....Since the beginning of the Christian era those who have

expounded the Scriptures have been principally men, and the

Gospel has been presented to us from the standpoint of men. In

all these interpretations Heaven has been peopled with men, God

has been pictured as a man, and even the earth has been

represented as masculine.

In the beginning this was wise, because people have always been

more impressed by law, order, system and government than by the

spirit of faith. But we have passed the stage of force in nature,

of force in physical life, and have arrived at the age of

spiritual thought and earthly needs when the mother comes to the

front. In the Old World I have seen venerable men, strong men,

and women kneeling together at the shrine of Mary pouring out

their sufferings into the mother heart of the Virgin and rising

refreshed and solaced. What Catholicism has done for its church,

Protestantism must do for Christianity everywhere, by revealing

the mother-life and the mother-spirit of divine nature. In the

lesson of life there is not only a father but a mother-love.

Jesus Christ, we are told, was a man and so were His disciples,

and this is given as the reason why men only should preach the

Gospel, yet the Scriptures tell us that the first

divinely-ordained preacher was a woman. All the way down in the

history of Christianity are found women side by side with men,

always ready and willing to bear the burdens and sorrows of life

in order to better their fellows. In this country every

reformation has been urged by women as well as men. The names of

William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips will go down to

posterity linked with those of Lucretia Mott, Harriet Beecher

Stowe and Susan B. Anthony. In the great temperance movement the

name of Gough will at once bring to mind Frances E. Willard.

There is no name more prominently identified in the effort to

uplift the Indian than that of Helen Hunt Jackson. Wherever there

has been a wrong committed there have always been women to defend

the wronged. Julia Ward Howe gave us the "Battle Hymn of the

Republic," while Lucy Stone's last words should be the motto of

every young girl's life, "Make the world better."

With respect to my text, "Let no man take thy crown," these words

were written to the church, and not to the men alone, and the

command should be obeyed by every woman. If the churches then

were anything like the churches of to-day, they were composed of

three-fourths women. Hence this injunction was intended

especially for women. This crown, I take it, means the crown of

righteousness, of regeneration, of redemption, of purity, and

applies to the whole body of the church. I believe the crown of

womanhood in its highest sense means womanly character and

nature. We never can wear a higher or nobler crown than pure and

womanly womanhood....

The world has always been more particular how we did things than

what things we did.... All human beings are under obligations

first to themselves. If self-sacrifice seems best, then we should

practice that; while if self-assertion seems best, then we should

assert ourselves. The abominable doctrine taught in the pulpit,

the press, in books and elsewhere, is that the whole duty of

women is self-abasement and self-sacrifice. I do not believe

subjection is woman's duty any more than it is the duty of a man

to be under subjection to another man or to many men. Women have

the right of independence, of conscience, of will and of

responsibility.

Women are robbed of themselves by the laws of the country and by

fashion. The time has not passed when women are bought and sold.

Social custom makes the world a market-place in which women are

bought and sold, and sometimes they are given away. In the

marriage ceremony woman loses her name, and under the old Common

Law a married woman had no legal rights. She occupied the same

position to her husband as the slave to his master. These things

degraded marriage, but the home would be the holiest of spots if

the wife asserted her individuality and worked hand-in-hand with

her husband, each uplifting the other. Women are robbed of the

right of conscience. Their silence and subjection in the church

have been the curse not only of womanhood but of manhood. No

other human being should decide for us in questions pertaining to

our own moral and spiritual welfare. Women are beginning to

believe that God will listen to a woman as quickly as to a man.

The time has come when councils of women will gather and do their

work in their quiet way without regard to men.

No person is human who may not "will" to be anything he can be.

When the woman says "I will," there is not anything this side of

the throne of God to stop her, and the girls of the present day

should learn this lesson. Now there is placed upon women the

obligation of service without the responsibility of their

actions. The man who leads feels the responsibility of his acts,

and this urges him to make them noble. Women should have this

same responsibility and be made to feel it. The most dangerous

thing in the world is power without responsibility....

Monday night's session was designated "president's evening" and many

short, clever talks were given.[99] James L. Hughes, Superintendent of

Schools in Toronto and president of the Equal Suffrage Association of

that city, told how the women of Canada voted, sat on the public and

High School boards and even served as president of the Toronto board.

At the Tuesday evening meeting Miss Anthony introduced Senator W. A.

Peffer and Representatives Jerry Simpson, John C. Davis, Case

Broderick and Charles Curtis of Kansas, and Henry A. Coffeen of

Wyoming. Ex-Senator Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi was invited to the

platform and responded by saying he hoped to see the day when every

qualified woman could exercise the suffrage. The Hon. Simon Wolf,

commissioner of the District, urged equality of rights for women.

Grace Greenwood was presented as one of the pioneer woman suffragists.

Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell (N. Y.), the heroine of many campaigns, in a

stirring speech related her varied experiences and said: "Ours is one

of the greatest wars of the centuries. Indeed, it is a continuation of

the same battle which has been waged almost since the world began but

carried on with different tactics. It stands unique. No cannon is

heard. No smoke tells of defeat or victory. No bloody battlefields

lift their blushing faces to the heavens. It is a battle of ideas, a

battle of prejudices, the right and the wrong, the new and the old,

meeting in close contact. It is the 'war of the roses,' if you so

please to call it. It is the motherhood of the republic asking for

full political recognition."

The last address of the convention was made by the Rev. Ida C. Hultin,

on the Crowning Race, whose men and women should be equally free. Gov.

Davis H. Waite of Colorado sent a letter in relation to the

enfranchising of women the previous year, in which he said:

The Populists more than any other political party in Colorado

favored equal suffrage, but many Republicans and Democrats also

voted for it, and in my opinion the result may be considered as

due to the enlightened public sentiment of the common people of

the State. The more I consider the matter the more it grows upon

me in importance, and the more I realize the fact that all the

patriotism, all the intelligence and all the virtue of the

commonwealth are necessary to preserve it from the corrupt and

mercenary attacks made upon it from all points by corporate

trusts and monopolies. Equal suffrage can not fail to encourage

purity in both private and public life, and to elevate the

official standard of fitness.

A letter from Mrs. May Wright Sewall, regretting her enforced absence,

closed by saying:

Many of you know that the last few months I have spent in editing

the papers presented at the World's Congress of Representative

Women, held in Chicago last May. It is a remarkable and to me

quite an unexpected fact that the papers upon the subject of

Civil and Political Reform are hardly more earnest appeals for

political equality than are the addresses to be found in every

other chapter. Hereafter if one asserts that the interest in the

woman suffrage movement is not growing, let him be cited to this

galaxy of witnesses, whose testimony is all the more valuable

because in the large majority of instances it proceeds from women

who never have identified themselves with it, and are not at all

known as advocates of political equality. The meaning of the

entire report is equality, co-operation, organization; that is,

the demand made by the National Suffrage Association is the

demand borne to us by the echoes of that great congress.

Among the committee reports that of Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery, Chairman

of Columbian Exposition Work, attracted especial attention and was in

part as follows:

There is a most valuable and interesting bit of unpublished

history which seems to me to form an integral part of your

committee's report. It concerns the origin of the Board of Lady

Managers, and this association should be proud to be able to feel

that to our president is largely due the recognition of women in

official capacity at the World's Fair. The fact that women were

not officially recognized during the Centennial Exposition in

1876 was a great disappointment to all interested in the

advancement of womankind, and while it was suggested on every

side that women must have a voice in the management of the

World's Fair in 1893, it remained for Susan B. Anthony to take

the initiatory step which led to the creation of the Board of

Lady Managers. She had invitations sent to women of official and

social position to meet in the Riggs House parlors to consider

this matter, in December, 1889. At this meeting Mrs. Conger, wife

of Senator Omar D. Conger of Michigan, was made chairman, and

Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, secretary. Miss Anthony was not

present, fearing lest her well-known radical views might hinder

the progress of affairs in the direction she wished them to take,

but she restlessly walked about her room in the hotel anxiously

awaiting the result.

Several meetings followed this and a committee was appointed to

wait upon Congress, asking that the commission should consist of

both men and women. Meanwhile the World's Fair Bill had been

brought before the House and Miss Anthony soon saw that there

would not be time for this committee to act. She therefore

prepared petitions, sent them to women in official life and asked

them to obtain signatures of official people.[100] On the

strength of these petitions there was added to the bill, in

March, 1890, an amendment providing for the appointment of women

on the Board.

Miss Anthony's self-effacement was perhaps the wisest thing under

the circumstances, for the Board, as appointed, being unconnected

with woman suffrage, proved an immense source of education to the

conservative women of the whole world--an education not needed by

the radical women of our own ranks. I think the time has surely

come when the truth of this history should be known to all.

The election of officers resulted in Miss Anthony's receiving

for president 139 out of 140 possible votes; Miss Shaw for

vice-president-at-large, 130; Rachel Foster Avery for corresponding

secretary, unanimous; Alice Stone Blackwell for recording secretary,

136; Harriet Taylor Upton for treasurer, unanimous.

During the convention the death of Miss Anna Ella Carroll was

announced. A resolution of sympathy with her sister was adopted and a

collection was taken up, as had been done for Miss Carroll a number

of times during the past twenty-five years, which resulted in over

forty dollars.

Mrs. Sallie Clay Bennett (Ky.), the faithful champion of Federal

Suffrage, insisted that, instead of asking for an amendment to confer

suffrage, we should demand protection in the right already guaranteed

by the U. S. Constitution: "Even when asking for Municipal Suffrage,

we never should fail to assert that it is already ours under the

Constitution, and that there is strength enough in our national

government to protect every woman in the Union provided the men had

interpreted the laws right." Miss Sara Winthrop Smith (Conn.)

supported Mrs. Bennett, saying: "It is useless labor to petition for a

Sixteenth Amendment--we do not need it. Our fundamental institutions

most adequately protect the rights of all citizens of the United

States, irrespective of sex. In the twenty-four years since the

passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, 300 amendments to the Constitution

have been introduced into Congress which never met with any approval

from either House. I think it is wasted time for us to continue in

this work, and therefore I feel that it concerns our dignity as a part

of the people of this great United States that we declare and ask only

for that which recognizes the dignity of such citizens." Mrs. Diggs,

Mrs. Dietrick, Mrs. Colby and others supported this view.

In expressing his dissent Mr. Blackwell said: "I do not believe in

Federal Suffrage. I agree with the State's Rights party in their

views." Miss Blackwell and others took the same position, and Miss

Anthony closed the debate by saying: "There is no doubt that the

spirit of the Constitution guarantees full equality of rights and the

protection of citizens of the United States in the exercise of these

rights, but the powers that be have decided against us, and until we

can get a broader Supreme Court--which will not be until after the

women of every State in the Union are enfranchised--we never will get

the needed liberal interpretation of that document." The majority

concurred in this view.

The most spirited discussion of the convention was in regard to the

place of holding the next annual meeting. Urgent invitations were

received from Detroit and Cincinnati, but the persuasive Southern

advocates, Claudia Howard Maxwell, Miriam Howard DuBose and H. Augusta

Howard, three Georgia delegates, carried off the prize for Atlanta.

This was the first and last appearance on the suffrage platform of

Miss Kate Field, who was introduced by Miss Anthony with her

characteristic abruptness: "Now, friends, here is Kate Field, who has

been talking all these years against woman suffrage. She wants to tell

you of the faith that is in her." Miss Field responded quickly:

I take exception to what Miss Anthony has said, because I think

she has misconstrued my position entirely. I never have been

against woman suffrage. I have been against universal suffrage of

any kind, regardless of sex. I think that morally woman has

exactly as much right to the suffrage as man. It is a disgrace

that such women as you and I have not the suffrage, but I do

think that all suffrage should be regarded as a privilege and

should not be demanded as a right. It should be the privilege of

education and, if you please--I will not quarrel about that--of a

certain property qualification. I have not changed my opinion,

but I did say that I was tired of waiting for men to have common

sense, that there evidently never would be any restriction in

suffrage and that I should come in for the whole thing, woman

included. Now, that is my position.... I withdraw my former

attitude and take my stand on this platform.

The usual able "hearings" were held. Before the Senate

committee--Senators Hoar, Teller, Wolcott, Blackburn and Hill--the

speakers were the Rev. Ida C. Hultin, Miss Blackwell, Mrs. Lucretia

Mitchell, Mrs. Diggs, Mrs. Phoebe C. Wright, Miss Alice Smith, Mrs.

Bennett, Mrs. Colby, Representative John C. Davis of Kansas. Although

the majority of the committee were in favor of woman suffrage no

report was made.

The Hon. Isaac H. Goodnight (Ky.) was in the chair of the House

Judiciary Committee, which was addressed by the Reverends Miss Shaw

and Miss Hultin, Mrs. Young, Mrs. Emily G. Ketcham, Miss Lavina A.

Hatch, Prof. Jennie Gifford, Mrs. Alice Waugh, Mrs. Pickler, Miss

Howard, Mrs. Meredith, Mrs. Greenleaf, Mr. Blackwell. Miss Anthony

presented the speakers and closed the discussion. Later Mr. Goodnight

submitted an adverse report for a majority of the committee.

FOOTNOTES:

[98] The Hawaiian ex-queen, then in the United States endeavoring to

have her throne restored to her.

[99] Among the speakers were Mrs. Mary L. Bennett, Mrs. Lucretia L.

Blankenburg, Miss Laura Clay, Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby, Mrs. Etta

Grymes Farrah, Mrs. Jean Brooks Greenleaf, Mrs. Florence Howe Hall,

Mrs. Rebecca Henry Hayes, Mrs. Laura M. Johns, Mrs. Emily B. Ketcham,

Mrs. Claudia Howard Maxwell, Mrs. Ellis Meredith, Mrs. Mary Bentley

Thomas, Mrs. Emmeline B. Wells, Mrs. Virginia D. Young.

[100] Miss Anthony herself also went among prominent persons of her

own acquaintance obtaining signatures. In a few days 111 names were

secured of the wives and daughters of Judges of the Supreme Court, the

Cabinet, Senators, Representatives, Army and Navy officers--as

influential a list as the national capital could offer. These names

may be found in the published minutes of this convention of 1894, p.

135.

At the time Miss Anthony secured this petition no organization of

women had considered the question and, if she had not been on the

ground and taken immediate action, there is every reason to believe

that the bill would have passed Congress without any provision for a

board of women. For a further account of this matter, and for a

description of this great Congress of Women, see Life and Work of

Susan B. Anthony, Chap. XLI; also chapter on Illinois in this volume

of the History.

CHAPTER XV.

THE NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1895.

The Twenty-seventh annual convention--Jan. 31-Feb. 5, 1895--possessed

an unusual interest because of its being held outside of Washington.

The American society had been accustomed to migratory conventions, but

the National had gone to the capital for twenty-six winters. The

_Woman's Journal_, whose editors were strongly in favor of the former

plan, said of the Atlanta meeting:

There had been some fears that holding the convention so far

south might result in a smaller attendance of delegates than

usual; but there were ninety-three delegates, representing

twenty-eight States, and also a large number of visitors. Some,

like Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway of Oregon, had come nearly 4,000

miles to be present. De Give's Opera House was crowded. Even at

the morning meetings the seats were full and men stood for hours,

several rows deep all around the sides and back of the house--a

novel and gratifying sight at a business meeting. The proportion

of men among the delegates and in the audiences, both day and

evening, was larger than usual....

Over the platform hung two large flags, that of the association,

with the two stars of Wyoming and Colorado, and another flag, the

work of Georgia ladies, on which was ingeniously depicted the

relative standing of the different States on this question. The

States where women have no form of suffrage were represented by

black stars. Those where they can vote for school committee or on

certain local questions had a golden rim. Kansas and Iowa had a

wider golden rim, to indicate municipal and bond suffrage.

Wyoming and Colorado shone with full and undimmed luster.

Portraits of Lucy Stone and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, draped in

yellow, adorned opposite sides of the platform.

Many of the delegates were from the Southern States, and some of

them strikingly illustrated Miss Anthony's assertion, "These

Southern women are born orators." In sweetness of voice, grace of

manner and personal charm they have all the qualities to make

most effective speakers, while in the fervor of their equal

rights sentiments they go even beyond their sisters from the

North and West. One handsome young lady, who sat on the platform

a good deal of the time, was supposed to be from New England,

because she wore her hair short. It turned out, however, that she

was from New Orleans and was a cousin of Jefferson Davis. The

announcement of this fact caused her to be received by the

audience with roars of enthusiasm.

The Atlanta papers devoted columns every day to friendly reports

and innumerable portraits. Ministers of different denominations

opened the convention with prayer and their pulpits afterwards

for addresses by the ladies. Some of the best people of the city

took visitors into their homes, entertaining them hospitably and

delightfully, and showing them what a Southern home is like. The

national officers and speakers were entertained by the Georgia W.

S. A. at the Aragon, and the State officers generously insisted

upon taking almost the entire expenses of the great convention

upon their own young shoulders. These "Georgia girls" devoted

unlimited time, thought and work to getting up the convention,

and then effaced themselves as far as possible....[101]

Perhaps no one person did more, unintentionally, to promote the

enthusiasm of the convention than the Rev. Dr. Hawthorne, a

Baptist preacher. He had felt called upon to denounce all woman

suffragists from his pulpit, not only with severity but with

discourtesy, and had been so misguided as to declare that the

husbands of suffragists were all feeble-minded men. As the

average equal-rights woman is firmly convinced that her husband

is the very best man in the world, this remark stirred the women

up to a degree of wrath which no amount of abuse leveled against

themselves would have aroused. On the other hand, the Atlanta

people, even those who were not in favor of suffrage, felt

mortified by this unprovoked insult to their guests, and many of

them took occasion in private to express their regret. Several

speakers at the convention criticised Dr. Hawthorne's utterances,

and every such allusion was received with warm applause by the

audience....

At the beginning of the convention four announcements were made which

added much to the general good cheer--that South Australia had

followed the example of New Zealand in extending Full Suffrage to

women; that the Supreme Court of Ohio had pronounced the School

Suffrage Law constitutional; that the Governor of Illinois had filled

a vacancy on the Board of Trustees of the State University by

appointing a woman; that the Idaho Legislature had submitted a woman

suffrage amendment.

The most perfect arrangements had been made for the meetings, and the

novelty of the occasion attracted large crowds, but there was also

much genuine interest. The success was partly due to the excellent

work of the press of Atlanta. There was, however, no editorial

endorsement except by _The Sunny South_, Col. Henry Clay Fairman,

editor.

The national president, Miss Susan B. Anthony, said in opening the

convention: "With this gavel was called to order in 1869 that

Legislature of Wyoming which established the first true republic under

the Stars and Stripes and gave the franchise to what men call the

better-half of the people. We women do not say that, but we do claim

to be half."

Miss Anthony seldom made a stated address either in opening or

closing, but throughout the entire convention kept up a running fire

of quaint, piquant, original and characteristic observations which

delighted the audience and gave a distinctive attraction to the

meetings. It was impossible to keep a record of these and they would

lose their zest and appropriateness if separated from the

circumstances which called them forth. They can not be transmitted to

future generations, but the thousands who heard them during the fifty

years of her itineracy will preserve them among their delightful

memories. Perfectly at home on the platform, she would indulge in the

same informality of remarks which others use in private conversation,

but always with a quick wit, a fine satire and a keen discrimination.

Words of praise or criticism were given with equal impartiality, and

accepted with a grace which would have been impossible had the giver

been any other than the recognized Mentor of them all. Her wonderful

power of reminiscence never failed, and she had always some personal

recollection of every speaker or of her parents or other relatives.

She kept the audience in continuous good-humor and furnished a variety

to the program of which the newspaper reporters joyfully availed

themselves. At the morning business meetings which were always

informal there would often be a running dialogue something like the

following, when Mrs. Alberta C. Taylor was called to the platform:

MISS ANTHONY: This is an Alabama girl, transplanted to the

Rockies--a daughter of Governor Chapman of Alabama. She is as

good a Southerner as any one, and also as good a Northerner and

Westerner.

MRS. TAYLOR: A Southern paper lately said no Southern woman

could read the report of the late election in Colorado without

blushing. I went through the election itself without blushing,

except with gratification.

MISS ANTHONY: Instead of degrading a woman it makes her feel

nobler not to be counted with idiots, lunatics and criminals. It

even changes the expression of her face.

VOICE IN THE AUDIENCE: How many women are there in the Colorado

Legislature?

MRS. TAYLOR: Three.

MISS ANTHONY: It has always been thought perfectly womanly to be

a scrub-woman in the Legislature and to take care of the

spittoons; that is entirely within the charmed circle of woman's

sphere; but for women to occupy any of those official seats would

be degrading.

MISS LUCY E. ANTHONY: What salaries do the women legislators

receive?

MRS. TAYLOR: The same as the men, $4 a day. The pay of our

legislators is small. A prosperous business man has to make a

great sacrifice to go to the Legislature, and we can not always

get the best men to serve. This is an additional reason for

making women eligible. There are more first-class women than

first-class men who have the leisure.

MISS SHAW: We are accused of wishing to belittle men, but in

Colorado they think a man's time is worth only as much as a

woman's.

MRS. CLARA B. COLBY: The Hon. Mrs. Holley has just introduced in

the Colorado House, and carried through it against strong

opposition, a bill raising the age of protection for girls to

eighteen years.

MRS. DUNIWAY: I was in the Colorado House and saw it done. The

women members are highly respected. I have never seen women so

honored since those of Washington were disfranchised. The leading

men are as proud of the enfranchisement of their women as Georgia

men will be when the time comes. The Colorado women have

organized a Good Government League to promote education,

sanitation and general prosperity.

MRS. TAYLOR: A bookseller in Denver told me that since women were

given the suffrage he had sold more books on political economy

than he had sold since Colorado was admitted into the Union.

MISS ANTHONY: The bill raising the age of protection for girls

shows that suffrage does not make a woman forget her children,

and the bookseller's remark shows that she will study the science

of government.

MRS. MARY BENTLEY THOMAS: One of our most conservative Maryland

women, who married in Colorado ten years ago, writes to me: "I

enjoyed every moment of the campaign, especially the primary

meetings." A Virginia woman who also married a Colorado man

writes back: "Come West, where women are appreciated, and where

they are proud and happy citizens." She adds: "If you will come

I will show you the sweetest girl baby you ever saw."

MRS. HENRY: Let it be recorded that the first bill introduced by

a woman member in any State Legislature was a bill for the

protection of girls.

On motion of Mrs. Colby, it was voted to send a telegram of

congratulation to the Hon. Mrs. Holley.

Again:

Before introducing the president of the Florida W. S. A. Miss

Anthony said: "For several years a big box of oranges has come to

me from Florida. Not long ago, I got home on one of the coldest

nights of the year, and found a box standing in my woodshed, full

of magnificent oranges. Next morning the papers reported that all

the oranges in Florida were frozen; but the president of the

suffrage association saved that boxful for me."

MRS. ELLA C. CHAMBERLAIN: Those were all we saved.... A man in

Florida who hires himself and his wife out to hoe corn, charges

$1.25 for his own services and 75 cents for hers, although she

does just as much work as he, so the men who employ them tell me.

It costs his wife 50 cents a day to be a woman.

VOICE IN THE AUDIENCE: And the 75 cents paid for her work belongs

to her husband.

MISS ANTHONY: I suppose those are colored men.

MRS. CHAMBERLAIN: No, they are white.

MISS ANTHONY: White men have always controlled their wives'

wages. Colored men were not able to do so until they themselves

became free. Then they owned both their wives and their wages.

The delegate from the District of Columbia answered in a very faint

tone of voice, and Miss Anthony remarked that "this was through

mortification because even the men there had no more rights than

women." When another delegate could not be heard she said: "Women have

always been taught that it is immodest to speak in a loud voice, and

it is hard for them to get out of the old rut." At another time:

MISS LAVINA A. HATCH: In Massachusetts there are between 103,000

and 105,000 families which have no male head. Some of these pay

large taxes and none of them has any representation.

MRS. MARIANA W. CHAPMAN: In about two-thirds of the State of New

York, and not including New York City, women are assessed on

$348,177,107.

MRS. LOUISA SOUTHWORTH: This year, with the new income tax, I

shall pay in taxes, national, State and municipal, $5,300.

MISS ANTHONY: Yet why should she have a right to vote?

Inconsistency is the jewel of the American people.

MRS. MERIWETHER: Tennessee caps the climax in taxation without

representation. In Shelby County there are two young women,

sisters, who own farms. Both are married, and both were sensible

enough to have their farms secured to themselves and their

children. In one case, at least, it proved a wise precaution. One

of these young women asked the other, when she went to town, to

pay a few bills for her and settle her taxes. Accordingly she

went to the tax office, and as she handed in the papers she

noticed written at the foot of her sister's tax bill, "Poll tax,

$1.00." She exclaimed, "Oh, when did Mrs. A. become a voter? I am

so glad Tennessee has granted suffrage to women!" "Oh, she

hasn't; it doesn't," said the young clerk with a smile. "That is

her husband's poll tax." "And why is she required to pay her

husband's poll tax?" "It is the custom," he said. She replied,

"Then Tennessee will change its custom this time. I will see the

tax collector dead and very cold before I will pay Mr. A.'s poll

tax out of my sister's property in order that he may vote, while

she is not allowed to do so!"

MISS ANTHONY: It seems to me that these Southern women are in a

state of chronic rebellion.

MRS. MERIWETHER: We are.

In closing this meeting Miss Anthony said: "Now, don't all of you come

to me to tell me how glad you are that I have worked for fifty years,

but say rather that you are going to begin work yourselves."

The delegates were eloquently welcomed in behalf of the South by

Bennett J. Conyers of Atlanta, who declared that "suffrage for women

is demanded by the divine law of human development." He said in part:

The work of Miss Anthony needs no apology. She has blazed a way

for advanced thought in her lonely course over the red-hot

plowshares of resistance. Now almost at the summit she looks back

to see following her an army with banners. May she long worship

where she stands at Truth's mountain altar, as, with the royal

sunset flush upon her brow, she catches the beckoning of the

lights twinkling on the heavenly shore.... The South is a maiden

well worthy of the allegiance of this cause, and when her aid is

given it will be as devoted as it has been reserved. The South is

the land where has lingered latest on earth the chivalry which

idealized its objects of worship. What though it may have meant

repression? Is it any wonder that the tender grace of a day that

is dead even now lingers and makes men loath to welcome change?

Perhaps it can not be told how much it has cost men to surrender

the ideal, even though it be to change it for the perfected

womanhood....

The address of welcome for the State was made by Mrs. Mary L.

McLendon, who spoke earnestly in favor of equal suffrage, saying:

If Georgia women could vote, this National Convention could hold

its session in our million dollar capitol, which rears its grand

proportions on yonder hill. Crowning its loftiest pinnacle is the

statue of a woman representing Liberty, and on its front the

motto, "Justice, Wisdom and Moderation." It was built with money

paid into our State's treasury by women as well as men, both

white and black; but men alone, white and black, have the

privilege of meeting in legislative session to make laws to

govern women. Men are also allowed to hold their Democratic,

Republican, Prohibition and Populist Conventions in its halls. It

is with difficulty that women can secure a hearing before a

legislative committee to petition for laws to ameliorate their

own condition, or to secure compulsory training in the public

schools, that their children may be brought up in the way they

should go, and become sober, virtuous citizens.

Major Charles W. Hubner extended the welcome of the city, saying in

conclusion: "Reason and right are with you, and these, in the name of

God, will at last prevail." Afterwards he contributed the poem, "Thank

God that Thought is Free." Miss Anthony was presented by Miss H.

Augusta Howard and, after a speech complimentary to Southern women,

introduced Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.), who eulogized Southern

Chivalry, and Mrs. Lida A. Meriwether (Tenn.), who spoke in behalf of

Motherhood. Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates (Me.) made the closing address,

in which she said: "As surely as I want to vote--and nothing is more

certain--the man for whom I have most wished to vote was your own

beloved Henry W. Grady. There is something else for women to do than

to sit at home and fan themselves, 'cherishing their femininity.'

Womanliness will never be sacrificed in following the path of duty and

service."

One of the principal addresses of the convention was that of Gen.

Robert R. Hemphill of South Carolina, who began by saying that in 1892

he introduced a woman suffrage resolution in his State Senate, which

received fourteen out of thirty-five votes. He closed as follows: "The

cause is making headway, though slowly it is true, for it has the

prejudices of hundreds of years to contend against. The peaceful

revolution is upon us. It will not turn backward but will go on

conquering until its final triumph. Woman will be exalted, she will

enjoy equal rights; pure politics and good government will be

insured, the cause of morality advanced, and the happiness of the

people established."

Miss Alice Stone Blackwell (Mass.) discussed The Strongholds of

Opposition, showing what they are and how they must be attacked. Woman

as a Subject was presented by Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick (La.), who said

in part:

Women are, and ever will be, loyal, tender, true and devoted to

their well beloved men; for they naturally love them better than

they do themselves. It is the brave soldier submissive to

authority who deserves promotion to rank and honor; so woman,

having proved herself a good subject, is now ready for her

promotion and advancement. She is urgently asking, not to rule

over men, but to take command of herself and all her rightful

belongings....

As a self-respecting, reasonable being, she has grave

responsibilities, and from her is required an accountability

strict and severe. If she owns stock in one of your banks, she

has an influence in the management of the institution which takes

care of her money. The possession of children makes her a large

stockholder in public morality, but her self-constituted agents

act as her proxy without her authorization, as though she were of

unsound mind, or not in existence.

The great truths of liberty and equality are dear to her heart.

She would die before she would imperil the well-being of her

home. She has no design to subvert church government, nor is she

organized to tear up the social fabric of polite society. But she

has now come squarely up to a crisis, a new epoch in her history

here in the South, and asks for a womanly right to participate by

vote in this representative government.

Gentlemen, you value the power and privilege which the right of

suffrage has conferred upon you, and in your honest, manly souls

you can not but disdain the meanness and injustice which might

prompt you to deny it to women. Language utterly fails me when I

try to describe the painful humiliation and mortification which

attend this abject condition of total disfranchisement, and how

anxiously and earnestly women desire to be taken out of the list

of idiots, criminals and imbeciles, where they do not belong, and

placed in the respectable company of men who choose their

lawmakers, and give an intelligent consent to the legal power

which controls them.

Do women deserve nothing? Are they not worthy? They have a noble

cause, and they beg you to treat it magnanimously.

Mrs. Elizabeth Lyle Saxon (La.) described in an interesting manner

Club Life among the Women of the South. Mrs. Blake gave a powerful

address on Wife, Mother and Citizen. Miss Shaw closed the meeting with

an impromptu speech in which, according to the reporter, she said: "It

is declared that women are too emotional to vote; but the morning

paper described a pugilistic encounter between two members of Congress

which looked as if excitability were not limited to women. It is said

that 'the legal male mind' is the only mind fit for suffrage." Miss

Shaw then made her wit play around the legal male mind like chain

lightning. "It is said that women are illogical, and jump to their

conclusions, flea-like. I shall not try to prove that women are

logical, for I know they are not, but it is beyond me how men ever got

it into their heads that _they_ are. When we read the arguments

against woman suffrage, we see that flea-like jumping is by no means

confined to women."

On one evening the Hon. Henry C. Hammond of Georgia made the opening

address, which was thus reported:

After declaring that the atmosphere of the nineteenth century is

surcharged with the sentiment of woman's emancipation, he traced

the gradual evolution of this sentiment, showing that one by one

the shackles had been stricken from the limbs of woman until now

she was making her final protest against tyranny and her last

appeal for liberty. "What is meant," said he, "by this mysterious

dictum, 'Out of her sphere?' It is merely a sentimental phrase

without either sense or reason." He then proceeded to say that if

woman had a sphere the privilege of voting was clearly within its

limitations. There was no doubt in his mind as to woman's moral

superiority, and the politics of the country was in need of her

purifying touch. In its present distracted and unhappy condition,

the adoption of the woman suffrage platform and the incorporation

of equal rights into the supreme law of the land was the only

hope of its ultimate salvation....

J. Colton Lynes of Georgia, taking for his subject Women to the Front,

gave a valuable historical review of their progress during the last

half century. Mrs. Josephine K. Henry was introduced as "the daughter

of Kentucky," and the _Constitution_ said the next day: "If the spirit

of old Patrick Henry could have heard the eloquent plea of his

namesake, he would have had no reason to blush for a decadence of the

oratory which gave the name to the world." In considering Woman

Suffrage in the South, Mrs. Henry said:

It is asserted on all sides that the women of the South do not

want the ballot. The real truth is the women of the South never

have been asked what they want. When Pundita Ramabai was in this

country she saw a hen carried to market with its head downward.

This Christian method of treating a poor, dumb creature caused

the heathen woman to cry out, "Oh, how cruel to carry a hen with

its head down!" and she quickly received the reply, "Why, the hen

does not mind it"; and in her heathen innocence she inquired,

"Did you ask the hen?" Past civilization has not troubled either

dumb creatures or women by consulting them in regard to their own

affairs. For woman everything in sociology, law or politics has

been arranged without consulting her in any way, and when her

rights are trampled on and money extorted from her by the votes

of the vicious and ignorant, the glib tongue of tyranny says,

"Tax her again, she has no wish or right to tell what she wants."

...

Where the laws rob her in marriage of her property, she does want

possession and control of her inheritance and earnings. Where she

is a mother, she wants co-guardianship of her own children. Where

she is a breadwinner she wants equal pay for equal work. She

wants to wipe out the law that in its savagery protects brutality

when it preys upon innocent, defenseless girlhood. She wants the

streets and highways of the land made safe for the child whose

life cost her a hand to hand conflict with death. She wants a

single standard of morals established, where a woman may have an

equal chance with a man in this hard, old world, and it may not

be possible to crowd a fallen woman out of society and close

against her every avenue whereby she can make an honest living,

while the fallen man runs for Congress and is heaped with honors.

More than all, she needs and wants the ballot, the only weapon

for the protection of individual rights recognized in this

government.

In short, this New Woman of the New South wants to be a citizen

queen as well as a queen of hearts and a queen of home, whose

throne under the present regime rests on the sandy foundation of

human generosity and human caprice. It should be remembered that

the women of the South are the daughters of their fathers, and

have as invincible a spirit in their convictions in the cause of

liberty and justice as had those fathers.

We come asking the men of our section for the right of suffrage,

not that it be bestowed on us as a gift on a suppliant, but that

our birthright, bequeathed to us by the immortal Jefferson, be

restored to us....

The most pathetic picture in all history is this great conflict

which women are waging for their liberty. Men armed with all the

death-dealing weapons devised by human ingenuity, and with the

wealth of nations at their backs, have waged wars of

extermination to gain freedom; but women with no weapon save

argument, and no wealth save the justice of their cause, are

carrying on a war of education for their liberty, and no earthly

power can keep them from winning the victory.

The Next Phase of the Woman Question was considered by Miss Mary C.

Francis (O.) from the standpoint of a practical newspaper woman. Mrs.

Chapman Catt, chairman of the national organization committee, made

the last address, taking for a subject Eternal Justice. The

_Constitution_ said: "As a rapid, logical and fluent speaker it is

doubtful if America ever has produced one more gifted, and the

suffrage movement is fortunate in having so brilliant a woman for its

champion."

Henry B. Blackwell urged the South to adopt woman suffrage as one

solution of the negro problem:

Apply it to your own State of Georgia, where there are 149,895

white women who can read and write, and 143,471 negro voters, of

whom 116,516 are illiterates.

The time has come when this question should be considered. An

educational qualification for suffrage may or may not be wise,

but it is not necessarily unjust. If each voter governed only

himself, his intelligence would concern himself alone, but his

vote helps to govern everybody else. Society in conceding his

right has itself a right to require from him a suitable

preparation. Ability to read and write is absolutely necessary as

a means of obtaining accurate political information. Without it

the voter is almost sure to become the tool of political

demagogues. With free schools provided by the States, every

citizen can qualify himself without money and without price.

Under such circumstances there is no infringement of rights in

requiring an educational qualification as a pre-requisite of

voting. Indeed, without this, suffrage is often little more than

a name. "Suffrage is the authoritative exercise of rational

choice in regard to principles, measures and men." The comparison

of an unintelligent voter to a "trained monkey," who goes through

the motion of dropping a paper ballot into a box, has in it an

element of truth. Society, therefore, has a right to prescribe,

in the admission of any new class of voters, such a qualification

as every one can attain and as will enable the voter to cast an

intelligent and responsible vote.

In the development of our complex political society we have

to-day two great bodies of illiterate citizens: In the North,

people of foreign birth; in the South, people of the African race

and a considerable portion of the native white population.

Against foreigners and negroes, as such, we would not

discriminate. But in every State, save one, there are more

educated women than all the illiterate voters, white and black,

native and foreign.

The convention proper closed on Saturday night, but the exercises

Sunday afternoon may be said to have been a continuation of it. The

official report said:

The services began at 3 o'clock and more than half an hour before

this time the theatre was filled almost to its fullest capacity.

When the opening hour arrived there was not an empty chair in the

house, every aisle was crowded, and people anxious to hear the

sermon of the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw had invaded the stage. So

dense became the crowd that the doors were ordered closed and

people were refused admission even before the services began.

After the doors were closed the disappointed ones stood on the

stairs and many of them remained in the streets. The vast

congregation was made up of all classes of citizens. Every chair

that could be found in the theatre had been either placed in the

aisles or on the stage, and then boxes and benches were pressed

into service. Many of the most prominent professional and

business men were standing on the stage and in different parts of

the house.

Miss Shaw gave her great sermon The Heavenly Vision. She told of the

visions of the man which it depended upon himself to make reality; of

the visions of the woman which were forever placed beyond her reach by

the church, by society and by the laws, and closed with these words:

"We ask for nothing which God can not give us. God created nature, and

if our demands are contrary to nature, trust nature to take care of

itself without the aid of man. It is better to be true to what you

believe, though that be wrong, than to be false to what you believe,

even if that belief is correct."

Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby (D. C.) preached to more than a thousand

people at the Bethel (colored) Church; Mrs. Meriwether at the

Unitarian Church; Miss Yates and Miss Emily Howland (N. Y.) also

occupied pulpits.

The evening programs with their formal addresses naturally attracted

the largest audiences and occupied the most space in the newspapers,

but the morning and afternoon sessions, devoted to State and committee

reports and the business of the association, were really the life and

soul of this as of all the conventions. Among the most interesting of

the excellent State reports presented to the Atlanta meeting were

those of New York and Kansas, because during the previous year

suffrage campaigns had been carried on in those States. The former,

presented by Mrs. Jean Brooks Greenleaf, State president, said in

part:

The New York Constitutional Convention before whom we hopefully

carried our cause--"so old, so new, so ever true"--is a thing of

the past. We presented our petition, asking that the word "male"

be eliminated from the organic law, with the endorsement of _over

half a million_ citizens of the State. We laid before the

convention statistics showing that outside the city of New York

the property on which women pay taxes is assessed at

$348,177,107; the number of women taxed, 146,806 in 571 cities

and towns; not reported, 389.

We had the satisfaction of knowing that the delegates assembled

were kept upon a strong equal suffrage diet for days and nights

together. At the public hearings, graciously granted us, we saw

the great jury listen not only with patience but with evident

pleasure and enthusiasm, while women representing twenty-six

districts gave reasons for wanting to be enfranchised; and we

also saw the creative body itself turned into a woman suffrage

meeting for three evenings. At the close of the last we learned

that there were in this convention ninety-eight men who dared to

say that the freemen of the State should not be allowed to decide

whether their wives, mothers and daughters should be enfranchised

or not. We learned also, that there were fifty-eight men,

constituting a noble minority, who loved justice better than

party power, and were willing to risk the latter to sustain the

former.[102]

The report of the Press Committee Chairman, Mrs. Ellen Battelle

Dietrick (Mass.), called especial attention to the flood of matter

relating to the woman question which was now appearing in the

newspapers and magazines of the country, to the activity of the enemy

and to the necessity for suffragists to "publish an antidote wherever

the poison appears." The Legislative Committee, Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Henry

and Mrs. Diggs, closed their report as follows:

In a State where there is hope of support from the political

parties, where there has been long agitation and everything

points to a favorable result, it is wise to urge a constitutional

amendment striking out the word "male" as a qualification for

voters. This must pass both Houses in the form of concurrent

resolution; in some States it must pass two successive

Legislatures; and it must be ratified at the polls by a majority

of the voters.

When the conditions are not yet ripe for a constitutional

amendment, there are many measures which are valuable in arousing

public interest and preparing the way for final triumph, as well

as important in ameliorating the condition of women. Among these

are laws to secure school suffrage for women; women on boards of

education and as school trustees; equality of property rights for

husbands and wives; equal guardianship of children for mother and

father; women factory inspectors; women physicians in hospitals

and insane asylums; women trustees in all State institutions;

police matrons; seats for saleswomen; the raising of "the age of

consent."

The report of the Plan of Work Committee, Mrs. Chapman Catt, chairman,

began by saying:

The great need of the hour is organization. There can be no

doubt that the advocates of woman suffrage in the United States

are to be numbered by millions, but it is a lamentable fact that

our organization can count its numbers only by thousands. There

are illustrious men and women in every State, and there are men

and women innumerable, who are not known to the public, who are

openly and avowedly woman suffragists, yet we do not possess the

benefit of their names on our membership lists or the financial

help of their dues. In other words, the size of our membership is

not at all commensurate with the sentiment for woman suffrage.

The reason for this condition is plain; the chief work of

suffragists for the past forty years has been education and

agitation, and not organization. The time has come when the

educational work has borne its fruit, and there are States in

which there is sentiment enough to carry a woman suffrage

amendment, but it is individual and not organized sentiment, and

is, therefore, ineffective.

The audience was greatly amused when Miss Anthony commented on this:

"There never yet was a young woman who did not feel that if she had

had the management of the work from the beginning the cause would have

been carried long ago. I felt just so when I was young." There was

much laughter also over one of Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway's short

speeches in which she said:

There are in Oregon three classes of women opposed to suffrage.

1. Women who are so overworked that they have no time to think of

it. They are joined to their wash-tubs; let them alone. But the

children of these overworked women are coming on. 2. Women who

have usurped all the rights in the matrimonial category, their

husbands' as well as their own. The husbands of such women are

always loudly opposed to suffrage. The "sassiest" man in any

community is the hen-pecked husband away from home. 3. Young

girls matrimonially inclined, who fear the avowal of a belief in

suffrage would injure their chances. I can assure such girls that

a woman who wishes to vote gets more offers than one who does

not. Their motto should be "Liberty first, and union afterwards."

The man whose wife is a clinging vine is apt to be like the oaks

in the forest that are found wrapped in vines--dead at the top.

When Miss Anthony said, "One reason why politicians hesitate to grant

suffrage to woman is because she is an unknown quantity," Mrs. Henry

responded quickly, "There are two great unknown forces to-day,

electricity and woman, but men can reckon much better on electricity

than they can on woman." A resolution was adopted for a public

celebration in New York City of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton's

eightieth birthday, November 12, by the association.[103]

The treasurer, Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, reported the receipts of the

past year to be $5,820, of which $2,571 went to the Kansas campaign.

The contributions and pledges of this convention for the coming year

were about $2,000. In addition, Mrs. Louisa Southworth of Cleveland

gave $1,000 to Miss Anthony to use as she thought best, and she

announced that it would be applied to opening national headquarters. A

National Organization Committee was for the first time formally

organized and Mrs. Chapman Catt was made its chairman by unanimous

vote.

Mrs. Colby presented the memorial resolutions, saying in part:

During the past year our association has lost by death a number

of members whose devotion to the cause of woman's liberty has

contributed largely to the position she holds to-day, and whose

labors are a part of the history of this great struggle for the

amelioration of her condition. Among these beloved friends and

co-workers three stood, each as the foremost representative in a

distinct line of action: Myra Bradwell of Chicago, Virginia L.

Minor of St. Louis, Amelia Bloomer of Council Bluffs, Ia.

Mrs. Bradwell was the first to make a test case with regard to

the civil rights of women, and to prove that the disfranchised

citizen is unprotected. [Her struggle to secure from the U.S.

Supreme Court a decision enabling women to practice law was

related.] The special importance of Mrs. Minor's connection with

the suffrage work lies in the fact that she first formulated and

enunciated the idea that women have the right to vote under the

United States Constitution. [The story was then told of Mrs.

Minor's case in the U.S. Supreme Court to test the right of women

to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment.][104] Mrs. Amelia Bloomer

was the first woman to own and edit a paper devoted to woman

suffrage and temperance, the _Lily_, published in Seneca Falls,

N. Y. She was also an eloquent lecturer for both these reforms

and one of the first women to hold an office under the

Government, as deputy postmaster. The costume which bears her

name she did not originate, but wore and advocated for a number

of years.

Of the noble band that started in 1848, few now remain, but a

host of young women are already on the stage of action, even

better equipped than were our pioneers to plead their own cases

in the courts, the halls of legislation, the pulpit and the

press.

Two large receptions were given to the delegates and visitors, one at

the Hotel Aragon, and one by Mrs. W. A. Hemphill, chairman of the

Committee on the Professional Work of Women at the approaching Cotton

States Exposition soon to be held in Atlanta. She was assisted by Mrs.

W. Y. Atkinson, wife of the newly-elected Governor of Georgia.

During several weeks before the convention Miss Anthony and Mrs.

Chapman Catt had made a tour of the Southern States, speaking in the

principal cities to arouse suffrage sentiment, as this section was

practically an unvisited field. Immediately after the convention

closed a mass meeting was held in the court-house of Atlanta.

Afterwards Mrs. Blake was requested to address the Legislature of

North Carolina, Miss Anthony lectured in a number of cities on the way

northward, and others were invited to hold meetings in the neighboring

States. Most of the speakers and delegates met in Washington on

February 15 to celebrate Miss Anthony's seventy-fifth birthday and

participate in the triennial convention of the National Council of

Women.

FOOTNOTES:

[101] The three sisters, Claudia Howard Maxwell, Miriam Howard Du Bose

and H. Augusta Howard, who as delegates at Washington the previous

winter had invited the association to Atlanta, bore the principal part

of these expenses and were largely responsible for the success of the

convention.

[102] The facts and figures presented in the report from Kansas by the

president, Mrs. Laura M. Johns, will be found in the chapter on that

State.

[103] For an account of this beautiful celebration in the Metropolitan

Opera House with an audience of 3,000, see Life and Work of Susan B.

Anthony, p. 848; also Reminiscences of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

[104] For account of Mrs. Bradwell's case see History of Woman

Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 601; of Mrs. Minor's, same, p. 715.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1896.

The suffrage association held its Twenty-eighth annual convention in

the Church of Our Father, Washington, D. C., Jan. 23-28, 1896. In her

opening remarks the president, Miss Susan B. Anthony, said:

The thought that brought us here twenty-eight years ago was that,

if the Federal Constitution could be invoked to protect black men

in the right to vote, the same great authority could be invoked

to protect women. The question has been urged upon every Congress

since 1869. We asked at first for a Sixteenth Amendment

enfranchising women; then for suffrage under the Fourteenth

Amendment; then, when the Supreme Court had decided that against

us, we returned to the Sixteenth Amendment and have pressed it

ever since. The same thing has been done in this Fifty-fourth

Congress which has been done in every Congress for a decade,

namely, the introducing of a bill providing for the new

amendment....

You will notice that the seats of the delegation from Utah are

marked by a large United States flag bearing three stars, a big

one and two smaller ones. The big star is for Wyoming, because it

stood alone for a quarter of a century as the only place where

_women had full suffrage_. Colorado comes next, because it is the

first State where a majority of the men voted to grant women

equal rights. Then comes Utah, because its men in convention

assembled--in spite of the bad example of Congress, which took

the right away from its women nine years ago--those men, having

seen the good effects of woman suffrage for years, voted by an

overwhelming majority to leave out the little word "male" from

the suffrage clause of their new State Constitution, and their

action was ratified by the electors. Next year, if I am here, I

hope to rejoice with you over woman suffrage in California and

Idaho.

Some one whispered to Miss Anthony that the convention had not been

opened with prayer, and she answered without the slightest confusion:

"Now, friends, you all know I am a Quaker. We give thanks in silence.

I do not think the heart of any one here has been fuller of silent

thankfulness than mine, but I should not have remembered to have the

meeting formally opened with prayer if somebody had not reminded me.

The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw will offer prayer."

Miss Shaw's report as vice-president-at-large was full of the little

touches of humor for which she was noted:

The report of my specific work would not take long; but the work

that really did count for our association began last May, when

your president and I were invited to California. On the way we

stopped first at St. Louis, where Miss Anthony spoke before the

Women's Federation, the Woman's Council, and the State W. S. A.

From there we went to Denver, where we had a remarkable meeting,

and a warm greeting was given to Miss Anthony by the newly

enfranchised women of Colorado. It was pleasant to find them so

grateful to the pioneers. The large opera house was packed, and a

reception, in which the newspapers estimated that 1,500 persons

took part, was afterwards given at the Palace Hotel.

From Denver we went to Cheyenne, where we addressed the citizens,

men and women. For once there were present at our meeting quite

as many men as women, and not only ordinary but extraordinary

men. After introducing us to the audience, Mrs. Theresa A.

Jenkins introduced the audience to us. It included the Governor,

Senators, Representatives, Judges of the Supreme Court, city

officials, and never so many majors and colonels, and it showed

that where women have a vote, men think their meetings are worth

going to. We were the guests of the Governor during our stay in

Colorado, and guests of a U. S. Senator in Wyoming. At Salt Lake

all the city turned out, and I spoke in the Tabernacle to the

largest audience I ever had. It was sympathetic too, for Utah

people are accustomed to go to church and listen. At Ogden they

had to take two buildings for the meeting. At Reno, Nevada, there

was a large audience.

The Woman's Congress at San Francisco was the most marvelous

gathering I ever saw. The newspapers said the men were all

hypnotized, or they would not stand on the sidewalk two hours to

get into a church. Every subject considered during the whole

week, whether it was the care of children or the decoration of

the home, turned on the ballot for women, and Susan B. Anthony

was the belle of the ball. The superintendent of San Francisco

closed the schools that Miss Anthony might address the 900

teachers. The Ministers' Association passed resolutions favoring

the amendment. We went the whole length of the State and the

meetings were just as enthusiastic.

The Citizens' Committee asked women to take part in the Fourth of

July celebration. The women accepted more than the men meant they

should, for they insisted that a woman should be on the program.

The Program Committee refused, and the Executive Committee said

if they did not put a woman on they should be discharged. Instead

of this they proposed that Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper should provide

sandwiches for over 5,000 kindergarten children. That was the

kind of work they invited such women to do.

The Program Committee discussed the matter, and their discussion

could be heard four blocks away, but they finally yielded and

invited me to speak. So Miss Anthony and I rode for three miles

in a highly-decorated carriage, just behind the mayor and

followed by a brass band and the fire brigade, and I wore a big

badge that almost covered me, just like the badge worn by the

masculine orator. The dispute between the Executive and the

Program Committees had excited so much interest that there were

more cheers for your president and vice-president as we passed

along than there were for the mayor....

They wanted us both to come back in the fall. I went and spoke

thirty-four times in thirty-seven evenings.

As the vice-president finished, Miss Anthony observed in her

characteristic manner: "Miss Shaw said she only went to California to

hold Miss Anthony's bonnet, but, when we left, everybody thought that

I had come to hold her bonnet. It is my delight to see these girls

develop and outdo their elders. There is another little woman that I

want to come up here to the platform, Mrs. Chapman Catt. While she is

blushing and getting ready, there is a delegation here from the

Woman's National Press Association." Mesdames Lockwood, Gates,

Cromwell and Emerson were introduced, and Miss Anthony remarked: "Our

movement depends greatly on the press. The worst mistake any woman can

make is to get crosswise with the newspapers."[105]

By this time Mrs. Chapman Catt had reached the platform, and Miss

Anthony continued: "Mrs. Catt went down South with me last year to

hold my bonnet; and wherever we were, at Memphis or New Orleans or

elsewhere, when she had spoken, Miss Anthony was nowhere. It is she

who has done the splendid organization work which has brought into the

association nearly every State in the Union, and every Territory

except the Indian and Alaska and we shall have them next year."

An able address was given by Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby (D. C.) on The

Philosophy of Woman Suffrage, in which she said:

Woman suffrage is in harmony with the evolution of the race. The

progress of civilization has developed the finer forces of

mankind and made ready for the entrance of woman into government.

As long as man was merely a slayer of men and animals he did not

feel the need of the co-partnership of woman, but as his

fatherhood was developed he felt his inadequacy and the necessity

of the maternal element by his side. Woman suffrage is in harmony

with the growth of the idea of the worth of the individual, which

has its best expression in our republic. Our nation is heir of

all the struggles for freedom which have been made....

The Magna Charta belongs to us as much as does the Declaration of

Independence. In all these achievements for liberty women have

borne their share. Not only have they inspired men but the record

of the past is illumined with the story of their own brave deeds.

Women love liberty as well as men do. The love of liberty is the

corollary of the right of consent to government. All the progress

of our nation has been along the line of extending the

application of this basic idea....

Woman suffrage is in harmony with the evolution in the status of

women. They always have done their share in the development of

the race. There always has been a "new woman," some one stepping

out in advance of the rest and gaining a place for others to

stand upon.... We have no cause to blush for our ancestors. We

may save our blushes for the women of to-day who do not live up

to their privileges.

Now that woman has made such advance in personal and property

rights, educational and industrial opportunities, to deny her the

ballot is to force her to occupy a much more degrading position

than did the women of the past. We think the savage woman

degraded because she walks behind her husband bearing the burden

to leave his hands free for the weapon which is his sign of

sovereignty; what shall we say of the woman of to-day who may not

follow her husband and brother as he goes forth to wield the

weapon of civilization, the ballot? If the evolution in the

status of woman does not point to the franchise it is

meaningless.

Mrs. Colby was followed by Miss Julie R. Jenney, a member of the bar

in Syracuse, N. Y., with a thoughtful address on Law and the Ballot.

She showed that woman's present legal rights are in the nature of a

license, and therefore revocable at the will of the bodies granting

them, and that until women elect the lawmakers they can not be

entirely sure of any rights whatever. Between Daybreak and Sunrise was

the title of the address of Mrs. May Stocking Knaggs (Mich.), who

pleaded for the opportunity of complete co-operation between men and

women, declaring that "each human being is a whole, single and

responsible; each human unit is concerned in the social compact which

is formed to protect individual and mutual rights."

This was the first appearance of Mrs. Stetson on this national

platform. She came as representative of the Pacific Coast Woman's

Congress and California Suffrage Association. The _Woman's Journal_

said: "Those of us who have for years admired Mrs. Stetson's

remarkably bright poems were delighted to meet her, and to find her

even more interesting than her writings. She is still a young woman,

tall, lithe and graceful, with fine dark eyes, and spirit and

originality flashing from her at every turn like light from a diamond.

She read several poems to the convention, made an address one evening

and preached twice on Sunday; and the delegates followed her around,

as iron filings follow a magnet."

Mrs. Catharine E. Hirst, president of the Ladies of the G. A. R.; Mrs.

Lillian M. Hollister, representing the Supreme Hive Ladies of the

Maccabees; Miss Harriette A. Keyser, from the Political Study Club of

New York; Mrs. Rose E. Lumpkin, president Virginia King's Daughters,

were presented as fraternal delegates. Grace Greenwood and Mrs.

Caroline B. Buell were introduced to the convention.

Mrs. Chapman Catt spoke for the Course of Study in Political Science,

which had been in operation only five months, had sold five hundred

full sets of books and reported over one hundred clubs formed. The

committee on credentials reported 138 delegates present, and all the

States and Territories represented except thirteen. A very

satisfactory report of the first year's work of the organization

committee was presented by its chairman, Mrs. Chapman Catt, which

closed as follows:

Our committee are more than ever convinced that it is possible to

build a great organization based upon the one platform of the

enfranchisement of women. With harmony, co-operation and

determination we shall yet build this organization, of such

numbers and political strength that through the power of

constituency it can dictate at least one plank in the platform of

every political party, and secure an amendment from any

Legislature it petitions. We believe it will yet have its

auxiliaries in every village and hamlet, township and school

district, to influence majorities when the amendment is

submitted. More--we believe ere many years its powers will be so

subtle and widespread that it can besiege the conservatism of

Congress itself, and come away with the laurel wreath of victory.

Nearly $3,300 were at once pledged for the committee, Miss Anthony

herself agreeing to raise $600 of this amount.

Mrs. Chapman Catt presented also a detailed Plan of Work, which

included Organization, Club Work, Letter Writing, Raising of Money

and Political Work. Of the last she said: "The time has fully come

when we should carry the rub-a-dub of our agitation into 'the

political Africa,' that is into every town meeting of every township

of every county, and every caucus or primary meeting of every ward of

every city of every State.... For a whole half century we have held

special suffrage meetings, with audiences largely of women; that is,

women have talked to women. We must now carry our discussion of the

question into all of the different political party gatherings, for it

is only there that the rank and file of the voters ever go. They won't

come to our meetings, so we must carry our gospel into theirs. It will

be of no more avail in the future than it has been in the past to send

appeals to State and national conventions, so long as they are not

backed by petitions from a vast majority of the voting constituents of

their members."

With the thousand dollars which had been put into Miss Anthony's hands

by Mrs. Louisa Southworth of Cleveland the preceding year, national

headquarters had been opened in Philadelphia with Mrs. Rachel Foster

Avery, corresponding secretary, in charge. Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton,

treasurer, reported total receipts for 1895 to be $9,835, with a

balance of several hundred dollars in the treasury.

The principal feature of the Saturday evening meeting was the address

of Miss Elizabeth Burrill Curtis, daughter of George William Curtis,

on Universal Suffrage. She said in part:

I find many people in my native State of New York who are leaning

toward a limited suffrage, and therefore I am beginning to ask,

"What does it mean? Is democratic government impossible after

all?" For a government in order to be democratic must be founded

on the suffrages of all the people, not a part. A republic may

exist by virtue of a limited suffrage, but a democracy can not,

and a democratic government has been our theoretical ideal from

the first. Are we prepared, after a hundred and twenty years, to

own ourselves defeated?... Universal suffrage, to me, means the

right of every man and woman who is mentally able to do so, and

who has not forfeited the right by an ill use of it, to say who

shall rule them, and what action shall be taken by those rulers

upon questions of moment....

This brings me to what I wish to say about those who desire a

limited suffrage. Who are they, and to what class do they belong?

For the most part, as I know them, they are men of property, who

belong to the educated classes, who are refined and cultivated,

and who see the government about them falling into the hands of

the unintelligent and often illiterate classes who are voted at

the polls like sheep. Therefore these gentlemen weep aloud and

wail and say: "If we had a limited suffrage, if we and our

friends had the management of affairs, how much better things

would be!"

Do not misunderstand me here. I am far from decrying the benefits

of education. Nobody believes in its necessity more sincerely

than I do. In fact I hold that, other things being equal, the

educated man is immeasurably in advance of the uneducated one;

but the trouble is that other things are often very far from

being equal and it is utterly impossible for the average man,

educated or not, to be trusted to decide with entire justice

between himself and another person when their interests are

equally involved....

The intelligent voter in a democratic community can not abdicate

his responsibility without being punished. He is the natural

leader, and if he refuses to fulfil his duties the leadership

will inevitably fall into the hands of those who are unfitted for

the high and holy task--and who is to blame? It is the educated

men, the professional men, the men of wealth and culture, who are

themselves responsible when things go wrong; and the refusal to

acknowledge their responsibility will not release them from

it....

The principle of universal suffrage, like every other high ideal,

will not stand alone. It carries duties with it, duties which are

imperative and which to shirk is filching benefits without

rendering an equivalent. How dare a man plead his private ease or

comfort as an excuse for neglecting his public duties? How dare

the remonstrating women of Massachusetts declare that they fear

the loss of privileges, one of which is the immunity from

punishment for a misdemeanor committed in the husband's presence?

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I thought as a child, I

understood as a child; but when I became a man, I put away

childish things."

Throughout history all women and many men have been forced, so

far as government has been concerned, to speak, think and

understand as children. Now, for the first time, we are asking

that the people, as a whole body, shall rise to their full

stature and put away childish things.

The sermon on Sunday afternoon was given by Mrs. Stetson from the

topic which was to have been considered by the Rev. Anna Garlin

Spencer, The Spiritual Significance of Democracy and Woman's Relation

to It. She spoke without notes and illustrated the central thought

that love grows where people are brought together, and that they are

brought together more in a democracy than in any other mode of living.

"Women have advanced less rapidly than men because they have always

been more isolated. They have been brought into relation with their

own families only. It is men who have held the inter-human

relation.... Everything came out of the home; but because you began

in a cradle is no reason why you should always stay there. Because

charity begins at home is no reason why it should stop there, and

because woman's first place is at home is no reason why her last and

only place should be there. Civilization has been held back because so

many men have inherited the limitations of the female sex. You can not

raise public-spirited men from private-spirited mothers, but only from

mothers who have been citizens in spite of their disfranchisement. In

holding back the mothers of the race, you are keeping back the race."

At the memorial services loving tributes were paid to the friends of

woman suffrage who had passed away during the year. Among these were

ex-Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch, ex-Governor Oliver Ames

(Mass.), Dr. James C. Jackson of Dansville (N. Y.), Dr. Abram W.

Lozier of New York City, Thomas Davis, Sarah Wilbur of Rhode Island,

Marian Skidmore of Lily Dale, N. Y., and Amelia E. H. Doyon of

Madison, Wis., who left $1,000 to the National Association.

Henry B. Blackwell spoke of Theodore D. Weld, the great abolitionist,

leader of the movement to found Oberlin, the first co-educational

college, and one of the earliest advocates of equal rights for women.

He told also of Frederick Douglass, whose last act was to bear his

testimony in favor of suffrage for women at the Woman's Council in

Washington on the very day of his death. Mrs. Avery gave a tender

eulogy of Theodore Lovett Sewall of Indianapolis, his brilliancy as a

conversationalist, his charm as a host, his loyalty as a friend, his

beautiful devotion to his wife, Mrs. May Wright Sewall, and his

lifelong adherence to the cause of woman.

The loss of Mrs. Ellen Battelle Dietrick came with crushing force, as

her services to the association were invaluable. To her most intimate

friend, the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, was assigned the duty of speaking a

word in her memory, and in broken sentences she said: "I never knew

such earnest purpose and consecration or such a fund of knowledge in

any one as Mrs. Dietrick possessed. She never stopped thinking because

she had reached the furthest point to which some one else had thought.

She was the best antagonist I ever saw; I never knew any one who could

differ so intensely, and yet be so perfectly calm and good-tempered.

What she was as a friend no one can tell. Her death is a great loss to

our press work. Perhaps no one ever wrote so many articles in the same

length of time. This was especially the case last summer. It seemed as

if she had a premonition that her life would soon end, for she sat at

her desk writing hour after hour. I believe it shortened her life. She

had just finished a book--Women in the Early Christian Ministry--and

she left many other manuscripts. It would be a pity if the rich, ripe

thought of this woman should not be preserved. Her funeral was like

her life, without show or display. No one outside the family was

present except myself. No eulogy was uttered there; she would not have

wanted it. Tennyson's last poem, Crossing the Bar, was recited by her

brother-in-law, the Rev. J. W. Hamilton.[106]" Miss Shaw ended her

remarks by reciting this poem.

Miss Anthony, who was to close the exercises, was too much affected to

speak and motioned that the audience was dismissed, but no one

stirred. At length she said: "There are very few human beings who have

the courage to utter to the fullest their honest convictions--Mrs.

Dietrick was one of these few. She would follow truth wherever it led,

and she would follow no other leader. Like Lucretia Mott, she took

'truth for authority, not authority for truth.' Miss Anthony spoke

also of the "less-known women": "Adeline Thomson, a most remarkable

character, was a sister to J. Edgar Thomson, first president of the

Pennsylvania railroad. She lived to be eighty, and for years she stood

there in Philadelphia, a monument of the past. Her house was my home

when in that city for thirty years. We have also lost in Julia Wilbur

of the District a most useful woman, and one who was faithful to the

end. This is the first convention for twenty-eight years at which she

has not been present with us. We should all try to live so as to make

people feel that there is a vacancy when we go; but, dear friends, do

not let there be a vacancy long. Our battle has just reached the place

where it can win, and if we do our work in the spirit of those who

have gone before, it will soon be over."

There was special rejoicing at this convention over the admission of

Utah as a State with full suffrage for women. Senator and Mrs. Frank

J. Cannon and Representative and Mrs. C. E. Allen of Utah were on the

platform. In her address of welcome Miss Shaw said:

Every star added to that blue field makes for the advantage of

every human being. We are just beginning to learn that we are all

children of one Father and members of one family; and when one

member suffers or is benefited, all the members suffer or

rejoice. So when Utah comes into the Union with every one free,

it is not only that State which is benefited, but we and all the

world. As the stars at night come out one by one, so will they

come out one by one on our flag, till the whole blue field is a

blaze of glory.

We expected it of the men of Utah. No man there could have stood

by the side of his mother and heard her tell of all that the

pioneers endured, and then have refused to grant her the same

right of liberty he wanted for himself, without being unworthy of

such a mother. They are the crown of our Union, those three

States on the crest of the Rockies, above all the others. In the

name of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, we

extend our welcome, our thanks and our congratulations to Utah,

as one of the three so dear to the heart of every woman who loves

liberty in these United States.

Senator Cannon said in response: " ... Only one serious question came

before our constitutional convention, and that was whether the

adoption of woman suffrage would hinder the admission of our Territory

as a State.... But our women had furnished courage, patience and

heroism to our men, and so we said: 'Utah shall take another

forty-nine years of wandering in the wilderness as a Territory before

coming in as a State without her women.' My mother wandered there for

twelve years. Women trailed bleeding feet and lived on roots that

those of to-day might reap bounteous harvests. Utah gave women the

suffrage while still a Territory. Congress, in its not quite infinite

wisdom, took it away after they had exercised it intelligently for

seventeen years; but the first chance that the men of Utah had they

gave it back."

Representative Allen was called on by Miss Anthony to "tell us how

nice it seems to feel that your wife is as good as you are," and said

in part: "Perhaps you have read what the real estate agents say about

Utah--how they praise her sun and soil, her mountains and streams, and

her precious metals. They tell you that she is filled with the basis

of all material prosperity, with gold, silver, lead and iron: but

greatness can not come from material resources alone--it must come

from the people who till and delve. Utah is great because her people

are great. When she has centuries behind her she will make a splendid

showing because she has started right. She has given to that part of

the people who instinctively know what is right, the power to

influence the body politic.... This movement is destined to go on

until it reaches every State in the Union."

Mrs. Allen and Mrs. Sarah A. Boyer told of the heroic efforts the

women had made for themselves; and Mrs. Emily S. Richards,

vice-president of the Territorial suffrage association, described in a

graphic manner the systematic and persistent work of this

organization. The tribute to its president, Mrs. Emmeline B. Wells,

whose influence had been paramount in securing the franchise for the

women of Utah, was heartily applauded and a telegram of congratulation

was sent to her.[107]

The address of Mrs. Ella Knowles Haskell, Assistant Attorney-General

of Montana, on The Environments of Woman as Related to her Progress,

attracted much attention. She had been the Populist candidate for

Attorney-General and made a strong canvass but went down to defeat

with the rest of her party. Soon afterward she married her competitor,

who appointed her his assistant. She reviewed the laws of past ages,

showing how impossible it was then for women to rise above the

conditions imposed upon them, and pointed out the wonderful progress

they had made as soon as even partial freedom had been granted.

Mrs. Virginia D. Young (S. C.), taking as a subject The Sunflower

Bloom of Woman's Equality, gave an address which in its quaint speech,

dialect stories and attractive provincialisms captivated the audience.

The convention received an invitation from Mrs. John R. McLean for

Monday afternoon to meet Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant on her seventieth

birthday. The ladies were welcomed by their hostess and Mrs. Nellie

Grant Sartoris, while Miss Anthony, who had attended the luncheon

which preceded the reception, presented the ladies to Mrs. Grant.

Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery, corresponding secretary, devoted a portion

of her report to an account of the visit made by the delegates of the

association in response to an invitation from the Woman's Board of

Congresses of the Atlanta Exposition, Oct. 17, 1895. The principal

address on that occasion was made by Mrs. Helen Gardiner.

This convention was long remembered on account of the vigorous contest

over what was known as the Bible Resolution. Mrs. Elizabeth Cady

Stanton recently had issued a commentary on the passages of Scripture

referring to women, which she called "The Woman's Bible." Although

this was done in her individual capacity, yet some of the members

claimed that, as she was honorary president of the National

Association, this body was held by the public as partly responsible

for it and it injured their work for suffrage. A resolution was

brought in by the committee declaring: "This association is

non-sectarian, being composed of persons of all shades of religious

opinion, and has no official connection with the so-called 'Woman's

Bible' or any theological publication."

The debate was long and animated, but although there was intense

feeling it was conducted in perfectly temperate and respectful

language. Those participating were Rachel Foster Avery, Katie R.

Addison, Henry B. Blackwell, Alice Stone Blackwell, Carrie Chapman

Catt, Annie L. Diggs, Laura M. Johns, Helen Morris Lewis, Anna Howard

Shaw, Frances A. Williamson and Elizabeth U. Yates speaking for the

resolution; Lillie Devereux Blake, Clara B. Colby, Cornelia H. Cary,

Lavina A. Hatch, Harriette A. Keyser, J. B. Merwin, Caroline Hallowell

Miller, Althea B. Stryker, Charlotte Perkins Stetson, Mary Bentley

Thomas and Victoria C. Whitney speaking against it.

Miss Anthony was thoroughly aroused and, leaving the chair, spoke

against the resolution as follows:

The one distinct feature of our association has been the right of

individual opinion for every member. We have been beset at each

step with the cry that somebody was injuring the cause by the

expression of sentiments which differed from those held by the

majority. The religious persecution of the ages has been carried

on under what was claimed to be the command of God. I distrust

those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because

I notice it always coincides with their own desires. All the way

along the history of our movement there has been this same

contest on account of religious theories. Forty years ago one of

our noblest men said to me: "You would better never hold another

convention than allow Ernestine L. Rose on your platform;"

because that eloquent woman, who ever stood for justice and

freedom, did not believe in the plenary inspiration of the Bible.

Did we banish Mrs. Rose? No, indeed!

Every new generation of converts threshes over the same old

straw. The point is whether you will sit in judgment on one who

questions the divine inspiration of certain passages in the Bible

derogatory to women. If Mrs. Stanton had written approvingly of

these passages you would not have brought in this resolution for

fear the cause might be injured among the _liberals_ in religion.

In other words, if she had written _your_ views, you would not

have considered a resolution necessary. To pass this one is to

set back the hands on the dial of reform.

What you should say to outsiders is that a Christian has neither

more nor less rights in our association than an atheist. When our

platform becomes too narrow for people of all creeds and of no

creeds, I myself can not stand upon it. Many things have been

said and done by our _orthodox_ friends which I have felt to be

extremely harmful to our cause; but I should no more consent to a

resolution denouncing them than I shall consent to this. Who is

to draw the line? Who can tell now whether these commentaries may

not prove a great help to woman's emancipation from old

superstitions which have barred its way?

Lucretia Mott at first thought Mrs. Stanton had injured the cause

of all woman's other rights by insisting upon the demand for

suffrage, but she had sense enough not to bring in a resolution

against it. In 1860 when Mrs. Stanton made a speech before the

New York Legislature in favor of a bill making drunkenness a

ground for divorce, there was a general cry among the friends

that she had killed the woman's cause. I shall be pained beyond

expression if the delegates here are so narrow and illiberal as

to adopt this resolution. You would better not begin resolving

against individual action or you will find no limit. This year it

is Mrs. Stanton; next year it may be I or one of yourselves who

will be the victim.

If we do not inspire in women a broad and catholic spirit, they

will fail, when enfranchised, to constitute that power for better

government which we have always claimed for them. Ten women

educated into the practice of liberal principles would be a

stronger force than 10,000 organized on a platform of intolerance

and bigotry. I pray you vote for religious liberty, without

censorship or inquisition. This resolution adopted will be a vote

of censure upon a woman who is without a peer in intellectual and

statesmanlike ability; one who has stood for half a century the

acknowledged leader of progressive thought and demand in regard

to all matters pertaining to the absolute freedom of women.

Notwithstanding this eloquent appeal the original resolution was

adopted by 53 yeas, 41 nays.[108]

At the request of about thirty of the delegates, mostly from the far

Western States, Miss Anthony sent a message to Mrs. Cleveland asking

that they might be permitted to call upon her, and she received them

with much courtesy.

The association decided to help California and Idaho in whatever

manner was desired in their approaching campaigns for a woman suffrage

amendment. Invitations for holding the national convention were

received from Springfield, Ill.; Denver, Col.; Cincinnati, O.; St.

Louis, Mo.; Portland, Ore.; Charleston, S. C. It was voted to leave

the matter to the business committee, who later accepted an invitation

from Des Moines, Ia., as the suffrage societies of that State were

organizing to secure an amendment from the Legislature.

At the last meeting, on Tuesday evening, every inch of space was

occupied and people were clinging to the window sills. Miss Anthony

stated that since Frederick Douglass was no longer among them as he

had been for so many years, his grandson, Joseph Douglass, who was an

accomplished violinist, would give two selections in his memory.

Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.), spoke on Presidential Candidates

and the Interests of Women, outlining the attitude of the various

nominees and parties. Miss Harriet May Mills (N. Y.) discussed Our

Unconscious Allies, the Remonstrants, illustrating from her experience

as organizer how their efforts really help the cause they try to

hinder. Mrs. Emma Smith DeVoe (Ills.), in demonstrating that The

Liberty of the Mother means the Liberty of the Race, showed the need

of truer companionship between man and woman and that the political

disabilities of women affect all humanity. This was further

illustrated by Mrs. Annie L. Diggs (Kas.) under the topic Women as

Legislators. She said in part:

You have before you a great problem as to whether republican

government itself is to be successful at this time, and statesmen

to save their souls can not tell what will be the outcome. We

believe that women have in their possession what is needed to

make it a success--those things upon which are built the home

life and the ethical life of the nation. We can supply what is

lacking, not because women are better than men, but because they

are other than men; because they have a supplementary part, and

it is their mission to guard most sacredly and closely those

things which protect the home life. Because of their womanhood,

because of their divine function of motherhood, women must always

be most closely concerned with the matters that pertain to the

home. It belongs to man, with his strong right arm, to pioneer

the way, and then woman comes along to help him build the

enduring foundation upon which everything rests.

Miss Shaw, in a short, good-naturedly sarcastic speech on The Bulwarks

of the Constitution, showed the illogical position of President Eliot

of Harvard in declaiming grand sentiments in favor of universal

suffrage and then protesting against having them applied to women. The

last number on the program was The Ballot as an Improver of

Motherhood, by Mrs. Stetson. It was an address of wonderful power

which thrilled the audience. Among other original statements were

these:

We have heard much of the superior moral sense of woman. It is

superior in spots but not as a whole.... Here is an imaginary

case which will show how undeveloped in some respects woman's

moral sense still is: Suppose a train was coming with a

children's picnic on board--three hundred merry, laughing

children. Suppose you saw this train was about to go through an

open switch and over an embankment, and your own child was

playing on the track in front of it. You could turn the switch

and save the train, or save your own child by pulling it off the

track, but there was not time to do both. Which would you do? I

have put that question to hundreds of women. I never have found

one but said she would save her own child, and not one in a

hundred but claimed this would be absolutely right. The maternal

instinct is stronger in the hearts of most women than any moral

sense....

What is the suffrage going to do for motherhood? Women enter

upon this greatest function of life without any preparation, and

their mothers permit them to do it because they do not recognize

motherhood as a business. We do not let a man practice as a

doctor or a druggist, or do anything else which involves issues

of life and death, without training and certificates; but the

life and death of the whole human race are placed in the hands of

utterly untrained young girls. The suffrage draws the woman out

of her purely personal relations and puts her in relations with

her kind, and it broadens her intelligence. I am not disparaging

the noble devotion of our present mothers--I know how they

struggle and toil--but when that tremendous force of mother love

is made intelligent, fifty per cent of our children will not die

before they are five years old, and those that grow up will be

better men and women. A woman will no longer be attached solely

to one little group, but will be also a member of the community.

She will not neglect her own on that account, but will be better

to them and of more worth as a mother.

Mrs. Stetson closed with her own fine poem, Mother to Child.

The usual congressional hearings were held on Tuesday morning, January

28.[109] The speakers were presented by Miss Shaw, who made a very

strong closing argument. At its conclusion Senator Peffer announced

his thorough belief in woman suffrage, and Senator Hoar planted

himself still more firmly in the favorable position he always had

maintained.[110]

Miss Anthony led the host before the Judiciary Committee of the House,

and opened with the statement that the women had been coming here

asking for justice for nearly thirty years. She gave a brief account

of the status of the question before Congress and then presented her

speakers, each occupying the exact limit of time allotted and each

taking up a different phase of the question.[111] Miss Anthony called

on Representative John F. Shafroth of Colorado, who was among the

listeners, to say something in regard to the experiment in his State.

He spoke in unqualified approval, saying: "In the election of 1894 a

greater per cent. of women voted than men, and instead of their being

contaminated by any influence of a bad nature at the polls, the effect

has been that there are no loafers, there are no drunkards, there are

no persons of questionable character standing around the polls. One of

the practical effects of woman suffrage will be to inject into

politics an element that is independent and does not have to keep a

consistent record with the party. We find that the ladies of Colorado

do not care whether they vote for one ticket or the other, but they

vote for the men they think the most deserving. Consequently if a man

is nominated who has a questionable record invariably they will strike

the party that does it. That tendency, I care not where it may exist,

must be for good."

Miss Anthony closed with an earnest appeal that the committee would

report in favor of a Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, thus

enabling the women to carry their case to the Legislatures of the

different States instead of to the masses of voters. She then

submitted for publication and distribution the address of Mrs.

Stanton, which said in part:

There is not a principle of our Government, not an article or

section of our Constitution, from the preamble to the last

amendment, which we have not elucidated and applied to woman

suffrage before the various committees in able arguments that

have never been answered. Our failure to secure justice thus far

has not been due to any lack of character or ability in our

advocates or of strength in their propositions, but to the

popular prejudices against woman's emancipation. Eloquent,

logical arguments on any question, though based on justice,

science, morals and religion, are all as light as air in the

balance with old theories, creeds, codes and customs.

Could we resurrect from the archives of this Capitol all the

petitions and speeches presented here by women for human freedom

during this century, they would reach above this dome and make a

more fitting pedestal for the Goddess of Liberty than the

crowning point of an edifice beneath which the mother of the race

has so long pleaded in vain for her natural right of

self-government--a right her sons should have secured to her long

ago of their own free will by statutes carved indelibly on the

corner-stones of the Republic.

As arguments have thus far proved unavailing, may not appeals to

your feelings, to your moral sense, find the response so long

withheld by your reason? Allow me, honorable gentlemen, to paint

you a picture and bring within the compass of your vision at once

the comparative position of two classes of citizens: The central

object is a ballot box guarded by three inspectors of foreign

birth. On the right is a multitude of coarse, ignorant beings,

designated in our constitutions as male citizens--many of them

fresh from the steerage of incoming steamers. There, too, are

natives of the same type from the slums of our cities. Policemen

are respectfully guiding them all to the ballot box. Those who

can not stand, because of their frequent potations, are carefully

supported on either side, each in turn depositing his vote, for

what purpose he neither knows nor cares, except to get the

promised bribe.

On the left stand a group of intelligent, moral,

highly-cultivated women, whose ancestors for generations have

fought the battles of liberty and have made this country all it

is to-day. These come from the schools and colleges as teachers

and professors; from the press and pulpit as writers and

preachers; from the courts and hospitals as lawyers and

physicians; and from happy and respectable homes as honored

mothers, wives and sisters. Knowing the needs of humanity

subjectively in all the higher walks of life, and objectively in

the world of work, in the charities, in the asylums and prisons,

in the sanitary condition of our streets and public buildings,

they are peculiarly fitted to write, speak and vote intelligently

on all these questions of such vital, far-reaching consequence to

the welfare of society. But the inspectors refuse their votes

because they are not designated in the Constitution as "male"

citizens, and the policemen drive them away.

Sad and humiliated they retire to their respective abodes,

followed by the jeers of those in authority. Imagine the feelings

of these dignified women, returning to their daily round of

duties, compelled to leave their interests, public and private,

in the State and the home, to these ignorant masses. The most

grievous result of war to the conquered is wearing a foreign

yoke, yet this is the position of the daughters of the

Puritans....

What a dark page the present political position of women will be

for the future historian! In reading of the republics of Greece

and Rome and the grand utterances of their philosophers in paeans

to liberty, we wonder that under such governments there should

have been a class of citizens held in slavery. Our descendants

will be still more surprised to know that our disfranchised

citizens, our pariahs, our slaves, belonged to the most highly

educated, moral, virtuous class in the nation, women of wealth

and position who paid millions of taxes every year into the State

and national treasuries; women who had given thousands to build

colleges and churches and to encourage the sciences and arts.

From the dawn of creation to this hour history affords no other

instance of so large a class of such a character subordinated

politically to the ignorant masses.

FOOTNOTES:

[105] Letters and telegrams of greeting were received from the Hon.

Mrs. C. C. Holly, member Colorado Legislature, Mrs. Henry M. Teller,

Mrs. Francis E. Warren, Mrs. Foster, from the National Woman's

Christian Temperance Union, State and local associations of various

kinds.

[106] Now Bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church.

[107] George W. Catt presented a significant paper showing that the

victory of Utah was almost wholly due to the excellent organization of

the suffrage forces, as with a population of 206,000 it had over 1,000

active workers for the franchise. If the same proportion existed in

other States nothing could prevent the success of the movement to

enfranchise women. This report was printed by the association as a

leaflet.

[108] _Yeas_: Rachel Foster Avery, Katie R. Addison, Lucy E. Anthony,

Mary O. Arnold, Lucretia L. Blankenburg, Caroline Brown Buell, Sallie

Clay Bennett, Henry B. Blackwell, Alice Stone Blackwell, Emma E.

Bower, Jennie Broderick, Jessie J. Cassidy, Carrie Chapman Catt,

Mariana W. Chapman, Mary N. Chase, Laura Clay, Elizabeth B. Dodge,

Annie L. Diggs, Matilda E. Gerrigus, Caroline Gibbons, John T. Hughes,

Mary Louise Haworth, Mrs. Frank L. Hubbard, Mary N. Hubbard, Mary G.

Hay, Mary D. Hussey, Hetty Y. Hallowell, Laura M. Johns, Mary Stocking

Knaggs, Helen Morris Lewis, Mary Elizabeth Milligan, Rebecca T.

Miller, Jessie G. Manley, Alice M. A. Pickler, Florence M. Post,

Florence Post, the Rev G. Simmons, Anna R. Simmons, Alice Clinton

Smith, Sarah H. Sawyer, Amanthus Shipp, Mrs. M. R. Stockwell, Mary

Clarke Smith, D. Viola Smith, Anna H. Shaw, Sarah Vail Thompson,

Harriet Taylor Upton, Laura H. Van Cise, Frances A. Williamson, Mary

J. Williamson, Eliza R. Whiting, Elizabeth A. Willard, Elizabeth Upham

Yates--53

_Nays:_ Susan B. Anthony, Mary S. Anthony, S. Augusta Armstrong,

Elizabeth D. Bacon, Lillie Devereux Blake, Elisan Brown, Annie

Caldwell Boyd, Cornelia H. Cary, Clara Bewick Colby, Dr. Cora Smith

Eaton, Caroline McCullough Everhard, Dr. M. Virginia Glauner, Mary E.

Gilmer, Mrs. L. C. Hughes, Lavina A. Hatch, Emily Howland, Isabel

Howland, Julie R. Jenney, Harriette A. Keyser, Jean Lockwood, Orra

Langhorne, Mary E. Moore, J. B. Merwin, Harriet May Mills, Mrs. M. J.

McMillan, Julia B. Nelson, Adda G. Quigley, Charlotte Perkins Stetson,

Althea B. Stryker, Mary B. Sackett, Harriet Brown Stanton, Mrs. R. W.

Southard, Ellen Powell Thompson, Helen Rand Tindall, Mary Bentley

Thomas, Martha S. Townsend, Mary Wood, Victoria Conkling Whitney, Mary

B. Wickersham, Mrs. George K. Wheat, Virginia D. Young--41.

[109] The Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage--Senators Wilkinson Call,

James Z. George, George F. Hoar, Matthew S. Quay and William A.

Peffer--were addressed by Elizabeth D. Bacon (Conn.), Sallie Clay

Bennett (Ky.), Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.), Lucretia L. Blankenburg

(Penn.), Mariana W. Chapman (N. Y.), Mary N. Chase (Vt.), Dr. Mary D.

Hussey (N. J.), Mrs. Frank Hubbard (Ills.), Lavina A. Hatch (Mass.),

May Stocking Knaggs (Mich.), Helen Morris Lewis (N. C.), Orra

Langhorne (Va.), Mary Elizabeth Milligan (Del.), Caroline Hallowell

Miller (Md.), Julia B. Nelson (Minn.), Mrs. R. W. Southard (Ok.),

Ellen Powell Thompson (D. C.), Victoria Conkling Whitney (Mo.),

Virginia D. Young (S. C.).

[110] On April 23 Senator Call submitted the Bill for a Sixteenth

Amendment without recommendation, and for himself and Senator George

the same old adverse report which had begun to do duty in 1882, and

which, he said, expressed their views. It will be found in the History

of Woman Suffrage, Vol. III, p. 237. Senator Quay evidently allowed

himself to be counted in the opposition.

[111] The members of the committee present were Representatives David

B. Henderson (chairman), Broderick, Updegraff, Gillett (Mass.) Baker

(N. H.), Burton (Mo.), Brown, Culberson, Boatner, Washington, Terry

and De Armond. Absent: Ray, Connolly, Bailey, Strong and Lewis. The

speakers were Mrs. L. C. Hughes (Ariz.), Charlotte Perkins Stetson

(Cal.), Annie L. Diggs, Katie R. Addison (Kan.), Elizabeth Upham Yates

(Me.), Henry B. Blackwell (Mass.), Harriet P. Sanders (Mont.), Clara

B. Colby (Neb.), Frances A. Williamson (Nev.), Dr. Cora Smith Eaton

(N. D.), Caroline McCullough Everhard (O.), Anna R. Simmons (S. D.),

Emily S. Richards (Utah), Jessie G. Manley (W. Va.).

CHAPTER XVII.

THE NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1897.

This year the suffrage association took its convention west of the

Mississippi River, the Twenty-ninth annual meeting being held in Des

Moines, Ia., Jan. 26-29, 1897. Circumstances were unfavorable, the

thermometer registering twenty-four degrees below zero and a heavy

blizzard prevailing throughout the West. Nevertheless sixty-three

delegates, representing twenty States, were present. All the visitors

were entertained in the hospitable homes of this city, and the entire

executive board were the guests of James and Martha C. Callanan at

their handsome home in the suburbs. Receptions were given by the Des

Moines Woman's Club, by the Young Women's Christian Association and by

Mr. and Mrs. F. M. Hubbell at their palatial residence, Terrace Hill.

The convention was welcomed in behalf of the State by Gov. Francis M.

Drake, who paid the highest possible tribute to the social and

intellectual qualities of women, pointed out the liberality of Iowa in

respect to manhood suffrage and congratulated the association

generally, but was extremely careful not to commit himself on the

question of woman suffrage. Mayor John McVicar extended the welcome of

the city in eloquent language. He also skirted all around the suffrage

question, came much nearer an expression of approval than did the

Governor, but cleverly avoided a direct assertion in favor. He was

followed by the Rev. H. O. Breeden, pastor of the Christian Church in

which the convention was assembled. Not being in politics he dared

express an honest opinion and said in the course of his remarks:

[Illustration: (MISS ANTHONY'S CABINET IN 1900.)

CATHARINE WAUGH McCULLOCH.

Second Auditor.

ALICE STONE BLACKWELL.

Recording Secretary.

RACHEL FOSTER AVERY.

Corresponding Secretary 21 Years.

LAURA CLAY.

First Auditor.

HARRIET TAYLOR UPTON.

Treasurer.

]

It is my privilege to address you in behalf of the churches, and

I do so with great pleasure, because I have a robust faith that

you are right, and also that the churches are with you in

sympathy and heart. I belong to one which welcomes women to its

pulpit and to all its offices. I should distrust the Christianity

of any that would deny to my mother and wife the rights it

accords to my father and myself. We welcome you to this city of

churches and to the churches of the city, and to its homes.

Woman shows her capacity for the highest functions in proportion

as she is admitted to them. I hold it true, with Dr. Storrs, that

as Dante measured his progress in Paradise not by outer objects

but by the increased beauty upon the face of Beatrice, so the

progress of the race is measured by the increasing beauty of

character shown in its women. The fanaticism of yesterday is the

reform of to-day, and the victory of to-morrow. Truth always goes

onward and never back. The day of equal rights for women is

surely coming. You are fighting a good warfare, with God, with

conscience and with right to inspire you, and the triumph is near

at hand.

Mrs. Mattie Locke Macomber extended the greetings of the Women's Clubs

of the State; Mrs. Adelaide Ballard, president of the Iowa Suffrage

Association, presented its welcome, and greetings were read from

various Women's Christian Temperance Unions. Miss Anthony responded

briefly, contrasting the welcome by Governor, mayor and different

societies with the olden times when perhaps not one person would

extend a friendly hand to those who attempted to hold a suffrage

meeting. "I hardly know what to say now," she continued. "It is so

much easier to speak when brickbats are flying. But I do rejoice with

you over the immense revolution and evolution of the past twenty-five

years, and I thank you for this cordial greeting."

The meetings were held in the large and well-arranged Christian

Church, with an auditorium seating 1,500. The four daily papers gave

full and fair reports and, although there was no editorial

endorsement, there was no adverse comment. The _Leader_ thus described

the opening session, Tuesday afternoon:

It is doubtful if the church ever before held so many people.

They poured in at all the doors, and the great audience room,

with the balconies and the windows, the choir and the aisles, the

platform and every foot of available space, was early occupied.

There were many gentlemen in the audience, but probably four of

every five were women. The men had come, apparently, to see and

hear Miss Anthony; and when she was done many of them left. It

was such an audience as is not often seen. The ladies were

generally elderly, the great majority beyond middle-age; they had

braved the cold and wind to hear the leader whom they had known

and loved for many years, but whom most of them had never seen.

Their bright faces framed in silvery hair, with brighter eyes

upturned to the speakers, must have been an inspiration to those

on the platform; in the case of Miss Anthony it was plain that

she was indeed inspired by her audience.

There was much rejoicing over the enfranchisement of the women of

Idaho by an amendment to the State constitution during the past year;

and much sorrow over the defeat of a similar amendment in California.

In her president's address Miss Anthony said in part:

The year 1896 witnessed greater successes than any since the

first pronunciamento was made at Seneca Falls, N. Y., July 19,

1848. On January 6 President Cleveland proclaimed Utah to be a

State, with a constitution which does not discriminate against

women. With Utah and Wyoming we have two States coming into the

Union with the principle of equal rights to women guaranteed by

their constitutions.

On November 3 the men of Idaho declared in favor of woman

suffrage, and for the first time in the history of judicial

decisions upon the enlargement of women's rights, civil and

political, a Supreme Court gave a broad interpretation of the

constitution. The Supreme Court of Idaho--Isaac N. Sullivan,

Joseph W. Huston, John T. Morgan--unanimously decided that the

amendment was carried constitutionally. This decision is the more

remarkable because the Court might as easily have declared that

the constitution requires amendments to receive a majority of the

total vote cast at the election, instead of a majority of the

votes cast on the amendment itself. By the former construction it

would have been lost, notwithstanding two to one of all who

expressed an opinion were in favor.

If anyone will study the history of our woman suffrage movement

since the days of reconstruction and the adoption of the

Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Federal

Constitution--taking the decisions of the Supreme Court of the

United States in the cases of Mrs. Myra Bradwell for the

protection of her civil rights; of Mrs. Virginia L. Minor for the

protection of her political rights; of the law granting Municipal

Suffrage to women in Michigan; on giving women the right to vote

for County School Commissioners in New York, and various other

decisions--he will find that in every case the courts have put

the narrowest possible construction upon the spirit and the

letter of the constitution. The Judges of Idaho did themselves

the honor to make a decision in direct opposition to judicial

precedent and prejudice. The Idaho victory is a great credit not

only to the majority of men who voted for the amendment, but to

the three Judges who made this broad and just decision.

After sketching the situation in California, and relating the part

taken by the National Association in these two campaigns, she

concluded:

In every county which was properly organized, with a committee in

every precinct, who visited every voter and distributed leaflets

in every family, the amendment received a majority vote. This

ought to be sufficient to teach the women of all the States that

what we need is house-to-house educational work throughout every

voting precinct. We may possibly carry amendments with education

short of this, but we are not likely to. I believe if the slums

of San Francisco and Oakland had been thus organized, even the

men there could have been made to see that it was for their

interest and that of their wives and daughters to vote for the

amendment. But, while the suffragists had no committees whatever

in those districts, the "liquor men" had an active committee in

every saloon, "dive" and gambling house. I am, therefore, more

and more convinced that it is educational work which needs to be

done. It is of little use for us to make our appeals to political

party conventions, State Legislatures or Congress for resolutions

in favor of woman's enfranchisement, while no appeal comes up to

them from the rank and file of the voters.

Until we do this kind of house-to-house work we can never expect

to carry any of the States in which there are large cities. If

Idaho had had San Francisco, with all its liquor interests and

foreigners banded together, she would probably have been defeated

as was California.

So, friends, I am not in any sense disheartened, and while I

rejoice exceedingly over Idaho, I also rejoice exceedingly over

the grand work done in California, and over the 110,000 votes

given for woman suffrage in that State. It was vastly more than

was ever done in any other amendment campaign. Study then the

methods of California and Idaho and improve on them as much as

you possibly can.

The Des Moines _Leader_ thus finished its report:

It was not difficult for one who saw Miss Anthony for the first

time to understand why she is so well beloved by her associates.

Seventy-seven years old, she is the most earnest worker of them

all; she is not only their leader but their counsellor and

friend. While she occupied the platform the utmost solicitude was

manifested for her on the part of everybody. Once a glass of

water was sent for but did not come as soon as it should, and

everyone on the stage was visibly concerned except Miss Anthony

herself, who calmly observed, by way of apology for a trifling

difficulty with her voice, that she was not accustomed to speak

in public, at which a laugh went round.... Her silvery hair was

parted in the middle and brushed down over her ears. Her eyes

have the deep-set appearance which is characteristic of elderly

people who have been hard mental laborers, but on the whole she

did not look all her years, though older than most of her hearers

had expected to see her. But those beaming, earnest eyes, taking

in her whole audience as she talked, told of a nature tenacious

of purpose and not to be daunted by any obstacle--the qualities

which in her many years' work in the cause Miss Anthony has so

many times manifested.

The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw devoted the most of her report as

vice-president-at-large to the California campaign, as she had spent

the greater part of the past year in that State. She closed by saying:

"Our reception by the Californians was such as to make them forever

dear to us. I wish you could have seen Miss Anthony for once walking

ankle-deep in roses. It showed that the sentiment for suffrage had

reached the point where its advocates not only were tolerated but

honored. I used to like to see her sitting in a chair all adorned with

flowers and with a laurel crown suspended over her head, and to feel

that it was woman suffrage that was crowned. The work was hard, but we

all came back from California better in health and stronger in hope."

On Wednesday evening the crowd was so great it became necessary to

hold an overflow meeting, which was attended by five hundred persons.

Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, who was introduced as "one of Iowa's own

daughters," was received with great applause. She said in part:

I have a deep and tender love for Iowa. When I cross her

boundary, I always feel that I am coming home. In my travels

through the West I meet many men and women who give me a warmer

hand-shake because they too are from Iowa. But this State no

longer occupies the first place in my heart. There are four that

I love better, and every woman here feels the same. The first is

Wyoming. Many pass through that State and see only a barren plain

covered with sage brush, but when I cross her border, I feel a

thrill as sacred as ever the crusaders felt in visiting the Holy

Land. The second State is Colorado, the third Utah, and the

fourth Idaho. All of us Iowa women will love these States better

than our own until it shall arouse and place its laws and

institutions on an equality for women and men....

We ask suffrage in order to make womanhood broader and motherhood

nobler. Men and women are inextricably bound together. If we are

to have a great race, we must have a great motherhood. Do you ask

why people can not see this? In all history no class has been

enfranchised without some selfish motive underlying. If to-day we

could prove to Republicans or Democrats that every woman would

vote for their party, we should be enfranchised.

Do you say that whenever all women wish the ballot they will have

it? That time will never come. Not all of any class of men ever

wanted to vote till the ballot was put into their hands. When the

first woman desired to study medicine, not one school would admit

her. Since that time, only half a century ago, 25,000 women have

been admitted to the practice of medicine. If a popular vote had

been necessary, not one of them would yet have her diploma. We

have gained these advantages because we did not have to ask

society for them. If woman suffrage were granted in Iowa, women

would soon wish to vote, and every home would become a forum of

education....

There never had been so many deaths in the ranks as during the past

year. The following were among the names presented by Mrs. Clara

Bewick Colby as those whom the association would ever hold in reverent

memory:

Hannah Tracy Cutler of Illinois, former president of the American

Association and one of the earliest and most self-sacrificing of

woman suffrage lecturers; Sarah B. Cooper of California, auditor

of this association, whose labors for the enfranchisement of the

women of the Pacific coast will be remembered and honored equally

with her beneficent work in founding and sustaining free

kindergartens, and in whatever promoted justice, truth and mercy,

so that on the day of her funeral all the flags in San Francisco

were placed at half-mast; Mary Grew, who began her work for

freedom as corresponding secretary of the Philadelphia Female

Anti-Slavery Society in 1834, one of the founders of the New

Century Club of Philadelphia, and of the Pennsylvania Woman

Suffrage Association, of which she was president for twenty-three

years; Elizabeth McClintock Phillips, who in 1848 signed the call

for the first convention which demanded the ballot for women; J.

Elizabeth Jones of New York, a pioneer in anti-slavery and woman

suffrage; Judge E. T. Merrick of New Orleans, whose home was ever

open to the woman suffrage lecturers in that section, and who by

his eminent position as Chief Justice of Louisiana for many

years, sustained his wife in work which in earlier days but for

him would have been impossible; Eliza Murphy of New Jersey, who

bequeathed five hundred dollars to this association; Harriet

Beecher Stowe of Connecticut, who, although the apostle of

freedom in another field, yet held as firmly and expressed as

steadfastly her allegiance to the cause of woman suffrage; Dr.

Caroline B. Winslow, the earliest woman physician in the District

of Columbia, intrepid as a journalist, successful in practice, a

leader in many lines of reform; Maria G. Porter of Rochester, N.

Y.; Sarah Hussey Southwick of Massachusetts, a worker in the

cause of liberty for more than sixty years; Kate Field of

Washington, D. C.; Gov. Frederick T. Greenhalge of Massachusetts;

Dr. Hiram Corson of Pennsylvania, who stood for the full

opportunities of women in medicine, and secured the opening to

them of the conservative medical societies of Philadelphia.

The names of over thirty other tried and true friends who had passed

away during the months since the last meeting were given. Mrs. Colby

closed the memorial service by saying:

The best that comes to this world comes through the love of

liberty. These were souls of noble aspiration and undaunted

courage. We enter into their labors; we will enshrine them in the

history of the suffrage movement and bear them gratefully in our

hearts forever. May our lives be as fruitful as theirs, and when

we too pass away may we

"Join the choir invisible

Of these immortal dead who live again,

In minds made better by their presence."

Among letters received was one from Parker Pillsbury (N. H.), now 88

years old, who had spoken so eloquently in early days for the

emancipation of the slaves and the freedom of women. One of the many

excellent addresses was on the general topic Equal Rights, by Miss

Alice Stone Blackwell (Mass.), illustrated by a number of the piquant

and appropriate stories for which she is noted and which perhaps leave

a more lasting impression than a labored argument. Mrs. Catharine

Waugh McCulloch, a practicing lawyer of Chicago, considered the

hackneyed phrase All the Rights We Want, showing up in a humorous way

the legal disabilities of women in her own State. The wife's earnings

may be seized to pay for her husband's clothes; she can not testify

against her husband; she can not enter into a business partnership

without his consent; a married mother has no right to her children;

the age of protection for girls is only fourteen, etc.

President George A. Gates of Iowa College said in part: "I never heard

or read a single sound argument against the suffrage of women in a

democracy. There are a hundred arguments for it. The question now is

one of organization, of agitation, of perseverance. In my judgment he

who sneers at suffrage not only proclaims himself a boor and casts

discredit on at least four women--his mother, his wife, his sister and

his daughter--but he reveals a depth of ignorance that is pitiable.

Let the appeal be to experience. Not one of the direful consequences

predicted has come to pass where suffrage is enjoyed. Homes have not

been deserted, bad women have not flocked to the polls, conjugal

strife has not been aroused, bad effects have not come but good

effects have. Bad men seek office in vain where women have the ballot.

New States are coming into line and the triumph of the cause can not

much longer be delayed."

Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Stetson spoke with her usual ability on Duty

and Honor:

Underlying the objections to woman suffrage is a reason of which,

as an American, I am deeply ashamed. I do not think either men or

women have the same honest pride in our democracy that they had

fifty years ago. We are becoming a little afraid of what Europe

has always told us was an experiment, but one reason it has not

yet been all we could wish is that it is not a democracy at all,

but a semi-democracy, one-half of the race ruling over the other

half.