the field to her "girls." Her homecoming brought reporters to 17
Madison Street for the details about her alignment with the Populist
party. "I didn't go over to the Populists," she told them. "I have
been like a drowning man for a long time, waiting for someone to throw
a plank in my direction. I didn't step on the whole platform, but just
on the woman suffrage plank.... Here is a party in power which is
likely to remain in power, and if it will give its endorsement to our
movement, we want it."[390]
This explanation, however, did not satisfy her critics, and as the
Republican press circulated false stories about her enthusiasm for the
Populist party, letters of protest poured in, among them one from
Henry Blackwell. To him, she replied, "I shall not praise the
Republicans of Kansas, or wish or work for their success, when I know
by their own confessions to me that the rights of the women of their
state have been traded by them in cold blood for the votes of the
lager beer foreigners and whisky Democrats.... I never, in my whole
forty years work, so utterly repudiated any set of politicians as I do
those Republicans of Kansas.... I never was surer of my position that
no self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a
party that ignores her political rights."[391]
The contest in Kansas was close and bitter. Kansas women carried on an
able campaign with the help of Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman
Catt. When Susan returned to the state in October, she not only found
that the Democrats had entered the fight with an anti-suffrage plank
but the Populists had noticeably lost ground since the Pullman strike
riots, the court injunction against the strikers, and the arrest of
Eugene V. Debs. Again this prairie state, from which she had hoped so
much, refused to extend suffrage to women. Impulsively she recommended
a little "Patrick Henryism" to the women of Kansas, suggesting that
they fold their hands and refuse to help men run the churches, the
charities, and the reform movements.[392]
* * * * *
California was the next state to demand Susan's attention. A
Republican legislature had submitted a woman suffrage amendment to be
voted on by the people in 1896, and the women of California asked for
her help. She toured the state in the spring of 1895 with Anna Howard
Shaw, and everywhere she won friends. The continuous travel and
speaking, however, taxed her far more than she realized, and soon
after her return to the East, she collapsed. As this news flashed over
the wires, letters poured in from her friends, begging her to spare
herself. Two of these letters were especially precious. One in bold
vigorous script was from her good comrade, Parker Pillsbury, now
eighty-six, who had been an unfailing help during the most difficult
years of her career and whom she probably trusted more completely than
any other man. The other from her dearest friend, Elizabeth Stanton,
read, "I never realized how desolate the world would be to me without
you until I heard of your sudden illness. Let me urge you with all the
strength I have, and all the love I bear you, to stay at home and rest
and save your precious self."[393]
She now realized that rest was imperative for a time, but it troubled
her that people thought of her as old and ill, and she wrote Clara
Colby never to mention anyone's illness in her _Woman's Tribune_,
adding, "It is so dreadful to get public thought centered on one as
ill--as I have had it the last two months."[394]
She had no intention of retiring from the field. She knew her own
strength and that her life must be one of action. "I am able to endure
the strain of daily traveling and lecturing at over three-score and
ten," she observed, "mainly because I have always worked and loved
work.... As machinery in motion lasts longer than when lying idle, so
a body and soul in active exercise escapes the corroding rust of
physical and mental laziness, which prematurely cuts off the life of
so many women."[395]
Yet she did slow up a little, refusing an offer from the Slayton
Lecture Bureau for a series of lectures at $100 a night, and she
engaged a capable secretary, Emma B. Sweet, to help her with her
tremendous correspondence. "Dear Rachel" had given her a typewriter,
and now instead of dashing off letters at her desk late at night, she
learned to dictate them to Mrs. Sweet at regular hours. As requests
came in from newspapers and magazines for her comments on a wide
variety of subjects, she answered those that made possible a word on
the advancement of women.
Bicycling had come into vogue and women as well as men were taking it
up, some women even riding their bicycles in short skirts or bloomers.
What did she think of this? "If women ride the bicycle or climb
mountains," she replied, "they should don a costume which will permit
them the use of their legs." Of bicycling she said, "I think it has
done more to emancipate woman than any one thing in the world. I
rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. It gives her a
feeling of self-reliance and independence the moment she takes her
seat; and away she goes, the picture of untrammeled womanhood."[396]
[Illustration: Ida Husted Harper]
* * * * *
Susan returned to California in February 1896. Through the generosity
and interest of two young Rochester friends, her Unitarian minister,
William C. Gannett, and his wife, Mary Gannett, she was able to take
her secretary with her. Making her home in San Francisco with her
devoted friend, Ellen Sargent, she at once began to plan speaking
tours for herself and her "girls," many of whom, including her niece
Lucy, had come West to help her. She appealed successfully to Frances
Willard to transfer the national W.C.T.U. convention to another state,
for she was determined to keep the issue of prohibition out of the
California campaign.
With the press more than friendly and several San Francisco dailies
running woman suffrage departments, she realized the importance of
keeping newspapers fed with readable factual material and enlisted the
aid of a young journalist, Ida Husted Harper, whom she had met in 1878
while lecturing in Terre Haute, Indiana, and who was in California
that winter. When the San Francisco _Examiner_, William Randolph
Hearst's powerful Democratic paper, offered Susan a column on the
editorial page if she would write it and sign it, she dictated her
thoughts to Mrs. Harper, who smoothed them out for the column, helping
her as Mrs. Stanton had in the past, for writing was still a great
hardship. Grateful to Mrs. Harper, she sang her praises: "The moment I
give the idea--the point--she formulates it into a good
sentence--while I should have to haggle over it half an hour."[397]
California women had won suffrage planks from Republicans, Populists,
and Prohibitionists, and the prospects looked bright. Rich women came
to their aid, Mrs. Leland Stanford, with her railroad fortune,
furnishing passes for all the speakers and organizers, and Mrs. Phoebe
Hearst contributing $1,000 to their campaign. What warmed Susan's
heart, however, was the spirit of the rank and file, the seamstresses
and washerwomen, paying their two-dollar pledges in twenty-five-cent
installments, the poorly clad women bringing in fifty cents or a
dollar which they had saved by going without tea, and the women who
had worked all day at their jobs, stopping at headquarters for a
package of circulars to fold and address at night. The working women
of California made it plain that they wanted to vote.
Susan insisted upon carrying out what she called her "wild goose
chase" over the state.[398] People crowded to hear her at farmers'
picnics in the mountains, in schoolhouses in small towns, and in
poolrooms where chalked up on the blackboard she often found "Welcome
Susan B. Anthony." She was at home everywhere and ready for anything.
The men liked her short matter-of-fact speeches and her flashes of
wit. Her hopes were high that the friendly people she met would not
fail to vote justice to women.
She grew apprehensive, however, when the newspapers, pressured by
their advertisers, one by one began to ignore woman suffrage. The
Liquor Dealers' League had been sending letters to hotel owners,
grocers, and druggists, as well as to saloons, warning that votes for
women would mean prohibition and would threaten their livelihood. Word
was spread that if women voted not one glass of beer would be sold in
San Francisco. As in Kansas, liquor interests had persuaded
naturalized Irish, Germans, and Swedes to oppose woman suffrage, so
now in California, they appealed to the Chinese.
On election day Susan was in San Francisco with Anna Howard Shaw and
Ellen Sargent, watching and anxiously waiting for the returns. Telling
the story of those last tense hours when women's fate hung in the
balance, Anna Howard Shaw reported, "I shall always remember the
picture of Miss Anthony and the wife of Senator Sargent wandering
around the polls arm in arm at eleven o'clock at night, their tired
faces taking on lines of deeper depression with every minute, for the
count was against us.... When the final counts came in, we found that
we had won the state from the north down to Oakland and from the south
up to San Francisco; but there was not sufficient majority to overcome
the adverse votes of San Francisco and Oakland. In San Francisco the
saloon element and the most aristocratic section ... made an equal
showing against us.... Every Chinese vote was against us."[399]
In spite of defeat in California, Susan had the joy of marking up two
more states for woman suffrage in 1896. Utah was granted statehood
with a woman suffrage provision in its constitution and Idaho's
favorable vote, though contested in the courts, was upheld by the
State Supreme Court. Now women in Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah
were voters.
FOOTNOTES:
[387] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 763.
[388] To Elizabeth Smith Miller, July 25, 1894, Elizabeth Smith Miller
Papers, New York Public Library.
[389] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 788.
[390] _Ibid._, p. 791.
[391] _Ibid._, p. 794.
[392] To Clara Colby, July 22, 1895, Anthony Collection, Henry E.
Huntington Library.
[393] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 842.
[394] N.d., Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library.
[395] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 843.
[396] _Ibid._, pp. 844, 859.
[397] Ms., Diary, July 10, 1896.
[398] Sept. 8, 1896, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library.
[399] Shaw, _The Story of a Pioneer_, pp. 274-275.
AUNT SUSAN AND HER GIRLS
The future of the National American Woman Suffrage Association was
much on Susan's mind. This organization which she had conceived and
nursed through its struggling infancy had grown in numbers and
prestige, and she understood, as no one else could, the importance of
leaving it in the right hands so that it could function successfully
without her.
The young women now in the work, many of them just out of college,
were intelligent, efficient, and confident, and yet as she compared
them with the vivid consecrated women active in the early days of the
movement, she observed in her diary, "[Clarina] Nichols--Paulina
Davis--Lucy Stone--Frances D. Gage--Lucretia Mott & E. C.
Stanton--each without peer among any of our college graduates--young
women of today."[400]
Even so, she appreciated the "young women of today" whom she
affectionately called her girls or her adopted nieces, but she still
held the reins tightly, although they often champed at the bit.
Recognizing, however, that she must choose between personal power and
progress for her cause, she characteristically chose progress. Quick
to appreciate ability and zeal when she saw it, she seldom failed to
make use of it. When Carrie Chapman Catt presented a detailed plan for
a thorough overhauling of the mechanics of the organization, she gave
her approval, remarking drily, "There never yet was a young woman who
did not feel that if she had had the management of the work from the
beginning, the cause would have been carried long ago. I felt just
that way when I was young."[401]
On four of her adopted nieces, Rachel Foster Avery, Anna Howard Shaw,
Harriet Taylor Upton, and Carrie Chapman Catt, Susan felt that the
greater part of her work would fall and be "worthily done."[402] Yet
she feared that in their enthusiasm for efficient organization they
might lose the higher concepts of freedom and justice which had been
the driving force behind her work. Not having learned the lessons of
leadership when the cause was unpopular, they lacked the discipline of
adversity, which bred in the consecrated reformer the wisdom,
tolerance, and vision so necessary for the success of her task. What
they did understand far better than the highly individualistic
pioneers was the value of teamwork, which grew in importance as the
National American Association expanded far beyond the ability of one
person to cope with it.
[Illustration: Rachel Foster Avery]
Probably first in her affections was Rachel Foster Avery, who had been
like a daughter to her since their trip to Europe together in 1883.
The confidence she felt in their friendship was always a comfort.
Rachel's intelligent approach to problems made her an asset at every
meeting, and Susan relied much on her judgment.
In Anna Howard Shaw, ten years older than Rachel, Susan had found the
hardy campaigner and orator for whom she had longed. Anna expressed a
warmth and understanding that most of the younger women lacked, and
best of all she loved the cause as Susan herself loved it. Because of
her close friendship with Susan's niece Lucy, she was regarded as one
of the family, and whenever possible between lectures she stopped over
in Rochester for a good talk with "Aunt Susan."
Harriet Taylor Upton of Warren, Ohio, had enlisted in the ranks in
the 1880s when her father was a member of Congress. Because of her
influence in Washington and Ohio, Harriet was invaluable, and Susan
speedily brought her into the official circle of the National American
Association as treasurer, even thinking of her as a possible
president.[403] Harriet's jovial irrepressible personality readily won
friends, and Susan found her a refreshing and comfortable companion,
able to see a bit of humor in almost every situation. When differences
of opinion at meetings threatened to get out of hand, Harriet could
always be relied on to break the tension with a few witty remarks.
[Illustration: Harriet Taylor Upton]
Carrie Chapman Catt gave every indication of developing into an
outstanding executive. Not another one of Susan's "girls" could so
quickly or so intelligently size up a situation as Carrie, nor could
they so effectively put into action well-thought-out plans. Not as
popular a speaker as the more emotional Anna Howard Shaw, she held her
audiences by her appeal to their intelligence. Tall, handsome, and
well dressed, she never failed to leave a favorable impression. Only
her name irked Susan, and as Susan wrote Clara Colby, "If Catt it must
be then I insist, she should keep her own father's name--Lane--and
not her first husband's name--Chapman,"[404] but the three Cs
intrigued Carrie and she continued to be known as Carrie Chapman Catt.
Now living in the East because her husband's expanding business had
brought him to New York, she was easily accessible, and from her
beautiful new home at Bensonhurst, a suburb of Brooklyn, she carried
on the rapidly growing work of the organization committee until a New
York City office became imperative. In Carrie, Susan recognized
qualities demanded of a leader at this stage of the campaign when
suffragists must learn to be as keen as politicians and as well
organized.
* * * * *
"Spring is not heralded in Washington by the arrival of the robin,"
commented a Washington newspaper, "but by the appearance of Miss
Anthony's red shawl." Susan was still the dominating figure at the
annual woman suffrage conventions. Everyone looked eagerly for the
tall lithe gray-haired woman with a red shawl on her arm or around her
shoulders. Once when Susan appeared on the platform with a new white
crepe shawl, the reporters immediately registered their displeasure by
putting down their pencils. This did not escape her, and always on
good terms with the newsmen and informal with her audiences, she
called out, "Boys, what is the matter?"[405]
"Where is the red shawl?" one of them asked. "No red shawl, no
report."
Enjoying this little by-play, she sent her niece Lucy back to the
hotel for the red shawl, and when Lucy brought it up to the platform
and put it about her shoulders, the audience burst into applause, for
the red shawl, like Susan herself, had become the well-loved symbol of
woman suffrage.
Susan was convinced that the annual national convention should always
be held in Washington, where Congress could see and feel the growing
strength and influence of the movement. Her "girls," on the other
hand, wanted to take their conventions to different parts of the
country to widen their influence. Not as certain as Susan that work
for a federal amendment must come first, many of them contended that a
few more states won for woman suffrage would best help the cause at
this time. The southern women, now active, were firm believers in
states' rights and supported state work.[406] Susan's experience had
taught her the impracticability of direct appeal to the voters in the
states, now that foreign-born men in increasing numbers were arrayed
against votes for women. In spite of her arguments and her pleas, the
National American Association voted in 1894 to hold conventions in
different parts of the country in alternate years. Disappointed, but
trying her best graciously to follow the will of the majority, she
traveled to Atlanta and to Des Moines for the conventions of 1895 and
1897.
Nor did the younger women welcome the messages which Mrs. Stanton, at
Susan's insistence, sent to every convention. Susan herself often
wished her good friend would stick more closely to woman suffrage
instead of introducing extraneous subjects, such as "Educated
Suffrage," "The Matriarchate," or "Women and the Church," but
nevertheless she proudly read her papers to successive conventions.
Insisting that the conventions were too academic, Mrs. Stanton urged
Susan to inject more vitality into them by broadening their platform.
Susan, however, had come to the conclusion that concentration on woman
suffrage was imperative in order to unite all women under one banner
and build up numbers which Congressmen were bound to respect. With
this her "girls" agreed 100 per cent. While all of them were convinced
suffragists, they were divided on other issues, and few of them were
wholehearted feminists, as were Susan and Mrs. Stanton.
* * * * *
With the publication of _The Woman's Bible_ in 1895, Mrs. Stanton
almost upset the applecart, stirring up heated controversy in the
National American Woman Suffrage Association. _The Woman's Bible_ was
a keen and sometimes biting commentary on passages in the Bible
relating to women. It questioned the traditional interpretation which
for centuries has fastened the stigma of inferiority upon women, and
pointed out that the female as well as the male was created in the
image of God. To those who regarded every word of the Bible as
inspired by God, _The Woman's Bible_ was heresy, and both the clergy
and the press stirred up a storm of protest against it. Suffragists
were condemned for compiling a new Bible and were obliged to explain
again and again that _The Woman's Bible_ expressed Mrs. Stanton's
personal views and not those of the movement.
Susan regarded _The Woman's Bible_ as a futile, questionable
digression from the straight path of woman suffrage. To Clara Colby,
who praised it in her _Woman's Tribune_, she wrote, "Of all her great
speeches, I am always proud--but of her Bible commentaries, I am not
proud--either of their spirit or letter.... I could cry a heap--every
time I read or think--if it would undo them--or do anybody or myself
or the cause or Mrs. Stanton any good--they are so entirely unlike her
former self--so flippant and superficial. But she thinks I have gone
over to the enemy--so counts my judgment worth nothing more than that
of any other narrow-souled body.... But I shall love and honor her to
the end--whether her _Bible_ please me or not. So I hope she will do
for me."[407]
She was, however, wholly unprepared for the rebellion staged by her
"girls" at the Washington convention of 1896, when, led by Rachel
Foster Avery, they repudiated _The Woman's Bible_ and proposed a
resolution declaring that their organization had no connection with
it. This was clear proof to Susan that her "girls" lacked tolerance
and wisdom. Listening to the debate, she was heartsick. Anna Howard
Shaw and Mrs. Catt as well as Alice Stone Blackwell spoke for the
resolution. Only a few raised their voices against it, among them her
sister Mary, Clara Colby, Mrs. Blake, and a young woman new to the
ranks, Charlotte Perkins Stetson.
Susan was presiding, and leaving the chair to express her opinions,
she firmly declared, "To pass such a resolution is to set back the
hands on the dial of reform.... We have all sorts of people in the
Association and ... a Christian has no more right on our platform than
an atheist. When this platform is too narrow for all to stand on, I
shall not be on it.... Who is to set up a line? Neither you nor I can
tell but Mrs. Stanton will come out triumphant and that this will be
the great thing done in woman's cause. Lucretia Mott at first thought
Mrs. Stanton had injured the cause of woman's rights by insisting on
the demand for woman suffrage, but she had sense enough not to pass a
resolution about it....[408]
"Are you going to cater to the whims and prejudices of people?" she
asked them. "We draw out from other people our own thought. If, when
you go out to organize, you go with a broad spirit, you will create
and call out breadth and toleration. You had better organize one woman
on a broad platform than 10,000 on a narrow platform of intolerance
and bigotry."
Her voice tense with emotion, she concluded, "This resolution adopted
will be a vote of censure upon a woman who is without a peer in
intellectual and statesmanlike ability; one who has stood for half a
century the acknowledged leader of progressive thought and demand in
regard to all matters pertaining to the absolute freedom of
women."[409]
When the resolution was adopted 53 to 40, she was so disappointed in
her "girls" and so hurt by their defiance that she was tempted to
resign. Hurrying to New York after the convention to talk with Mrs.
Stanton, she found her highly indignant and insistent that they both
resign from the ungrateful organization which had repudiated the women
to whom it owed its existence. The longer Susan considered taking this
step, the less she felt able to make the break. She severely
reprimanded Mrs. Catt, Rachel, Harriet Upton, and Anna, telling them
they were setting up an inquisition.
Finally she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "No, my dear, instead of my resigning
and leaving those half-fledged chickens without any mother, I think it
my duty and the duty of yourself and all the liberals to be at the
next convention and try to reverse this miserable narrow action."[410]
To a reporter who wanted her views on _The Woman's Bible_, she made it
plain that she had no part in writing the book, but added, "I think
women have just as good a right to interpret and twist the Bible to
their own advantage as men have always twisted it and turned it to
theirs. It was written by men, and therefore its reference to women
reflects the light in which they were regarded in those days. In the
same way the history of our Revolutionary War was written, in which
very little is said of the noble deeds of women, though we know how
they stood by and helped the great work; it is so with history all
through."[411]
* * * * *