the Misses Howard--three sisters living in Columbus, Georgia, and each
an officer of the Georgia Woman Suffrage Association. It is a remarkable
fact that in many of our Southern states the suffrage movement has been
led by three sisters. In Kentucky the three Clay sisters were for many
years leaders in the work. In Texas the three Finnegan sisters did
splendid work; in Louisiana the Gordon sisters were our stanchest
allies, while in Virginia we had the invaluable aid of Mary Johnston,
the novelist, and her two sisters. We used to say, laughingly, if there
was a failure to organize any state in the South, that it must be due to
the fact that no family there had three sisters to start the movement.
From the Atlanta convention we went directly to Washington to attend
the convention of the National Council of Women, and on the first day of
this council Frederick Douglass came to the meeting. Mr. Douglass had a
special place in the hearts of suffragists, for the reason that at the
first convention ever held for woman suffrage in the United States (at
Seneca Falls, New York) he was the only person present who stood by
Elizabeth Cady Stanton when she presented her resolution in favor of
votes for women. Even Lucretia Mott was startled by this radical step,
and privately breathed into the ear of her friend, "Elizabeth, thee is
making us ridiculous!" Frederick Douglass, however, took the floor in
defense of Mrs. Stanton's motion, a service we suffragists never forgot.
Therefore, when the presiding officer of the council, Mrs. May Wright
Sewall, saw Mr. Douglass enter the convention hall in Washington on this
particular morning, she appointed Susan B. Anthony and me a committee to
escort him to a seat on the platform, which we gladly did. Mr. Douglass
made a short speech and then left the building, going directly to his
home. There, on entering his hall, he had an attack of heart failure
and dropped dead as he was removing his overcoat. His death cast a gloom
over the convention, and his funeral, which took place three days
later, was attended by many prominent men and women who were among the
delegates. Miss Anthony and I were invited to take part in the funeral
services, and she made a short address, while I offered a prayer.
The event had an aftermath in Atlanta, for it led our clerical enemy
to repeat his charges against us, and to offer the funeral of Frederick
Douglass as proof that we were hand in glove with the negro race.
Under the gracious direction of Miss Kate Gordon and the Louisiana Woman
Suffrage Association, we held an especially inspiring convention in
New Orleans in 1903. In no previous convention were arrangements
more perfect, and certainly nowhere else did the men of a community
co-operate more generously with the women in entertaining us. A club of
men paid the rent of our hall, chartered a steamboat and gave us a ride
on the Mississippi, and in many other ways helped to make the occasion
a success. Miss Gordon, who was chairman of the programme committee,
introduced the innovation of putting me before the audience for twenty
minutes every evening, at the close of the regular session, as a target
for questions. Those present were privileged to ask any questions they
pleased, and I answered them--if I could.
We were all conscious of the dangers attending a discussion of the negro
question, and it was understood among the Northern women that we must
take every precaution to avoid being led into such discussion. It had
not been easy to persuade Miss Anthony of the wisdom of this course; her
way was to face issues squarely and out in the open. But she agreed that
we must respect the convictions of the Southern men and women who were
entertaining us so hospitably.
On the opening night, as I took my place to answer questions, almost the
first slip passed up bore these words:
What is your purpose in bringing your convention to the South? Is it the
desire of suffragists to force upon us the social equality of black and
white women? Political equality lays the foundation for social equality.
If you give the ballot to women, won't you make the black and white
woman equal politically and therefore lay the foundation for a future
claim of social equality?
I laid the paper on one side and did not answer the question. The second
night it came to me again, put in the same words, and again I ignored
it. The third night it came with this addition:
Evidently you do not dare to answer this question. Therefore our
conclusion is that this is your purpose.
When I had read this I went to the front of the platform.
"Here," I said, "is a question which has been asked me on three
successive nights. I have not answered it because we Northern women had
decided not to enter into any discussion of the race question. But now I
am told by the writer of this note that we dare not answer it. I wish
to say that we dare to answer it if you dare to have it answered--and I
leave it to you to decide whether I shall answer it or not."
I read the question aloud. Then the audience called for the answer, and
I gave it in these words, quoted as accurately as I can remember them:
"If political equality is the basis of social equality, and if by
granting political equality you lay the foundation for a claim of social
equality, I can only answer that you have already laid that claim. You
did not wait for woman suffrage, but disfranchised both your black and
your white women, thus making them politically equal. But you have done
more than that. You have put the ballot into the hands of your black
men, thus making them the political superiors of your white women.
Never before in the history of the world have men made former slaves the
political masters of their former mistresses!"
The point went home and it went deep. I drove it in a little further.
"The women of the South are not alone," I said, "in their humiliation.
All the women of America share it with them. There is no other nation in
the world in which women hold the position of political degradation our
American women hold to-day. German women are governed by German men;
French women are governed by French men. But in these United States
American women are governed by every race of men under the light of the
sun. There is not a color from white to black, from red to yellow, there
is not a nation from pole to pole, that does not send its contingent to
govern American women. If American men are willing to leave their women
in a position as degrading as this they need not be surprised when
American women resolve to lift themselves out of it."
For a full moment after I had finished there was absolute silence in
the audience. We did not know what would happen. Then, suddenly, as the
truth of the statement struck them, the men began to applaud--and the
danger of that situation was over.
Another episode had its part in driving the suffrage lesson home to
Southern women. The Legislature had passed a bill permitting tax-paying
women to vote at any election where special taxes were to be imposed for
improvements, and the first election following the passage of this bill
was one in New Orleans, in which the question of better drainage for
the city was before the public. Miss Gordon and the suffrage association
known as the Era Club entered enthusiastically into the fight for
good drainage. According to the law women could vote by proxy if they
preferred, instead of in person, so Miss Gordon drove to the homes of
the old conservative Creole families and other families whose women
were unwilling to vote in public, and she collected their proxies while
incidentally she showed them what position they held under the law.
With each proxy it was necessary to have the signature of a witness, but
according to the Louisiana law no woman could witness a legal document.
Miss Gordon was driven from place to place by her colored coachman, and
after she had secured the proxy of her temporary hostess it was usually
discovered that there was no man around the place to act as a witness.
This was Miss Gordon's opportunity. With a smile of great sweetness she
would say, "I will have Sam come in and help us out"; and the colored
coachman would get down from his box, and by scrawling his signature on
the proxy of the aristocratic lady he would give it the legal value it
lacked. In this way Miss Gordon secured three hundred proxies, and three
hundred very conservative women had an opportunity to compare their
legal standing with Sam's. The drainage bill was carried and interest in
woman suffrage developed steadily.
The special incident of the Buffalo convention of 1908 was the receipt
of a note which was passed up to me as I sat on the platform. When I
opened it a check dropped out--a check so large that I was sure it had
been sent by mistake. However, after asking one or two friends on the
platform if I had read it correctly, I announced to the audience that if
a certain amount were subscribed immediately I would reveal a secret--a
very interesting secret. Audiences are as curious as individuals. The
amount was at once subscribed. Then I held up a check for $10,000, given
for our campaign work by Mrs. George Howard Lewis, in memory of Susan B.
Anthony, and I read to the audience the charming letter that accompanied
it. The money was used during the campaigns of the following year--part
of it in Washington, where an amendment was already submitted.
In a previous chapter I have described the establishment of our New York
headquarters as a result of the generous offer of Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont
at the Seattle convention in 1909. During our first year in these
beautiful Fifth Avenue rooms Mrs. Pankhurst made her first visit to
America, and we gave her a reception there. This, however, was before
the adoption of the destructive methods which have since marked the
activities of the band of militant suffragists of which Mrs. Pankhurst
is president. There has never been any sympathy among American
suffragists for the militant suffrage movement in England, and
personally I am wholly opposed to it. I do not believe in war in any
form; and if violence on the part of men is undesirable in achieving
their ends, it is much more so on the part of women; for women never
appear to less advantage than in physical combats with men. As for
militancy in America, no generation that attempted it could win. No
victory could come to us in any state where militant methods were tried.
They are undignified, unworthy--in other words, un-American.
The Washington convention of 1910 was graced by the presence of
President Taft, who, at the invitation of Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery,
made an address. It was understood, of course, that he was to come
out strongly for woman suffrage; but, to our great disappointment, the
President, a most charming and likable gentleman, seemed unable to grasp
the significance of the occasion. He began his address with fulsome
praise of women, which was accepted in respectful silence. Then he got
round to woman suffrage, floundered helplessly, became confused, and
ended with the most unfortunately chosen words he could have uttered: "I
am opposed," he said, "to the extension of suffrage to women not fitted
to vote. You would hardly expect to put the ballot into the hands of
barbarians or savages in the jungle!"
The dropping of these remarkable words into a suffrage convention was
naturally followed by an oppressive silence, which Mr. Taft, now wholly
bereft of his self-possession, broke by saying that the best women would
not vote and the worst women would.
In his audience were many women from suffrage states--high-minded women,
wives and mothers, who had voted for Mr. Taft. The remarks to which
they had just listened must have seemed to them a poor return. Some one
hissed--some man, some woman--no one knows which except the culprit--and
a demonstration started which I immediately silenced. Then the President
finished his address. He was very gracious to us when he left, shaking
hands with many of us, and being especially cordial to Senator Owens's
aged mother, who had come to the convention to hear him make his maiden
speech on woman suffrage. I have often wondered what he thought of that
speech as he drove back to the White House. Probably he regretted as
earnestly as we did that he had made it.
In 1912, at an official board meeting at Bryn Mawr, Mrs. Stanley
McCormack was appointed to fill a vacancy on the National Board.
Subsequently she contributed $6,000 toward the payment of debts incident
to our temporary connection with the Woman's Journal of Boston, and
did much efficient work for us, To me, personally, the entrance of
Mrs. Stanley McCormack into our work has been a source of the deepest
gratification and comfort. I can truly say of her what Susan B. Anthony
said of me, "She is my right bower." At Nashville, in 1914, she was
elected first vice-president, and to a remarkable degree she has since
relieved me of the burden of the technical work of the presidency,
including the oversight of the work at headquarters. To this she gives
all her time, aided by an executive secretary who takes charge of the
routine work of the association. She has thus made it possible for me
to give the greater part of my time to the field in which such inspiring
opportunities still confront us--campaign work in the various states.
To Mrs. Medill McCormack also we are indebted for most admirable work
and enthusiastic support. At the Washington (D.C.) convention in 1913
she was made the chairman of the Congressional Committee, with Mrs.
Antoinette Funk, Mrs. Helen Gardner of Washington, and Mrs. Booth of
Chicago as her assistants. The results they achieved were so brilliant
that they were unanimously re-elected to the same positions this year,
with the addition of Miss Jeannette Rankin, whose energy and service had
helped to win for us the state of Montana.
It was largely due to the work of this Congressional Committee,
supported by the large number of states which had been won for suffrage,
that we secured such an excellent vote in the Lower House of Congress
on the bill to amend the national Constitution granting suffrage to the
women of the United States. This measure, known as the Susan B. Anthony
bill, had been introduced into every Congress for forty-three years by
the National Woman Suffrage Association. In 1914, for the first time,
it was brought out of committee, debated, and voted upon in the Lower
House. We received 174 votes in favor of it to 204 against it. The
previous spring, in the same Congress, the same bill passed the Senate
by 35 votes for it to 33 votes against it.
The most interesting features of the Washington convention of 1913 were
the labor mass-meetings led by Jane Addams and the hearing before the
Rules Committee of the Lower House of Congress--the latter the first
hearing ever held before this Committee for the purpose of securing a
Committee on Suffrage in the Lower House to correspond with a similar
committee in the Senate. For many years we had had hearings before the
Judiciary Committee of the Lower House, which was such a busy committee
that it had neither time nor interest to give to our measure. We
therefore considered it necessary to have a special committee of
our own. The hearing began on the morning of Wednesday, the third of
December, and lasted for two hours. Then the anti-suffragists were given
time, and their hearing began the following day, continued throughout
that day and during the morning of the next day, when our National
Association was given an opportunity for rebuttal argument in the
afternoon. It was the longest hearing in the history of the suffrage
movement, and one of the most important.
During the session of Congress in 1914 another strenuous effort was made
to secure the appointment of a special suffrage committee in the Lower
House. But when success began to loom large before us the Democrats were
called in caucus by the minority leader, Mr. Underwood, of Alabama, and
they downed our measure by a vote of 127 against it to 58 for it. This
was evidently done by the Democrats because of the fear that the united
votes of Republican and Progressive members, with those of certain
Democratic members, would carry the measure; whereas if this caucus were
called, and an unfavorable vote taken, "the gentlemen's agreement" which
controls Democratic party action in Congress would force Democrats in
favor of suffrage to vote against the appointment of the committee,
which of course would insure its defeat.
The caucus blocked the appointment of the committee, but it gave great
encouragement to the suffragists of the country, for they knew it to be
a tacit admission that the measure would receive a favorable vote if it
came before Congress unhampered.
Another feature of the 1913 convention was the new method of electing
officers, by which a primary vote was taken on nominations, and
afterward a regular ballot was cast; one officer was added to the
members of the official board, making nine instead of eight, the former
number. The new officers elected were Mrs. Breckenridge of Kentucky,
the great-granddaughter of Henry Clay, and Mrs. Catherine Ruutz-Rees
of Greenwich, Connecticut. The old officers were re-elected--Miss Jane
Addams as first vice-president, Mrs. Breckenridge and Mrs. Ruutz-Rees
as second and third vice-presidents, Mrs. Mary Ware Dennett as
corresponding secretary, Mrs. Susan Fitzgerald as recording secretary,
Mrs. Stanley McCormack as treasurer, Mrs. Joseph Bowen of Chicago and
Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw of New York City as auditors.
It would be difficult to secure a group of women of more marked
ability, or better-known workers in various lines of philanthropic and
educational work, than the members composing this admirable board. At
the convention of 1914, held in Nashville, several of them resigned, and
at present (in 1914) the "National's" affairs are in the hands of this
inspiring group, again headed by the much-criticized and chastened
writer of these reminiscences:
Mrs. Stanley McCormack, first vice-president.
Mrs. Desha Breckenridge, second vice-president.
Dr. Katharine B. Davis, third vice-president.
Mrs. Henry Wade Rogers, treasurer.
Mrs. John Clark, corresponding secretary.
Mrs. Susan Walker Fitzgerald, recording secretary.
Mrs. Medill McCormack, }
} Auditors
Mrs. Walter McNabb Miller, of Missouri }
In a book of this size, and covering the details of my own life as well
as the development of the great Cause, it is, of course, impossible
to mention by name each woman who has worked for us--though, indeed,
I would like to make a roll of honor and give them all their due. In
looking back I am surprised to see how little I have said about many
women with whom I have worked most closely--Rachel Foster Avery, for
example, with whom I lived happily for several years; Ida Husted Harper,
the historian of the suffrage movement and the biographer of Miss
Anthony, with whom I made many delightful voyages to Europe; Alice Stone
Blackwell, Rev. Mary Saffard, Jane Addams, Katharine Waugh McCullough,
Ella Stewart, Mrs. Mary Wood Swift, Mrs. Mary S. Sperry, Mary Cogshall,
Florence Kelly, Mrs. Ogden Mills Reid and Mrs. Norman Whitehouse (to
mention only two of the younger "live wires" in our New York work),
Sophonisba Breckenridge, Mrs. Clara B. Arthur, Rev. Caroline Bartlett
Crane, Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw, Mrs. Raymond Brown, the splendidly
executive president of our New York State Suffrage Association, and my
benefactress, Mrs. George Howard Lewis of Buffalo. To all of them,
and to thousands of others, I make my grateful acknowledgment of
indebtedness for friendship and for help.
XVI. COUNCIL EPISODES
I have said much of the interest attending the international meetings
held in Chicago, London, Berlin, and Stockholm. That I have said less
about those in Copenhagen, Geneva, The Hague, Budapest, and other
cities does not mean that these were less important, and certainly the
wonderful women leaders of Europe who made them so brilliant must not be
passed over in silence.
First, however, the difference between the Suffrage Alliance meetings
and the International Council meetings should be explained. The Council
meetings are made up of societies from the various nations which are
auxiliary to the International Council--these societies representing all
lines of women's activities, whether educational, industrial, or
social, while the membership, including more than eleven million women,
represents probably the largest organization of women in the world.
The International Suffrage Alliance represents the suffrage interest
primarily, whereas the International Council has only a suffrage
department. So popular did this International Alliance become after
its formation in Berlin by Mrs. Catt, in 1904, that at the Copenhagen
meeting, only three years later, more than sixteen different nations
were represented by regular delegates.
It was unfortunate, therefore, that I chose this occasion to make a
spectacular personal failure in the pulpit. I had been invited to
preach the convention sermon, and for the first time in my life I had an
interpreter. Few experiences, I believe, can be more unpleasant than to
stand up in a pulpit, utter a remark, and then wait patiently while it
is repeated in a tongue one does not understand, by a man who is
putting its gist in his own words and quite possibly giving it his own
interpretative twist. I was very unhappy, and I fear I showed it, for I
felt, as I looked at the faces of those friends who understood Danish,
that they were not getting what I was giving them. Nor were they, for
I afterward learned that the interpreter, a good orthodox brother, had
given the sermon an ultra-orthodox bias which those who knew my creed
certainly did not recognize. The whole experience greatly disheartened
me, but no doubt it was good for my soul.
During the Copenhagen meeting we were given a banquet by the City
Council, and in the course of his speech of welcome one of the city
fathers airily remarked that he hoped on our next visit to Copenhagen
there would be women members in the Council to receive us. At the time
this seemed merely a pleasant jest, but two years from that day a bill
was enacted by Parliament granting municipal suffrage to the women of
Denmark, and seven women were elected to the City Council of Copenhagen.
So rapidly does the woman suffrage movement grow in these inspiring
days!
Recalling the International Council of 1899 in London, one of my most
vivid pictures has Queen Victoria for its central figure. The English
court was in mourning at the time and no public audiences were being
held; but we were invited to Windsor with the understanding that,
although the Queen could not formally receive us, she would pass
through our lines, receiving Lady Aberdeen and giving the rest of us
an opportunity to courtesy and obtain Her Majesty's recognition of the
Cause. The Queen arranged with her chamberlain that we should be given
tea and a collation; but before this refreshment was served, indeed
immediately after our arrival, she entered her familiar little pony-cart
and was driven slowly along lines of bowing women who must have looked
like a wheat-field in a high wind.