we a glorious constellation of women on

the silent continent to assure us that our cause is good and that

it must finally prevail, but we have such men as William Lloyd

Garrison, Wendell Phillips, William Henry Channing, Francis

Jackson, Gerrit Smith, Samuel J. May, Samuel E. Sewall--now no

longer with us in body, but in spirit and memory to cheer us on

in the good work of lifting women in the fullest sense to the

dignity of American liberty and American citizenship.

Miss Anthony closed the services with heartfelt testimonials to Mrs.

Myra Bradwell, one of the first woman lawyers and founder and editor

of _The Legal News_; Miss Mary F. Seymour, founder of _The Business

Woman's Journal_; and Col. John Thompson, a founder of the Patrons of

Husbandry, the first national organization of men to indorse woman

suffrage.

At one of the evening sessions Miss Anthony presented Dr. John

Trimble, secretary of the National Grange, and Leonard Rhone,

chairman of its executive committee. The latter said in course of a

few brief remarks: "When the farmers of this country organized they

took with them their wives and daughters, and for twenty-seven years

we have tried woman suffrage in the Grange and it has worked well.

What we have demonstrated by experience in our organization we are

ready to indorse, and by almost a unanimous vote at our last national

convention we passed a resolution in favor of woman suffrage."

Mrs. Orra Langhorne read a clever paper on House Cleaning in Old

Virginia, describing present social and political conditions and

showing the need of woman's participation. Mrs. Mary Lowe Dickinson

(N. Y.), secretary of the King's Daughters, gave a talk which sparkled

with anecdotes and illustrations, every one scoring a point for woman

suffrage. Madame Hanna Korany, from Syria, told in her soft, broken

English how the women of the old world looked to those of America to

free them from the slavery of customs and laws.

Mrs. Miriam Howard DuBose took for her subject Some Georgia

Curiosities, which she showed to be "men who love women too dearly to

accord them justice; women who are deceived by such affection; the

self-supporting woman, who crowds all places where there is any money

to be made without encountering the masculine frown and declares she

has all the rights she wants. Georgia's motto should read: Unwisdom,

Injustice, Immoderation."

Miss Harriet A. Shinn (Ills.), president of the National Association

of Women Stenographers, gave unanswerable testimony from employers in

many different kinds of business expressing a preference for women

stenographers. Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates (Me.) illustrated how class

distinctions, public schools, religious liberty and social life have

been affected by the thought of the times, by fashionable thought. The

official report said: "So bristling with humor was this address that

there were several times when the speaker had to stop and wait for the

laughter to subside. At the conclusion, her effort was acknowledged by

long applause."

Miss Shaw closed an evening which had been full of mirth, saying in

the course of her vivacious remarks:

I spoke at a woman's club in Philadelphia yesterday and a young

lady said to me afterwards: "Well, that sounds very nice, but

don't you think it is better to be the power behind the throne?"

I answered that I had not had much experience with thrones, but a

woman who has been on a throne, and who is now behind it, seems

to prefer to be on the throne.[98] Mr. Edward Bok, editor of the

_Ladies' Home Journal_, says that by careful watching for many

years, he has come to the conclusion that no woman has had any

business relations with men who has not been contaminated by

them; and this same individual who does not want us to have

business relations with men, lest we be contaminated by the

association, wants us to marry these same men and live with them

three hundred and sixty-five and one-fourth days a year!

On Sunday Mrs. Chapman Catt gave a sermon in the People's Church, Mrs.

Ellen Battelle Dietrick in All Soul's Church (Unitarian), and the Rev.

Anna Howard Shaw in Metzerott's Music Hall. At the last named meeting

Mrs. Howe offered the prayer and, at the close, recited her Battle

Hymn of the Republic. Miss Shaw preached from the text, "Let no man

take thy crown."