If the question of the right of women to a voice in making the

laws they are to obey could be treated in the same common-sense

way that other practical questions are treated it would have been

settled long ago. If the question were to be asked in any

community about to establish a government, "Shall the whole

people who are of mature age and sound mind have a right to help

make the laws they are required to obey?" the natural answer

would be that they should have that right. But the fact is that

only the men exercise it. If the question were asked, "Shall the

whole people who are of mature age and sound mind and not

convicted of crime have a right to elect the men who will have

the spending of the money they pay for taxes?" the common-sense

answer would be that they should have that right. But the fact is

that only men are allowed to exercise it. So of the special

interests of women, their right to settle the laws which regulate

their relation to their children, their right to earn and own, to

buy and sell, to will and deed, the application of the simple

principles of fair play, would have given women equal voice with

men in these questions of personal and common interest. But as

it is men control it all, whether it is the child we bear, the

dollar we earn or the will we wish to make.

One would suppose that under a government whose fundamental

principle affirms that "the consent of the governed" is the just

basis, the consent of the governed women would have been asked

for. The only form of consent is a vote and that is denied to

women. As a result they are at a disadvantage everywhere. The

stigma of disfranchisement cheapens the respect due to their

opinions, diminishes their earnings and makes them subjects in

the home as they are in the State. The woman suffrage movement

means equal rights for women. It proposes to secure fair play and

justice.

At this convention valuable reports were presented from twenty-six

States. Of especial interest was that from Texas, where Mrs. Mariana

T. Folsom had done seven months' work under the auspices of the

American W. S. A., giving nearly 200 public addresses in advocacy of

equal rights. Texas was virgin soil on this subject, and Mrs. Folsom's

description of the conditions she found there was both entertaining

and instructive.

The old officers were re-elected with but few changes. Among the

resolutions adopted were the following:

The American Woman Suffrage Association, at its seventeenth

annual meeting, in this beautiful city of the new Northwest,

reaffirms the American principle of free representative

government, and demands its application to women. "Governments

derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," and

women are governed; "taxation without representation is tyranny,"

and women are taxed; "all political power inheres in the people,"

and one-half of the people are women.

_Resolved_, That women, as sisters, wives and mothers of men,

have special rights to protect and special wrongs to remedy; that

their votes will represent in a special sense the interests of

the home; that equal co-operation of the sexes is essential alike

to a happy home, a refined society, a Christian church and a

republican State.

WHEREAS, Under the Federal Constitution, "All persons born or

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

States in which they reside;" and, by the decision of the United

States courts, "Women are citizens, and may be made voters by

appropriate State legislation;" therefore,

_Resolved_, That this association regards with satisfaction the

acceptance of the claim of Anna Ella Carroll by the United States

Court of Claims, by which the remarkable services of Miss Carroll

in urging the campaign of Tennessee, which broke the force of the

rebellion and gave success to our armies, will have at last,

after more than a score of years, their late reward.[140]

_Resolved_, That the association send a deputation to Washington

in behalf of its memorial to Congress to frame a statute

prohibiting the disfranchisement of women in the Territories, and

to co-operate with the National Woman Suffrage Association (at

its January meeting) for a Sixteenth Amendment forbidding

political distinctions on account of sex.

The great success of this convention was due in large measure to the

excellent arrangements made by the friends in Minneapolis, especially

Dr. Ripley and Mrs. Martha A. Dorsett.

The association sent two delegates, Henry B. Blackwell and the Rev.

Anna H. Shaw, to Washington, to urge upon the House Committee the duty

of Congress to establish equal suffrage in the Territories. They were

given a respectful hearing.

_1886._--The Eighteenth annual meeting was held in Topeka, Kan.,

October 26-28. The morning and afternoon sessions were held in Music

Hall. Above the platform hung the beautiful banner of the Minnesota W.

S. A., sent by Dr. Martha G. Ripley, and at its side was a package of

7,000 leaflets for distribution contributed by Mrs. Cornelia C. Hussey

of New Jersey, which were gladly taken for use in different States.

The evening meetings assembled in the Hall of the House of

Representatives, seating 1,200 persons; the floor and both galleries

were crowded with the best citizens of Topeka; all the desks were

taken out, making room for more chairs, and even then hundreds of

people were turned away. Both halls were given free.

All the preparations had been admirably made by Mrs. Juliet N. Martin,

Miss Olive P. Bray, Mrs. S. A. Thurston and other Topeka women, who

had a collation spread in Music Hall for the delegates on their

arrival. The press gave full and cordial reports. Lucy Stone wrote in

the _Woman's Journal_:

We found the editors of the four daily papers all suffragists.

Among these was Major J. K. Hudson, who took his first lessons in

equal rights on the _Anti-Slavery Bugle_ in Ohio and, reared

among "Friends," was ready to continue the good service he has

all along rendered. Here, too, we found our old co-worker,

William P. Tomlinson, who at one time published the _Anti-Slavery

Standard_ for Wendell Phillips and the American Anti-Slavery

Society, and who a little later, in his young prime, devoted his

time, his money and his strength to the publication of the

_Woman's Advocate_ in New York, of which he was proprietor and

editor. He is now editor of the Topeka _Daily Democrat_. Mr. B.

P. Baker, now editor and proprietor of the _Commonwealth_, did

good service to the woman suffrage cause in 1867 in the Topeka

_Record_. Mr. McLennan, of the _Journal_, is also with us.

The whole convention was interspersed with ringing reminiscences of

the heroic early history of Kansas. Mrs. S. N. Wood, who in the Border

Ruffian days went through the enemy's lines and at great personal

peril brought into beleaguered Lawrence the ammunition which enabled

it to defend itself, came to the platform to add her good word for

equal suffrage. It was a great pleasure to the officers of the

association to meet her and the other early Kansas workers, many of

whom, like Mrs. J. H. Slocum, of Emporia, were old personal friends.

Mrs. Anna C. Wait, president of the Kansas W. S. A. and editor of the

Lincoln _Beacon_, gave the address of welcome in behalf of the

suffragists. Referring to the first campaign for a woman suffrage

amendment in 1867, when Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell spoke in

forty-two counties of Kansas, Mrs. Wait said: "Nineteen years ago when

you came to Kansas you found no suffrage societies and even seven

years ago you would have found none. To-day, in behalf of the State W.

S. A. and its many flourishing auxiliaries, I welcome these dear

friends who come to us from the rock-ribbed shores of the Atlantic,

from the coast of the Pacific, from the lakes of the North and from

the sunny South, a veritable gathering of the clans of freedom."

Major Hudson, in his address of welcome in behalf of the city,

reviewed the history of woman suffrage in Kansas, paid a tribute to

the work of the pioneer suffragists, and said:

We welcome you to Kansas, because it has been good battle-ground

for the right.... We place the ballot in the hands of the

foreigner who can not read or speak our language, and who knows

nothing of our government; we enfranchised a slave race, most of

whom can not read; and yet we deny to the women of America the

ballot, which in their hands would be the strongest protection of

this republic against the ignorance and vice of the great centers

of our population. Give to woman the ballot, and you give her

equal pay with men for the same work; you break down prejudice

and open to her every vocation in which she is competent to

engage; you do more--you give her an individuality, and equal

right in life.

The president, the Hon. William Dudley Foulke, in his response to the

welcome of the suffrage association said: "It gives us great pleasure

to visit your beautiful city and fertile State. It gives us pleasure

not because your State is fertile and your city beautiful but because

it is in these Western States that there is most hope of the growth of

the woman suffrage movement. The older States are what old age is in

the human frame, something that is difficult to change; but where

there is young blood there is hope and the progress of a new idea is

more rapid."

Mrs. Howe, responding to the welcome of the citizens, said some one

had spoken of woman suffrage as a hobby; she questioned whether the

opposition to suffrage was not the hobby and suffrage the horse. The

discussion of these great questions was doing much to make the women

of the country one in feeling, and to do away with sectional

prejudices. A most cordial hearing was given to the Woman's Congress

lately held at Louisville, Ky., and especially to the woman suffrage

symposium which occupied one evening. Mrs. Howe spoke of the

wonderful, providential history of Kansas, and the way in which a new

and unexpected chapter of the country's history opened out from the

experience of the young Territory. She remembered when the name of

Kansas was the word which set men's blood at the East tingling. She

continued:

You men of Kansas, you who have been bought with a price, noble

men have worked and suffered and died that you might be free. For

you Charles Sumner fell in the Senate of the United States. He

fell to rise again, but others fell for whom there was no rising.

Having received this great gift of freedom, pray you go on to

make it perfect. You may think that you have a free State, well

founded and stable, and that it will stand; but remember that the

State, like the Church, is not a structure to be built and set up

but a living organism to grow and move. Its life is progress and

freedom. Do not think that you can stay this great tide of

progress by saying, "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." No

such limitation is possible. That tide will oversweep every

obstacle set in its way.

Why, men of Kansas, having been so nobly endowed at the

beginning, have you let the younger children in the nursery of

our dear mother country learn lessons that you have not learned?

Are the women of Wyoming and Washington better than your women,

and do the men of those Territories love their women better than

you love yours? You will say "no," with indignation; but remember

that love is shown in deeds far more than in words. Until you

make your women free I must hold that you do not love them as

well as those do who have given their mothers and sisters the

gift of political enfranchisement. This place is the temple of

your liberties; here, if anywhere, should be spoken the words of

wisdom and be enacted just and equal laws. However grand the

words may be which have been spoken here, may they become grander

and better and deeper, until to all your other glories shall be

added that of having set the crown of freedom upon the heads of

the women of your State!

Only a few gleanings from the many speeches can be given. Professor W.

H. Carruth, of the Kansas State University, said in part:

We are likely to meet some good-natured person who will say:

"Why, yes, I am in favor of woman suffrage, but I don't see that

there is any need of it here in Kansas. If I were in Rhode Island

or Connecticut, where there are so many laws unjust to women, I

would petition and work for it; but I don't see that it is worth

while to make a fuss about it here." Now, what can be said to

such a person? Weapons are both defensive and aggressive. The

ballot has both uses. What would a herdsman say if you told him

his sheepfold was all that was needed, and refused to give him a

gun? What would the farmer say if you gave him a cultivator but

no plough? What would Christianity be if it had only the Ten

Commandments and not the Golden Rule?

He who thinks the ballot is given simply as a means of

protection--protection in a limited sense, against fraud and

violence--has but a limited conception of the duties of American

citizenship. The old let-alone theory of government has been

found a failure, and instead of it people are coming to think

that government is good to do anything that it can do best--just

as they have already learned that it is proper for woman to do

anything that she can do well. In a word, as Mrs. Howe said the

other evening, the ballot is a means of getting things done which

we want done.

When your good friend with a kind and prosperous husband, a

pleasant home and nothing lacking which better laws could secure

for her, says she thinks women are already pretty well treated

and she doesn't know that she would care for the ballot, ask her

how she would feel if she were a teacher and were expected to

work beside a man, equal work and equal time, he to get $60 and

she $40 a month? Ask her whether she would not want to have a

vote then? Isn't this a case, kind mistress of a home, where you

should remember those in bonds as bound with them? I very much

fear there never will be a time when all the good people in this

world can dispense with any effective weapon against wrong.

And, beyond this, there are all the offensive, aggressive uses of

the ballot. We want a sewer here, a bridge there, a lamp-post or

a hydrant yonder. A woman's nose will scent a defective drain

where ten men pass it by, but votes get these things looked

after. We want a new schoolhouse, or more brains or more fresh

air in an old one. Don't you know that women will attend to such

needs sooner than men?

Mr. Foulke said in part:

It is said that woman suffragists are dreamers. There was a time

within our memory when human flesh in this our free America was

sold at auction. In those days a few earnest men dreamed of a

time when our flag should no longer unfurl itself over a slave.

Inspired by this great vision they bore the persecution and

contumely of their fellows. In season and out of season they

preached their glorious gospel of immediate and unconditional

emancipation. Wild visionaries they, incendiaries whose very

writings, like the heresies of old, must be consigned to the

flames; impracticable enthusiasts, seditious citizens. But lo!

the flame of war passed over us and their dream is true; and in

the clearer light which shines upon us to-day, we can hardly

realize that this great blot upon our civilization could have

existed, the time seems so far away.

And we of America, we who have reached the summit of the

prophecies of centuries past, we dream of new and loftier

mountains in the distance. We who have realized in our political

institutions a universal equality of men before the law, find

that we have only reached the foothills of the greater range

beyond. There are men in our midst who are dreaming to-day of a

time when mere political equality shall be based upon that

broader social and economic equality which is so necessary to

maintain it. They dream of a time when each man's reward shall be

proportioned to his own exertions and his own desert, and nothing

at all shall be due to the accident of birth; dream of a time

when bitter, grinding poverty, save as a punishment for idleness,

shall no longer exist in a world so full of the bounty of heaven.

Is it wilder than the dream of him who, under the despotism of

the Bourbons, could dream of a great people whose birth should be

heralded by the cry that all men are created equal? Is it wilder

than the dream of him who, oppressed by the tyranny of Alva,

could dream of a day of perfect religious toleration? Men talk

with contemptuous pity of the dreamer. But he rather is the

object of pity who bars the windows and draws the curtains of his

soul to shut out the light of heaven that would smile in upon

him. Let us rather pity the man who fears to utter the divine

thought which fills him. Let us pity rather that man or that

nation which lives in the complacent consciousness of its own

virtue and blessedness, and dreams of no higher good than it

possesses. He that has a dream of something better than he sees

around him, let him tell it though the world smile. He that has a

prophecy to utter, let him speak, though men account it his folly

as much as they will. God bless the dreamers of all just and

perfect dreams! The great wheel of the ages with ever-increasing

motion is sure to roll out their accomplishment.

The Rev. Louis A. Banks, lately of Washington Territory, spoke of

woman suffrage there. He said:

The first fact proved by experience is that women do vote. Before

the law was enacted, the old objection used to meet us on every

hand, "The women do not want to vote"--as though that, if true,

were a valid reason. They ought to want to. It is my business to

urge men to repent, and I have never supposed it a reason to

cease preaching to them because they did not want to repent; they

ought to want to. But our experience has proved that women do

want to vote. It was universally conceded that in our first

general Territorial election fully as many women voted in

proportion to their numbers as men....

Woman's influence as a citizen has been of equal value in the

jury-box. Experience shows that she is peculiarly fitted for that

duty. Woe to the gambler who enriches himself by the folly or

innocence of the ignorant, and the rum-seller who lures boys into

his backroom! Woe to the human vultures who prey upon young

lives, when they fall into the hands of a jury of mothers!...

You who have not hitherto been woman suffragists, why not espouse

this cause now, when it is in the full flush of its heroic

struggle? When John Adams went courting Abigail Smith, her proud

father said to her: "Who is this young Adams? Where did he come

from?" Abigail answered: "I do not know where he came from and I

do not care, but I know where he is going and I am going with

him." Ladies and gentlemen, you know where we are going; we

invite your company for the journey.

State Senator R. W. Blue said: "One of the greatest questions of the

day is how to counteract the influence of the vicious vote cast every

year in the large cities. I believe the only way to do that is to

enfranchise the women." He added that he had worked for the Municipal

Suffrage Bill in the preceding Legislature, and should do so in the

next. President Foulke complimented him on his bold and outspoken

remarks, and said he thought a man in politics never lost anything by

telling the people exactly where he stood on vital issues.[141]

James G. Clark, associate editor of the Minneapolis _Spectator_, was a

delegate, and delighted the audience with his equal rights songs. A

letter was received from Dr. Mary F. Thomas and, by a rising vote of

the convention, it was decided to send her a telegram of greeting and

congratulations on her seventieth birthday.

Letters were read from Chief-Justice Greene of Washington Territory,

and from Mrs. Margaret Bright Lucas of England, sister of John and

Jacob Bright; also telegrams from the Minnesota W. S. A., from Major

and Mrs. Pickler of South Dakota, and from others, and reports from

the different State societies.

Chancellor J. A. Lippincott, of the State University, invited the

association to visit that institution, and Mrs. Howe and Mrs. Stone to

address the students. Mrs. Stone wrote in the _Woman's Journal_: "It

was worth the journey to receive the warm welcome which greeted us on

every hand, and still more to see the progress the cause has made in

the nineteen years that have passed since the first suffrage campaign

in Kansas. It would not be surprising if Municipal Suffrage should be

secured in this State at the next session of the Legislature.[142] The

very air was full of suffrage, even in the midst of the political

contest."

_1887._--The Nineteenth annual meeting was held in Association Hall,

Philadelphia, October 31, November 1, 2. The platform had been

beautifully decorated with tropical plants and foliage by Miss

Elizabeth B. Justice and other Pennsylvania friends. The weather was

fine, the audience sympathetic and the speaking excellent.

State Senator A. D. Harlan gave the address of welcome in behalf of

the Pennsylvania W. S. A. President Wm. Dudley Foulke in responding

paid a tribute to the Senator's good service in the Legislature in

behalf of a constitutional amendment for equal suffrage. A letter of

welcome was read from the venerable and beloved president of the

association, Miss Mary Grew, who was kept away by illness. Col. T. W.

Higginson said:

I have the sensations of a Revolutionary veteran, almost, in

coming back to Philadelphia and remembering our early suffrage

meetings here in that time of storm, in contrasting the audiences

of to-day with the audiences of that day, and in thinking what

are the difficulties that come before us now as compared with

those of our youth. The audiences have changed, the atmosphere of

the community has changed; nothing but the cause remains the

same, and that remains because it is a part of the necessary

evolution of democratic society and is an immortal thing.

I recall those early audiences; the rows of quiet faces in Quaker

bonnets in the foreground; the rows of exceedingly unquiet

figures of Southern medical students, with their hats on, in the

background. I recall the visible purpose of those energetic young

gentlemen to hear nobody but the women, and the calm

determination with which their bootheels contributed to put the

male speakers down. I recall also their too-assiduous attentions

in the streets outside when the meeting broke up....

Woman suffrage should be urged, in my opinion, not from any

predictions of what women will do with their votes after they get

them, but on the ground that by all the traditions of our

government, by all the precepts of its early founders, by all the

axioms which lie at the foundation of our political principles,

woman needs the ballot for self-respect and self-protection.

The woman of old times who did not read books of political

economy or attend public meetings, could retain her self-respect;

but the woman of modern times, with every step she takes in the

higher education, finds it harder to retain that self-respect

while she is in a republican government and yet not a member of

it. She can study all the books that I saw collected this morning

in the political economy alcove of the Bryn Mawr College; she can

master them all; she can know more about them perhaps than any

man of her acquaintance; and yet to put one thing she has learned

there in practice by the simple process of dropping a piece of

paper into a ballot-box--she can no more do that than she could

put out her slender finger and stop the planet in its course.

That is what I mean by woman's needing the suffrage for

self-respect.

Then as to self-protection. We know there have been great

improvements in the laws in regard to women. What brought about

those improvements? The steady labor of women like these on this

platform, going before Legislatures year by year and asking for

something they were not willing to give, the ballot; but, as a

result of it, to keep the poor creatures quiet, some law was

passed removing a restriction. The old English writer Pepys,

according to his diary, after spending a good deal of money for

himself finds a little left and buys his wife a new gown,

because, he says, "It is fit that the poor wretch should have

something to content her." I have seen many laws passed for the

advantage of women and they were generally passed on that

principle.

I remember going before the Rhode Island Legislature once with

Lucy Stone and she unrolled with her peculiar persuasive power

the wrong laws which existed in that commonwealth in regard to

women. After the hearing was over the chairman of that committee,

a judge who had served on it for years, said to her: "Mrs. Stone,

all that you have stated this morning is true, and I am ashamed

to think that I, who have been chairman for years of this

judiciary committee, should have known in my secret heart that it

was all true and should have done nothing to set these wrongs

right until I was reminded of them by a woman." Again and again I

have seen that experience. Women with bleeding feet, women with

exhausted voices, women with wornout lives, have lavished their

strength to secure ordinary justice in the form of laws which a

single woman inside the State House, armed with the position of

member of the Legislature and representing a sex who had votes,

could have had righted within two years. Every man knows the

weakness of a disfranchised class of men. The whole race of women

is disfranchised, and they suffer in the same way.

Among the other speakers were the Rev. Charles G. Ames, Henry B.

Blackwell, the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Dr. Thomas, Mrs.

Campbell, Mrs. Mary E. Haggart, Mrs. Frances E. W. Harper, the Rev. S.

S. Hunting, Miss Cora Scott Pond, the Rev. Ada C. Bowles and Mrs.

Adelaide A. Claflin.

The chairman of the executive committee, Mrs. Lucy Stone, in her

annual report, reviewed the year's activities and continued:

But the chief work of the American Woman Suffrage Association

during the past year has been to obtain wide access to the public

through the newspapers. Early in the year correspondence was

opened with most of the papers in the United States. The editors

were asked whether they would publish suffrage literature if it

were sent them every week without charge. More than a thousand

answered that they would use what we sent, in whole or in part.

Accepting this the association has, for the last eight months,

furnished 1,000 weekly papers with a suffrage column. The cost of

it consumes nearly the whole interest of the Eddy Fund, besides

much time and strength gratuitously given. But as these papers

come to us week by week containing the suffrage items and

articles which through their columns reach millions of readers,

we feel that no better use could be made of money or time.

The Revs. Anna H. Shaw and Ada C. Bowles were chosen national

lecturers. Among the resolutions were the following:

We congratulate the Legislature of Kansas upon its honorable

record in extending Municipal Suffrage last February to the women

of that State, and the 26,000 women of Kansas by whose aid, last

April, reformed city governments were elected in every

municipality; we hail the National W. C. T. U. as an efficient

ally of the woman suffrage movement; we recognize the woman

suffrage resolutions of the Knights of Labor, the Land and Labor

organizations, the Third Party Prohibitionists and other

political parties, as evidence of a growing public sentiment in

favor of the equal rights of women; we rejoice that two-thirds of

the Northern Senators in the Congress of the United States voted

last winter for a Sixteenth Constitutional Amendment prohibiting

political distinctions on account of sex; we observe an

increasing friendliness in the attitude of press and pulpit and

the fact that 1,000 newspapers now publish a weekly column in the

interests of woman suffrage; we are encouraged by more general

discussions and more favorable votes of State Legislatures than

ever before--all indicating a sure and steady progress toward the

complete enfranchisement of women.

WHEREAS, The woman suffragists of the United States were all

united until 1868 in the American Equal Rights Association; and

WHEREAS, The causes of the subsequent separation into the

National and the American Woman Suffrage Societies have since

been largely removed by the adoption of common principles and

methods, therefore,

_Resolved_, That Mrs. Lucy Stone be appointed a committee of one

from the American W. S. A. to confer with Miss Susan B. Anthony,

of the National W. S. A., and if on conference it seems

desirable, that she be authorized and empowered to appoint a

committee of this association to meet a similar committee

appointed by the National W. S. A., to consider a satisfactory

basis of union, and refer it back to the executive committees of

both associations for final action.

A pleasant incident of the convention was the presentation to the

audience of Mrs. E. R. Hunter, of Wichita, Kan., a real voter. Letters

of greeting were read from Miss Matilda Hindman of Pennsylvania,

Senator M. B. Castle of Illinois, Mrs. Mary B. Clay of Kentucky, and

Judge Stanton J. Peelle of Indiana. Mrs. Stone, the Rev. Antoinette

Brown Blackwell and Mrs. Mary A. Livermore were elected delegates to

the International Council of Women to be held in Washington, D. C., in

1888, with Dr. Mary F. Thomas, Miss Mary Grew and Mrs. Hannah M. Tracy

Cutler as alternates.

After Mrs. Howe's address on the last evening, The Battle Hymn of the

Republic was sung standing, the great assembly joining in the chorus.

The officers had the pleasure of visiting Bryn Mawr College, by

invitation of Dean M. Carey Thomas, during the convention.

In December of this year, a Suffrage Bazar was held in Boston for the

joint benefit of the American W. S. A. and of the State suffrage

associations that participated,[143] which was a success both socially

and financially. The _Woman's Journal_ of December 17 said:

Music Hall is a wonderful sight; the green and gold banner of

Kansas occupies the place of honor in the middle of the platform,

flanked on the left by the great crimson banner of Michigan with

its motto "Neither delay nor rest," and on the right by the blue

flag of Maine, decorated with a pine branch and cones. The bronze

statue of Beethoven which has looked calmly down upon so many

different assemblages in Music Hall, gazes meditatively at the

Kansas table, with a large yellow sunflower which surmounts the

Kansas banner blazing like a great star at his very feet. Next

comes the banner of Vermont, rich and beautiful, though smaller

than the rest, in two shades of blue, with the seal of the State

in the center surrounded by wild roses and bearing the motto

"Freedom and Unity." At the extreme right of the platform hangs

the banner of Pennsylvania, yellow, with heavy crimson fringe and

the motto "Taxation _with_ Representation." On the other side of

Michigan is a large portrait of Wendell Phillips, sent by friends

in Minnesota. At the left are the _Woman's Journal_ exhibit,

press headquarters and a display of exquisite blankets made at

the Lamoille mills and contributed to the Vermont exhibit by the

manufacturer, Mrs. M. G. Minot.

All down the hall on both sides and across the middle hang the

many banners of the Massachusetts local leagues, of all sizes and

colors and with every variety of motto and device. At the extreme

end hangs the white banner of the State Association.

This handsome banner, bearing the motto, "Male and female created He

them, and gave _them_ dominion," was presented to the association by

Miss Cora Scott Pond and the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, to whose energetic

work the success of the bazar was largely due.

Mrs. Livermore, the president of the bazar, made the opening address

on the first evening. Floor and gallery were filled and scores of

yellow-ribboned delegates threaded their way through the smiling

crowd. Mrs. Howe followed, saying in part:

Addresses this evening are something like grace before meat; they

are expected to be short and sweet. The grace is a good thing

because it reminds us that we do not live by bread alone but by

all the divine words with which the Creator has filled the

universe. The most divine word of all is justice, and in that

sacred name we are met to-night. In her name we set up our tents

and spread our banners....

In the suspense in which we have so long waited for suffrage, I

sometimes feel as if we were in a dim twilight through which at

last a single star sheds its way to show us there is light yet,

and then another and another star follow. Wyoming was the first,

the evening star--we may call her our Venus; then came Washington

Territory, and then Kansas. What sort of a star shall we call

Boston? She might aptly be compared to sleepy old Saturn,

surrounded by a triple ring of prejudice. Dr. Channing was asked

once if he did not despair of Harvard College. He replied: "No, I

never _quite_ despair of anything." Therefore, following his good

example, I never quite despair of Boston. We want our flag to be

full of such stars as those I have mentioned.

Mrs. Lucy Stone closed a brief address by saying: "To-morrow will be

election day and the papers urge all citizens to go and vote; but

there are 60,000 women in Boston who have the same interest in the

city government that men have, and yet can have no voice in the

matter. Make this bazar a success and so enable us to take

Massachusetts by its four corners and shake it till it gives suffrage

to women."

_1888._--The twentieth annual meeting was held in Cincinnati, Ohio,

November 20-22, with large crowds in attendance and much interest

shown. The _Enquirer_ said: "The audiences may be said to have

chestnutized the time-honored assertion that advocates of the ballot

for the fair sex are unable to win even womankind to their way of

thinking. New faces of ladies of the highest standing in society are

seen at every succeeding session. The Scottish Rite Cathedral has

rarely or never held as large a number of ladies, and equally rarely

has there been present at a meeting of woman suffragists so large a

proportion of men." And the _Commercial Gazette_: "The Scottish Rite

Cathedral never held a finer-looking company, composed as it was of a

large number of the oldest and best citizens."

The Hon. Wm. Dudley Foulke presided.[144] Addresses of welcome were

made by the Hon. Alphonso Taft and Mrs. McClellan Brown, president of

the Wesleyan Woman's College. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe responded.

In a letter the Hon. George William Curtis said: "Every change in the

restrictive laws regarding women is an acknowledgment of the justice

of the demand for equal suffrage. The case was conceded when women

became property holders and taxpayers in their own right. In every way

their interest in society is the same as that of men, and the reason

for their voting in school meetings is conclusive for their voting

upon the appropriation of other taxes which they pay."

U. S. Senator George F. Hoar wrote: "My belief in the wisdom and

justice of the demand that women shall be admitted to the ballot

grows stronger every year." In a letter to Lucy Stone, Clara Barton

wrote:

It gives me pain to be compelled to decline your generous

invitation to attend your annual meeting, but there is a deep

pleasure in the thought that you remembered and desired me to be

with you. Nowhere would I so gladly speak my little word for

woman, her rights, her needs, her privileges delayed and

debarred--yet blessed with the grand advance of the last thirty

years, the budding and blossoming of the seed sown in darkness,

doubt and humiliation, scattered by the winds of conscious

superiority and power and the whirlwinds of opposing wrath--as on

the green, native soil, the home of the early labors of its

sainted citizen, Frances D. Gage. Dear, noble, precious Aunt

Fanny, with the soul so pure and white, the heart so warm, the

sympathies so quick and ready, the sensitive, shrinking modesty

of self, the courage that scoffed at fear when the needs of

others were plead; the friend of the bondman and oppressed, who

knew no sect, sex, race or color, but toiled on for freedom and

humanity till the glorious summons came! If only five minutes of

her clarion voice could ring out in that meeting--McGregor on his

native heath--"'twere worth a thousand men." I pray you, dear

friend, whose voice will reach and be heard, try to point out to

the younger and later workers of the grand, old State the broad

stubble swath of the scythe and the deep blazing of the sturdy

axe of this glorious pioneer of theirs--the grandest of them

all--whose sleeping dust is an honor to Ohio.

It is nothing that I am not there; it is much that you will be,

who carry back the memories of your girlhood, your school-life,

your earliest labors, to lay them on this freely-proffered altar,

in a spot where then there was no room for the tired foot, nor

scarce safety for the head. The occasion points with unerring

finger to the hands on the dial of thirty years in the future. We

need not to see it then, for it is given us to foresee it now.

God's blessing on this work and on the meeting, and on all who

may compose it![145]

Henry B. Blackwell said in his address:

In equal suffrage lies our only hope of a representative

government. Women are one-half of our citizens with rights to

protect and wrongs to remedy. They are a distinct class in

society, differing from men in character, position and interest.

Every class that votes makes itself felt in the government. Women

will change the quality of government when they vote. They are

more peaceable, temperate, chaste, economical and law-abiding

than men; less controlled by physical appetite and passion; more

influenced by humane and religious considerations. They will

superadd to the more harsh and aggressive masculine qualities

those feminine qualities in which they are superior to men. And

these qualities are precisely what our government lacks. Women

will always be wives and mothers. They will represent the home as

men represent the business interests, and both are needed. This

is a reform higher, broader, deeper than any and all others. Let

good men and women of all sects, parties and opinions unite in

establishing a government of and by and for the people--men and

women.

Lucy Stone, describing the convention in the _Woman's Journal_ of

December 1, wrote:

The local arrangements had been carefully made by Dr. Juliet M.

Thorpe, Mrs. Ellen B. Dietrick and Miss Annie McLean Marsh. The

spirit and temper of the meeting were of the best. Telegrams of

greeting were received from various States, and from far and near

came letters from those who were already friends of the cause,

and others who wished to learn. One old lady with snow-white

locks had come alone forty miles. She was not a delegate and she

had no speech to make, but her heart was in the work and she

found opportunity to speak words of cheer to those who were in

the thick of the fight. One young woman, a busy teacher, came

from Knoxville, Tenn. She wanted to know how to work for suffrage

in that State, and said she thought it "the best way to come

where the suffrage was." A large supply of leaflets, copies of

the _Woman's Journal_ and of the _Woman's Column_, were given

her, with such advice and instruction as the time permitted. Two

ladies were there from Virginia. This was their first suffrage

meeting, but they listened eagerly, subscribed for our

periodicals and gladly accepted leaflets. It was a comfort to see

by these new recruits how widely the idea of equal rights for

women is taking root. At these annual meetings the workers who

come from far distant States and Territories strengthen each

other. The sight of their faces and the warm grasp of their hands

serve to renew the strength of those who never have flinched, and

who never will flinch till women are secure in possession of

equal rights.

A number of ladies who came over from Kentucky took the

opportunity to organize a Kentucky Equal Suffrage Association.

It is always a matter of regret that the excellent speeches made

at these meetings can not be phonographically reported, but it

must suffice to say that they covered all the ground, from the

principles on which representative government rests, to the

teaching of the Bible, which Miss Laura Clay, in an able speech,

warmly claimed was on the side of equal rights for women. Mrs.

Zerelda G. Wallace, that noble mother in Israel, agreed with her,

though from a different point of view, while Frederick Douglass

claimed that the "Eternal Right exists independent of all books."

The Cincinnati press gave noticeably friendly and fair reports.

Hospitality to delegates was abundant. The sunny side of many of

the best people of the Queen City was evidently turned toward

this meeting. A distinguished member of the Hamilton County bar,

who had not been thoroughly converted before, said: "When you

come again, let me make the address of welcome!"

The annual report of the chairman of the executive committee stated

that the association had continued to supply with suffrage matter all

editors who would use it; and that to save postage this weekly

bulletin had been put into the form of a small newspaper, the _Woman's

Column_:

Its woman suffrage arguments come back to us in papers scattered

from Maine to California, and reach hundreds of thousands of

readers who would not take a paper devoted specifically to this

reform.... Twenty thousand suffrage leaflets were given to the

Rev. Anna H. Shaw, national lecturer for the American W. S. A.,

whose position as national superintendent of franchise for the W.

C. T. U. enables her to use them with great effect; 7,700 were

made a gift to the Ohio Centennial Exposition at Cincinnati with

hundreds of copies of the _Woman's Journal_ and _Woman's Column_;

also many to the exposition at Columbus; 1,000 leaflets were sent

to the meeting of the Wisconsin W. S. A. at Milwaukee, and 500 to

its recent meeting at Stevens Point; many were sent to the fair

at Ottumwa, Ia.; a large number were distributed at the annual

meeting of the National W. C. T. U. in New York, and smaller

quantities have been supplied for local use in almost all the

States and Territories. Several friends have made donations of

money for this purpose, and there is no way in which money goes

further or does more good. In August, the association began the

publication of a series of tracts under the title of the _Woman

Suffrage Leaflet_. The association has given $50 for work in

Montana, $50 in Vermont, $25 in Wisconsin and $15 in New York.

Memorial resolutions were adopted for Louisa M. Alcott, Dr. Mary F.

Thomas and James Freeman Clarke, D. D.

The following committee was chosen to continue the negotiations for

union with the National Woman Suffrage Association, which had been

entered upon in pursuance of the resolution adopted at Philadelphia:

the Hon. William Dudley Foulke, Indiana; the Rev. Anna H. Shaw,

Michigan; Miss Laura Clay, Kentucky; Mrs. Margaret W. Campbell, Iowa;

Prof. W. H. Carruth, Kansas; Miss Mary Grew, Pennsylvania; the Rev.

Antoinette Brown Blackwell, New Jersey; Mrs. Sarah C. Schrader, Ohio;

Mrs. Catherine V. Waite, Illinois; Mrs. May S. Knaggs, Michigan; Miss

Alice Stone Blackwell, Massachusetts.

_1889._--In January these delegates met with those from the National

Association at the convention of the latter in Washington, D. C., and

arrangements for the union of the two societies for the following year

were practically completed.[146]

In the summer an appeal was addressed by Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe

and Mary A. Livermore to the constitutional conventions which were

preparing for Statehood in Dakota, Washington, Montana and Idaho. It

said in part:

The undersigned, officers of the American Woman Suffrage

Association, though not properly entitled to address your

convention, nevertheless ask its courtesy on account of the great

interest they feel in the question of the status you will give to

women.

You, gentlemen, felt keenly the disadvantage you were under when

you had only Territorial rights. If you will consider how much

greater are the disadvantages of a class that is wholly without

political rights, you will, we feel sure, pardon our entreaty

that in building your new constitution you will secure for women

equal political rights with men.

The men of the older States inherited their constitutions, with

the odious features which the common law imposes upon women. But

you are making constitutions. You have the golden opportunity to

save your women from all these evils by securing their right to

vote in the organic law of the new State. By doing this, over and

above the satisfaction which comes from having done a just deed,

you will win the gratitude of women for all time, as our fathers

won the gratitude of the race when they announced the principle

which we ask you to apply. You will also secure the historic

credit of being the first men to take the next great step in

civilization--a step sure to be taken at no distant day....

Edward Everett once said, illustrating the effect of small things

on character: "The Mississippi and the St. Lawrence Rivers have

their rise near each other. A very small difference in the

elevation of the land sends one to the ocean amid tropical heat,

while the other empties into the frozen waters of the north." So,

it may seem a small matter whether you admit or shut out women

from an equal share in the government. But if you exclude them

you shut out a class of citizens pre-eminently orderly,

law-abiding and peaceful, and especially interested in the

welfare of the home and the safety of society. If, at the same

time, you admit all classes of men, however worthless, provided

they are out of prison, and if you make them free to stamp their

impress upon the government, in the long run you will find the

moral tone of the community lowered and cheapened, and your most

sacred institutions imperiled by the dangerous classes to whom

you entrusted the power which you denied to orderly and good

women.

Henry B. Blackwell, secretary of the association, visited North

Dakota, Montana and Washington, and personally labored with the

members of the three constitutional conventions. He carried with him

letters written expressly for these conventions by Governor Francis E.

Warren and U. S. Delegate Joseph M. Carey of Wyoming; Governor Lyman

U. Humphrey, Attorney-General L. B. Kellogg, Chief Justice Albert H.

Horton and all the Judges of the Supreme Court of Kansas; U. S.

Senator Henry M. Teller of Colorado, U. S. Senator Cushman K. Davis of

Minnesota, Governor Oliver Ames, U. S. Senator George F. Hoar, William

Lloyd Garrison and others of Massachusetts, commending his mission and

expressing the hope that the new States would incorporate equal

suffrage in their constitutions. Copies of these letters were placed

in the hands of every delegate. Mr. Blackwell devoted over a month to

the journey and the work in these Territories, paying his own expenses

and giving them and his services to the American Suffrage Association.

[Detailed accounts of these efforts will be found in chapters on these

three States.]

_1890._--In February the American and the National Societies held a

convention in Washington under the name of the National-American

Association and this body has continued its annual meetings as one

organization.

FOOTNOTES:

[135] The History is indebted for this chapter to Miss Alice Stone

Blackwell, editor of _The Woman's Journal_, Boston, Mass. For early

accounts of this organization see History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II,

Chap. XXVI. [Editors of History.

[136] Mrs. Helen Ekin Starrett, principal of Highland Park Academy;

Miss Ada C. Sweet, head of the Pension Office in Illinois; Mrs. Mary

B. Willard, of the _Union Signal_; Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, of

the _Inter-Ocean_; Dr. Julia Holmes Smith, Helen K. Pierce, Mrs. W. O.

Carpenter, Mrs. H. W. Fuller, Mrs. George Harding, Mrs. Catherine V.

Waite, Mrs. Elizabeth Loomis and the Rev. Florence Kollock composed

the entertainment committee.

[137] Mr. Wood, in many public addresses made during the first Kansas

amendment campaign in 1867, attributed this action of the Kansas

Constitutional Convention to Mrs. Stone; but it is certain that other

influences contributed to it. [For a further account of these, see

History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. 1, p. 185. Eds.]

[138] Massachusetts gave to this fund $472; Pennsylvania, $201.50;

Indiana, $146; New Jersey, $80; Connecticut, $50; New Hampshire, $25;

Ohio, $10; Delaware, $5; New Brunswick, Canada, $10.

[139] Vice-presidents, ex-officio: Mrs. E. N. Bacon, Me.; Mrs. Armenia

S. White, N. H.; Mrs. M. L. T. Hidden, Vt.; William I. Bowditch,

Mass.; Mrs. Elizabeth B. Chace, R. I.; Mrs. Emily P. Collins, Conn.;

Mrs. Mariana W. Chapman, N. Y.; Kate A. Browning, N. J.; Miss Mary

Grew, Penn.; Mrs. Mary A. Heald, Del.; Mrs. Frances M. Casement, O.;

Mary F. Thomas, M. D., Ind.; Miss Ada C. Sweet, Ill.; Lucy C.

Stansell, Mich.; Sylvia Goddard, Ky.; Mrs. A. E. Dickinson, Mo.;

Lizzie D. Fyler, Ark.; Jennie Beauchamp, Tex.; Emma C. Bascom, Wis.;

Narcissa T. Bennis, Ia.; Gertrude M. McDowell, Neb.; the Hon. Charles

Robinson, Kan.; Gen. Theodore F. Brown, Col.; Jennie Carr, Cal.;

Abigail Scott Duniway, Ore.; Martha G. Ripley, M. D., Minn.; the Hon.

J. W. Hoyt, Wy. Ty.; Elizabeth Lyle Saxon, Tenn.; Mrs. Cadwallader

White, Ga.; the Hon. Roger S. Greene, Wash. Ty.; Mary J. Ireland, Md.;

Caroline E. Merrick, La.

Executive Committee: Lucy Stone, chairman; Mrs. C. A. Quinby, Me.; Dr.

J. H. Gallinger, N. H.; Laura Moore, Vt.; Mrs. Judith W. Smith, Mass.;

Mrs. S. E. H. Doyle, R. I.; the Hon. John Sheldon, Conn.; Anna C.

Field, N. Y.; Cornelia C. Hussey, N. J.; John K. Wildman, Penn.; Dr.

John Cameron, Del.; Jennie F. Holmes, Neb.; Prof. W. H. Carruth, Kan.;

Mary F. Shields, Col.; Sarah Knox Goodrich, Cal.; Mrs. N. Coe Stewart,

O.; Mary E. Haggart, Ind.; Helen E. Starrett, Ill.; Mrs. Geary, Va.;

Jennie A. Crane, W. Va.; Mrs. L. S. Ellis, Mich.; Laura Clay, Ky.;

Charlotte A. Cleveland, Mo.; Rhoda Munger, Ark.; Mrs. H. Buckner,

Tex.; Helen R. Olin, Wis.; Mary A. Work, Ia.; Laura Howe Carpenter,

Minn.; Mrs. A. S. Duniway, Ore.; the Hon. J. W. Kingman, Wy. Ty.; Mrs.

Smith of Seattle, Wash. Ty.

[140] Congress never could be persuaded to take any action and Miss

Carroll died in poverty and need. [Eds.

[141] Among the other speakers were Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell,

of Massachusetts; Mrs. Margaret W. Campbell and the Rev. S. S.

Hunting, of Iowa; Mrs. Mary E. Haggart, of Indiana; the Rev. Anna

Howard Shaw, of Michigan; Mrs. Laura M. Johns, Mrs. Hammer, Mrs.

Barnes, Mrs. Annie L. Diggs, Miss Sarah A. Brown, Mrs. Brown of

Abilene, William P. Tomlinson, of the Topeka _Democrat_; the Revs. C.

H. Lovejoy, H. W. George and Dr. McCabe, Dr. Fisher, Judge W. A.

Peffer, Mrs. M. E. De Geer Call, Mrs. Martia L. Berry, Col. A. B.

Jetmore, J. C. Hebbard and Hon. C. S. Gleed.

[142] This was done.

[143] The American W. S. A. afterwards voted to give to each State the

entire amount of its gross sales.

[144] Mr. Foulke served as president from 1884 to 1890. During this

time but few changes were made in the official board. In 1885 Mrs.

Mary E. Haggart (Ind.) was added to the vice-presidents-at-large; in

1886 Dr. Mary F. Thomas (Ind.), J. K. Hudson (Kas.), the Rev. Anna

Howard Shaw (Mass.); 1887, Mrs. May Stocking Knaggs (Mich.); 1888,

Miss Clara Barton (D. C.), Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace (Ind.), Mrs. Phebe

C. McKell (Ohio). In 1887 Mrs. Martha C. Callanan (Iowa) was elected

recording secretary. The various State auxiliaries made numerous

changes in vice-presidents ex-officio and members of the executive

committee.

[145] Among speakers not elsewhere mentioned were the Rev. Antoinette

Brown Blackwell, Mrs. Lucy Stone, Mrs. Sarah C. Schrader, Mrs.

Margaret W. Campbell, Mrs. Martha C. Callahan, Dr. Caroline M. Dodson,

Madame Calliope Kachiya (a Greek friend of Mrs. Howe's), and Miss

Alice Stone Blackwell. Mrs. Wessendorf read a poem, and there were

songs by the Blaine Glee Club and by Miss Annie McLean Marsh and her

little niece, and violin music by Miss Lucille du Pre.

[146] The American Woman Suffrage Association was indebted for State

reports during the past years to the following: Arkansas, Lizzie

Dorman Fyler; California, Sarah Knox Goodrich, Elizabeth A. Kingsbury,

Sarah M. Severance, Fannie Wood; Connecticut, Emily P. Collins, Abby

B. Sheldon; Dakota, Major J. A. Pickler, Alice M. Pickler; Delaware,

Dr. John Cameron; Illinois, Mary E. Holmes, Catherine G. Waugh

(McCulloch); Indiana, Florence M. Adkinson, Mary S. Armstrong, Sarah

E. Franklin, Adelia R. Hornbrook, Mary D. Naylor; Iowa, Mary J.

Coggeshall, Eliza H. Hunter, Mary A. Work, Narcissa T. Bemis; Kansas,

Prof. W. H. Carruth, Mrs. M. E. De Geer, Bertha H. Ellsworth;

Kentucky, Mary B. Clay, Laura Clay; Maine, the Rev. Henry Blanchard,

Mrs. C. S. Quinby; Massachusetts, Henry B. Blackwell, Lucy Stone;

Missouri, Rebecca N. Hazard, Amanda E. Dickenson; Minnesota, Martha

Angle Dorsett, Ella M. S. Marble, Dr. Martha G. Ripley; Michigan, Mrs.

E. L. Briggs, Mary L. Doe, Emily B. Ketcham, Mrs. H. L. Udell, Mrs.

Ellis; New Hampshire, Armenia S. White, Mrs. M. H. Ela; New Jersey,

Cornelia C. Hussey, Therese M. Seabrook; New York, Lillie Devereaux

Blake, Mariana W. Chapman, Mrs. E. O. Putnam Heaton, Anna Holyoke

Howard, Hamilton Willcox; Nebraska, Erasmus M. Correll, Deborah G.

King, Lucinda Russell, Clara Albertson Young; Ohio, Lou J. Bates,

Frances M. Casement, Orpha D. Baldwin, S. S. Bissell, Mary J. Cravens,

Mrs. (Dr.) Henderson, Mrs. M. B. Haven, Martha M. Paine, Mary P.

Spargo, Rosa L. Segur, Cornelia C. Swezey; Oregon, Abigail Scott

Duniway, W. S. Duniway; Pennsylvania, Florence A. Burleigh, Mary Grew,

Matilda Hindman; Rhode Island, Elizabeth B. Chace, Marilla M.

Brewster, Sarah W. Ladd, Mary C. Peckham, Louise M. Tyler; Tennessee,

Lida A. Meriwether, Elizabeth Lyle Saxon; Texas, Mariana T. Folsom;

Vermont, Laura Moore; Virginia, Orra Langhorne; Washington Territory,

Bessie J. Isaacs; Wisconsin, Mary W. Bentley, Alura Collins; Wyoming,

Dr. Kate Kelsey.

CHAPTER XXIII.

SUFFRAGE WORK IN POLITICAL AND OTHER CONVENTIONS.

The chapters thus far have given some idea of the endeavor to secure

the ballot for women through national suffrage conventions, which

bring together delegates from all parts of the country and send them

back to their respective localities strengthened and fortified for the

work; and which, through strong and logical arguments covering all

phases of the question, given before large audiences, gradually have

created a wide-spread sentiment in favor of the enfranchisement of

women. There have been described also the hearings before committees

of Congress, at which the advocates of this measure have made pleas

for the submission to the State Legislatures of a Sixteenth Amendment

to the Federal Constitution which should prohibit disfranchisement on

account of sex, as the Fifteenth Amendment does on account of

color--pleas which a distinguished Senator, who reported against

granting them, said "surpassed anything he ever had heard, and whose

logic if used in favor of any other measure could not fail to carry

it" (p. 201); and of which another, who had the courage to report in

favor, declared, "The suffragists have logic, argument, everything on

their side" (p. 162).

In addition to this national work the following chapters will show

that the State work has been continued on similar lines--State and

local conventions and appeals to Legislatures to submit an amendment

to the electors to strike the word "male" from the suffrage clause of

their own State constitution. These appeals, in many instances, have

been supported by larger petitions than ever presented for any other

object.

Further efforts have been made on a still different line, viz.:

through attempts to secure from outside conventions an indorsement of

woman suffrage, not only from those of a political but also from those

of a religious, educational, professional or industrial nature. This

has been desired in order that the bills may go before Congress and

Legislatures with the all-important sanction of voters, and also

because of its favorable effect on those composing these conventions

and on public sentiment.

The idea of asking for recognition from a national political

convention was first suggested to Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Miss

Susan B. Anthony in 1868. By their protests against the use of the

word "male" in the Fourteenth Amendment, as described in Chap. I of

this volume, they had angered the Republican leaders, some of whom,

even those who favored woman suffrage, sarcastically advised them to

ask the Democrats for indorsement in their national convention of this

year and see what would be the response. These two women, therefore,

did appear before that body, which dedicated the new Tammany Hall in

New York City, on July 4. An account of their insulting reception may

be found in the History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 340, and in the

Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, p. 304. They, with Abby Hopper

Gibbons, daughter of Isaac T. Hopper, and Elizabeth Smith Miller,

daughter of Gerrit Smith, previously had sent an earnest letter to the

National Republican Convention which had met in Chicago in June,

asking in the name of the women who had rendered the party such

faithful service during the Civil War, that it would recognize in its

platform their right to the suffrage, but the letter received no

notice whatever.

From that year until the present a committee of women has attended

every national convention of all the parties, asking for an

indorsement or at least a commendation of their appeal for the

franchise. Sometimes they have been received with respect, sometimes

with discourtesy, and occasionally they have been granted a few

minutes to make their plea before the Committee on Resolutions. In but

a single instance has any one of these women, the most eminent in the

nation, been permitted to address a Republican convention--at

Cincinnati in 1876. Twice this privilege has been extended by a

Democratic--at St. Louis in 1876 and at Cincinnati in 1880. A far-off

approach to a recognition of woman's claim was made by the National

Republican Convention at Philadelphia in 1872, in this resolution:

The Republican party, mindful of its obligations to the loyal

women of America, expresses gratification that wider avenues of

employment have been opened to woman, and it further declares

that her demands for additional rights should be treated with

respectful consideration.

Again in 1876 the national convention, held in Cincinnati, adopted the

following:

The Republican party recognizes with approval the substantial

advance recently made toward the establishment of equal rights

for women by the many important amendments effected by the

Republican (!) Legislatures, in the laws which concern the

personal and property relations of wives, mothers and widows, and

by the election and appointment of women to the superintendence

of education, charities and other public trusts. The honest

demands of this class of citizens for additional rights,

privileges and immunities should be treated with respectful

consideration.

In 1880, '84, '88 and '92 the women were wholly disregarded. The

national platform of 1888, however, contained this plank:

We recognize the supreme and sovereign right of every lawful

citizen to cast one free ballot in all public elections and to

have that ballot duly counted.

The leaders of the woman suffrage movement at once telegraphed to

Chicago to the chairman of the convention, the Hon. Morris M. Estee,

asking if this statement was intended to include "lawful women

citizens," and he answered, "I do not think the platform is so

construed here." A letter was addressed to the presidential candidate,

Gen. Benjamin Harrison, begging that in his acceptance of the

nomination, he would interpret this declaration as including women,

but it was politely ignored.

In 1892 Miss Anthony appeared before the Resolutions Committee of the

national convention in Minneapolis and in an address of thirty minutes

pleaded that women might have recognition in its platform. At the

close many of the members assured her of their thorough belief in the

justice of woman suffrage, but said frankly that "the party could not

carry the load."[147] The following was the suffrage plank in its

platform that year:

We demand that every citizen of the United States shall be

allowed to cast one free and unrestricted ballot in all public

elections, and that such ballot shall be counted as cast; that

such laws shall be enacted and enforced as will secure to every

citizen, be he rich or poor, native or foreign, white or black,

this sovereign right guaranteed by the constitution. The free and

honest popular ballot, the just and equal representation of all

the people, as well as their just and equal protection under the

laws, are the foundation of our republican institutions, and the

party will never relax its efforts until the integrity of the

ballot and the purity of elections shall be guaranteed and

protected in every State.

But not once during the campaign did the party speakers or newspapers

apply this declaration to the women citizens of the United States.

In 1896, when the prospects of success seemed certain enough to

justify the party in assuming some additional "load," the women made

the most impassioned appeal to the committee at the St. Louis

convention, with the following remarkable result:

The Republican party is mindful of the rights and interests of

women. Protection of American industries includes equal

opportunities, equal pay for equal work, and protection to the

home. We favor the admission of women to wider spheres of

usefulness, and welcome their co-operation in rescuing the

country from Democratic mismanagement and Populist misrule.

A whole plank to exploit Republicanism and a small splinter to cajole

the women, who had not asked for the suffrage to "rescue" or to defeat

any political party!

No Democratic national platform ever has recognized so much as the

existence of women, in all its grandiloquent declarations of the

"rights of the masses," the "equality of the people," the "sovereignty

of the individual" and the "powers inherent in a democracy."

The Populists at the beginning of their career sounded the slogan,

"Equal rights to all, special privileges to none," and many believed

that at length the great party had arisen which was to secure to women

the equal right in the suffrage which thus far had been the special

privilege of men. Full of joy and hope there went to the first

national convention of this party, held in Omaha, July 4, 1892, Susan

B. Anthony and the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, president and

vice-president-at-large of the National Suffrage Association. To their

amazement they were refused permission even to appear before the

Committee on Resolutions, a courtesy which by this time was usually

extended at all political conventions. The platform contained no woman

suffrage plank and no reference to the question except that in the

long preamble occurred this sentence:

We believe that the forces of reform this day organized will

never cease to move forward until every wrong is righted, and

equal rights and equal privileges securely established for all

the men and women of this country.

In 1896 the Populist National Convention in St. Louis effected its

great fusion with the Democrats, and the political rights of women

were hopelessly lost in the shuffle. By 1900 the organization was

thoroughly under Democratic control, and the expectations of women to

secure their enfranchisement through this "party of the people,"

created to reform all abuses and abolish all unjust discriminations,

vanished forever. It must be said to its credit, however, that during

its brief existence women received more recognition in general than

they ever had had from the old parties. They sat as delegates in its

national and State conventions and served on National and State

Committees; they were employed as political speakers and organizers;

and they were elected and appointed to official positions. Various

State and county conventions declared in favor of enfranchising women,

the majority of the legislators advocated it, and there is reason to

believe that in those States where an amendment to secure it was

submitted, individual Populists very largely voted for it.

The Prohibition National Conventions many times have put a woman

suffrage plank in their platforms, and women have served as delegates

and on committees. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union forms the

bulwark of this party, and, like its distinguished president, Miss

Frances E. Willard, her successor, Mrs. Lillian M. N. Stevens, is an

earnest advocate of the enfranchisement of women, which is also true

of the vast majority of its members, so it has not been necessary for

the Woman Suffrage Association to send delegates to the national

conventions, although it has occasionally done so. These have

frequently failed, however, to adopt a plank declaring for woman

suffrage, the refusal to do so at Pittsburg in 1896 being a principal

cause of the division in the ranks which took place at that time.

The Greenback party, the Labor party, the various Socialist parties,

and other reform organizations of a political character have made

unequivocal declarations for woman suffrage and welcomed women as

delegates. Whether they would do so if strong enough to have any hope

of electing their candidates must remain an open question until

practically demonstrated.[148]

Women have served a number of times as delegates in the national

conventions of most of the so-called Third parties. In 1892 they

appeared for the first time at a Republican National Convention,

serving as alternates from Wyoming. In 1896 women alternates were sent

from Utah to the Democratic National Convention. In 1900 Mrs. W. H.

Jones went as delegate from that State to the Republican, and Mrs.

Elizabeth Cohen to the Democratic National Convention, and both

discharged the duties of the position in a satisfactory manner. Mrs.

Cohen seconded the nomination of William J. Bryan. A newspaper

correspondent published a sensational story in regard to her bold and

noisy behavior, but afterwards he was compelled to retract publicly

every word of it and admit that it had no foundation.

Doubtless Miss Anthony has attended more political conventions to

secure recognition of the cause which she represents than any other

woman, and also has presented the subject to more national conventions

of various associations. In early days this was because she was one of

the few who had the courage to take this new and radical step, and

also because she was the only one who made the suffrage the sole

object of her life and was ready and willing to work for it at all

times and under all circumstances. In later days her name has carried

so much weight and she is so universally respected that she has been

able to obtain a hearing and often a resolution where this would be

difficult if not impossible for other women. However, in national and

State work of this kind she has had the valuable co-operation of the

ablest women of two generations. In no way can the scope and extent of

these efforts be better understood than by reviewing Miss Anthony's

report to the National Suffrage Convention of 1901, as chairman of

the Committee on Convention Resolutions. It is especially interesting

as a fair illustration of the vast amount of work which women have

been doing in this direction for the past thirty years.

After stating that the names and home addresses of most of the

delegates to all the national political conventions of 1900 were

obtained, Miss Anthony submitted copies of four letters of which 4,000

were sent in June from the national suffrage headquarters in New York,

signed by herself and the other members of the committee--Carrie

Chapman Catt, Anna Howard Shaw, Ida Husted Harper and Rachel Foster

Avery.

(To the Republican delegates.)

The undersigned Committee, appointed by the National-American

Woman Suffrage Association, beg leave to submit to you, as

delegate to the approaching Republican Convention, the enclosed

Memorial.

The Republican party was organized in response to the demand for

human freedom. Its platform for the last forty years has been an

unswerving declaration for liberty and equality. Animated by the

spirit of progress, it has continued to enlarge the voting

constituency from time to time, thus acknowledging the right of

the individual to self-representation. This principle was

embodied in the plank adopted at the Chicago convention of 1888,

and has been often reaffirmed: "We recognize the supreme and

sovereign right of every lawful citizen to cast one free ballot

in all public elections and have that ballot duly counted." We

appeal to the Republican party to sustain its record by applying

this declaration to the lawful women citizens of the United

States.

You will observe that this petition does not ask you to endorse

the enfranchisement of women, but simply to recommend that

Congress submit this question to the decision of the various

State Legislatures. In the name of American womanhood we ask you

to use every means within your power to bring this matter to a

discussion and affirmative vote in your convention.

* * * * *

(To the Democratic delegates.)

Since its inception the Democratic party has had for its rallying

cry the immortal words of Thomas Jefferson, "No taxation without

representation," "Governments derive their just powers from the

consent of the governed." Under this banner wage-earning men,

native and foreign, were endowed with the franchise, by which

means alone an individual can represent himself or consent to his

government, and by this act the party was kept in power for

nearly sixty years.

At the close of the eighteenth century this was a broad view for

even so great a leader to take. In this closing year of the

nineteenth century it would show an equally progressive spirit

if his loyal followers would carry these splendid declarations to

their logical conclusion and enfranchise women.

* * * * *

(To the Populist delegates.)

At the very first National Convention of the People's Party, held

at Omaha in 1892, the preamble of their platform declared that

"equal rights and privileges must be securely established for all

the men and women of the country." In the majority of State

conventions held since that time there has been specific

recognition of equal political rights for women. By admitting

women as delegates in their representative assemblies and by

appointing them to State and local offices, the Populists have

put into practice this fundamental principle of their

organization. Therefore, in asking you to give your influence and

vote in favor of this petition, we are proposing only that you

shall reaffirm your previous declarations.

* * * * *

(To the Prohibition delegates.)

Judging from the honorable record made by your party upon this

subject, we have every reason to hope that you will give your

influence and your vote in favor of the petition contained

herein.

In the Democratic letter was enclosed an Open Letter from Gov. Charles

S. Thomas (Dem.) of Colorado, setting forth in the strongest manner

the advantages of woman suffrage, and in all was placed favorable

testimony from prominent men of the respective States, accompanied by

the following Memorial. The latter was mailed also to every member of

the Resolutions Committees, and 10,000 copies were sent to editors and

otherwise circulated throughout the country.

MEMORIAL

TO THE NATIONAL PRESIDENTIAL CONVENTION OF 1900.

GENTLEMEN: You are respectfully requested by the

National-American Woman Suffrage Association to place the

following plank in your platform:

_Resolved_, That we favor the submission by Congress, to the

various State Legislatures, of an Amendment to the Federal

Constitution forbidding disfranchisement of United States

citizens on account of sex.

The chief contribution to human liberty made by the United States

is the establishment of the right of personal representation in

government. In other countries suffrage often has been called

"the vested right of property," and as such has been extended to

women the same as to men. Our country at length has come to

recognize the principle that the elective franchise is inherent

in the individual and not in his property, and this principle has

become the corner-stone of our republic. Up to the beginning of

the twentieth century, however, the application of this great

truth has been made to but one-half the citizens.

The women of the United States are now the only disfranchised

class, and sex is the one remaining disqualification. A man may

be idle, corrupt, vicious, utterly without a single quality

necessary for purity and stability of government, but through the

exercise of the suffrage he is a vital factor. A woman may be

educated, industrious, moral and law-abiding, possessed of every

quality needed in a pure and stable government, but, deprived of

that influence which is exerted through the ballot, she is not a

factor in affairs of State. Who will claim that our government is

purer, wiser, stronger and more lasting by the rigid exclusion of

what men themselves term "the better half" of the people?

Every argument which enfranchises a man, enfranchises a woman.

There is no escape from this logic except to declare sex the just

basis of suffrage. But this position can not be maintained in

view of the fact that women already have full suffrage in

Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho, municipal suffrage in Kansas,

school suffrage in twenty-five States, a vote on tax levies in

Louisiana, on bond issues in Iowa, and on minor questions in

various other States. They have every franchise except the

Parliamentary in England, Scotland and Ireland, the full ballot

in New Zealand and South and West Australia, and some form of

suffrage in every English colony. In a large number of the

monarchical countries certain classes of women vote. On this

fundamental question of individual sovereignty surely the United

States should be a leader and not a follower. The trend of the

times is clearly toward equal suffrage. It will add to the credit

and future strength of any party to put itself in line with the

best modern and progressive thought on this question.

In the division of the world's labor an equal share falls to

woman. As property holder and wage-earner her material stake in

the government is equal to that of man. As wife, as mother, as

individual, her moral stake is certainly as great as his. The

perpetuity of the republic depends upon the careful performance

of the duties of both. One is just as necessary as the other to

the growth and prosperity of the country. All of these

propositions are self-evident, but they are wholly foreign to the

question at issue. The right of the individual to a vote is not

founded upon the value of his stake in government, upon his moral

character, his business ability or his physical strength, but

simply and solely upon that guarantee of personal representation

which is the essence of a true republic, a true democracy.

The literal definition of these two terms is, "a State in which

the sovereign power resides in the whole body of the people and

is exercised by representatives elected by them." By the

Declaration of Independence, by the rules of equity, by the laws

of justice, women equally with men are entitled to exercise this

sovereign power, through the franchise, the only legal means

provided. But whatever may be regarded as the correct basis of

suffrage--character, education, property, or the inherent right

of the person who is subject to law and taxation--women possess

all the qualifications required of men.

At this dawn of a new century are not the sons of the

Revolutionary Fathers sufficiently progressive to remove the

barriers which for more than a hundred years have prevented women

from exercising this citizen's right? We appeal to this great

national delegate body, representing the men of every State,

gathered to outline the policy and select the head of the

Government for the next four years, to adopt in your platform a

declaration approving the submission by Congress of an amendment

enfranchising women. We urge this action in order that the

question shall be carried to the various Legislatures, where

women may present their arguments before the representative men,

instead of being compelled to plead their cause before each

individual voter of the forty-one States where they are still

disfranchised.

We make this earnest appeal on behalf of the hundreds of

thousands of women who, from year to year, have petitioned

Congress to take the action necessary for their enfranchisement;

and of those millions who are so engrossed in the struggle for

daily bread, or in the manifold duties of the home, that they are

compelled to leave this task to others. We make it also on behalf

of the generations yet to come, for there will be no cessation of

this demand until this highest privilege of citizenship has been

accorded to women.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, } Honorary Presidents.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, }

CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT, President.

HARRIET TAYLOR UPTON, ANNA HOWARD SHAW,

Treasurer. Vice-President-at-Large.

LAURA CLAY, RACHEL FOSTER AVERY,

First Auditor. Corresponding Secretary.

CATHARINE WAUGH MCCULLOCH, ALICE STONE BLACKWELL,

Second Auditor. Recording Secretary.

Headquarters, National-American Woman Suffrage Association,

2008 American Tract Society Building,

New York City.

Four women were permitted to appear before a sub-committee of the

Committee on Platform at the Republican National Convention at

Philadelphia, in 1900. They met with a polite but chilly reception

and were informed that they could have ten minutes to present

their case. This time was occupied by the president and the

vice-president-at-large in concise but forcible arguments on the duty

of the party to recognize their claim for enfranchisement. The

platform eventually contained the following plank:

We congratulate the women of America upon their splendid record

of public service in the Volunteer Aid Association, and as nurses

in camp and hospital during the recent campaigns of our armies in

the Eastern and Western Indies, and we appreciate their faithful

co-operation in all works of education and industry.

In other words, being asked to recognize women as political factors,

the committee responded by commending them as nurses!

This plank was written by Mrs. J. Ellen Foster, who as president of

the Woman's National Republican League and a campaign speaker, has

done far more for the party than any other woman, and originally it

ended with this clause: "We regard with satisfaction their unselfish

interest in public affairs in the four States where they have already

been enfranchised, and their growing interest in good government and

Republican principles." But even so small a recognition as this of

women in political life was ruthlessly struck out by the committee.

Mrs. Chapman Catt and Miss Mary G. Hay attended the Democratic

National Convention at Kansas City and were not allowed to address any

committee, but the platform contained the Declaration of Independence

as its preamble!

The Populist national platform adopted at Sioux City did not contain

even a reference to women or their rights and privileges.

The Prohibition convention followed its action of 1896 and put no

woman suffrage plank in its platform. A separate resolution was passed

expressing a favorable regard but carrying no official weight.

The only national political convention in 1900 which adopted a plank

declaring for the enfranchisement of women was that of the

Social-Democratic party at Indianapolis.

In not one of the four largest parties were the delegates in

convention given so much as an opportunity to discuss and vote on a

resolution to enfranchise women. All these heroic efforts, all these

noble appeals, had not the slightest effect because made by a class

utterly without influence by reason of this very disfranchisement

which it was struggling to have removed. At every political convention

all matters of right, of justice, of the eternal verities themselves,

are swallowed up in the one all-important question, "Will it bring

party success?" And to this a voteless constituency can not contribute

in the smallest degree, even though it represent the Ten Commandments,

the Sermon on the Mount, the Golden Rule, the Magna Charta and the

Declaration of Independence.

Paradoxical as it may seem, notwithstanding the refusal of the

Resolutions Committees of all these national bodies to grant even an

indirect recognition of woman suffrage in their platforms, its

advocates never before found such a general sentiment in its favor

among the individual delegates. In a number of instances they were

told that a poll of delegations had shown a majority of the members to

be ready to vote for it. It was demonstrated beyond doubt that the

rank and file of the delegates, if freed from hostile influences among

their constituents and granted the sanction of the political leaders,

could be won to a support of the measure, but that at present it must

wait on party expediency. As every campaign brings with it national

issues on which each party makes a fight for its life, and which it

fears to hamper by any extraneous questions; as the elements most

strongly opposed to the enfranchisement of women not only are fully

armed with ballots themselves but are in complete control of an

immense force similarly equipped; and as the vote of women is so

problematical that none of the parties can claim it in advance, it is

impossible to foresee when and how they are to obtain political

freedom. The one self-evident fact is, however, that in order to win

it they must be supported by a stronger public sentiment than exists

at present, and that this can be secured only through a constant

agitation of the subject.

A return to Miss Anthony's report will illustrate other methods

adopted to bring this question to the attention of the public. "During

the year I have also sent petitions and letters to more than one

hundred national conventions of different sorts--industrial,

educational, charitable, philanthropic, religious and political.[149]

Below are the forms of petition:"

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the Fifty-sixth

Congress of the United States:_

The undersigned on behalf of (naming the association) in annual

convention assembled at ......, ......, 1900, and representing

fully ...... members, respectfully ask for the prompt passage by

your Honorable Body of a _Sixteenth Amendment_ to the Federal

Constitution, to be submitted to the Legislatures of the several

States for ratification, prohibiting the disfranchisement of

United States citizens on account of sex.

................, President.

................, Secretary.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the Fifty-sixth

Congress of the United States:_

WHEREAS, The trend of civilization is plainly in the direction of

equal rights for women, and

WHEREAS, Woman suffrage is no longer an experiment, but has been

clearly demonstrated to be beneficial to society; therefore,

_Resolved_, That we, on behalf of [as above], do respectfully

petition your Honorable Body not to insert the word "male" in the

suffrage clause of whatever form of government you shall

recommend to Hawaii, Cuba, Porto Rico or any other newly-acquired

possessions. We ask this in the name of justice and equality for

all citizens of a republic founded on the consent of the

governed.[150]

"A number of large associations adopted these and returned them to me

duly engrossed on their official paper, signed by the president and

secretary and with their seal affixed; and I forwarded all to the

Senators and Representatives whom I thought most likely to present

them to Congress in a way to make an impression.

"The General Federation of Labor at Detroit was the first to respond.

I was invited to address its annual convention and, after I had

spoken, the four hundred delegates passed a resolution of thanks to

me, adopted the above petition for the Sixteenth Amendment by a rising

vote, and ordered their officers to sign it in the name of their one

million constituents.

"The National Building Trades Council at Milwaukee had an able

discussion in its annual meeting, based on my letter, and adopted both

petitions. This body has half a million members.

"The Bricklayers' and Masons' International Union of America was held

in Rochester, and invited me to address the delegates. They received

me with enthusiasm, passed strong woman suffrage resolutions and

signed both petitions. Afterwards a stenographic report of my speech,

covering two full pages of their official organ, _The Bricklayer and

Mason_, was published with an excellent portrait of myself, thus

sending me and my argument to each one of their more than sixty

thousand members, all of whom subscribe to this paper as part of their

dues to the union.

"The National Grange, which has indorsed woman suffrage for so many

years, adopted the resolutions and petitions.

"At the Federation of Commercial Schools of the United States and

Canada, which met in Chicago, my letter was read, the question was

thoroughly discussed and the suffrage petitions were adopted almost

unanimously.

"The Columbia Catholic Summer School, held at Detroit, gave a hearing

to our national president, Mrs. Chapman Catt, at which she is said to

have made many converts. A strong suffrage speech was made by the Rev.

Father W. J. Dalton, and other prominent members expressed themselves

in favor.

"The contents of my letters to religious and educational bodies can

readily be imagined, and one which was sent to the United States

Brewers' Association, in convention at Atlantic City, N. J., may be

cited as an example of the subject-matter of those to other

organizations:

GENTLEMEN: As chairman of the committee appointed by our National

Suffrage Association to address letters to the large conventions

held this year, allow me to bring before you the great need of

the recognition of women in all of the rights, privileges and

immunities of United States citizenship.

Though your association has for its principal object the

management of the great brewing interests of this country, yet I

have noted that you have adopted resolutions declaring against

woman suffrage. I therefore appeal to you, since the question

seems to come within the scope of your deliberations, to reverse

your action this closing year of the century, and declare

yourselves in favor of the practical application of the

fundamental principles of our Government to all the people--women

as well as men. Whatever your nationality, whatever your

religious creed, whatever your political party, you are either

born or naturalized citizens of the United States, and because of

that are voters of the State in which you reside. Will you not,

gentlemen, accord to the women of this nation, having the same

citizenship as yourselves, precisely the same privileges and

powers which you possess because of that one fact?

The only true principle--the only safe policy--of a

democratic-republican government is that every class of people

shall be protected in the exercise of the right of individual

representation. I pray you, therefore, to pass a resolution in

favor of woman suffrage, and order your officers, on behalf of

the association, to sign a petition to Congress for this

purpose, and thereby put the weight of your influence on the side

of making this Government a genuine republic.

Should you desire to have one of our best woman suffrage speakers

address your convention, if you will let me know as soon as

possible, I will take pleasure in arranging for one to do so.

"This was read to the convention, and the secretary, Gallus Thomann,

thus reported its action to me:

Mr. Obermann [ex-president of the association and one of the

trustees] voicing the sentiments of the delegates, spoke as

follows: "Miss Susan B. Anthony is entitled to the respect of

every man and woman in this country, whether agreeing with her

theories or not. I think it but fair and courteous to her that

the secretary be instructed to answer that letter, and to inform

Miss Anthony that this is a body of business men; that we meet

for business purposes and not for politics. Furthermore, that she

is mistaken and misinformed so far as her statement is concerned

that we have passed resolutions opposing woman suffrage. _We have

never taken such action at any of our conventions or on any other

occasion._ I submit this as a motion."

The motion was unanimously adopted, and that part of Mr.

Obermann's remarks which related to the respect due Miss Anthony

was loudly and enthusiastically applauded.

To the sentiment thus expressed, permit me, dear Miss Anthony, to

add personally the assurance of my highest esteem.

"Among the results of the work with State conventions it may be

mentioned that the Georgia Federation of Labor, the Minnesota

Federation of Labor, the State Teachers' Association of Washington and

the New York State Grange signed the petitions and passed the

resolutions.

"As another branch of the work, copies of these two petitions were

sent to each of the forty-five States and three Territories, with

letters asking the suffrage presidents, where associations existed,

and prominent individuals in the few States where they did not, to

make two copies of each petition on their own official paper, sign

them on behalf of the suffragists of the State, and return them to me

to be sent to the members of Congress from the respective districts.

This was done almost without exception and these petitions were

presented by various members, one copy in the Senate and one in the

House. Of all the State petitions, the most interesting was that of

Wyoming, which, in default of a suffrage association (none being

needed) was signed by every State officer, from the Governor down, by

several United States officials, and by many of the most influential

men and women. With it came a letter from the wife of ex-U. S. Senator

Joseph M. Carey, who collected these names, saying the number was

limited only by the brief space of time allowed.

"In all, more than two hundred petitions for woman suffrage from

various associations were thus sent to Congress in 1900, representing

millions of individuals. Many cordial responses were received from

members, and promises of assistance should the question come before

Congress, but there is no record of the slightest attempt by any

member to bring it before that body.

"In doing this work I wrote fully a thousand letters to associations

and individuals, in all of which I placed some of our best printed

literature. There was a thorough stirring up of public sentiment which

must have definite results in time, for it should not be forgotten

that in addressing conventions we appeal to the chosen leaders of

thought and work from many cities and States, and so set in motion an

ever-widening circle of agitation in countless localities."

A most valuable means of educating public sentiment is the securing of

a Woman's Day at Chautauqua Assemblies and State and county fairs,

when good speakers present the "woman question" in its various phases,

including always the need for enfranchisement. The Rev. Anna Howard

Shaw and Mrs. Chapman Catt, the leading orators of the country, have

addressed Chautauquas in all parts of the United States, as well as

countless other large gatherings which have no connection with

suffrage, being thus enabled to propagate the principle over a vast

area. It can be seen from the above resume that the ground of effort

is widely extended and that the harvest is ripening, but alas, there

is a constant repetition of the old, old cry, "The laborers are few."

One can only repeat what has often been said, that never before were

such results as can be seen on every hand in the improved conditions

for women and the advanced public sentiment in favor of a full

equality of rights, accomplished by so small a number of workers and

under such adverse conditions. Perhaps this will continue to be said

even unto the end, but their labors will know neither faltering nor

cessation until the original object, as announced over fifty years

ago, has been attained, viz.: the full enfranchisement of women.

FOOTNOTES:

[147] See Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, p. 723.

[148] For the names of the women who have addressed the National

Conventions and Resolutions Committees of the various parties in the

effort to obtain an indorsement of woman suffrage, and for a full

account of their reception, of the memorials presented and the results

which followed, the reader is referred to the History of Woman

Suffrage, Vol. II, pp. 340 and 517; Vol. III, pp. 22 and 177; and for

many personal incidents, to the Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony in

the chapters devoted to the years of the various presidential

nominating conventions, beginning with 1868.

Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake, from the National Suffrage Association,

and Henry B. Blackwell and Mrs. J. Ellen Foster, as Republicans,

presented the question to the Resolutions Committee of the National

Republican Convention of 1896 in St. Louis, above referred to; Dr.

Julia Holmes Smith, accompanied by a committee of ladies, to that of

the National Democratic Convention in Chicago that year.

[149] Miss Anthony sent a special letter to each of these bodies

worded to appeal particularly to the interests it represented.

[150] For the answer to this petition see Chap. XIX.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN IN THE STATES.

The preceding chapters have been devoted principally to efforts made

in behalf of women by the National-American Suffrage Association

through its conventions, committees, officers, speakers, organizers

and members. Contemporaneous with this line of action there has been

for a number of years a similar movement in the respective States

carried forward through their associations auxiliary to the National,

their committees, officers, speakers, organizers and individual

membership. Each of the two divisions has been largely dependent upon

the other, the States forming the strength of the national body, the

latter extending assistance to the States whenever a special campaign

has been at hand or help has been needed in organizing, convention or

legislative work. The following chapters are confined wholly to the

situation in the various States and are subdivided into Organization,

Legislative Action, Laws, Suffrage, Office-Holding, Occupations and

Education. Their object is to give a general idea of the status of

woman at the close of the nineteenth century and the manifold changes

of which it is the result. It is desired also to put on record the

part which women themselves have had in the steady advance which will

be observed.

The account of only the past seventeen years is given, as the three

preceding volumes of this History relate in detail the pioneer work

and the gains made previous to 1884. Unfortunately it is inevitable in

a recital of this kind that many names should be omitted which are

quite as worthy of mention as those that find place, for in some

instances the records are imperfectly kept and in others the list is

so long as to forbid reproduction.[151] It has been necessary to bar

compliments in order to avoid unjust discrimination and to meet the

demands of limited space. To posterity the work is of more importance

than the workers, and those who have engaged in the efforts to improve

the condition of women necessarily have had to possess a spirit of

self-abnegation and self-sacrifice which neither expected nor desired

personal rewards.

The subject of Organization in most of the States is treated in the

briefest possible manner, the intention being merely to show that in

every State and Territory there has been some attempt to gather into a

working force the scattered individuals who believe in the justice of

woman suffrage and wish to obtain it. More extended mention of course

is due to the older States, where there has been continuous organized

work for many years, and where the societies have remained intact and

held their regular meetings in spite of such defeats and

discouragements as never have had to be faced by any other cause. It

is most difficult to form and maintain an association which has not a

concrete object to labor for, and when a campaign for an amendment is

not actually in progress, the suffrage in the distant future appears

largely as an abstraction. The early days of the movement necessarily

had to be given to creating the sentiment which would later be

organized, and it is only within the past decade that the time has

seemed ripe for systematic effort in this direction. The lack of

effective organization has been a serious but unavoidable weakness

which henceforth will be remedied as speedily and thoroughly as

possible.

It is a favorite argument of the opponents of woman suffrage that the

many gains of various kinds have not been due to the efforts of women

themselves. Under the head of Legislative Action will be found the

dates and figures to prove that, year after year, in almost every

State, women have gone to the Legislatures with appeals for every

concession which has been granted and many more which have been

refused. The bills presented by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union

have not been specifically included because they are fully recorded in

the publications of that body, and because this volume is confined

almost exclusively to the one subject of enfranchisement. While the

Suffrage Associations have directed their legislative efforts

principally to secure action for this purpose, individual members have

joined the W. C. T. U. innumerable times in its attempts to obtain

other bills of advantage to women and children, and in some instances

this has been done officially by the associations.

Among various measures in which the two organizations have united may

be mentioned the raising of the "age of protection" for girls; the

securing of women physicians in all institutions where women and

children are confined, and women on the boards of all such; women city

physicians; matrons at jails and station houses; better conditions for

working women; the abolition of child-labor; industrial schools for

girls. Measures which have been especially championed by the W. S. A.,

but which the W. C. T. U. has aided officially or individually, have

been those asking for every form of suffrage; equal property laws for

wives; the opening of all educational institutions to women; their

admission to all professions and occupations; the repeal of laws

barring them from office; the enactment of laws giving father and

mother equal guardianship of children.[152]

The W. C. T. U. alone has secured temperance measures of many kinds,

including a law in every State requiring scientific temperance

instruction in the public schools; in many States curfew laws, and

statutes prohibiting the sale of cigarettes and of liquor on or near

fair grounds, Soldiers' Homes and school-houses, and preventing

gambling devices, immoral exhibits, etc. The Federation of Women's

Clubs has obtained laws for free traveling libraries and has united

with other organizations in various States in efforts for equal

guardianship of children, school suffrage, women on school and library

boards and the abolishing of child labor. Other associations have

joined in one or more of the above lines of work and have had

independent measures of their own, such as prison reform, social

purity, the assistance of different races--as the negro and the

Indian--village improvement, kindergartens, public playgrounds, etc.

It would not be possible to draw a distinct line dividing the

legislative work of one association from the others, except that it

may be said the suffrage societies have made the franchise their chief

point, believing it to be the power with which the rest could be

gained, and the temperance unions have made their principal attack

upon the liquor traffic, considering it the greatest evil. The objects

of the various bodies are indicated in the last chapter of this volume

on Organizations of Women, but whatever these may be, if they include

any direct, practical work their promoters usually find themselves at

the door of the Legislature asking for help. Here they get their first

lesson in the imperative necessity of possessing a vote, and seeing

their measures fail because asked for by a disfranchised class, to

whom the legislators are in no way indebted, they frequently become

ardent advocates of suffrage for women.

As it would be wholly impossible in the small space which can be

allowed to include an account of all the legislative work done by

women, mention is made principally of that for the franchise. While

the successes have been few compared to the number of bills presented,

the record is valuable as indicating that determined and persistent

effort will not be relaxed until it is granted in every State.

Under the head of Legislation is related also the attempts to get from

Constitutional Conventions an amendment striking out the word "male"

as a qualification for suffrage. It includes, besides, graphic

accounts of the campaigns made in behalf of such amendments when

submitted to the voters by the Legislatures. Those who have not

closely followed these events doubtless will be surprised to learn the

amount of effort which has been expended by women to obtain the

franchise. It is infinitely greater than has been put forth for this

purpose by all other classes combined, since the Revolutionary War was

fought to secure to every citizen the right of individual

representation.

The Laws regarding women as here given are in no sense of the word a

"brief," but merely present the facts in the language of a layman and

in the simplest and most concise form. Those relating to property are

in the nature of a curiosity. An attorney in San Francisco who was

asked for information as to the laws in general for women in

California, answered that to give in full those of property alone

would require as much space as could be granted in the History for the

entire chapter. It is not possible to make in these introductory

paragraphs an adequate digest of these laws in various States. They

are not precisely the same in any two of the forty-nine States and

Territories, and they offer a striking illustration of the attempts of

law-makers, during the last few decades, to rectify in a measure the

legal outrages of the past, and of their inability in the present

state of their development to grant absolute justice. That must await

the lawmakers of the future, and probably the time when women shall

have a part in selecting them.

All that can be claimed for the statutes quoted herein is that they

are as nearly correct as it has been possible to make them. With but

one or two exceptions, the Attorney-Generals in every State have been

most courteous and obliging when appealed to for assistance. The laws

for women, however, have been so taken from and added to, so torn to

pieces and patched up, that the best lawyers in many States say

frankly that they do not know just what they are at the present time.

Legislatures and code revision committees are continually tinkering at

them and every year witnesses some changes in most of the States.[153]

A very thorough abstract of the laws, made in 1886 by Miss Lelia J.

Robinson, LL. B., a member of the bar in Massachusetts, was of almost

no use in the compilation for this volume because of the endless

alterations since that time. The Legal Status of Women, a condensed

resume issued in 1897 by the National Suffrage Association, has been

covered thickly with pencil marks during the preparation of this

summary, as the reports received from different States have shown the

changes effected in the few years which have since elapsed. A new

book, Woman and the Law, prepared by a lecturer on political science

in one of our largest universities and published in 1901, was hailed

with joy, but was found to include a number of laws which had been

repealed within the past four or five years and to omit some very

important ones which had been enacted during this time, as well as to

contain frequent mistakes in regard to others.

These instances show the impossibility of an absolutely authentic

presentation of the laws for women in their constantly changing

condition. Although it was the intention to close this History with

1900, in several States, notably Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York,

Illinois and Wisconsin, laws have been passed since that date of

sufficient importance to demand a place. During the two years of its

preparation the entire codes of property laws for women in

Massachusetts and Virginia have been revolutionized.

An amusing part of a difficult task has been the reluctance of men to

admit the existence of laws which are conspicuously unjust to women,

the admission being frequently accompanied by the statement that it is

the intention to change them at an early date, or that it would only

be necessary to call the attention of the Legislature to them in order

to secure their repeal. Even women themselves in States where the

statutes especially discriminate against them, have written that these

must not be published unless those from all the others are given.

Whether this is due to State pride or personal humiliation is not

clearly evident.

The one encouraging feature is that in almost every State decided

progress is shown since 1848, when in New York and Pennsylvania the

first change was made in the English Common Law which then everywhere

prevailed, and which did not permit a married woman to hold property,

to buy or sell, to sue or be sued, to make a contract or a will, to

carry on business in her own name, to possess the wages she earned, or

to have her children in case of divorce. An examination of the laws in

the following chapters will show that the wife now may own and control

her separate property in three-fourths of the States, and in the other

fourth only one Northern State is included. In every State a married

woman may make a will, but can dispose only of her separate property.

In about two-thirds of the States she possesses her earnings. In the

great majority she may make contracts and bring suit. The property

rights of unmarried women always have been nearly the same as those of

unmarried men, but the Common Law declared that "by marriage husband

and wife are one person in law and the legal existence of the wife is

merged in that of the husband. He is her baron or lord, bound to

supply her with shelter, food, clothing and medicine, and is entitled

to her earnings and the use and custody of her person, which he may

seize wherever he may find it." (Blackstone, I, 442.)[154]

In his Commentaries, after enumerating some of the disabilities of

woman under these laws, Blackstone calmly argues that the most of them

were really intended for her benefit, "so great a favorite is the

female sex with the law of England." He strikes here the keynote of

even the special statutes which have superseded the Common Law in the

various States, all have been "intended for her benefit," man alone

being the judge of what she needed and careful while providing it to

retain within himself the exclusive power of law-making. It has been

gradually dawning upon him, however, that, as a human being like

himself, her needs are very similar to his own, and where he has

failed to see it she has reminded him of it as she has slowly learned

this fact herself. The laws show an awakening conscience on the part

of men and a tardy but continuous advance toward justice to women,

although there is yet very much to be desired. For instance, in

reading the laws regarding the inheritance of separate property, which

in a number of States is now made the same for widow and widower, the

first thought will be, "These are absolutely just." But a little

investigation will show that the separate property of either is what

he or she possesses at marriage or receives afterwards by gift or

inheritance, while all that is acquired during marriage by the joint

earnings of the two belongs to the husband. In many States the law now

provides that if the wife engages in business as a sole trader or goes

outside the home to work, her earnings belong to her, but all the

proceeds of her labor within the household are still the sole and

separate property of the husband. The Common Law on this point, which

never has been changed in a single State,[155] makes the services of

the wife belong to the husband, and in return she is legally entitled

only to food, shelter and clothes, and these of such quality and

quantity as the husband dictates. She can not dispose by will of any

of the property acquired during marriage, nor has she any control of

it during the husband's lifetime.

These facts should be borne in mind when reading the laws which

declare that husband and wife have the same power to dispose of

separate property. Comparatively few women in this country have

property when married, especially if young at the time, and the same

is true of the majority of men, but afterwards the woman may never

hope to accumulate any, as the joint earnings of the marriage

partnership belong exclusively to the husband, and the duties of the

average household prevent the wife from engaging in outside work.

However, in order that she might not be left absolutely penniless

after years of labor, the Common Law provided that she should be

entitled to "dower," i. e., the possession, for her lifetime, of

one-third of all the real estate of which her husband was possessed in

fee simple during the marriage. That is, she should receive the

life-use of one-third of any realty she might have brought into the

marriage and one-third of all they had earned together. But if the

husband had converted these into cash, bonds, stocks or other personal

property, she could legally claim nothing. He had "curtesy," i. e.,

the life-use of all her real estate, (sometimes dependent on the birth

of children, sometimes not), and usually the whole of her personal

estate absolutely.

Curtesy has now been abolished in over one-half the States. The law of

dower still exists in more than one-half, but special statutes in

regard to personal property and the wife's separate estate have been

made so liberal that in comparatively few States is she left in the

helpless condition of olden times. In about one-half of them she takes

from one-third to the whole (if there are no children) of both real

and personal estate absolutely; but in all of them it is only at the

death of the husband that she has any share or control of the joint

accumulations except such as he chooses to allow. At the death of the

wife all of these belong legally to the husband and she can not secure

to her children or her parents any part of the property which she has

helped to earn. Space forbids going into a discussion of the general

upheaval which follows the death of the husband, the inventories

which must be taken, the divisions which must be made, generally

resulting in the breaking up of the home; while at the death of the

wife all passes peacefully into the possession of the husband and

there is no scattering of the family unless he wishes it. A general

but necessarily superficial statement of the property laws will be

found in connection with each State in the following chapters, and

they represent a complete legal revolution during the past half

century.

Fathers and mothers are given equal guardianship of children in the

District of Columbia and nine States--Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois,

Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New York and Washington. (See

Pennsylvania.) In all others the father has the sole custody and

control of the persons, education, earnings and estates of minor

children. Where this right is abused the mother can obtain custody

only by applying for separation or divorce or proving in court the

unfitness of the father. In a number of States the father may by will

appoint a guardian even of a child unborn, to the exclusion of the

mother. In others the widow is legally entitled to the guardianship

but forfeits it by marrying again. Others do not permit a widow to

appoint by will a guardian for her children. Tennessee and Louisiana

offer examples of the English and French codes in this respect.

Although the father is the sole guardian and entitled to the services

of the children, and although the joint earnings of the marriage

belong exclusively to him, and in a number of States he is declared in

the statutes to be the "head of the family," in many of them the

mother is held to be equally liable for its support. Her separate

property may be taken for this purpose and she is also required to

contribute by her labor. In such cases the husband decides what

constitutes "necessities" and the wife must pay for what he orders. A

recent decision of the Illinois courts compelled a wife to pay for the

clothes of an able-bodied husband. In most but not all of the States

the husband, if competent, is punished for failure to support his

family. The punishment consists in a fine, the State thus taking from

the family what money he may possess; or confinement in prison, where

he is boarded and lodged while the family is in nowise relieved.

It has not been deemed necessary to consider at length the subject of

divorce, except to mention the laws of the few States which

discriminate against women. South Carolina is the only one which does

not grant divorce; New York the only one which makes adultery the sole

cause. In the remainder the causes have a wider range, but in all the

records show that the vast majority of divorces are granted to wives.

The following list is taken from the New York _Sun_ (1902) and

corresponds with information gathered from other sources:

Habitual drunkenness, in all except eight States.

Wilful desertion, generally.

Felony, in all except three.

Cruelty, and intolerable cruelty, in all except five.

Failure by the husband to provide, in twenty.

Fraud and fraudulent contract, in nine.

Absence without being heard from, for different periods, in six.

Ungovernable temper, in two.

Insupportably cruel treatment, outrages and excesses, in six.

Indignities rendering life burdensome, in six.

Attempt to murder other party, in three.

Insanity or idiocy at time of marriage, in six. Insanity lasting

ten years, in Washington; incurable insanity, in North Dakota,

Florida and Idaho.

Husband notoriously immoral before marriage, unknown to wife,

in West Virginia. [Pregnancy of wife before marriage, unknown

to husband, in many States].

Fugitive from justice, in Virginia.

Gross misbehavior or wickedness, in Rhode Island.

Any gross neglect of duty, in Kansas and Ohio.

Refusal of wife to remove into the State, in Tennessee.

Mental incapacity at time of marriage, in Georgia.

Three years with any religious society that believes the marriage

relation unlawful, in Massachusetts; and joining any such sect, in

New Hampshire.

When parties can not live in peace and union, in Utah.

Vagrancy of the husband, in Missouri and Wyoming.

Excesses, in Texas.

Where wife by cruel and barbarous treatment renders condition

of husband intolerable, in Pennsylvania.

By reference to the History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. I, pp. 482, 717,

745 and following, it will be seen that the resolutions favoring

divorce for habitual drunkenness offered in the first women's

conventions, during the early '50's, almost disrupted the meetings,

and caused press and pulpit throughout the country to thunder

denunciations, but half a century later such laws exist in

thirty-seven of the forty-five States and meet with general approval.

It is frequently charged that the granting of woman suffrage has been

followed by laws for free divorce, but an examination of the statutes

will show that exactly the same causes obtain in the States where

women do not vote as in those where they do; that there has not been

the slightest change in the latter since the franchise was given them;

and that in Wyoming, where it has been exercised since 1869, there is

the smallest percentage of divorce in proportion to the population of

any State in the Union. The three places which are so largely utilized

by outsiders who wish a speedy divorce, because only a ninety days'

residence is required, are North and South Dakota and Oklahoma, in

neither of which have women any suffrage except for school trustees.

The "age of consent or protection" for girls, i. e., the age when they

are declared to have sufficient understanding to consent to

intercourse, and above which they can claim no legal protection, was

fixed at ten years by the Common Law. No action was taken by any State

to advance the age up to which they might be protected until 1864,

when Oregon raised it to fourteen years. No other State followed this

example until 1882, when Wyoming made it fourteen. In 1885 Nebraska

added two years making it twelve. At this date women commenced to

besiege the Legislatures in all parts of the country, and there was a

general movement from that time forward to have the age of protection

increased, but in almost every instance where this has been

accomplished, the penalty for violation of the law has been reduced,

and now in thirteen States no minimum penalty is named. The age still

remains at ten years in Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North and South

Carolina. In Kentucky, Louisiana, Tennessee and West Virginia the age

is twelve years, but in Tennessee it is only a "misdemeanor" between

twelve and sixteen. (For the recent efforts of women in Georgia and

Florida to have the age advanced, and their failure, see the chapters

on those States.) In Delaware the Common Law age of ten years was

reduced to seven by the Legislature in 1871, and no protection was

afforded to infants over seven until 1889 when the age was raised to

fifteen, but the crime was declared to be only a "misdemeanor."

Women who have "all the rights they want," and men who insist that

"the laws are framed for the best interests of women," are recommended

to make a study of those presented herewith.

Under the head of Suffrage it is stated whether women possess any form

of it and, if so, in what it consists. The story of the four States

where they have the complete franchise--Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and

Idaho--naturally is most interesting, as it describes just how this

was obtained and gives considerable information on points which are

not fully understood by the general public. The chapter on Kansas

doubtless will come next in interest, as there women have had the

Municipal ballot since 1887. It is frequently said in criticism that

women have School Suffrage in twenty-six States and Territories,

including the five mentioned above, but they do not make use of it in

large numbers. What this fragmentary suffrage includes, the

restrictions thrown around it and the obstacles placed in its way, are

described in the chapters of those States and Territories where it

prevails--Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Kentucky,

Massachusetts, Minnesota, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota,

New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South

Dakota, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin.

It will be seen that in New York women tax-payers in villages, and in

Louisiana and Montana all tax-paying women, may vote on questions

submitted for taxation, and an account is given of the first use which

women made of this privilege in Louisiana in 1899. In Iowa all women

may vote on the issuing of bonds. In Mississippi they have the merest

form of a franchise on a few matters connected with country schools

and the running at large of stock. In Arkansas they may sign a

petition against liquor selling within certain limits and their names

count for as much as men's. After a careful study of the situation the

wonder will not be that women do not exercise more largely these

grudgingly-given and closely-restricted privileges, but that in many

States they think it worth while to exercise them at all. In the four,

however, where they have the Full Suffrage, and in Kansas where they

have the Municipal, the official figures which have been carefully

tabulated will demonstrate beyond further controversy that where they

possess exactly the same electoral rights as men they use them in

even a larger proportion. These statistics answer conclusively the

question, "Do women want to vote?"

The information as to Office-Holding is necessarily somewhat desultory

as there is no record in any State of the women in office. This is

true even of those pertaining to the schools, and in very few cases

does the State Superintendent of Public Instruction know how many

women are serving as county superintendents and members of school

boards. The information on these points contained in the State

chapters was secured principally through personal investigation and by

an extended correspondence, and while it is believed to be entirely

correct so far as it goes, it does not by any means include the total

number of offices filled by women. Imperfect as is the list it will be

a surprise to those who look upon office-holding as the natural

prerogative of man. A stock objection to woman suffrage is that women

will be wanting the offices. An examination of the reports here

submitted will disclose the surprising fact that in a number of States

where women do not vote they are filling as many offices as in those

where they have the full franchise. Probably the majority of State

constitutions declare that the offices must be held by electors, but

where this proviso is not made, women have been elected and appointed

to various offices and so far as can be learned have given general

satisfaction.[156]

The necessity for matrons at police stations and jails, and for women

physicians in all institutions where women and children are confined,

is too evident to need any argument in its favor, and yet it is only

within the past ten years that they have been thus employed to any

extent and even now they are found in only a small fraction of such

institutions. The objection to these matrons on the part of the police

force has been strenuous, and yet, almost without exception, after

they have gained a foothold, the police officers testify that they do

not understand how the department got on without them. It ought to be

equally evident that there should be women on the boards of all

institutions which care for women and children, but, although in most

instances these positions have no salary, there is the most violent

opposition to giving women a place, and the concession has had to be

wrung from Legislatures in the few States where it has been obtained.

The right of women and their value to school offices is now partly

conceded in about half the States. Women librarians also have met with

some favor. As to offices in general, most of which carry either

salary or patronage or both, they will continue to be regarded as

belonging entirely to voters and as perquisites of party managers with

which to reward political service, although all of them are

proportionately supported by women tax-payers.

As regards Occupations, the census of 1900 shows 3,230,642 women

engaged in wage-earning employments, exclusive of domestic service,

and the question of their admittance to practically all such may be

regarded as settled, but it has not been gained without a contest.

Women, however, are still barred from the best-paying positions and

are usually compelled to accept unequal wages for equal work. This is

partly due to disfranchisement and partly to economic causes and can

be remedied only by time. In many of the States of which it is said,

"No profession is forbidden to women," the test has not been made, and

until some woman attempts to be a minister, physician, lawyer or

notary public it can not be known whether she will encounter a

statutory prohibition.

The department of Education presents the most satisfactory condition.

The battle for co-education, which means simply a chance for women to

have the best advantages which exist, has been bitterly fought. A

guerilla warfare is still maintained against it, but the contest is so

nearly finished as to warrant no fears as to the future. Every State

University but those of Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina and

Virginia, is open to women on exactly the same terms as to men (with

the exception of some departments of Pennsylvania). They have full

admission to Chicago and Leland Stanford Universities, two of the

largest in the United States. They may enter the post-graduate

department of Yale and receive its degrees. Harvard and Princeton are

still entirely closed to them, as are a number of the smaller of the

old, established Eastern universities, but this is largely compensated

by the great Woman's Colleges of the East--Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, Smith

and Vassar--which accommodate nearly 4,000 students. The Medical

Department of Johns Hopkins, and Medical, Theological, Law and Dental

Colleges in all parts of the country, admit women to their full

courses. This is true also of Agricultural Colleges and of Technical

Institutes such as Drexel and Pratt. There is now no lack of

opportunity for them to obtain the highest education, either along the

line of general culture or specialized work.[157]

The details of the following chapters will show that the civil, legal,

industrial and educational rights of women are so far secured as to

give full assurance that they will be absolute in the near future. The

political rights are further off, for reasons which are presented in

the introduction to this volume, but the yielding of all the others is

proof sufficient that the spirit of our institutions will eventually

find its fullest expression in perfect equality of rights for all the

people.

FOOTNOTES:

[151] The names of newspapers which have supported this cause are not

given, partly for these reasons and partly because on this question

they reflect simply the personal views of the editors, and a change of

management may cause a complete reversal of their attitude toward

woman suffrage.

[152] A reading of these chapters will show that the suffrage

societies have started many progressive movements and then turned them

over to other organizations of women, believing they would thrive

better if freed from the effects of the prejudice against woman

suffrage and everything connected with it.

[153] Notwithstanding these efforts, the very statutes which are

intended to be fair to women are continually found to be defective,

and whenever any doubt arises as to their construction the Common Law

must prevail, which in all cases is unjust to women. An example of

this kind will be found in the chapter on New York, showing that it

was held in 1901 that a wife's wages belonged to her husband, although

it was supposed that these had been secured to her beyond all question

by a special statute of 1860.

[154] For abstract of the Common Law in regard to women see History of

Woman Suffrage, Vol. III, p. 961.

[155] A few of the States were formed under the Spanish or French code

instead of the English Common Law, but neither was more favorable to

women.

[156] No mention is made of women postmasters as these are found in

all States. The first were appointed by President Grant during his

first term of office, 1868-1872.

[157] In the various States under the head of Education, Roman

Catholic colleges and universities are not considered, as they are

nowhere co-educational.

The public school statistics are taken from the reports for 1898-9 of

the U. S. Commissioner of Education.