reminiscences, spurred on by the fact that Mrs. Stanton, Mary
Livermore, and Julia Ward Howe were writing theirs. There were also
other good reasons for putting her to work at this task. Writing would
keep her safely at home and away from the strenuous work in the field
which they feared was sapping her strength. It would keep her well
occupied so that they could develop the work and the conventions in
their own way.
Susan put off this task from month to month and from year to year,
torn between her desire to leave a true record of her work and her
longing to be always in the thick of the suffrage fight. Finally she
began looking about for a collaborator, convinced that she herself
could never write an interesting line. Ida Husted Harper, with her
newspaper experience and her interest in the cause, seemed the logical
choice, and in the spring of 1897, she came to 17 Madison Street to
work on the biography.[412]
The attic had been remodeled for workrooms and here Susan now spent
her days with Mrs. Harper, trying to reconstruct the past. She had
definite ideas about how the book should be written, holding up as a
model the biography of William Lloyd Garrison recently written by his
children. Mrs. Harper also had high standards, and influenced by
the formalities of the day, edited Susan's vivid brusque
letters--hurriedly written and punctuated with dashes--so that they
conformed with her own easy but more formal style. To this Susan
readily consented, for she always depreciated her own writing ability.
On one point, however, she was adamant, that her story be told without
dwelling upon the disagreements among the old workers.
The household was geared to the "bog," as they called the biography.
Mary, supervising as usual, watched over their meals and the housework
with the aid of a young rosy-cheeked Canadian girl, Anna Dann, who had
recently come to work for them and whom they at once took to their
hearts, making her one of the family. Soon another young girl,
Genevieve Hawley from Fort Scott, Kansas, was employed to help with
the endless copying, sorting of letters, and pasting of scrapbooks,
and with the current correspondence which piled up and diverted Susan
from the book.[413] Through 1897 and 1898, they worked at top speed.
_The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, A Story of the Evolution of
the Status of Women_, in two volumes, by Ida Husted Harper, was
published by the Bowen Merrill Company of Indianapolis just before
Christmas 1898. Happy as a young girl out of school, Susan inscribed
copies for her many friends and eagerly watched for reviews, pleased
with the favorable comments in newspapers and magazines throughout
this country and Europe.[414]
* * * * *
By this time the Cuban rebellion was crowding all other news out of
the papers, and Susan followed it closely, for this struggle for
freedom instantly won her sympathy. She hoped that Spain under
pressure from the United States might be persuaded to give Cuba her
independence, but the blowing up of the battleship _Maine_ and the war
cries of the press and of a faction in Congress led to armed
intervention in April 1898. Always opposed to war as a means of
settling disputes, she wrote Rachel, "To think of the mothers of this
nation sitting back in silence without even the power of a legal
protest--while their sons are taken without a by-your-leave! Well all
through--it is barbarous ... and I hope you and all our young women
will rouse to work as never before--and get the women of the Republic
clothed with the power of control of conditions in peace--or when it
shall come again--which Heaven forbid--in war."[415]
Not only did she express these sentiments in letters to her friends,
but in a public meeting, where only patriotic fervor and flag-waving
were welcome, she dared criticize the unsanitary army camps and the
greed and graft which deprived soldiers of wholesome food. "There
isn't a mother in the land," she declared, "who wouldn't know that a
shipload of typhoid stricken soldiers would need cots to lie on and
fuel to cook with, and that a swamp was not a desirable place in which
to pitch a camp.... What the government needs at such a time is not
alone bacteriologists and army officers but also women who know how to
take care of sick boys and have the common sense to surround them with
sanitary conditions."[416] At this her audience, at first hostile,
burst into applause.
More and more disturbed by the inefficient care of the wounded and the
feeding of enlisted men, she wrote Rachel, "Every day's reports and
comments about the war only show the need of women at the front--not
as employees permitted to be there because they begged to be--but
there by right--as managers and dictators in all departments in which
women have been trained--those of feeding and caring for in health and
nursing the sick."[417]
The war over, the problem of governing the Philippines, Puerto Rico,
and Hawaii was of great interest to her, and she at once asked for the
enfranchisement of the women of these newly won island possessions.
She regarded it as an outrage for the most democratic nation in the
world to foist upon them an exclusively masculine government, a "male
oligarchy," as she called it. "I really believe I shall explode," she
wrote Clara Colby, "if some of you young women don't wake up and raise
your voice in protest.... I wonder if when I am under the sod--or
cremated and floating in the air--I shall have to stir you and others
up. How can you not be all on fire?"[418]
The unwillingness of her "girls" to relate woman suffrage to
contemporary public affairs such as this, repeatedly disappointed her.
Yet she was well aware that the younger generation would never see the
work through her eyes, or exactly follow her pattern.
* * * * *
Disappointed that her National American Woman Suffrage Association did
not attract members as did the W.C.T.U. or the General Federation of
Women's Clubs, she confessed to Clara Colby, "It is the disheartening
part of my life that so very few women will work for the emancipation
of their own half of the race."[419] Watching women flock into these
other organizations and contributing to all sorts of charities, she
was obliged to admit that "very few are capable of seeing that the
cause of nine-tenths of all the misfortunes which come to women, and
to men also, lies in the subjection of women, and therefore the
important thing is to lay the ax at the root."[420]
She also discovered that it was one thing to build up a large
organization and another to keep women so busy with pressing work for
the cause that they did not find time to expend their energies on the
mechanics of organization. Not only did she chafe at the red tape most
of them spun, but she often felt that they were too prone to linger in
academic by-ways, listening to speeches and holding pleasant
conventions. Since the California campaign of 1896, only one state,
Washington, had been roused to vote on a woman suffrage amendment,
which was defeated and only one more state Delaware had granted women
the right to vote for members of school boards.
Again and again she warned her "girls" that some kind of action on
woman suffrage by Congress every year was important. A hearing, a
committee report, a debate, or even an unfavorable vote would, she was
convinced, do more to stir up the whole nation than all the speakers
and organizers that could be sent through the country.
Such thoughts as these, relative to the work which was always on her
mind, she dashed off to one after another of her young colleagues.
"Your letters sound like a trumpet blast," wrote Anna Howard Shaw,
grateful for her counsel. "They read like St. Paul's Epistles to the
Romans, so strong, so clear, so full of courage."[421]
At seventy-eight, Susan realized that the time was approaching when
she must make up her mind to turn over to a younger woman the
presidency of the National American Association, and during the summer
of 1898 she announced to her executive committee that she would retire
on her eightieth birthday in 1900.
FOOTNOTES:
[400] Ms., Diary, Nov. 7, 1895
[401] Mary Gray Peck, _Carrie Chapman Catt_ (New York, 1944), p. 84.
[402] Ms., Diary, Nov. 27, 1895.
[403] To Mrs. Upton, Sept. 5, 1890, University of Rochester Library,
Rochester, New York.
[404] Feb. 10, 1894, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library.
[405] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1113.
[406] Miss Anthony's first attempt to win Southern women to suffrage
was at the time of the New Orleans Exposition in 1885. Because of her
reputation as an abolitionist, she had much resistance to overcome in
the South.
[407] Dec. 18, 1895, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library.
[408] _Woman's Tribune_, Feb. 1, 1896.
[409] _History of Woman Suffrage_, IV, p. 264.
[410] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 855. The action of the National
American Woman Suffrage Association on the Woman's Bible was never
reversed.
[411] _Ibid._, p. 856.
[412] Susan thought seriously of Clara Colby as a collaborator but
concluded she was too involved with the _Woman's Tribune_. Susan
agreed to share royalties with Mrs. Harper on the biography and any
other work on which they might collaborate. On her 75th birthday
Susan's girls had presented her with an annuity of $800 a year. This
made it possible for her to give up lecturing and concentrate on her
book.
[413] Genevieve Hawley left an interesting record of these years in
letters to her aunt, many of which are preserved in the Susan B.
Anthony Memorial Collection in Rochester, New York.
[414] Both the New York _Herald_ and Chicago _Inter-Ocean_ gave the
book full-page reviews. A third volume was published in 1908.
[415] Aug. 10, 1898, Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress.
[416] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1121.
[417] Aug. 10, 1898, Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress.
[418] Dec. 17, 1898, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library.
Clara Colby, making her headquarters in Washington, kept Susan
informed on developments and they carried on an animated, voluminous
correspondence during these years.
[419] March 12, 1894, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library.
[420] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 920.
[421] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 924.
PASSING ON THE TORCH
The last year of Susan's presidency was particularly precious to her.
In a sense it represented her farewell to the work she had carried on
most of her life, and at the same time it was also the hopeful
beginning of the period leading to victory. Yet she had no illusion of
speedy or easy success for her "girls" and she did her best to prepare
them for the obstacles they would inevitably meet. She warned them not
to expect their cause to triumph merely because it was just.
"Governments," she told them, "never do any great good things from
mere principle, from mere love of justice.... You expect too much of
human nature when you expect that."[422]
The movement had reached an impasse. The temper of Congress, as shown
by the admission of Hawaii as a territory without woman suffrage, was
both indifferent and hostile. That this attitude did not express the
will of the American people, she was firmly convinced. It was due, she
believed, to the political influence of powerful groups opposed to
woman suffrage--the liquor interests controlling the votes of
increasing numbers of immigrants, machine politicians fearful of
losing their power, and financial interests whose conservatism
resisted any measure which might upset the status quo. How to
undermine this opposition was now her main problem, and she saw no
other way but persistent agitation through a more active, more
effective, ever-growing woman suffrage organization, reaching a wider
cross section of the people. She herself had established a press
bureau which was feeding interesting factual articles on woman
suffrage to newspapers throughout the country, for as she wrote Mrs.
Colby, the suffrage cause "needs to picture its demands in the daily
papers where the unconverted can see them rather than in special
papers where only those already converted can see them."[423]
Of greatest importance to her was winning the support of organized
labor. Samuel Gompers, the president of the American Federation of
Labor, had already shown his friendliness toward equal pay and votes
for women and was putting women organizers in the field to speed the
unionization of women. Even so she was surprised at the enthusiasm
with which she was received at the American Federation of Labor
convention in 1899, when the four hundred delegates by a rising vote
adopted a strong resolution urging favorable action on a federal woman
suffrage amendment.
So far as possible she had always established friendly relations with
labor organizations, first in 1869 with William H. Sylvis's National
Labor Union and then with the Knights of Labor and their leader,
Terrence V. Powderly.[424] When Eugene V. Debs, president of the
American Railway Union, was arrested during the Pullman strike in 1894
for defying a court injunction, she did not rate him, as so many did,
a dangerous radical, but as an earnest reformer, crusading for an
unpopular cause. They had met years before in Terre Haute, where at
his request she had lectured on woman suffrage, and immediately they
had won each other's sympathy and respect. She did not see indications
of anarchy in the Pullman and Homestead strikes or in the Haymarket
riot, but regarded them as an unfortunate phase of an industrial
revolution which in time would improve the relations of labor and
capital.
That women would be effected by this industrial revolution was obvious
to her, and she wanted them to understand it and play their part in
it. For this reason she saw the importance of keeping the National
American Woman Suffrage Association informed on all developments
affecting wage-earning women and to her delight she found three young
suffragists wide awake on this subject. One of them, Florence Kelley,
had joined forces with that remarkable young woman, Jane Addams, in
her valuable social experiment, Hull House, in the slums of Chicago,
and was now devoting herself to improving the working conditions of
women and children. She represented a new trend in thought and
work--social service--which made a great appeal to college women and
set in motion labor legislation designed to protect women and
children. Another young woman of promise, Gail Laughlin, pioneering as
a lawyer, approached the subject from the feminist viewpoint, seeking
protection for women not through labor legislation based on sex, but
through trade unions, the vote, equal pay, and a wider recognition of
women's right to contract for their labor on the same terms as men.
Her survey of women's working conditions, presented at a convention of
the National American Association was so valuable and attracted so
much attention that she was appointed to the United States Labor
Commission. Harriot Stanton Blatch also understood the significance of
the industrial revolution and woman's part in it, and she too opposed
labor legislation based on sex. Coming from England occasionally to
visit her mother in New York, she brought her liberal viewpoint into
woman suffrage conventions with a flare of oratory matching that of
her gifted parents. "The more I see of her," Susan remarked to a
friend, "the more I feel the greatness of her character."[425]
* * * * *
Although it was Susan's intention to hew to the line of woman suffrage
and not to comment publicly on controversial issues, she could not
keep silent when confronted with injustice. Religious intolerance,
bigotry, and racial discrimination always forced her to take a stand,
regardless of the criticism she might bring on herself.
The treatment of the Negro in both the North and the South was always
of great concern to her, and during the 1890s, when a veritable
epidemic of lynchings and race riots broke out, she expressed herself
freely in Rochester newspapers. She noted the dangerous trend as
indicated by new anti-Negro societies and the limitation of membership
to white Americans in the Spanish-American War veterans' organization.
Whenever the opportunity presented itself, she put into practice her
own sincere belief in race equality. During every Washington
convention, she arranged to have one of her good speakers occupy the
pulpit of a Negro church, and in the South she made it a point to
speak herself in Negro churches and schools and before their
organizations, even though this might prejudice southerners. In her
own home, she gladly welcomed the Negro lecturers and educators who
came to Rochester. This seeking out of the Negro in friendliness was a
religious duty to her and a pleasure. She demanded of everyone
employed in her household, respectful treatment of Negro guests. She
rejoiced when she saw Negroes in the audience at woman suffrage
conventions in Washington, and it gave her great satisfaction to hear
Mary Church Terrell, a beautiful intelligent Negro who had been
educated at Oberlin and in Europe, making speeches which equaled and
even surpassed those of the most eloquent white suffragists.
* * * * *
Susan did not fail to keep in touch with the international feminist
movement, and in the summer of 1899, when she was seventy-nine years
old, she headed the United States delegation to the International
Council of Women, meeting in London. Visiting Harriot Stanton Blatch
at her home in Basingstoke, she first conferred with the leading
British feminists, bringing herself up to date on the progress of
their cause. In England as in the United States, the burden of the
suffrage campaign had shifted from the shoulders of the pioneers to
their daughters, and they were carrying on with vigor, pressing for
the passage of a franchise bill in the House of Commons.
Moving on to London, she was acclaimed as she had been at the World's
Fair in Chicago. "The papers here have been going wild over Miss
Anthony, declaring her to be the most unaggressive woman suffragist
ever seen," reported a journalist to his newspaper in the United
States.
From China, India, New Zealand, and Australia, from South Africa,
Palestine, Persia, and the Argentine, as well as from Europe and the
United States, women had come to London to discuss their progress and
their problems, and Susan, pointing out to them the goal toward which
they must head, declared with confidence, "The day will come when man
will recognize woman as his peer, not only at the fireside but in the
councils of the nation. Then, and not until then, will there be the
perfect comradeship ... between the sexes that shall result in the
highest development of the race."[426]
She had hoped that Queen Victoria would receive the delegates at
Windsor Castle, thus indicating her approval of the International
Council. She longed to talk with this woman who had ruled so long and
so well. That a queen sat on the throne of England, this in itself was
important to her and she wanted to express her gratitude, although she
was well aware that the Queen had never used her influence for the
improvement of laws relating to women. She had hoped to convince her
of the need of votes for women, but Queen Victoria never gave her the
opportunity. All that influential Englishwomen were able to arrange
was the admission of the delegates to the courtyard of Windsor Castle
to watch the Queen start on her drive and to tea in the banquet room
without the Queen.
[Illustration: Carrie Chapman Catt]
* * * * *
Returning home late in August 1899, Susan began at once to make
definite plans to turn over the presidency of the National American
Woman Suffrage Association to a younger woman. Although she well knew
that the choice of her successor was actually in the hands of the
membership, it was her intention to do what she could within the
bounds of democratic procedure to insure the best possible leadership.
To fill the office, she turned instinctively to Anna Howard Shaw whom
she loved more dearly as the years went by and whose selfless devotion
to the cause she trusted implicitly. Yet Anna, in spite of her many
qualifications, lacked a few which were exceptional in Carrie Chapman
Catt--creative executive ability, diplomacy, a talent for working with
people, directing them, and winning their devotion. With growing
admiration, Susan had been watching Mrs. Catt's indefatigable work in
the states where she had been building up active branches. Her flare
for raising money was outstanding, and Susan realized, as few others
did, the crying need of funds for the campaigns ahead. In addition
Mrs. Catt had no personal financial worries, for her husband,
successful in business, was sympathetic to her work. Anna, on the
other hand, would have to support herself by lecturing and carry as
well the burden of the presidency of a rapidly growing organization.
Anna made the decision for Susan. She urged the candidacy of Mrs.
Catt, although her highest ambition had always been to succeed her
beloved Aunt Susan. As she later confessed to Susan, this was a
personal sacrifice which cost her many a heartache, but she "honestly
felt that Mrs. Catt was better fitted ... as well as freer to go into
an unpaid field."[427] Susan therefore approached Mrs. Catt through
Rachel and Harriet Upton, and was relieved when she consented to stand
for election.
Rumors of Susan's retirement aroused ambitions in Lillie Devereux
Blake, who from the point of seniority and devoted work in New York
was regarded as being next in line for the presidency by Mrs. Stanton
and Mrs. Colby. Unable to visualize Mrs. Blake as the leader of this
large organization with its diverse strong personalities, Susan
nevertheless conceded her right to compete for the office. Although
she appreciated Mrs. Blake's valuable work for the cause, there never
had been understanding or sympathy between them. Temperamentally the
blunt stern New Englander with untiring drive had little in common
with the southern beauty turned reformer.
A change in the presidency needed wise and patient handling as
personal ambitions, prejudices, and misunderstandings reared their
heads. When there were murmurings of secession among a small group if
Mrs. Catt were elected, Susan wrote Mrs. Colby that such talk was
"very immature, very despotic, very undemocratic," and she hoped she
was not one of the malcontents.[428]
Another problem was the future of the organization committee which
under Mrs. Catt's chairmanship had carried on a large part of the
work. Its influence was considerable and could readily develop so as
to conflict with that of the officers, thus threatening the unity of
the whole organization. To dissolve the committee seemed to Susan and
her closest advisors the wisest procedure. Mary Garrett Hay, who had
worked closely with Mrs. Catt on the organization committee, opposed
this plan, but after earnest discussion the officers, including Mrs.
Catt, agreed to dissolve the organization committee.
* * * * *
As Susan appeared on the platform at the opening session of the
Washington convention in February 1900, there was thunderous applause
from an audience tense with emotion at the thought of losing the
leader who had guided them for so many years. The tall gray-haired
woman in black satin, with soft rich lace at her throat and the
proverbial red shawl about her shoulders, had become the symbol of
their cause. Now, as she looked down upon them with a friendly smile
and motherly tenderness, tears came to their eyes, and they wanted to
remember always just how she looked at that moment. Then she broke the
tension with a call to duty, a summons to press for the federal
amendment, and one more plea that they always hold their annual
conventions in the national capital.