X. THE NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1890…

X. THE NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1890

The winter of 1890 brought the usual crowd of eminent women to Washington to attend the Twenty-second national convention of the suffrage association, February 18-21. As the president, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was to start for Europe on the 19th, the congressional hearings took place previous to the convention and consisted only of her address. The Senate hearing on February 8 was held for the first time in the new room set apart for the Select Committee on Woman Suffrage, but much objection was made because on account of its size only a small audience could be admitted. Senators Vance, Farwell, Blair and John B. Allen of the new State of Washington were present. Mrs. Stanton said in part:

For almost a quarter of a century a body of intelligent and law-abiding women have held annual conventions in Washington and made their appeals before committees of the House and the Senate, asking to be recognized as citizens of this Republic. A whole generation of distinguished members, who have each in turn given us aid and encouragement, have passed away--Seward, Sumner, Wilson, Giddings, Wade, Garfield, Morton and Sargent--with Hamlin, Butler and Julian still living, have all declared our demands just, our arguments unanswerable.

In consulting at an early day as to the form in which our claims should be presented, some said by an amendment to the Constitution, others said the Constitution as it is, in spirit and letter, is broad enough to protect the rights of every citizen under our flag. But when the war came and we saw that it took three amendments to make the slaves of the South full-fledged citizens, we thought it would take at least one to make woman's calling and election sure. So we asked for a Sixteenth Amendment. But learned lawyers, Judges and Congressmen took the ground that women were already enfranchised by the Fourteenth Amendment. The House minority report in 1871, signed by Benjamin F. Butler and William Loughridge, held that view. It is an able, unanswerable argument on the whole question, based on the oft-repeated principles of the Republican party at that time. It stands to-day a living monument of the grossest inconsistencies of which the Republican party ever was guilty.[76] ...

We can not play fast and loose with the eternal principle of justice without being caught sooner or later in the net of our own weaving. The legitimate results of the war have been all frittered away by political maneuvering. While Northern statesmen have made a football of the rights of 12,000,000 women as voters, and by Supreme Court decisions driven them from the polls, why arraign the men in the South for treating 1,000,000 freedmen in the same way? Are the rights of that class of citizens more sacred than ours? Are the violations of the fundamental principles of our Government in their case more dangerous than in ours?...

In addressing those who already enjoy the right of suffrage, one naturally would suppose that it would not be necessary to enlarge on the advantages of having a voice in deciding the laws and the rulers under which one lives. And neither would it if each member of this committee understood that woman's wants and needs are similar to his own; that the cardinal virtues belong to her as well as to him; that personal dignity, the power of self-protection, are as important for her as for him; that woman loves justice, equality, liberty, and wishes the right to give her consent to the Government under which she lives, as much as man does. Matthew Arnold says: "The first desire of every cultured mind is to take part in the great work of government." ...

If we would rouse new respect for womanhood in the hearts of the masses, we must place woman in a position to respect herself, which she can never do as long as her political status is beneath that of the most degraded, ignorant classes of men. To make women the political equals of their sons, or even of their gardeners and coachmen, would add new dignity to their position; and to change our laws and constitutions in harmony with the new status would have its influence on the large class of young men now devoting themselves to the study of the law. Lord Brougham said long ago that the Common Law of England for women, and all the statutes based on such principles, were a disgrace to the Christianity and civilization of the nineteenth century. Do you think our sons can rise from such studies with a high ideal of womanhood? And with what feelings do you suppose women themselves read these laws, and the articles in the State constitutions, rating them with the disreputable and feeble-minded classes? Can you not understand the dignity, the pride, the new-born self-respect which would thrill the hearts of the women of this nation in their enfranchisement? It would elevate their sphere of action and every department of labor in which they are occupied; it would give new force to their words as teachers, reformers and missionaries, new strength to their work as guardians of the young, the wayward and the unfortunate. It would transform them from slaves to sovereigns, crowned with the rights of citizenship, with the ballot, that scepter of power, in their own right hands....

If there are any who do not wish to vote, that is the strongest reason for their enfranchisement. If all love of liberty has been quenched in their souls by their degraded condition, the duties of citizenship and the responsibility of self-government should be laid upon them at once, for their pitiful indifference is merely the result of their disfranchisement. Would that I could awake in the minds of my countrywomen the full significance of this demand for the right of suffrage; what it is to be queens in their own right, intrusted with the power of self-government, possessed of all the privileges and immunities of American citizens....

Whoever heard of an heir apparent to a throne in the Old World abdicating her rights because some conservative politician or austere bishop doubted woman's capacity to govern? History affords no such example. Those who have had the right to a throne have invariably taken possession of it and, against intriguing cardinals, ambitious nobles and jealous kinsmen, fought even to the death to maintain the royal prerogatives which by inheritance were theirs. When I hear American women, descendants of Jefferson, Hancock and Adams, say they do not want to vote, I feel that the blood of the revolutionary heroes must long since have ceased to flow in their veins.

Suppose when the day dawned for Victoria to be crowned Queen of England she had gone before the House of Commons and begged that such terrible responsibilities might not be laid upon her, declaring that she had not the moral stamina nor intellectual ability for the position; that her natural delicacy and refinement shrank from the encounter; that she was looking forward to the all-absorbing duties of domestic life, to a husband, children, home, to her influence in the social circle where the Christian graces are best employed. Suppose with a tremulous voice and a few stray tears in her blue eyes, her head drooping on one side, she had said she knew nothing of the science of government; that a crown did not befit a woman's brow; that she had not the physical strength even to wave her nation's flag, much less to hold the scepter of power over so vast an empire; that in case of war she could not fight and hence could not reign, as there must be force behind the throne, and this force must be centered in the hand which governed. What would her Parliament have thought? What would other nations have thought?...

None of you would admit, honorable gentlemen, that all the great principles of government which center round our theories of justice, liberty and equality in favor of individual sovereignty have not as yet produced as high a type of womanhood as has a monarchy in the Old World. We have a large number of women as well fitted as Victoria for the most responsible positions in the Government, who could fill the highest places with equal dignity and wisdom.

There is no subject more intensely interesting to men than the science of government, and when their wives are intelligent on all the questions it comprises they will be far more valuable companions than they are to-day. Marriage means companionship, a similarity of tastes and opinions, and where one of the parties has no interest in or knowledge of those subjects most absorbing to the other, the bonds of union necessarily are weakened. So long as woman's thought is centered in personal and family aggrandizement, her strongest influence will be used to keep man's interest there also. The virtue of patriotism would be far greater among men, their devotion to the public good far more earnest, if the influences of home life were not continually drawing them into a narrow selfishness.

Women naturally take no interest in questions where their opinions have no weight, in a sphere of action from which they are excluded. They are not supposed to know what is necessary for the public good, hence how could they influence their husbands to make that their first duty when in public life? But when women are enfranchised their interest in the State will deepen. They will see that the welfare of their own children depends as much on the conditions of the outside world as on the environments of their own homes. This settled discontent of women is exerting an insidious influence which is undermining the very foundations of the home as well as the State. We must rouse them to new hopes, new ambitions, new aspirations, through the enjoyment of the blessings of freedom and self-government.

Moreover, an active participation in the practical duties of government by educated women would bring a new and needed element to the State. We can not overestimate the influence women exert, whether for good or ill, hence the immense importance of their having right views on all questions of public interest and some knowledge of the requirements of practical politics. But their power to-day is wholly irresponsible and hence dangerous. Lay on them the responsibility of legislating, with all the criticism and odium of a constituency and a party, in case they make some blunder, and you render them wiser in judgment and more deliberate in action. To secure this large disfranchised class as allies to one of the leading parties would be a wise measure for that party and bring a new element of morality and intelligence into the body politic. Women are now taking a more active part in public affairs than ever before and, with political freedom, always will be the reserved moral power to sustain great men in their best endeavors.

An interesting conversation followed. Chairman Zebulon B. Vance (N. C.) asked Mrs. Stanton if women would be willing to go to war if they had the ballot. She answered that they would decide whether there should be war. He inquired whether women would not lose their refining influence and moral qualities if they engaged in men's work. She replied that there would have to be a definition of "men's work" and that she found the latter in many avocations, such as washing, cooking, and selling needles and tape, which might be considered the work of women. "The moral qualities," she said, "are more apt to grow when a human being is useful, and they increase in the woman who helps to support the family rather than in the one who gives herself to idleness and fashionable frivolities. The consideration of questions of legislation, finance, free trade, etc., certainly would not degrade woman, nor is her refinement so evanescent a virtue that it could be swept away by some work which she might do with her hands. Queen Victoria looked as dignified and refined in opening Parliament as any lady one ever had seen."

Miss Susan B. Anthony, who was never so happy as when her beloved friend was scoring a victory, said there would always be a division of labor, in time of war as in time of peace. Women would do their share in the hospitals and elsewhere, and if they were enfranchised, the only difference would be that they would be paid for their services and pensioned at the close of the war. Mrs. Colby reminded the committee that the report of the U. S. Commissioner of Labor showed that the largest proportion of immoral women came from home life and the more feminine occupations.

Mrs. Stanton drew from the chairman the admission that his wife wanted the franchise, and he laughingly admitted that he had had the worst of the discussion. Senator Allen expressed himself in favor of woman suffrage, and Senator Charles B. Farwell said, "The suffragists have logic, argument, everything on their side."

Another heaping was granted by the Senate Committee, February 24, when they were addressed by the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, Mrs. Sallie Clay Bennett, Mrs. Virginia L. Minor and Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby.

Later in the session Senator Henry W. Blair (N. H.) presented the majority report of the Committee (No. 1576), the usual strong, dignified statement. It closed as follows: "To deny the submission of this joint resolution to the action of the Legislatures of the States is analogous to the denial of the right of justice in the courts. It is to say that no plaintiff shall bring his suit; no claimant of justice shall be heard; and whatever may be the result to the friends of woman suffrage when they reach the Legislatures of the States, it is, in our belief, the duty of Congress to submit the joint resolution and give them the opportunity to try their case."

Mrs. Stanton presented the same address before the House Judiciary Committee, February 11, with the result that for the first time in history a majority House report in favor of a Sixteenth Amendment was submitted. It was presented by Lucien B. Caswell (Wis.) and said in conclusion: "The disfranchisement of twelve millions of people, who are citizens of the United States, should command from us an immediate action. Since the women of this country are unjustly deprived of a right so essential to complete citizenship in a republic as the elective franchise, common justice requires that we should submit the proposition for a change in the fundamental law to the State Legislatures, where the correction can be made."[77]

The fiftieth birthday of Susan B. Anthony had been celebrated in New York City in 1870 by a large number of prominent men and women, the first instance of the kind on record. It had been decided by her friends that her seventieth birthday should receive a similar recognition, but that it should be more national in character. The arrangements were made by Mrs. May Wright Sewall and Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery, and on the evening of February 15 a distinguished company of two hundred sat around the banquet tables in the great dining-room of the Riggs House. Miss Anthony occupied the place of honor, on her right Senator Blair and Mrs. Stanton, on her left Robert Purvis, Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker and Mrs. Sewall, who presided. In addition to the after-dinner speeches of these distinguished guests there were clever and sparkling responses to toasts by the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage, Miss Phoebe W. Couzins, the Rev. Frederick A. Hinckley, Representative J. A. Pickler (S. D.), Mrs. Colby, Mrs. Stanton's two daughters--Mrs. Harriot Blatch and Mrs. Margaret Lawrence--Mrs. Laura Ormiston Chant of England, and others. Mrs. Stanton began her address by saying: "If there is one part of my life which gives me more intense satisfaction than another, it is my friendship of more than forty years' standing with Susan B. Anthony." The key-note to Miss Anthony's touching response was struck in the opening sentence: "The thing I most hope for is that, should I stay on this planet twenty years longer, I still may be worthy of the wonderful respect you have manifested for me to-night."

Among the more than two hundred letters, poems and telegrams received were those of George William Curtis, William Lloyd Garrison, John G. Whittier, George F. Hoar, Lucy Stone, Frances E. Willard, Speaker Thomas B. Reed, Mrs. John A. Logan, Thomas W. Palmer, the Rev. Olympia Brown, Harriet Hosmer, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Alice Williams Brotherton, Charles Nordhoff, Frank G. Carpenter, U. S. Senator Henry L. Dawes, Neal Dow, Laura M. Johns, T. V. Powderly and Leonora M. Barry. Most of the prominent newspapers in the country contained editorial congratulations, and the Woman's Tribune issued a special birthday edition.

The convention opened in Metzerott's Music Hall, February 18, 1890, continuing four days. The feature of this occasion which will distinguish it in history was the formal union of the National and the American Associations under the joint name. For the past twenty-one years two distinctive societies had been in existence, both national as to scope but differing as to methods. Negotiations had been in progress for several years toward a uniting of the forces and, the preliminaries having been satisfactorily arranged by committees from the two bodies,[78] the officers and members of both participated in this national convention of 1890.

Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the newly-elected president of the united societies, faced a brilliant assemblage of men and women as she arose to make the opening address. Having declared that in going to England as president of the National-American Association she felt more honored than if sent as minister plenipotentiary of the United States, she spoke to a set of resolutions which she presented to the convention.[79] After reviewing the history of the movement for the rights of woman and naming some of its brilliant leaders she said:

For fifty years we have been plaintiffs in the courts of justice, but as the bench, the bar and the jury are all men, we are nonsuited every time. Some men tell us we must be patient and persuasive; that we must be womanly. My friends, what is man's idea of womanliness? It is to have a manner which pleases him--quiet, deferential, submissive, approaching him as a subject does a master. He wants no self-assertion on our part, no defiance, no vehement arraignment of him as a robber and a criminal. While the grand motto, "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God," has echoed and re-echoed around the globe, electrifying the lovers of liberty in every latitude and making crowned heads tremble on their thrones; while every right achieved by the oppressed has been wrung from tyrants by force; while the darkest page on human history is the outrages on women--shall men still tell us to be patient, persuasive, womanly?

What do we know as yet of the womanly? The women we have seen thus far have been, with rare exceptions, the mere echoes of men. Man has spoken in the State, the Church and the Home, and made the codes, creeds and customs which govern every relation in life, and women have simply echoed all his thoughts and walked in the paths he prescribed. And this they call womanly! When Joan of Arc led the French army to victory I dare say the carpet knights of England thought her unwomanly. When Florence Nightingale, in search of blankets for the soldiers in the Crimean War, cut her way through all orders and red tape, commanded with vehemence and determination those who guarded the supplies to "unlock the doors and not talk to her of proper authorities when brave men were shivering in their beds," no doubt she was called unwomanly. To me, "unlock the doors" sounds better than any words of circumlocution, however sweet and persuasive, and I consider that she took the most womanly way of accomplishing her object. Patience and persuasiveness are beautiful virtues in dealing with children and feeble-minded adults, but those who have the gift of reason and understand the principles of justice, it is our duty to compel to act up to the highest light that is in them, and as promptly as possible.

Mrs. Stanton urged that women should have more power in church management, saying:

As women are taking an active part in pressing on the consideration of Congress many narrow sectarian measures, such as more rigid Sunday laws, the stopping of travel, the distribution of the mail on that day, and the introduction of the name of God into the Constitution; and as this action on the part of some women is used as an argument for the disfranchisement of all, I hope this convention will declare that the Woman Suffrage Association is opposed to all union of Church and State, and pledges itself as far as possible to maintain the secular nature of our Government. As Sunday is the only day that the laboring man can escape from the cities, to stop the street-cars, omnibuses and railroad trains would indeed be a lamentable exercise of arbitrary authority. No, no, the duty of the State is to protect those who do the work of the world, in the largest liberty, and instead of shutting them up in their gloomy tenement houses on Sunday, to open wide the parks, horticultural gardens, museums, libraries, galleries of art and the music halls where they can listen to the divine melodies of the great masters.

She demanded that women declare boldly and decisively on all the vital issues of the day, and said:

In this way we make ourselves mediums through which the great souls of the past may speak again. The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life flow no longer into our souls. Every truth we see is ours to give the world, not to keep for ourselves alone, for in so doing we cheat humanity out of their rights and check our own development.

As Mrs. Stanton finished she introduced her daughter, Mrs. Blatch, a resident of England, who in a few impressive remarks showed that on the great socialistic questions of the day--capital and labor, woman suffrage, race prejudice--England was liberal and the United States conservative; that the latter had beautiful ideas but did not apply them, and tended too much to the worship of legislation.

The Hon. Wm. Dudley Foulke, retiring president of the American Association, an uncompromising advocate of woman's enfranchisement, then made a strong and scholarly address in the course of which he said:

The fundamental rights of self-government, the right of each man to cast his single vote and have it counted as it is cast, is of greater and more lasting importance than any of the temporary consequences which flow from the result of any election. Beyond all matters of expediency and good administration lies the great question of human liberty and equality, which can only be maintained by the uncorrupted equal suffrage of every citizen; and so sacred is this in the eyes of the law that years of penitentiary service are prescribed for the interference with the right of a single human being of the male sex to cast the vote which the law allows him.

But there may be a moral guilt outside the law, of a character quite similar to that which is so punished when it comes within the terms of the statute, and it may be the crime, not of a single lawbreaker, but of the entire community that establishes the constitutions and enacts the statutes, which denies these equal rights to citizens who are subject to equal burdens. Wherever the rule of power is substituted for the just and equitable principle that all who are subject to government should have a voice in controlling it, we are guilty under the form of law of the same violation of the just rights of others for which the corruptor of elections and the forger of tally-sheets is tried, convicted and incarcerated. Yet from the remotest times the world has done this thing, for equal rights have never been conceded to women, and so warped are our convictions by custom and prejudice that a denial of their political equality seems as natural as the breath we draw....

Paternalism in government, which seeks to do good to the people against their will, is wrong in the Czar of Russia and in old King George, but is quite right and just when it affects only our wives, sisters and daughters! They have everything they need, why ask the ballot? Ah, my friends, so long as they have not the right to determine the thing they need, so long as the ultimate sovereignty remains with men to say what is good and what is bad for them, they are deprived of that which we, as men, esteem the most precious of all rights. I suppose there never was a time when men did not believe that women had everything they ought to want; that they had as much as was good for them. The woman must obey in consideration of the kind protection which her lord vouchsafes to her. The wife's property ought to belong to the husband, because upon him the law casts the burden of sustaining the family. There must be a ruler, and the husband ought to be that one. But this is the same principle which, during thousands of years, maintained the divine right of kings. When we apply it to our system of suffrage the number of sovereigns is increased, that is all. It is a recognition of the divine right of man to legislate for himself and woman too. It is only a difference in the number of autocrats and the manner in which their decrees are promulgated....

By what argument can a man defend his own suffrage as a right and not concede an equal right to woman? A just man ought to accord to every other human being, even his own wife, the rights which he demands himself.

"But she has her sphere and she ought not go beyond it." My friend, who gave you the right to determine what that sphere should be? If nature prescribes it, nature will carry out her own ordinances without your prohibitory legislation. I have the greatest contempt for the sort of legislation which seeks to enable nature to carry out her own immutable laws. I would have very little respect for any decree, enacted with whatever solemnity, which should prescribe that an object shall fall towards the earth and not from it; and I have just as little respect for any statute of man which enacts that women shall continue to love and care for their children by shutting them out from political action and preferment lest they should neglect the duties of the household....

"But," say you, "woman is already adequately represented. She does not form a separate class. She has no interests different from those of her husband, brother or father." These arguments have been used even by so eminent an authority as John Bright. Is it indeed a fact? Wherever woman owns property which she would relieve from unjust taxation; wherever she has a son whom she would preserve from the temptations of intemperance, or a daughter from the enticements of a libertine, or a husband from the conscriptions of war, she has a separate interest which she is entitled to protect.

"But she can control legislation by her influence." If it were proposed to take away our right to vote, we would think it a satisfactory answer that our influence would still remain? If she has influence she is entitled to that and her vote too. You have no right to burn down a man's house because you leave him his lot.

"But woman does not want the suffrage." How do you know? have you given her an opportunity of saying so? Wherever the right has been accorded it has been generally exercised, and the best proof of her wishes is the actual use which she makes of the ballot when she has it. But it makes no difference whether all women want to vote or whether most women want to vote, so long as there is one woman who insists upon this simple right, the justice of America can not afford to deny it....

At the close of Mr. Foulke's address Mrs. Stanton was obliged to leave in order to reach New York City in time for her steamer. The entire audience arose, the women waving handkerchiefs and the men joining in three farewell cheers.

One splendid address followed another, morning and evening, while the afternoons were occupied with business meetings, and even here there were many little speeches which were worthy of preservation. Among them was one of Miss Anthony's, in which she said: "If it is necessary, I will fight forty years more to make our platform free for the Christian to stand upon, whether she be a Catholic and counts her beads, or a Protestant of the straightest orthodox sect, just as I have fought for the rights of the 'infidels' the last forty years. These are the principles I want to maintain--that our platform may be kept as broad as the universe, that upon it may stand the representatives of all creeds and of no creeds--Jew and Christian, Protestant and Catholic, Gentile and Mormon, believer and atheist."

Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker (Conn.) discussed The Centennial of 1892, demanding the recognition of women. Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell (N. Y.) spoke on the Present, the Destiny of To-day. Mrs. Ormiston Chant (Eng.) depicted the glory of The Coming Woman. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt made her first appearance on the national platform with an address on The Symbol of Liberty, describing political conditions with a keen knowledge of the facts and showing their need of the intelligence, morality and independence of women. The subject selected by Miss Phoebe W. Couzins, herself an office-holder, was Woman's Influence in Official Government.

Henry B. Blackwell made a strong speech on Woman Suffrage a Growth of Civilization. He read a letter from Lucy Stone, his wife, who was to have spoken on The Progress of Women but was prevented by illness, in which she said: "The time is full of encouragement for us. We look back to our small beginnings and over the many years of constant endeavor to secure for women the application of the principles which are the foundation of a representative government. Now we are a host. Both Houses of Congress and the legislative bodies in nearly all the States, have our questions before them. So has the civilized world. Surely at no distant day the sense of justice which exists in everybody will secure our claim, and we shall have at last a truly representative government, of the people, by the people and for the people. We may, therefore, rejoicing in what is already gained, look forward with hope to the future."

A large audience listened to the address of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe on The Chivalry of Reform, during which she said:

The political enfranchisement of woman has long been sought upon the ground of abstract right and justice. This ground is surely the soundest and safest basis for any claim to rest upon. But mankind, after yielding a general obedience to the moral law, will reserve for themselves a certain freedom in its application to particular things. Even in so imperative a matter as the salvation of their own souls they will not be content with weights and measures. The touch of sentiment must come in, uplifting what law knocks down, freeing what it trammels, satisfying man's love for freedom by ministering to his sense of beauty. When this subtle power joins itself to the demonstrations of reason, the victory is sure and lasting.

It is in the grand order of these ideas that I stand here to advocate the enfranchisement of my sex. Morally, socially, intellectually equal with men, it is right that we should be politically equal with them in a society which claims to recognize and uphold one equal humanity. I do not say it is our right. I say it is right--God's right and the world's.

In the name of high sentiment then, in the name of all that good men profess, I ask that the gracious act may be consummated which will admit us to the place that henceforth befits us, that of equal participants with you in the sovereignty of the people. Do this in the spirit of that mercy whose quality is not strained. Remember that the neglect of justice brings with it the direst retribution. Make your debt to us a debt of honor, and pay it in that spirit; if you do not pay it, dread the proportions which its arrears will assume. Remember that he who has the power to do justice and refrains from doing it, will presently find it doing itself, to his no small discomfiture....

Women, trained for the moral warfare of the time, armed with the fine instincts which are their birthright, are not doomed to sit forever as mere spectators in these great encounters of society. They are to deserve the crown as well as to bestow it; to meet the powers of darkness with the powers of light; to bring their potent aid to the eternal conquest of right. And let me say here to those women who not only hang back from this encounter but who throw obstacles in the way of true reform and progress, that the shallow ground upon which they stand is within the belt of the moral earthquake, and that what they build upon it will be overthrown....

The Rev. Miss Shaw, in an address filled with humor as well as logic, treated of Our Unconscious Allies, among whom she included clergymen who oppose equal suffrage, the women remonstrants with their weak documents, the colleges which try to keep out girls, and the many cases of outrage and wrong committed by "our motherless Government." The Rev. Olympia Brown replied to the question, Where is the Mistake? With great power and earnestness she pointed out the mistakes made by our Government during the century of its existence and demanded the correction of the greatest one of all--the exclusion of women.

The address of Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace (Ind.), A Whole Humanity, aroused the universal sympathy and appreciation of the audience, permeated as it was with the spirit of love, charity and justice:

....The animus of this movement for woman's freedom has been mistaken in the idea that it meant competition between women and men; to my thought it simply means co-operation in the work of the world. The man is to bring the physical forces, and he has done that work magnificently. I never go over this continent and see what men have done, that I do not feel like bowing my head in reverence to their wisdom, their strength, their power, and I think the nearest thing we see to divinity is the incarnation of the God-head in a grand good man.

But there are other forces which must be brought into subjection to humanity before we reach the highest development, and those are the moral and spiritual forces. That is woman's share largely, not that I exempt man, but pre-eminently woman is the teacher of the race; in virtue of her motherhood she is the character builder; she forms the soul life; she rears the generations. It is not part of woman's work to contend with man for supremacy over the material forces. It was never told to woman that she should earn her bread by the sweat of her brow. That was man's curse. He was to earn his bread and woman's too, if he faithfully performed his duty, and we are not "dependents" even if he does that. I never allow a man to say in my presence that he "supports" his wife, and I want every woman to take the same position. I would correct any man and tell him he was mistaken in his phraseology if he should say anything of that kind. You have something different to do, my sisters. You shall hate evil, was said to woman, and evil shall hate you. There shall go forth from you an influence which shall ultimately exterminate evil.... The men of this nation would never have made the success they have in the material world, if some stronger force had limited them on all sides.

I said a moment ago that I do not like the idea of dependence of women on men, or the dependence of men on women. I do not like the word independence, but I do like the word interdependence. It is said of this beautiful country, "United we stand, divided we fall." It is the same with men and women. Men without women would go back to barbarism, and women without men would be most frivolous and vain. If we work not in competition but in co-operation and harmony we shall bring the race to its ultimate inheritance, which is rulership over the universe.

Now to deprive woman of the right to express her thought with authority at the ballot-box in regard to the laws under which she is governed, puts a mark of imbecility upon her at once. So far as the Government is concerned we are held in perpetual tutelage, we are minors always, and while good men will act justly towards women, it is an excuse for every bad and foolish man to oppress them, and every unfledged boy to make them the subject of ridicule....

I believe the great majority of American men love our free institutions; I believe they have hope and pride in the future of this nation; but as sure as you live, every argument you use against the enfranchisement of women deals a death-blow against the fundamental principle which lies at the base of our government, and it is treason to bring an argument against it.

Another thing which you permit is reacting now to the detriment of our free institutions; if from prejudice or expediency you think you have a right to withhold the ballot from the women of this nation, you have but to go one step further and deprive any other class of a right they already have, should you think it expedient to do so. It is beginning to bear its fruit now in your elections. You are becoming demoralized; ballots are bought and sold; you have your blocks of five; and in some entire communities the men are deprived of the right of suffrage. It is simply a question of time how long you will be able to maintain the freedom you cherish for yourselves.

If we women are citizens, if we are governed, if we are a part of the people, according to the plain declarations of the fundamental principles which underlie this nation, we are as much entitled to vote as you, and you can not make an argument against us that would not disfranchise yourselves.

I feel this phase of the question more acutely than any other because I think from a fundamental standpoint the progress of the race is bound up in republican institutions. It is not a question of woman's rights, it is a question of human rights, of the success or failure of these institutions, and the more highly cultured a woman is the more deeply she feels this humiliation....

I do not think it weakness to say that women love, and that love predominates in their nature, because, my friends, love is the only immortal principle in the universe. Love is to endure forever. Faith will be swallowed up in knowledge after a while, and hope in fruition, but love abides forever. It is peculiarly an attribute of our feminine nature to love our offspring over everything else; for them we would peril our lives; and for the men of this nation, under our form of government, to say to us that we shall not have the power which will enable us through laws and legislation to decide the conditions which shall surround them, and throw the mother love around these children from the cradle to the grave, is an inhuman use of their authority....

The Washington Star said: "If the first day of the convention was Mrs. Stanton's, the rest have belonged to Miss Anthony, 'Saint Susan,' as her followers love to call her. As vice-president-at-large she presided over every session, and never was in better voice or more enthusiastic spirits. As she sat by the table clad in a handsome dress of black satin, she was the life and soul of the meetings.... She does not make much noise with her gavel,[80] nor does she have to use it often, but she manages to keep the organization over which she presides in a state of order that puts to shame many a convention of the other sex. Business is transacted in proper shape, and every important measure receives its due share of attention. There is no filibustering. The speakers who have been invited to address the convention are listened to with attention and interest. When speeches are on the program they are made. When resolutions are desired they are presented, discussed, rejected or adopted as the case may be.... There are no attempts to push through unsuitable measures in haste and without the necessary attention. If any of those who have not attended the meetings of the association are of the opinion that serious breaches of parliamentary usage are committed through ignorance or with intent, they are laboring under a decided delusion."

The business meeting devoted to a discussion of Our Attitude toward Political Parties proved to be the most exciting of the series. Among the speakers were Mr. Foulke, Mrs. Sewall, Mrs. Howe, Miss Blackwell, Mrs. Blake, the Rev. Mr. Hinckley, Mrs. Alice M. A. Pickler, Mrs. Ellen Sully Fray, Mr. Blackwell, Miss Shaw, Mrs. Martha McClellan Brown, the Rev. Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Martha E. Root and Miss Mary Desha. Without exception the sentiment was in favor of keeping strictly aloof from all political alliances. It was pointed out that repeatedly the promises made by politicians were violated and the planks in the platforms ignored; it was shown that the suffrage can be gained only through the assistance of men in all parties; and it was proved beyond doubt that in the past, where members had allied themselves with a political party it had injured the cause of woman suffrage.

In addition to the speakers already mentioned Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Col. D. R. Anthony, Ellen Battelle Dietrick, Laura Clay, the Hon. J. A. Pickler, Sallie Clay Bennett, Margaret W. Campbell, Laura M. Johns, Frances Ellen Burr, Frances Stuart Parker, Dr. Frances Dickinson and others participated in the various discussions of the convention.

A deep interest was felt in the pending woman suffrage amendment in South Dakota. The subject was presented by Representative and Mrs. Pickler, national speakers were appointed to canvass the State and a fund of over $5,000 was eventually raised.

Tributes of respect were paid to Caroline Ashurst Biggs and Margaret Bright Lucas of England, U. S. Senator Elbridge G. Lapham, Maria Mitchell, the great astronomer, Prudence Crandall Philleo, Harriet Winslow Sewall, Amy Post, Wm. D. Kelley, M. C., Dinah Mendenhall, Emerine J. Hamilton, Amanda McConnell and other friends and supporters of woman suffrage who had passed away during the year.

The vote for officers of the united association, which was limited strictly to delegates, stood as follows: For president, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 131; Susan B. Anthony, 90; scattering, 2: for vice-president-at-large, Susan B. Anthony, 213; scattering, 9.[81] Rachel Foster Avery was elected recording secretary; Alice Stone Blackwell, corresponding secretary; Jane H. Spofford, treasurer; Lucy Stone, chairman of the executive committee by unanimous vote; Eliza T. Ward and the Rev. Frederick A. Hinckley, auditors. The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw was appointed national lecturer.

FOOTNOTES:

[76] See History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 464.

[77] The other members in favor of this report were Ezra B. Taylor, O., Chairman; George E. Adams, Ill.; James Buchanan, N. J.; Albert C. Thompson, O.; H. C. McCormick, Penn., and Joseph R. Reed, Ia. The six members from the Southern States were opposed.

[78] National:--May Wright Sewall, Chairman; Isabella Beecher Hooker, Harriette R. Shattuck, Olympia Brown, Helen M. Gougar, Laura M. Johns, Clara Bewick Colby, Virginia L. Minor, Abigail Scott Duniway, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Mary B. Clay, Mary F. Eastman, Clara Neymann, Sarah M. Perkins, Jane H. Spofford, Lillie Devereux Blake, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Rachel Foster Avery, Secretary. American:--Julia Ward Howe, Chairman; Wm. Dudley Foulke, Margaret W. Campbell, Anna Howard Shaw, Mary F. Thomas, Hannah M. Tracy Cutler, Henry B. Blackwell, Secretary.

[79] The resolutions declared the constitutional right of women to vote, and continued:

Resolved, That as the fathers violated the principles of justice in consenting to a three-fifths representation, and in recognizing slavery in the Constitution, thereby making a civil war inevitable, so our statesmen and Supreme Court Judges by their misinterpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, declaring that the United States has no voters and that citizenship does not carry with it the right of suffrage, not only have prolonged woman's disfranchisement but have undermined the status of the freedman and opened the way for another war of races.

WHEREAS, It is proposed to have a national law, restricting the right of divorce to a narrower basis, and

WHEREAS, Congress has already made an appropriation for a report on the question, which shows that there are 10,000 divorces annually in the United States and the majority demanded by women, and

WHEREAS, Liberal divorce laws for wives are what Canada was for the slaves--a door of escape from bondage, therefore,

Resolved, That there should be no farther legislation on this question until woman has a voice in the State and National Governments.

Resolved, That the time has come for woman to demand of the Church the same equal recognition she demands of the State, to assume her right and duty to take part in the revision of Bibles, prayer books and creeds, to vote on all questions of business, to fill the offices of elder, deacon, Sunday school superintendent, pastor and bishop, to sit in ecclesiastical synods, assemblies and conventions as delegates, that thus our religion may no longer reflect only the masculine element of humanity, and that woman, the mother of the race, may be honored as she must be before we can have a happy home, a rational religion and an enduring government.

They concluded with a demand that the platform of the suffrage association should recognize the equal rights of all parties, sects and races.

[80] There is no woman in the world who has wielded the gavel at as many conventions as has Miss Anthony.

[81] For account of Miss Anthony's determination not to accept the presidency see her Life and Work, p. 631.

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XI. THE NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1891

Immediately preceding the Twenty-third annual suffrage convention in 1891, the first triennial meeting took place of the National Council of Women, which had been formed in 1888. It was held in Albaugh's Opera House, Washington, beginning Sunday, February 22, and continuing four days, an assemblage of the most distinguished women of the nation in many lines of work. Miss Frances E. Willard presided and the other officers contributed to the success of the Council--Miss Susan B. Anthony, vice-president; Mrs. May Wright Sewall, corresponding secretary; Miss Mary F. Eastman, recording secretary; Mrs. M. Louise Thomas, treasurer. Ten national organizations were represented by official delegates and forty sent fraternal delegates.

The Sunday services were conducted entirely by women, the Rev. Ida C. Hultin giving the sermon from the text, "For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth". The program of the week included Charities, Education, Temperance, Religion, Organized Work, Political Status of Women, etc.[82] On Saturday evening Mrs. Jane H. Spofford gave a large reception at the Riggs House to the Council and the Suffrage Association. The latter held its sessions February 26-March 1, occupying the same beautifully decorated opera house which had been filled for four days by audiences in attendance at the Council, who kept on coming, scarcely knowing the difference.

The Call for this convention expressed the great joy over the action of Congress during the past year in admitting Wyoming as a State with woman suffrage in its constitution:

The admission of Wyoming into the Union as a State with equal rights for women guaranteed in its organic law, not only sets a seal of approval upon woman suffrage after a practical experience of twenty-one years, but it makes woman a recognized factor in national politics. Hereafter the Chief Executive and both Houses of Congress will owe their election partly to the votes of women. The injustice and absurdity of allowing women in one State to be sovereign rulers, and across the line in every direction obliging them to occupy the position of a subject class, taxed without representation and governed without consent--and this in a nation which by its Constitution guarantees equal rights to all the States and equal protection to all their citizens--must soon be manifest even to the most conservative and prejudiced. We therefore congratulate the friends of woman suffrage everywhere that at last there is one spot under the American flag where equal justice is done to women. Wyoming, all hail; the first true republic the world has ever seen!

The program attracted considerable attention from a design on the cover showing a woman yoked with an ox to the plow, and, looking down upon them a girl in a college cap and gown with the inscription, "Above the Senior Wrangler," referring to the recent victory at Cambridge University, England, by Philippa Fawcett, in outranking the male student who stood highest in mathematics. The first session was opened by the singing of Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert's inspiring hymn, The New America. After a welcome by Mrs. Ella M. S. Marble, president of the District W. S. A., Miss Anthony read the address of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was in England, entitled, The Degradation of Disfranchisement, which said in part:

Disfranchisement is the last lingering shadow of the old spirit of caste which always has divided humanity into classes of greater or less inferiority, some even below certain animals that were considered special favorites with Heaven. One can not contemplate these revolting distinctions among mankind without amazement and disgust. This spirit of caste which has darkened the lives of millions through the centuries still lives. The discriminations against color and sex in the United States are but other forms of this same hateful spirit, still sustained by our religion as in the past. It is the outgrowth of the false ideas of favoritism ascribed to Deity in regard to races and individuals, but which have their origin in the mind of man. Banish the idea of divine authority for these machinations of the human mind, and the power of the throne and the church, of a royal family and an apostolic order of succession, of kings and queens, of popes and bishops, and man's headship in the State, the Church, and the Home will be heard of no more forever....

All men of intelligence appreciate the power of holding the ballot in their own hands; of having a voice in the laws under which they live; of enjoying the liberty of self-government. Those who have known the satisfaction of wielding political influence would not willingly accept the degradation of disfranchisement. Yet men can not understand why women should feel aggrieved at being deprived of this same protection, dignity and power. This is the Gibraltar of our difficulties to-day. We can not make men see that women feel the humiliation of their petty distinctions of sex precisely as the black man feels those of color. It is no palliation of our wrongs to say that we are not socially ostracized as he is, so long as we are politically ostracized as he is not. That all orders of foreigners also rank politically above the most intelligent, highly-educated women--native-born Americans--is indeed the most bitter drop in the cup of our grief which we are compelled to swallow....

Again, the degradation of woman in the world of work is another result of her disfranchisement. Some deny that, and say the laboring classes of men have the ballot yet they are still helpless victims of capitalists. They have the power and hold the weapon of defense but have not yet learned how to use it. The bayonet, the sword, the gun, are of no value to the soldier until he knows how to wield them. Yet without the weapons of defense what could individuals and nations do in time of war for their own protection? The first step in learning to use a gun or a ballot is to possess one....

Man has the prestige of centuries in his favor, with the force to maintain it, and he has possession of the throne, which is nine-tenths of the law. He has statutes and Scriptures and the universal usages of society all on his side. What have women? The settled dissatisfaction of half the race, the unorganized protests of the few, and the open resistance of still fewer. But we have truth and justice on our side and the natural love of freedom and, step by step, we shall undermine the present form of civilization and inaugurate the mightiest revolution the world has ever witnessed. But its far-reaching consequences themselves increase the obstacles in the way of success, for the selfish interests of all classes are against us. The rulers in the State are not willing to share their power with a class over whom as equals they could never obtain absolute control, whose votes they could not manipulate to maintain the present conditions of injustice and oppression....

Again, the rulers in the church are hostile to liberty for a sex supposed for wise purposes to have been subordinated to man by divine decree. The equality of woman as a factor in religious organizations would compel an entire change in church canons, discipline, authority, and many doctrines of the Christian faith. As a matter of self-preservation, the church has no interest in the emancipation of woman, as its very existence depends on her blind faith....

Society at large, based on the principle that might makes right, has in a measure excluded women from the profitable industries of the world, and where she has gained a foothold her labor is at a discount. Man occupies the ground and holds the key to the situation. As employer, he plays the cheap labor of a disfranchised class against the employe, thus in a measure undermining his independence, making wife and daughter in the world of work the rivals of husband and father.

The family, too, is based on the idea of woman's subordination, and man has no interest, as far as he sees, in emancipating her from that despotism by which his narrow, selfish interests are maintained under the law and religion of the country.

Here, then, is a fourfold bondage, so many cords tightly twisted together, strong for one purpose. To attempt to undo one is to loosen all.... To my mind, if we had at first bravely untwisted all the strands of this fourfold cord which bound us, and demanded equality in the whole round of the circle, while perhaps, we should have had a harder battle to fight, it would have been more effective and far shorter. Let us henceforth meet conservatives on their own ground and admit that suffrage for woman does mean political, religious, industrial and social freedom--a new and a higher civilization....

Woman's happiness and development are of more importance than all man's institutions. If constitutions and statute laws stand in the way of woman's emancipation, they must be amended to meet her wants and needs, of which she is a better judge than man possibly can be. If church canons and scriptures do not admit of woman's equal recognition in all the sacred offices, then they must be revised in harmony with that idea. If the present family life is necessarily based on man's headship, then we must build a new domestic altar, at which the mother shall have equal dignity, honor and power; and we do not propose to wait another century to secure all this; the time has come....

Miss Anthony, with an allusion to pioneer days, then introduced Lucy Stone, who, amid much applause, said that, while this was the first time she had stood beside Susan B. Anthony in a Washington suffrage convention, she had stood beside her on more than one hard-fought battle-field before many of those present were born. After sketching briefly the progress of the last forty years and giving some trying personal experiences, she said in conclusion: "The vote will not make a man of a woman, but it will enable her to demand and receive many things which are hers by right; to do the things which ought to be done, to prevent what ought not to be done. Women and men can help each other in making the world better. This is not an anti-man movement, but an effort toward the highest good of the race. We can congratulate ourselves upon what we have gained, but the root of the evil still remains--the root of disfranchisement. All organizations of women should join with us in pulling steadily at this deeply-planted and obstinate root."

Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker (Conn.) read an able paper on Woman in Politics and Jurisprudence, in which she showed the necessity in politics and in law of a combination of the man's and the woman's nature, point of view and distinguishing characteristics.

The second evening Mrs. Julia Ward Howe gave an address on The Possibilities of the American Salon, and the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer considered The Democratic Principle. Mrs. Spencer pointed out that the reason why the advance in the specific line of woman suffrage had not been so great as in some other directions was because its advocates had to contend with a reaction of disbelief in the democratic principle. In expressing her own faith in this principle she said: "There are wisdom enough and virtue enough in this country to take care of all its ignorance and wickedness. The difficulty is that the average American citizen does not know that he wears a crown. And oh, the pity of it, and the shame of it, when some of us women, who do feel the importance of the duty of suffrage and who need no man to teach us patriotism, wish to help in this work that any man should say us nay!"

Miss Florence Balgarnie, who brought the greetings of a number of great English associations,[83] gave a comprehensive sketch of The Status of Women in England. The Rev. Ida C. Hultin (Ills.) followed in an eloquent appeal that there should be no headship of either man or woman alone, but that both should represent humanity; government is a development of humanity and if woman is human she has an equal right in that development. Mrs. Ellen Battelle Dietrick (Mass.) showed that the present supremacy of men was a reaction from the former undue supremacy of women, and brought out many historical points of deep interest. Mrs. Josephine K. Henry spoke on The Kentucky Constitutional Convention, illustrating the terrible injustice of the laws of that State in regard to women and the vain efforts of the latter to have them changed. The Rev. Frederick A. Hinckley (R. I.) lifted the audience to the delectable heights, taking as a text, "Husband and Wife are One." After illustrating the tendency of all nature and all science toward unity and harmony, he said:

Humanity is the whole. Men alone are half a sphere; women alone half a sphere; men and women together the whole of truth, the whole of love, the whole of aspiration. We have come to recognize this thought in nearly all the walks of life. We want to acknowledge it in the unity of mankind. The central thought we need in our creeds and in our lives is that of the solidarity and brotherhood of the race. This movement derives its greatest significance not because it opens a place here and there for women; not because it enables women to help men; but because in all the concerns of life it places man and woman side by side, hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, putting their best thought, their finest feeling, their highest aspiration, into the work of the world. This reflection gives us a lasting and sublime satisfaction amid defeat and derision. Whatever of fortune or misfortune befalls the Suffrage Association in the carrying on of its work, this belief is the root which is calculated to sustain and inspire us--that this movement is the next step in the progress of the race towards the unification of humanity....

I look forward to the time when men and women, labor and capital, all classes and all sections, shall work side by side with one great co-operative spirit, the denizens of the world and the keepers of human progress. When that time comes we may not have reached the millennium but we shall be nearer to it. We shall then together establish justice, temperance, purity of life, as never has been done before. Earth's aspirations then shall grow to events. The indescribable--that shall then be done.

U. S. Senator Joseph M. Carey was introduced by Miss Anthony as "the man who on the floor of Congress fought Wyoming's battle for Statehood." His address on Wyoming, the True Republic, was a leading feature of the convention. He said in part:

On the tenth day of July last, the State of Wyoming was born and the forty-fourth star took its place on the old flag. Never was first-born more warmly welcomed, for not only had a commonwealth been created, but the principle of equality of citizenship without regard to sex had been fully recognized and incorporated as a part of the constitution of the new State.

The adoption of a woman suffrage bill by the first Territorial Legislature was graphically described, and after relating the subsequent efforts for its repeal, and its incorporation finally into the State constitution, he told of the struggle in Congress and said:

While I would not make invidious distinctions by giving the names of those in both branches of Congress who favored Wyoming's admission, I wish to say that I was agreeably surprised to have many of the ablest members, both in public and private, disclose the fact that they firmly believed the time would come when women would be permitted to exercise full political rights throughout the United States. They rejoiced that an opportunity had presented itself by which they could show they had no prejudice or opposition in their hearts to women's exercising the rights of citizenship.

He closed with the following strong argument for the enfranchisement of women:

Suffrage should be granted to women for two reasons: first, because it will help women; and second, because it will promote the interests of the State. Whatever doubt I may have entertained in the past concerning either the first or second proposition, has entirely disappeared. From the experiment made under my own eyes I can state in all candor that suffrage has been a real benefit to women. It gives them a character and standing which they would not otherwise possess. It does not lower a woman to be consulted about public affairs, but is calculated to make her more intelligent and thoughtful in matters that concern her own household, especially in bringing up her sons and daughters. It increases her interest in those things which concern the great body of the people. Men in office and out of office, particularly those who expect to serve the public, are compelled to be more considerate of her wishes, and more desirous of doing those things which will secure her approval. The greater the number of persons living under a government who are interested in the administration of its affairs, its well-being and the perpetuity of its institutions, the stronger the government and the more difficult it will be to compass its overthrow....

We frequently hear it said that women will not vote if they have the opportunity; or, if permitted to vote, such an inconsiderable number will exercise the privilege that it will not be worth while to encumber the electoral system by granting it. In all matters in which women have an interest, as large a percentage vote as of the other sex. They have the same interest in all which pertains to good government. They have exercised the privilege of voting not in a careless and indifferent manner but in a way reflecting credit on their good sense and judgment.

I know women who have exercised the fullest political rights for a period of more than twenty years. They have taken the deepest interest in the political affairs of the Territory and young State. Neither in their homes nor in public places have they lost one womanly quality; but their minds have broadened and they have become more influential in the community in which they live. During these years I have never heard of any unhappiness brought into the home on account of women's exercising their political rights. A fair and unbiased test of this question has been made by the people of Wyoming, and no unprejudiced man or woman who has seen its workings, can now raise a single honest objection. Where women have voted, the family relation has not been destroyed, men have loved them none the less, the mountains have not been shaken from their foundations, nor have social earthquakes or political convulsions taken place....

In order that women shall be more influential citizens of the State and better qualified to raise noble men and women to fight the battles of life, and to carry out the true purpose of this republic, they must possess the full rights of citizenship.

At the close of his speech the Senator was presented with a large basket of roses from the delegates.

Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.) spoke on The Right of a Citizen to a Trial by a Jury of His Peers, showing that women never have possessed this right; that in many criminal cases, such as seduction and infanticide, women could better understand the temptations than could men; that the feminine heart, the maternal influence, are needed in the court-room as well as in the home. Mrs. Lida A. Meriwether (Tenn.) spoke in a keen, sarcastic but humorous manner of The Silent Seven, "the legally mute"--minors, aliens, paupers, criminals, lunatics, idiots and women.

The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw took for her subject Women vs. Indians, and reviewed the suffrage amendment campaign in South Dakota the previous year. In an address brimming and bubbling over with wit, satire and pathos, she showed how much greater consideration the Indians received from the men of that State than did women. She told how 45 per cent. of the votes cast the preceding year were for male Indian suffrage and only 37 per cent. for woman suffrage; how Indians in blankets and moccasins were received in the State convention with the greatest courtesy, and Susan B. Anthony and other eminent women were barely tolerated; how, while these Indians were engaged in their ghost dances, the white women were going up and down the State pleading for the rights of citizens; how the law in that State gives not only the property but the children to the husband, in the face of all the hardships endured by those pioneer wives and mothers. She suggested that the solution of the Indian question should be left to a commission of women with Alice Fletcher at its head, and said in closing: "Let all of us who love liberty solve these problems in justice; and let us mete out to the Indian, to the negro, to the foreigner, and to the woman, the justice which we demand for ourselves, the liberty which we love for ourselves. Let us recognize in each of them that One above, the Father of us all, and that all are brothers, all are one."

The Moral and Political Emergency was presented by Mrs. Emma Smith DeVoe (S. D.). Henry B. Blackwell and Mrs. Alice M. A. Pickler described the South Dakota Campaign. Representative J. A. Pickler was introduced by Miss Anthony as the candidate who, when told that if he expressed his views on woman suffrage he would lose votes, expressed them more freely than ever and ran ahead of his ticket; and his wife as the woman who bade her husband to speak even if it lost him the office, and who was herself the only Congressman's wife that ever took the platform for the enfranchisement of women.

Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby took for her subject Ibsen's drama, A Doll's House, and discussed its ethical problems, closing with the sentence: "As long as the fighting qualities of woman remain, there is a chance for the nation to make a robust, steady progress; but if these die out and woman willingly surrenders herself for the sake of selfish ease to the dominance of man, civilization is arrested and true manhood becomes impossible." The convention ended with a scholarly address by Wm. Lloyd Garrison (Mass.) on The Social Aspect of the Woman Question.

The present officers were re-elected. Mrs. Lucia E. Blount (D. C.), chairman of the committee appointed to push the claim of Anna Ella Carroll, reported that a great deal of work had been done by Mr. and Mrs. Melvin A. Root of Michigan, Mrs. Colby and herself. Every possible effort had been made but the prospect was that Congress would do nothing for Miss Carroll. Miss Frances E. Willard brought an invitation from Mrs. Harrison to the National Council of Women and the members of all its auxiliary societies to attend a reception at the White House, which was accepted by the convention. Mrs. Ellen M. Henrotin presented in the name of Mrs. Bertha Honore Palmer an official invitation to the association to meet in Chicago during the Columbian Exposition, promising a hall which would seat five thousand.

Miss Anthony announced that she had engaged permanent headquarters for the association in the Wimodaughsis club building, which action was ratified. It was decided to give especial attention to suffrage work in the Southern States during the year. The wives of the two senators from Wyoming, Mrs. Warren and Mrs. Carey, occupied seats on the platform.

Mrs. Blake reported the work done by the Platform Committee in having suffrage resolutions endorsed by a large number of Labor Unions. Miss Sara Winthrop Smith had been equally successful in Granges and branches of the Knights of Labor. Dr. Frances Dickinson, Dr. Lucy Waite, Mrs. Corinne S. Brown and Mrs. Colby had visited the National Convention of Locomotive Engineers and secured the endorsement of a suffrage petition. They obtained also the cordial approval of T. V. Powderly and the Knights of Labor, and of Samuel Gompers and the Federation of Labor. The Illinois Trade and Labor Assembly endorsed their petition. All of these bodies circulated suffrage petitions among their members, as also did the Illinois Farmers' Mutual Benefit Association and the Grand Army Posts, a number of which were reported as heartily recommending the enfranchisement of women. Signatures representing millions of voters were thus obtained.[84]

In addition to the resolutions adopted by the convention bearing directly on suffrage, there was a demand for women on school boards and as physicians, matrons and managers in all public institutions containing women and children; and for a revision of the laws on marriage and property.

On Sunday afternoon a great audience assembled for the closing exercises. The sermon was given by the Rev. Caroline J. Bartlett from the text, "The night is far spent, the day is at hand." It had been said on the preceding Sunday that the sermon of Miss Hultin could not be equalled. The verdict now was that the honors must be evenly divided.

FOOTNOTES:

[82] A complete report of the able addresses made by specialists in these subjects was prepared by the new corresponding secretary, Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery, and placed by Miss Anthony in the large libraries of the country.

[83] The Central National Society for Women's Suffrage; the Women's Franchise Leagues of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bedford, Bridgeport, Leicester, Nottingham and York; the Bristol Woman's Temperance Association; the International Arbitration and Peace Society; the Woman Councillors' Society; the Women's Federal Association of Great Britain.

[84] The funds necessary for this work were furnished by J. W. Hedenberg of Chicago, who also made a personal appeal to many of these bodies; but he claimed possession of the petitions, and for some reason never permitted them to be presented to Congress.

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XII. NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION AND HEARINGS OF 1892

The Twenty-fourth annual woman suffrage convention, held in the Church of Our Father, Washington, D. C., Jan. 17-21, 1892, was preceded by the usual services at three o'clock on Sunday afternoon. The text of the sermon, by the Rev. Mila Tupper, was "Think on these things" and it was devoted to a lofty consideration of "success through the moral power of ideals." Unexpectedly the congressional hearings were set for Monday morning, which called to the Capitol both Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Miss Susan B. Anthony, president and vice-president of the association. The convention was called to order by the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, and Mrs. Caroline McCullough Everhard (O.) was made chairman pro tem. Twenty-six States were represented by seventy-six delegates, the reports showed a year of unprecedented activity and there were requests from every State for speakers and organizers. The treasurer reported receipts for the past year, $3,830.

The executive sessions throughout the convention were spirited and interesting. After some discussion it was decided to carry the work into the Southern States, and also to appropriate money and workers for Kansas, where it was likely that an amendment for full suffrage soon would be submitted. It was voted to accept the space offered at the Columbian Exposition, to furnish and decorate a booth, circulate literature, etc. The motion to have the next meeting in Chicago during the Fair renewed the question of holding alternate conventions in some other city besides Washington, but the measure was defeated.

Mrs. Stanton introduced a resolution in favor of keeping the World's Fair open on Sunday, which was advocated and opposed with great earnestness. The majority of opinion evidently was in favor of opening the gates on Sunday but many felt that the subject was not germane to the purposes of the association, while others were conscientiously opposed to Sunday opening. Finally, in the midst of the controversy Mrs. Stanton withdrew her resolution, saying that she had offered it largely for the sake of discussion. Miss Shaw presented a resolution opposing the sale of intoxicating liquor on the Fair Grounds, saying that she did so as a matter of conscience and in order that it might go on record. It was voted to call an international suffrage meeting at Chicago during the Columbian Exposition. Miss Anthony urged more systematic organization, special efforts with the Legislatures, the securing of a Woman's Day at all Chautauqua Assemblies, county fairs, camp meetings, etc.

At the earnest request of Mrs. Stanton, who had now reached the age of seventy-six, she was permitted to retire from the presidency, and Miss Anthony, aged seventy-two, was elected in her place. The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw was made vice-president-at-large. Lucy Stone, who was now seventy-four, begged to be released as chairman of the executive committee, which was then abolished, the duties being transferred to the business committee consisting of all the officers of the association. Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Stone were made honorary presidents.

This was Mrs. Stanton's last appearance at a national convention after an attendance of forty years, but she never failed to take an active interest in the proceedings and to send her speech to be read by Miss Anthony. This also was the last time Lucy Stone appeared upon the national platform, as she died the next year, and Miss Anthony alone, of this remarkable trio of women, was left to carry forward the great work.

The addresses of this convention were up to the high standard of those which had preceded them during the past years, and no organization in existence, of either men or women, can show a more brilliant record of oratory. As Mrs. Stanton, Lucy Stone and Miss Anthony came on the platform the first evening they were enthusiastically applauded. The mental and physical vigor of Mrs. Stanton was much commented upon as in a rich and resonant voice she read the speech which she had that morning delivered before the Judiciary Committee of the House. It was entitled The Solitude of Self, and is considered by many to be her masterpiece.

Lucy Stone discussed The Outlook with clear vision. She contrasted the woman of the past, her narrow life, her limited education, her inferior position, with the educated, ambitious, independent woman of to-day, and urged that the latter should be equal to her opportunities, lay aside all frivolous things and labor unceasingly to secure for her sex an absolute equality of civil and political rights.

In the half-humorous address of Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller (Md.) on The Golden Rule, she said:

I am firmly convinced that our present powerless--I may almost say ignominious--position arises not so much, as many aver, from the lukewarmness of our own sex as from the supreme and absolute indifference of men. With a few honorable exceptions, men do not care one iota whether we vote or not....

Now if only men would take to betting on this question of woman suffrage, if we could open it up as a field of speculation, if we could manipulate it by some sort of patent process into stocks or bonds and have it introduced into Wall Street, we should very soon find ourselves emancipated. I keep on hoping that, by some fortuitous chance, fate may eventually execute for us as brilliant a coup d'etat as did General Butler for the colored slaves when he made them contraband of war, so that we shall just tumble into freedom as they did very soon thereafter. Until then let us trust in God, keep our powder very dry and our armies well drilled and disciplined.

In an inspiring address on The True Daughters of the Republic, Mme. Clara Neymann (N. Y.) pointed out the splendid material progress of our country under the guidance of men, and urged that women should be the power to lift it up to an equally exalted spiritual plane. The paper of Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby (D. C.) on Wyoming, in which as a Territory women had voted for twenty years and as a State for two years, presented a most convincing array of statistics proving the benefits of equal suffrage. Ex-Governor John W. Hoyt of Wyoming came to the platform and corroborated these statements, paying a fine tribute to the political influence of women. He was followed by Mrs. Lida A. Meriwether (Tenn.), whose reputation as a humorist was fully sustained in her clever portrayal of Dreams that Go by Contraries. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt (N. Y.) gave a brilliant address on The Mission of a Republic.

In discussing The Value of Organizations for Women, Mrs. Elizabeth Lyle Saxon (La.) said:

Among the various organizations of women the suffrage society must rank first, for its demands have reached out and embraced every reform which comes under the head of right, justice or charity; and I am firmly persuaded that if the demand for the ballot, the full right of citizenship, had not been made the foundation of all other advantages, our organization would have fallen apart and drifted into the more conservative and popular lines along which less courageous women have successfully worked....

Financial independence has been gained by many women, who, proud of their own success, never try to benefit others, and fail to comprehend the debt they owe to the brave, unselfish ones who first made demands for them and who never ceased their efforts until one after another the barriers were removed and opportunities secured for thousands which they never could have found themselves. It was this stanch band of pioneers, defying criticism, scorn and hate, who forced open college doors, invaded the law courts and stubbornly contested every inch of ground so persistently held by fraud or force from the daughters of the great republic....

Organized as women now are, they could pour such an overwhelming moral influence into the political life of the country as to become its saving grace; for when women vote they will show good men, who have weakly shrunk from political duty, that they have a moral and clean constituency to stand with them.

The platform proceedings of the convention closed with Miss Shaw's splendid delineation of The Injustice of Chivalry.

Every suffrage convention for the last twelve years had been preceded by a handsome reception at the Riggs House. This well-known and commodious hotel had been the convention headquarters, and it also had been the winter home of Miss Anthony, where she remained as a guest of the proprietor, C. W. Spofford, and his wife, being thus enabled to do a vast amount of congressional and political work, such as never has been done since. The hotel now had passed into other hands and the Washington Post, in speaking of this matter, said: "The delegates feel like lost sheep without Mrs. Spofford's hospitality at the Riggs House, which has always been headquarters for suffragist and all women's conventions. Probably no one but those in the inner circle will ever know just how much Mrs. Spofford has done for the advancement of women in every direction. Whatever was hers was at the disposal of the leaders, and in the absence of so much assistance it is appreciated more nearly at its real worth."

The new club house of Wimodaughsis was opened for a reception to the delegates by the District W. S. A., with Miss Anthony, Lucy Stone, Mrs. Stanton, Henry B. Blackwell, and Miss Shaw, president of Wimodaughsis, as guests of honor. All made clever little speeches toward the close of the evening, which were supplemented with remarks by Senator Joseph M. Carey (Wy.), Representatives J. A. Pickler (S. D.), Martin N. Johnson (N. D.) and the Rev. Dr. Corey of the Metropolitan church.

The hearing on January 17 was held for the first time before a Judiciary Committee of the House, the majority of which was Democratic.[85] The Washington Star said: "The new members of the committee were apparently surprised at receiving such a talk from a woman and there was the most marked attention on the part of every one present. Their surprise was still greater when they found that Mrs. Stanton was not a phenomenal exception, but that every woman there could make an argument which would do credit to the best of public men."

The hearing before the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage was held the morning of February 20. Four of the greatest women this nation ever produced addressed this committee, asking for themselves and their sex a privilege which is freely granted without the asking to every man, no matter how humble, how ignorant, how unworthy, who is not included within the category of the insane, the idiotic, the convicted criminal--Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Isabella Beecher Hooker. Mrs. Stanton (N. Y.) gave her address, The Solitude of Self, in place of the old arguments so many times repeated, saying in part:

The point I wish plainly to bring before you on this occasion is the individuality of each human soul--our Protestant idea, the right of individual conscience and judgment--our republican idea, individual citizenship. In discussing the rights of woman, we are to consider, first, what belongs to her as an individual, in a world of her own, the arbiter of her own destiny, an imaginary Robinson Crusoe with her woman Friday on a solitary island. Her rights under such circumstances are to use all her faculties for her own safety and happiness.

Secondly, if we consider her as a citizen, as a member of a great nation, she must have the same rights as all other members, according to the fundamental principles of our Government.

Thirdly, viewed as a woman, an equal factor in civilization, her rights and duties are still the same--individual happiness and development.

Fourthly, it is only the incidental relations of life, such as mother, wife, sister, daughter, which may involve some special duties and training. In the usual discussion in regard to woman's sphere, such men as Herbert Spencer, Frederick Harrison and Grant Allen uniformly subordinate her rights and duties as an individual, as a citizen, as a woman, to the necessities of these incidental relations, some of which a large class of women never assume. In discussing the sphere of man we do not decide his rights as an individual, as a citizen, as a man, by his duties as a father, a husband, a brother or a son, some of which he may never undertake. Moreover he would be better fitted for these very relations, and whatever special work he might choose to do to earn his bread, by the complete development of all his faculties as an individual. Just so with woman. The education which will fit her to discharge the duties in the largest sphere of human usefulness, will best fit her for whatever special work she may be compelled to do.

The isolation of every human soul and the necessity of self-dependence must give each individual the right to choose his own surroundings. The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full development of her faculties, her forces of mind and body; for giving her the most enlarged freedom of thought and action; a complete emancipation from all forms of bondage, of custom, dependence, superstition; from all the crippling influences of fear--is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life. The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the government under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief factor; a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn her bread, is because of her birthright to self-sovereignty; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself....

To throw obstacles in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes; to deny the rights of property is like cutting off the hands. To refuse political equality is to rob the ostracized of all self-respect, of credit in the market place, of recompense in the world of work, of a voice in choosing those who make and administer the law, a choice in the jury before whom they are tried, and in the judge who decides their punishment. Shakespeare's play of Titus and Andronicus contains a terrible satire on woman's position in the nineteenth century--"Rude men seized the king's daughter, cut out her tongue, cut off her hands, and then bade her go call for water and wash her hands." What a picture of woman's position! Robbed of her natural rights, handicapped by law and custom at every turn, yet compelled to fight her own battles, and in the emergencies of life to fall back on herself for protection....

How the little courtesies of life on the surface of society, deemed so important from man towards woman, fade into utter insignificance in view of the deeper tragedies in which she must play her part alone, where no human aid is possible!

Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one's self-sovereignty; the right to an equal place, everywhere conceded--a place earned by personal merit, not an artificial attainment by inheritance, wealth, family and position. Conceding then that the responsibilities of life rest equally on man and woman, that their destiny is the same, they need the same preparation for time and eternity. The talk of sheltering woman from the fierce storms of life is the sheerest mockery, for they beat on her from every point of the compass, just as they do on man, and with more fatal results, for he has been trained to protect himself, to resist, to conquer....

In music women speak again the language of Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, and are worthy interpreters of their great thoughts. The poetry and novels of the century are theirs, and they have touched the keynote of reform in religion, politics and social life. They fill the editor's and professor's chair, plead at the bar of justice, walk the wards of the hospital, speak from the pulpit and the platform. Such is the type of womanhood that an enlightened public sentiment welcomes to-day, and such the triumph of the facts of life over the false theories of the past.

Is it, then, consistent to hold the developed woman of this day within the same narrow political limits as the dame with the spinning wheel and knitting needle occupied in the past? No, no! Machinery has taken the labors of woman as well as man on its tireless shoulders; the loom and the spinning wheel are but dreams of the past; the pen, the brush, the easel, the chisel, have taken their places, while the hopes and ambitions of women are essentially changed.

We see reason sufficient in the outer conditions of human beings for individual liberty and development, but when we consider the self-dependence of every human soul, we see the need of courage, judgment and the exercise of every faculty of mind and body, strengthened and developed by use, in woman as well as man....

With the earnest persuasiveness for which she had been noted nearly half a century, Lucy Stone (Mass.) said:

I come before this committee with the sense which I always feel, that we are handicapped as women in what we try to do for ourselves by the single fact that we have no vote. This cheapens us. You do not care so much for us as if we had votes, so that we come always with that infinite disadvantage.

But the thing I want to say particularly is that we have our immortal Declaration of Independence and the various bills of rights of the different States (George Washington advised us to recur often to first principles), and in these nothing is clearer than the basis of the claim that women should have equal rights with men. A complete government is a perfectly just government....

What I desire particularly to impress upon this committee is the gross and grave injustice of holding thirty millions of women absolutely helpless under the Government. The laws touch us at every point. From the time the girl baby is born until the time the aged woman makes her last will and testament, there is not one of her affairs which the law does not control. It says who shall own the property, and what rights the woman shall have; it settles all her affairs, whether she shall buy or sell or will or deed....

Persons are elected by men to represent them in Congress and the State Legislatures, and here are these millions of women, with just the same stake in the Government that men have, with a class interest of their own, and with not one solitary word to say or power to help settle any of the things which concern them.

Men know the value of votes and the possession of power, and I look at them and wonder how it is possible for them to be willing that their own mothers, sisters, wives and daughters should be debarred from the possession of like power. We have been going to the Legislature in Massachusetts longer than Mrs. Stanton has been coming here. We asked that when a husband and wife make a contract with each other, as for instance, if the wife loan the husband her money, the contract should be considered valid just as it would be between any other parties--for now in case the husband fails in business, she can not get her money--and the Legislature very kindly gave us leave to withdraw. Then we asked that when a man dies and the wife is left alone, with the whole burden of life on her shoulders, the law might give her more than forty days in which to stay in her home without paying rent. But we could not defeat one of our legislators, and they cared not a cent for our petition and less than a cent for our opinion; and so when we asked for this important measure they gave us leave to withdraw.

They respect the wants of the voter, but they care nothing about the wants of those who do not have votes. So, when we asked for protection for wives beaten by their husbands, and that the husband should be made to give a portion of his earnings to support the minor children, again we had leave to withdraw....

I can think of nothing so helpless and humiliating as the position of a disfranchised person. I do not know whether I am treading on dangerous toes when I say that, after the late war the Government in power wished to punish Jefferson Davis, and it considered that the worst punishment it could inflict upon him was to take away his right to vote. Now, the odium which attached to him from his disfranchisement is just the same as attaches to women from their disfranchisement. The only persons who are not allowed to vote in Massachusetts are the lunatics, idiots, felons and people who can not read and write. In what a category is this to place women, after one hundred years and at the close of this nineteenth century? And yet that is history. In Massachusetts we are trying to get a small concession--the right to vote in the cities and towns in which we live in regard to the taxes we have to pay. In 1792, in Newburyport, Mass., it was not thought necessary to give women education. At that time there were no schools for girls; the public money was not so used, and when one man said he had five daughters, and paid his taxes like other men, and his girls were not allowed to attend school, and that they ought to give the girls a chance, another man said, "Take the public money and educate shes? Never!"

Remember this was one hundred years ago. Some of the fathers urged that the girls should be educated in the public schools, and so the men--God forgive them!--said, "We will let the girls go in the morning between 6 and 8 o'clock, before the boys want the schoolhouse." Just think of the time those girls would have to rise in order to have a little instruction before the boys got there! This plan did not work well, and the teacher was directed not to teach females any longer. Every descendant of those men now feels ashamed of them; and I think that in one hundred years the children of the men who are now letting us come here, year after year, pleading for suffrage, will feel ashamed. Men would rather lose anything than their votes; they would fight for their right of suffrage, and if anybody attempted to deprive them of it there would be war to the knife and the knife to the hilt. We come here to carry on our bloodless warfare, praying that the privilege granted in the foundation of the Government should be applied to women....

What we look forward to is part of the eternal order. It is not possible that thirty millions of women should be held forever as lunatics, fools and criminals. It is not possible, as the years go on, that each person should not at least have the right to look after his or her own interests. As the home is at its best when the father and mother consult together in regard to the family interests, so it is with the Government. I do not think a man can see from a man's point of view all the things that a woman needs, or a woman from her single point of view all the things that a man needs. Now men have brought their best, and also brought their worst, into the Government, and it is all here, but the thing you have not at all is the qualities which women possess, the feminine qualities. It has been said that women are more economical, peaceful and law-abiding than men, and all these qualities are lacking in the Government today.... But whether this be so or not, it is right that every class should be heard in behalf of its own interest....

Now, gentlemen, I hope you will try to make this case your own. It is simple justice and fair play, and it is also a fundamental principle of the Government. Here we are trying to have a complete republic, and yet there are twelve millions of disfranchised adults. I believe that among the great people--and by the people I do not mean men, but men and women, the whole people--nothing creates such disrespect for a fundamental principle as not to apply it. The Government was founded upon the principle that those who obey the laws should make them, and yet it shuts out a full half. As long as this continues to be done, it certainly tends to create disrespect for the principle itself. Do you not see it? Why not reach out a hand to woman and say, "Come and help us make the laws and secure fair play"?

At the close of this argument Miss Anthony said: "We have with us one not so old in our cause as Mrs. Stone--I never call myself old because I shall be young until the crack of doom--and that is Mrs. Hooker, a sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher. The world has always made special place for the family of Beechers."

Mrs. Hooker (Conn.) spoke very briefly, saying: "You all know those old Jewish words in the Decalogue, 'Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long in the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee.' If we want to help the republic, if we want to perpetuate the institutions our fathers brought across the water, we must honor the mothers equally with the fathers in the Government. To-day the laws compel our sons the moment they are twenty-one to come to us and say: 'My mother, I owe you much; sometimes I think all that is good in me has come from you, but to-day you will retire and I will rule. I will no longer listen to your counsel; but I will make the laws for you and my sisters, and you must obey them. Henceforth I am your ruler.' Now, friends, a Government can not last long which teaches its sons disrespect to its mothers. It is in line with our principles that we recognize the mother element in the Government as well as in the family."

Miss Anthony closed the hearing with a strong appeal for a report from the committee which should recommend Congress to submit a Sixteenth Amendment and allow the women of the country to carry their case to the State Legislatures. The committee seemed much impressed by the arguments, but evidently there was no change of opinion.[86]

A hearing was granted February 17 by the House Judiciary Committee, with delegates present from twenty-six States. Addresses were made in part as follows:

MRS. CHAPMAN CATT: ... You know that in these modern years there has been a great deal of talk about natural rights, and we have had an innumerable host of philosophers writing books to tell us what natural rights are. I believe that to-day both scientists and philosophers are agreed that they are the right to life, the right to liberty, the right to free speech, the right to go where you will and when you please, the right to earn your own living and the right to do the best you can for yourself. One of the greatest of those philosophers and writers, Herbert Spencer, has accorded to woman the same natural rights as to man. I believe every thoughtful man in the United States to-day concedes that point.

The ballot has been for man a means of defending these natural rights. Even now in some localities of the world those rights are still defended by the revolver, as in former days, but in peaceable communities the ballot is the weapon by means of which they are protected. We find, as women citizens, that when we are wronged, when our rights are infringed upon, inasmuch as we have not this weapon with which to defend them, they are not considered, and we are very many times imposed upon. We find that the true liberty or the American people demands that all citizens to whom these rights have been accorded should have that weapon....

MRS. LIDA A. MERIWETHER (Tenn.): "Oh, Caesar, we who are about to die salute you!" was the gladiators' cry in the arena, standing face to face with death and with the Roman populace. All over this fair city, youth and beauty, freshness and joy, stand with welcoming hands, calling you to all pleasures of ear and eye, of soul and sense. But here, into the inner sanctuary of your deepest, gravest thought, come, year after year, a little band of women over whose heads the snows of many winters and of many sorrows have sifted. Here "we who are about to die salute you." We do not come asking for gifts of profit or preferment for ourselves; for us the day for ban or benison has almost passed. But we ask for greater freedom, for better conditions for the children of our love, whom we shall so soon leave behind. In the short space allowed each petitioner we have not time to ask for much. But in my State the grandmothers of seventy are growing weary of being classed with the grandsons of seven. They fail to find a valid reason why they should be relegated to perpetual legal and political childhood.

Years ago, when the bugle call rang out over this unhappy land, as the men rallied to the standard of their State, we, the wives and mothers, who had no voice in bringing about those cruel conditions, were called to give up our brightest and best for cannons' food. We furnished the provisions, ministered on the battlefield, nursed in the hospital; we, equally with our brothers, regarded "our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor" only as gifts held in trust to spend and be spent for home and State. And to-day when we see the wayfaring man, who probably hails from a penal institution of the Old World, who honors no home, no country and no political faith, freely enjoying the right to say who shall make and who shall enforce the laws by which we women are governed, we grow weary of being classed as perpetual aliens upon our nation's soil.

The honest, industrious, bread-winning women of Tennessee do not enjoy the knowledge that the pauper of their State is their political superior. Four years ago we saw it practically demonstrated that when a great moral issue was at stake the male pauper could cast his ballot without hindrance from the penal code, but if the widow or the single woman, who earned and owned property and paid her quota of the tax for his support, should attempt to cast a counteracting ballot, her penalty would be fine or imprisonment.

Year after year we have journeyed to the Mecca of the petitioner--the legislative halls. There we have asked protection for our boys from the temptation of the open saloon; we have asked that around our baby girls the wall of protection might be raised at least a little higher than ten years; we have asked for reform schools for boys, where they should not be thrown in daily contact with old and hardened criminals. Year after year we have pleaded for better conditions for the children to whom we have given the might of our love, the strength and labor of our lives; but in not one instance has that prayer been granted. And at last we have found the reason why. A senator in a sister State said to a body of petitioners: "Ladies, you won't get your bill, but your defeat will be a paying investment if it only teaches you that the politician, little or big, is now, always was, and always will be, the drawn image, pocket edition, safety valve and speaking-trumpet of the fellow that voted him in."

Gentlemen, we ask your help to the end that not we, perhaps, but the daughters and granddaughters whom we leave behind, may be counted with "those that voted him in."

MRS. JEAN BROOKS GREENLEAF (N. Y.): Soon after I came to Washington to make it my home for two years, one clear, bright morning I drove up to this Capitol with a friend. As we ascended the hill on the left we warmly expressed our admiration for the beautiful structure within whose walls we are now standing, and were enthusiastic in our admiration for those who so nobly planned that, with the growth of the nation, there could be a commensurate outstretching of its legislative halls without loss to the dignity of the whole. We drove slowly around the front and commenced the descent on the opposite side, when I called to the driver to stop in order that we might feast our eyes on the inspiring view which lay before us. There rose Washington Monument so simple yet so grand, and I recalled the fact that in its composition it fitly represented the Union of the States. My heart swelled and my eyes overflowed as I thought of the grand idea embodied in this Government, the possibilities of this country's future. The lines of "My country, 'tis of thee," rose to my lips, but they died there.

Whence came my right to speak those words? True I was born here; true I was taught from my earliest youth to repeat the glorious words of Thomas Jefferson, Roger Sherman and other patriots; but when I grew to womanhood I had to learn the bitter lesson that these words applied only to men; that I simply counted as one in the population; that I must submit to be governed by the laws in the selection of whose makers I had no choice; that my consent to be governed would never be asked; that for my taxation there would be no representation; that, so far as my right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" was concerned, others must judge for me; that I had no voice for myself; that I was a woman without a country, and only on the plane of political equality with the insane, the idiot, the pauper, Indians not taxed, the criminal, and the unnaturalized foreigner.

Honorable gentlemen, women come here annually to ask that these wrongs be righted. To-day we have come again to entreat that, as you have extended this building to meet the needs of the people, you will extend your thought of the people and make it possible that the principle underlying the Government of this country may be embodied in a law which will make the daughters of the land joint heirs with the sons to all the rights and privileges of an enfranchised people. In the name of the women of the State of New York, I ask it.

MISS ALICE STONE BLACKWELL (Mass.): Except where there is some very strong reason to the contrary, it is generally admitted that every man has a right to be consulted in regard to his own concerns. The laws which he has to obey and the taxes he has to pay are things that do most intimately concern him, and the only way of being directly consulted in regard to them, under our form of government, is through the ballot. Is there any very good reason why women should not be free to be consulted in this direct manner? Let us consider a few of the reasons which are generally given against this freedom of women, and see whether they are good.

It is said that women do not need to vote, because they are virtually represented by their husbands, fathers and brothers. The first trouble with this doctrine of virtual representation is that it is not according to numbers. I know a man who had a wife, a widowed mother, four unmarried daughters and five unmarried sisters. According to this theory his vote represented himself and all those eleven women. Yet it counted but one, just the same as the vote of his next-door bachelor neighbor without a female relative in the world.

Then, again, suppose that all the women in one family do not think alike. A member of our Massachusetts Legislature had two daughters. One was a suffragist, the other was so much opposed that she used to burn the Woman's Journal as soon as it came in the house. How was that man to represent both his daughters by his single vote on the suffrage question? Instead of two daughters he might have had three, one a Republican, one a Democrat and the other a Prohibitionist. How could he have represented all of them by his one vote unless he had voted "early and often?"

Again, in order to represent the women of his family a man may have to go without representation himself. There was a case of an old gentleman in Chicago, a Greenbacker, who had three daughters, all of whom were Republicans. When election day approached his three daughters said to him that he was the natural representative of their family--he had always told them so, and they fully agreed with him--and they pointed out to him how very wrong it would be, when that family consisted of three Republicans and only one Greenbacker, with but one ballot to represent the family, that it should be cast for the Greenback candidate. The old gentleman was conscientious and consistent and, although he was a man of strong Greenback convictions, he actually voted the Republican ticket in order to represent his daughters. It was the nearest he could come to representing them under this theory. But did it give that family any accurate or adequate representation? Evidently not. The Greenback candidate was entitled to one vote from that family, and he did not get it; and the Republican candidate was entitled to three ballots, and he got only one. And then, in order to represent his daughters, that chivalrous father had to go without any representation himself. It is evident that the only fair way to get at public sentiment in such a case is for each member of the family to have one vote, and thus represent himself or herself.

Another proof that women are not virtually represented is to be found in the laws as they actually exist. These one-sided laws were not made because men meant to be unjust or unkind to women, but simply because they naturally looked at things mainly from their own point of view. It does not indicate any special depravity on the part of men. I have no doubt that if women alone had made the laws, those laws would be just as one-sided as they are to-day, only in the opposite direction.

It is said that if women are enfranchised, husbands and wives will vote just alike, and you will simply double the vote and have no change in the result. Then, in the next breath, it is said that husbands and wives would vote for opposing candidates, and then there would be matrimonial quarrels. If they vote just alike there will be no harm done, and this good may be done--the women will be broadened by a knowledge of public affairs, and husband and wife will have a subject of mutual interest in which they can sympathize with each other. In cases where husband and wife do not think alike as to who will make the best selectmen, for instance, you will admit that is hardly sufficient to cause them to quarrel; but if they should think differently on very many other points, they would quarrel anyway, so that politics would not make much difference with them.

Then it is said that women do not want to vote, and in proof it is said they do not vote generally for school committeemen where allowed to do so. We all know that the size of the vote cast at any election is just in proportion to the amount of interest that election calls forth. At a Presidential election nearly all the voters turn out; in an ordinary State election only about half; at a municipal election only a small fraction of the men take the trouble to vote. The Troy Press states that at a recent election in Syracuse for a board of education, out of about 3,000 qualified voters only 40 voted.

Then, it is said that this movement is making no progress; that while the movements along other lines are largely succeeding, there has been no advance along this line. Twenty-five years ago, with insignificant exceptions, women could not vote anywhere. To-day they have school suffrage in twenty-three States, full suffrage in Wyoming, municipal suffrage in Kansas, and municipal suffrage for single women and widows in England, Scotland and most of the British provinces. The common sense of the world is slowly but surely working toward the enfranchisement of women.

MRS. ANNIE L. DIGGS (Kan.): You remember the time when the theoretical objection was often urged that if the suffrage was given to women, men would cease to show them the proper respect. For instance, the weighty argument was made that they would not raise their hats when they met women on the street, and that they would not give up their seats in the cars. But, gentlemen, you should just see how they take off their hats to us in Kansas, and how every man of them gets up and offers us his seat when we come into a street car!

It was also urged that if the ballot were put into the hands of women it would be detrimental to the interests of the home. There is not a man in the State to-day who would venture to go before a Kansas audience and urge that objection. There is not a man there who would be willing to jeopardize his political, social or business interests by casting any kind of obloquy upon the women who have exercised the right of the elective franchise for the last five years. This is the result of success. We have Municipal Suffrage. One little ounce of fact outweighs whole tons of theory....

THE REV. ANNA HOWARD SHAW (Penn.): Yesterday I noticed in a report of our hearing before the Judiciary Committee of the House the headline, "Appeals to Deaf Ears". And I said, "Has it come to this, that when earnest and sincere women of this great country make an appeal to the heads of the Government it is dubbed an 'Appeal to Deaf Ears'?" Time was when the British Government thought our ancestors had not sufficient merit in their cause to be heard, and when they made an "appeal to deaf ears". But the time came when those ears were unstopped and they heard, and what they heard was the cry of victory by a free people. We may be appealing to deaf ears to-day, but the time is coming when it will not be so. Men will hear and, hearing, they will answer, because ultimately men desire the right. If I were asked what I conscientiously believe the real condition of the hearts of most men to be, I should say they are positively ignorant in regard to the justice of this matter, and if it could be brought properly before them, they would stand on the side of justice and right for women.

Therefore I desire only to say that I know from my travels all over the country, conferring with the intelligent women to bring before them this great principle, that the good work is going on. It may be deafness yesterday and partial hearing to-day, but it will be full hearing to-morrow. To-day we may be blind to the truth; to-morrow we shall see the whole truth. We may not have another centennial before we shall see justice for all human kind.

You know, gentlemen, that this Government exists for only three things, and in those every woman is as much interested as every man. It exists for the administration of justice, for the protection of person and property, and for the development of society. Just as you and all men have persons and property to protect, so we women have. We are because of our nature and because it seems as if the Almighty had intended it should be so, more interested than men in the development of society. Wherever there is any movement for the uplifting of society you will find women in the forefront. There never has been any great movement in this nation when women have not stood side by side with the noblest and truest men.

We do to-day nine-tenths of the philanthropic work, nine-tenths of the church work, and form three-fourths of the church membership. We are the teachers of the young; we are the mothers of the race. If you want the noblest men you must have the noblest mothers. "Eye hath not seen, nor hath ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive" the kind of men and women God had in view when He created man in His own likeness and gave to male and female dominion over the world, to subdue it and to bring out of it the best things.

You who talk of a great Government in which the voice of God is heard must remember that, if "the voice of the people is the voice of God," you never will know what that is until you get the voice of the people, and you will find it has a soprano as well as a bass. You must join the soprano voice of God to the bass voice in order to get the harmony of the Divine voice. Then you will have a law which will enable you to say, "We are a people justly ruled, because in this nation the voice of the people is the voice of God, and the voice of the people has been heard."

Mrs. Ellen M. Bolles (R. I.) said in the course of her remarks: "The conditions surrounding women to-day are quite different from what they were in the days of our grandmothers. Women are becoming property earners and owners, as they were not in those former times before they began asking for the ballot. Twenty-five per cent. or more of the women of this country are property owners. Nearly nine-tenths of the laws are made for the protection of property and of those who own it and who earn wages. Now it seems to me that this twenty-five per cent. of the women should have a voice in the making of laws for the protection of their property and of their right to earn a living...."

Mrs. Colby thus closed her address on Wyoming: "Having thus shown that the twenty-two years' experience of woman suffrage has been satisfactory to the citizens of Wyoming; that it has conduced to good order in the elections and to the purity of politics; that the educational system is improved and that teachers are paid without regard to sex; that Wyoming stands alone in a decreased proportion of crime and divorce; and that it has elevated the personal character of both sexes--what possible good is there left to speak of as coming to that State from woman suffrage save its position as the vanguard of progress and human freedom. Not the Bartholdi statue in New York harbor, but Wyoming on the crest of the continent, the first true republic, represents Liberty enlightening the world."

Short addresses were made also by Mrs. Caroline McCullough Everhard, Mrs. Mary Jewett Telford, the Rev. Mila F. Tupper, Mrs. Marble, Dr. Frances Dickinson, Miss H. Augusta Howard, Mrs. Saxon, Mrs. Hannah J. Bailey, Mrs. Evaleen L. Mason and Mrs. Olive Pond Amies.[87]

The Post, in an account of the Senate hearing, said: "Miss Anthony called attention to Senator Hoar as the gentleman who had presented the first favorable suffrage report to the Senate in 1879. Everybody shouted "Stand up," and as he retired deeper into his leather chair they continued to cry, "Up, up!" It was a tableau when the Senator found his feet, and at the same time was confronted with a round of applause and a volley of white handkerchiefs waved at him in Chautauqua style. He capped the climax by moving at once a favorable report. Laurel wreaths and bouquets would have been Senator Hoar's portion if they had been available, but the women all assured him afterward of their sincere appreciation. The hearing was held in the ladies' reception room, which was completely filled."

These matchless arguments had no effect upon the Democratic members of the committee, but Senator Warren of Wyoming made a favorable report for himself, Senators Hoar of Massachusetts, Quay of Pennsylvania and Allen of Washington, which concluded by saying: "The majority of the members of this committee, believing that equal suffrage, regardless of sex, should be the legitimate outgrowth of the principles of a republican form of government, and that the right of suffrage should be conferred upon the women of the United States, earnestly recommend the passage of the amendment submitted herewith."

Senators Vance of North Carolina and George of Mississippi filed the same minority report which already had done duty several times, although the former was said to have declared that the speeches of the women surpassed anything he ever had heard, and that their logic, if used in favor of any other measure, could not fail to carry it.

FOOTNOTES:

[85] David B. Culberson, Tex.; William C. Oates, Ala.; Thomas R. Stockdale, Miss.; Charles J. Boatner, La.; Isaac H. Goodnight, Ky.; John A. Buchanan, Va.; William D. Bynum, Ind.; Alfred C. Chapin, N. Y.; Fernando C. Layton, O.; Simon P. Wolverton, Penn.; Case Broderick; Kan.; James Buchanan, N. J.; George W. Ray, N. Y.; H. Henry Powers, Vt.

[86] Zebulon B. Vance, N. C.; John G. Carlisle, Ky.; J. Z. George, Miss.; George F. Hoar, Mass.; John B. Allen, Wash.; Matthew S. Quay, Penn.; Francis E. Warren, Wyo.

[87] After the convention had adjourned Miss Sara Winthrop Smith (Conn.) made an argument on Federal Suffrage before the Judiciary Committee of the House. See Chap. I for general statement of position taken by its advocates.

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XIII. THE NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1893

At the close of the Twenty-fifth annual meeting the Washington Evening News said: "There will be an exodus from Washington during the next three days--an exodus of some of the intellectually powerful and brilliant women who participated in what was agreed to be the brightest and most successful convention ever held by the National Suffrage Association. Whatever may be the opinion of the world at large upon the feasibility or desirability of granting the franchise to women, none who attended their annual reunion of delegates or listened to the addresses of their orators and leaders, can deny that the convention was composed of clever, sensible and attractive women, splendidly representative of their sex and of the present time."

After complimentary notices of the leading members, it continued: "'One very pleasant thing connected with our business committee is the beautiful relations existing among its members,' said one of the officers the other evening. 'We all have our opinions and they often differ, but we are absolutely true to each other and to the cause. We are most of us married, and all of us have the co-operation of our husbands and fathers. Of the business committee of nine, six are married. For the past two years we have had one man on our board, the Hon. Wm. Dudley Foulke, but as a rule men have not the time and thought to give this subject, as they are engaged in more remunerative employment.' The self-control and good-nature prevailing even in the heated debate on the religious liberty interference resolution have already been alluded to in our columns."

Miss Susan B. Anthony presided over the convention, Jan. 16-19, 1893, held in Metzerott's Music Hall and preceded by the usual religious services Sunday afternoon. The sermon was given by the Rev. Annis F. Eastman (N. Y.), an ordained Congregational minister, from the text in Isaiah, "Take away the yoke."

The memorial service, which was of unusual impressiveness, opened with the reading by Miss Anthony of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton's tribute to the distinguished dead of the past year who advocated equality of rights for women--George William Curtis, John Greenleaf Whittier, Ernestine L. Rose, Abby Hutchinson Patton and others.[88] Of Mr. Curtis she said:

If the success of our cause could be assured by the high character of the men who from the beginning have identified themselves with it, woman would have been emancipated long ago. A reform advocated by Garrison, Phillips, Emerson, Alcott, Theodore Parker, Gerrit Smith, Samuel J. May and George William Curtis must be worthy the consideration of statesmen and bishops.

For more than one generation Mr. Curtis maintained a brave attitude on this question. As editor of Harper's Magazine, and as a popular lecturer on the lyceum platform, he was ever true to his convictions. Before the war his lecture on Fair Play for Women aroused much thought among the literary and fashionable classes. In the New York Constitutional Convention in 1867, a most conservative body, Mr. Curtis, though a young man and aware that he had but little sympathy among his compeers, bravely demanded that the word "male" should be stricken from the suffrage article of the proposed constitution. His speech on that occasion, in fact, philosophy, rhetoric and argument never has been surpassed in the English language. From the beginning of his public life to its close Mr. Curtis was steadfast on this question. Harper's Magazine for June, 1892, contains his last plea for woman and for a higher standard for political parties....

Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose, exiled from Poland on account of her religious faith, married an Englishman and came to America, where she was one of the first and most eloquent of the women who spoke on the public platform. In 1836 she circulated petitions for the property rights of married women, in company with Mrs. Paulina Wright (Davis), and presented them to the New York Legislature. For forty years she was among the ablest advocates of the rights of women, lecturing also on religion, government and other subjects. Mrs. Abby Hutchinson Patton was lovingly referred to, the last but one of that family who had sung so many years for freedom, not only for the negro but for woman. Whittier, the uncompromising advocate of liberty for woman as well as for man, was eulogized in fitting terms.

The Hon. A. G. Riddle (D. C.) offered a fine testimonial to Francis Minor and Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, saying: "Mr. Minor was the first to urge the true and sublime construction of that noble amendment born of the war. It declares that all persons--not simply males--born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. Those who are denied or are refused the right to exercise the privileges and franchises of citizenship are less than citizens. Those who still declare that women may not vote, simply write 'falsehood' across that glorious declaration." General Butler, as a leading member of the House Judiciary Committee, in a matchless argument had asserted the right of women to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment,[89] and used all his influence to secure suffrage for women. Miss Anthony said in part:

The good of this hour is that it brings to the knowledge of the young the work of the pioneers who have passed away. It seems remarkable to those standing, as I do, one of a generation almost ended, that so many of these young people know nothing of the past; they are apt to think they have sprung up like somebody's gourd, and that nothing ever was done until they came. So I am always gratified to hear these reminiscences, that they may know how others have sown what they are reaping to-day.

One of the earliest advocates of this cause was Sally Holly, the daughter of Myron Holly, founder of the Liberty Party in the State of New York, and also founder of Unitarianism in the city of Rochester. Frederick Douglass will say a few words in regard to Sally Holly, and of such of the others as he may feel moved to speak; and I want to say that when, at the very first convention called and managed by women, Elizabeth Cady Stanton read her resolution that the elective franchise is the underlying right, there was but one man to stand with her, and that man was Frederick Douglass.

Mr. Douglass (D. C.) told of attempting to speak in Buffalo against slavery in 1843, when every hall was closed to him and he went into an abandoned storeroom:

I continued from day to day speaking in that old store to laborers from the wharves, cartmen, draymen and longshoremen, until after awhile the room was crowded. No woman made her appearance at the meetings, but day after day for six days in succession I spoke--morning, afternoon and evening. On the third day there came into the room a lady leading a little girl. No greater contrast could possibly have been presented than this elegantly dressed, refined and lovely woman attempting to wend her way through that throng. I don't know that she showed the least shrinking from the crowd, but I noticed that they rather shrank from her, as if fearful that the dust of their garments would soil hers. Her presence to me at that moment was as if an angel had been sent from Heaven to encourage me in my anti-slavery endeavors. She came day after day thereafter, and at last I had the temerity to ask her name. She gave it--Sally Holly. "A daughter of Myron Holly?" said I. "Yes," she answered. I understood it all then, for he was amongst the foremost of the men in western New York in the anti-slavery movement. His home was in Rochester and his dust now lies in Mt. Hope, the beautiful cemetery of that city. Over him is a monument, placed there by that other true friend of women, Gerrit Smith of Peterboro....

I have seen the Hutchinson family in a mob in New York. When neither Mr. Garrison, Mr. Phillips nor Mr. Burleigh, nor any one could speak, when there was a perfect tempest and whirlwind of rowdyism in the old Tabernacle on Broadway, then this family would sing, and almost upon the instant that they would raise their voices, so perfect was the music, so sweet the concord, so enchanting the melody, that it came down upon the audience like a summer shower on a dusty road, subduing, settling everything.

I can not add to the paper which Mrs. Stanton has sent. After her--silence. Your cause has raised up no voice so potent as that of Elizabeth Cady Stanton--no living voice except yours, Madame President.

How delighted I am to see that you have the image of Lucretia Mott here [referring to her marble bust on the stage]. I am glad to be here, glad to be counted on your side, and glad to be able to remember that those who have gone before were my friends. I was more indebted to Whittier perhaps than to any other of the anti-slavery people. He did more to fire my soul and enable me to fire the souls of others than any other man. It was Whittier and Pierpont who feathered our arrows, shot in the direction of the slave power, and they did it well. No better reading can now be had in favor of the rights of woman or the liberties of man than is to be found in their utterances....

Miss Clara Barton (D. C.) spoke in a touching manner of the great service rendered to humanity by Dr. Harriet N. Austin, who assisted Dr. James C. Jackson to establish the "Home on the Hillside," the Dansville (N. Y.) Sanitorium. Henry B. Blackwell told of John L. Whiting, "a power and a strength to the Massachusetts Suffrage Association for many years, one of those rare men not made smaller by wealth, and always willing to give himself, his mind, his heart, his money, to help the cause of woman." The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw said in part:

I have been asked to speak a word of Mrs. Ralph Waldo Emerson. It has been said by some people that we have wrongfully quoted Mr. Emerson as being on our side. His biographers appear to have put in his early statements and forgotten to include his later declarations, which were all in favor of the enfranchisement of women.

I was once sent to Concord by the Massachusetts society to hold a meeting. The churches were closed against suffrage speakers and there was not money enough to pay for a hall. Mrs. Ralph Waldo Emerson heard the meeting was to be given up, and she sent a message to the lady having the work in charge, saying: "Shall it be said that here in Concord, where the Revolutionary war began, there is no place to speak for the freedom of women? Get the best hall in town and I will pay for it." So on that occasion and on another Mrs. Emerson paid for the hall and sent a kind word to the meeting, declaring herself in favor of the suffrage for women, and stating that her husband's views and her own were identical on this question. She had the New England trait of being a good wife, a good mother and a good housekeeper, and Mr. Emerson's home was a restful and blessed place. We sometimes forget the wives of great men in thinking of the greatness of their husbands, but Mrs. Emerson was as great in her way as Mr. Emerson in his, and no more faithful friend to woman and to woman's advancement ever has lived among us.[90]

A word as to the Rev. Anna Oliver, the first woman to enter the theological department of Boston University. She was much beloved by her class. She was a devoted Christian, eminently orthodox, and a very good worker in all lines of religious effort. After Miss Oliver graduated she was ambitious to become ordained, as all women ought to be who desire to preach the gospel; and so after I had graduated from the theological school, the year following, we both applied to the conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church for admission. Miss Oliver's name beginning with O and mine with S, her case was presented first. She was denied ordination by Bishop Andrews. Our claims were carried to the general conference in Cincinnati, and the Methodist Episcopal Church denied ordination to the women whom it had graduated in its schools and upon whom it had conferred the degree of bachelor of divinity. It not only did this, but it made a step backwards; it took from us the licenses to preach which had been granted to Miss Oliver for four years and to myself for eight years.

But Miss Oliver was earnest in her efforts, and so she began to preach in the city of Brooklyn, and with great courage bought a church in which a man had failed as a minister, leaving a debt of $14,000. She was like a great many other women--and here is a warning for all women. God made a woman equal to a man, but He did not make a woman equal to a woman and a man. We usually try to do the work of a man and of a woman too; then we break down, and they say that women ought not to be ministers because they are not strong enough. They do not get churches that can afford to send them to Europe on a three months' vacation once a year. Miss Oliver was not only the minister and the minister's wife, but she started at least a dozen reforms and undertook to carry them all out. She was attacked by that influential Methodist paper, the Christian Advocate, edited by the Rev. Dr. James M. Buckley, who declared that he would destroy her influence in the church, and so with that great organ behind him he attacked her. She had that to fight, the world to fight and the devil to fight, and she broke down in health. She went abroad to recover, but came home only to die.[91]

The death of those less widely known was touchingly referred to by women of the different States. Miss Anthony closed the services by saying: "I am just informed that we must add to this list the revered name of Abby Hopper Gibbons, of four-score-and-ten, who with her father, Isaac T. Hopper, formed the Women's Prison Association, and who has stood for more than the allotted years of man the sentinel on the watch-tower to guard unfortunate women and help them back into womanly living."

At the first evening session Miss Anthony, in her president's address, answered the question, "What has been gained by the forty years' work?" She called attention to the woman who had preached the day before, ordained by an orthodox denomination; to the women alternate delegates to the late National Republican Convention; to the recommendation of Gov. Roswell P. Flower that women should be delegates to the approaching New York Constitutional Convention. She pointed out rapidly many other straws showing the direction of the wind, saying: "Wendell Phillips said what he wanted to do on the abolition question was to turn Congress into an anti-slavery debating society. That is what we have done with every educational, industrial, religious and political body--we have turned them all into debating societies on the woman question."

U. S. Senator Joseph M. Carey (Wy.) sent a letter reaffirming his conviction that the granting of full political rights to women would be for the best interests of the country. Mr. Blackwell sketched the successive extensions of suffrage to women, and set forth the special importance of their trying to secure the Municipal and the Presidential franchises, both of which could be granted by the Legislature. Mrs. Ellen Battelle Dietrick (Mass.) read an able paper on The Best Methods of Interesting Women in Suffrage, in which she said:

The truth is, the American woman has been so pleasantly soothed by the sweet opiate of that high-sounding theory of her "sovereignty," that until very recently she could not be aroused to examine the facts. Forty years ago the voices of a few crying in the wilderness began to prepare the way for the present awakening....

The deliverance of woman must have as its corner-stone self-support. The first step in this direction must be to explode the fallacy that marriage is a state of being supported. As men are most largely the gatherers of money, it is mistakenly assumed that they are most largely the creators of wealth. The man goes abroad and gives his daily labor toward earning his board and clothes; but what he actually receives for his work can neither be eaten nor worn. It does nothing whatever until he puts it into his wife's hands, and upon her intelligence, energy and ability depend how much can be done through the using of it. Not until her labor in transforming raw material, in cooking, sewing, and rendering a house habitable, is joined to his, can a man be said to have really received anything worth having. He begins, she completes, the making of their joint wealth. Their dependence is mutual; the position of the one who turns the money into usable material by her labor being equally important, equally valuable, with that of him who turned his labor into money; and this must be fully recognized if woman is ever to come into her true relation to man. She supports him exactly as he supports her, and this is equally the case with the wife who herself produces directly, or the one who gives her time and intelligence to direct the production of others....

Closely allied to the fallacy that man supports woman is the fallacy that man protects woman, and has a right to control her by virtue of this protection. There was a period in the world's transition from savagery to civilization when mankind had so little conception of the mutuality of human interests that war was a perpetual condition of society. Originally women also were fighters; just as the lioness or tigress is as capable as her mate of self-defense and protection of her young, so the savage woman, when necessity required, was equally capable of conducting warfare in the same cause. But long before men had given up killing each other for the better business of trading with and helping each other woman had ceased to be a fighter. She was the first to see the advantages of peace, both because she was the earliest manufacturer and trader and because it cost her more in the production of every soldier than it cost man. Instinct directed her toward peace long before reason made it possible for her to explain why she hated war, and she hated it as an occupation for herself long before it occurred to her to despise it as an occupation for man. To-day the love of peace and hatred for war which she is rapidly spreading through the world is the real protector of woman; she is a self-protector by virtue of this proclivity, and, as war is equally the enemy of man, here again woman gives to man as much as she receives. Whatever force the argument based on the right of soldiers to rule may once have had is rapidly passing away. The era of the destroyer is dying, the epoch of the Creator is coming in....

The subjugation of woman doubtless arose from an honest desire of man to protect her. His mistake lay in assuming that his mind and will could do private and public duty for both. Woman's mistake lay in assuming that she might with safety permit man's mind and will to discharge the duties nature meant to be fulfilled by her own. Unhappily nature has a way of allowing the human race to learn by its own experience, even though the lesson consume ages of time; and she has also a rule that unused faculties and functions fall into a state of atrophy. It was by such a substitution of masculine for feminine will that woman fell so far behind him whom she originally led in the race, industrial and intellectual. If they are ever to march side by side as true comrades and free partners, it must be by a voluntary resumption of independence in feminine mind and will. In this man can assist by stimulating her spirit of independence, or he can discourage it by a contrary course, but the final result lies with woman herself. She alone can free herself from the habits of thought and action engendered by thousands of years of slavery.

The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made by millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.

In the address of Mrs. Ruth C. D. Havens (D. C.) on The Girl of the Future, which was greatly enjoyed, she said:

The training and education of the girl of the present have seldom been discussed except from one standpoint--her suitable preparation for becoming an economical housekeeper, an inexpensive wife, a willing and self-forgetful mother, a cheap, unexacting, patient, unquestioning, unexpectant, ministering machine. The girl's usefulness to herself, to her sex and race, her preferences, tastes, happiness, social, intellectual or financial prosperity, hardly have entered into the thought upon this question....

If woman would be a student, a scientist, a lecturer, a physician; if she would be a pioneer in a wilderness of scoffers to make fair roads up which her sex might easily travel to equal educational and legal rights, equal privileges and pay in fields of labor, equal suffrage--she must divide her eager energies and give the larger half to superior homekeeping, wifehood and motherhood, in order that her new gospel shall be received with any respect or acceptance. And probably no class of women have been such sticklers for the cultivation of all woman's modest, unassuming home duties as have been the great, ambitious teachers on this suffrage platform....

But this will not be the training of the girl of the future. It is not the sort of preparation to which the boy of the present is urged. "Jack of all trades, good at none" is the old epithet bestowed upon a man who thus diffuses his energies. You do not expect a distinguished lawyer to clean his own clothes, a doctor to groom his horse, a teacher to take care of the schoolhouse furnace, a preacher to half-sole his shoes. This would be illogical, and men are nothing if not logical. Yet a woman who enters upon any line of achievement is invariably hampered, for at least the early years, with the inbred desire to add to the labor of her profession all the so-called feminine duties, which, fulfilled to-day, are yet to be done to-morrow, which bring to her neither comfort, gain nor reputation, and which by their perpetual demand diminish her powers for a higher quality of work....

Everywhere there is too much housekeeping. It is not economy of time or money for every little family of moderate means to undertake alone the expensive and wearing routine. The married woman of the future will be set free by co-operative methods, half the families on a square, perhaps, enjoying one luxurious, well-appointed dining-room with expenses divided pro rata. In many other ways housekeeping will be simplified. Homes have no longer room for people--they are consecrated to things. Parlors and bedrooms are full of the cheap and incongruous or expensive and harmonious belongings of a junk shop. Plush gods hold the fort. All the average house needs to make it a museum is the sign, "Hands off." ...

The girl of the future will select her own avocation and take her own training for it. If she be a houseworker, and many will prefer to be, she will be so valuable in that line as to command much respect and good wages. If she be an architect, a jeweler, an electrical engineer, she will not rob a cook by mutilating a dinner, or a dressmaker by amateur cutting and sewing, or a milliner by creating her own bonnet. The house helper will not be incompetent, because the development and training of woman for her best and truest work will have extended to her also, and she will do housework because she loves it and is better adapted to it than to any other employment. She will preside in the kitchen with skill and science.

The service girl of the future will be paid perhaps double or treble her present wages, with wholesome food, a cheerful room, an opportunity to see an occasional cousin and some leisure for recreation. At present this would be ruinous, and why? Because too frequently the family has but one producer. The wife, herself a consumer, produces more consumers. Daughters grow up around a man like lilies of the field, which toil not, neither do they spin. Every member of every family in the future will be a producer of some kind and in some degree. The only one who will have the right of exemption will be the mother, for a child can hardly be born with cheerful views of living whose mother's life has been, for its sake, a double burden. From this root spring melancholy, insanity, suicide. The production of human souls is the highest production of all, the one which requires most preparation, truest worth, gravest care and holiest consecration. If the girl of the future recognizes this truth, she will have made an advance indeed. But apart from the mother every member of the family should be a material producer; and then there will be means sufficient for the producer in the kitchen to get such remuneration for her skill as will eliminate the incompetent, shirking, migratory creature of today....

I hardly need say to this audience that the girl of the future will vote. She will not plead for the privilege--she will be urged to exercise the right, and no one will admit that he ever opposed it, or remember that there was a time when woman's ballot was despised and rejected of men. She will not be told that she needs the suffrage for her own protection, but she will be urged to exercise it for the good of her country and of humanity. It will not be known that the Declaration of Independence was once a dead letter. No one will believe that it ever was declared that the Constitution did not protect this right. It will be incredible that women were once neither people nor citizens, and yet were the mothers, and in so much the creators, of the men who governed them.

Mrs. Mary S. Lockwood (D. C.), member-at-large of the World's Fair Board of Lady Managers, read a carefully prepared statement of the methods and aims of that body, which began: "The Board of Lady Managers owe their existence to Susan B. Anthony and her co-workers. It was these women who went before Congress and not only asked but demanded that women should have a place in the management of this Columbian Exposition--and they got it"![92] She closed as follows:

I have been greatly impressed as I have come into this hall from day to day, and have looked upon the sweet representative face in marble of Lucretia Mott and the benign, glorified face of Mrs. Stanton, with Susan B. Anthony as the central figure of the trio, and have thought of the years they have lifted up their voices praying they might see the glory of the coming of the Lord; and I have felt if only I could bring before them the sheaves which we are gathering from the women of the earth for this great exposition; if only I could show them how their work has put the women of this nation in touch with the women of every other country, awakening them to new aspirations, new hopes, new efforts, to whom the dawn of a brighter day is visible--these pioneers would say, "Our eyes are indeed opened; a handful of corn planted on the top of the mountain has been made to shake all Lebanon."

Miss Mary H. Williams (Neb.) reported that, as chairman of a committee for this purpose, she had sent letters to forty-nine Governors of States and Territories; twenty-one replies had been received--nine in favor of full suffrage for women, two of school suffrage only, three were totally opposed and the others made evasive replies. The nine in favor were Governors Barber of Wyoming, Routt of Colorado, Mellette of South Dakota, Winans of Michigan, Thomas of Utah, Burke of North Dakota, Humphrey of Kansas, Colcord of Nevada, Knapp of Alaska. All of these were Western men and all Republicans but Winans. Tillman of South Carolina and Willey of Idaho favored school suffrage alone. Stone of Mississippi and Fleming of West Virginia answered "no". Gov. James E. Boyd of Nebraska was opposed, although he would allow women to vote on school questions. Governor Boyd's election had been contested on the ground that his father had not been properly naturalized.

Gov. Thomas M. Holt of North Carolina replied: "I am utterly opposed to woman suffrage in any shape or form. I have a wife and three daughters, all married, who are as much opposed to women going into politics as I am, and they reflex the sentiment of our Southern women generally."

Gov. Francis P. Fleming of Florida gave nine reasons why he was opposed, but concluded: "The above objections would not as a rule apply to church or school elections, and as women are usually much more pious than men and take more interest in church matters, I am inclined to think it would be well for them to vote at church elections, and am not aware of any particular objection to their voting at school elections."

The address of Mrs. Orra Langhorne (Va.) was read by her niece, Miss Henderson Dangerfield. It gave a charming picture of the oldtime Southern woman, her responsible social position, her care for her great household in her own small world; described how she was handicapped by tradition and lack of intellectual training; depicted the changed conditions since the war and her gradual awakening to the demands of modern life and the need of larger rights.

Lucy Stone was not able to be present and a letter from her was read by her husband, Mr. Blackwell:

DEAR FRIENDS:--Wherever woman suffragists are gathered together in the name of equal rights, there am I always in spirit with them. Although unable to be present in person, my glad greeting goes to you, every one, to those who have borne the heat and burden of the day, and to the strong, brave, younger workers who have come to lighten the load and help bring the victory. The work still calls for patient perseverance and ceaseless endeavor; but we have every reason to rejoice when there are so many gains and when favorable conditions abound on every hand. The end is not yet in sight, but it can not be far away. The road before us is shorter than the road behind.

This was her last message to the association. She passed away in October of this year, having labored nearly half a century for the enfranchisement of women.

Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, in an address entitled Comparisons Are Odious, showed the contrast between the Government's treatment of the Sioux Indians, exempted from taxation and allowed to vote, and of law-abiding, intelligent women in the same section of the country, compelled to pay taxes and not allowed to vote.[93] Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates closed the evening with a brilliant address.

Before adjourning Miss Anthony read Gov. Roswell P. Flower's certificate appointing her a member of the Board of Managers of the State Industrial School at Rochester, N. Y. She took considerable satisfaction in pointing out that it referred to her as "him," because she had always contended that, if the masculine pronoun in an official document is sufficient to send a woman to the jail or the gallows, it is sufficient to enable her to vote and hold office.

On the last evening, the Hon. Carroll D. Wright, U. S. Commissioner of Labor, delivered a valuable address on The Industrial Emancipation of Women, in which he said:

Until within a comparatively recent period, woman's subjection to man has been well-nigh complete in all respects, whether such subjection is considered from a social, political, intellectual or even a physical point of view. At first the property of man, she emerged under civilization from the sphere of a drudge to that of a social factor and, consequently, into the liberty of cultivating her mental faculties....

Industrial emancipation, using the term broadly, means the highest type of woman as the result, the word "industrial" comprehending in this sense all remunerative employment. The entrance of woman into the industrial field was assured when the factory system of labor displaced the domestic or hand labor system. The age of invention, with the wonderful ramifications which invention always has produced, must be held accountable for bringing woman into a field entirely unknown to her prior to that age. As an economic factor, either in art, literature or industry, she was before that time hardly recognizable. With the establishment of the factory system, the desire of woman to have something more than she could earn as a domestic or in agricultural labor, or to earn something where before she had earned nothing, resulted in her becoming an economic factor, and she was obliged to submit to all the conditions of this new position. It hardly can be said that in the lower forms of industrial pursuits she superseded man, but it is true that she supplemented his labors....

Each step in industrial progress has raised her in the scale of civilization rather than degraded her. As a result she has constantly gone up higher and gained intellectual advantages, such as the opening to her of the higher institutions of learning, which have in turn equipped her for the best professional employment. The moral plane of the so-called workingwoman certainly is higher than that of the woman engaged in domestic service, and is equal to that of any class of women in the community....

As women have occupied the positions of bookkeepers, telegraphers and many of what might be called semi-professional callings, men have entered engineering, electrical, mechanical and other spheres of work which were not known when women first stepped into the industrial field. As the latter have progressed from entire want of employment to that which pays a few dollars per week, men, too, have progressed in their employments, and occupied larger fields not existing before....

Woman is now stepping out of industrial subjection and coming into the industrial system of the present as an entirely new economic factor. If there were no other reasons, this alone would be sufficient to make her wages low and prevent their very rapid increase.... The growing importance of woman's labor, her general equipment through technical education, her more positive dedication to the life-work she chooses, the growing sentiment that an educated and skilful woman is a better and truer companion in marriage than an ignorant and unskilful one, her appreciation of the value of organization, the general uplifting of the principle of integrity in business circles, woman's gradual approach to man's powers in mental achievement also, her possible and probable political influence--all these combined, working along general avenues of progress and evolution, will bring her industrial emancipation, by which she will stand on an equality with man in those callings in life for which she may be fitted. As she approaches this equality her remuneration will be increased and her economic importance acknowledged....

If woman's industrial emancipation leads to what many are pleased to call "political rights," we must not quarrel with it. It is not just that all other advantages which may come through this emancipation shall be withheld simply because one great privilege on which there is a division of sentiment may also come.

One of the greatest boons which will result from the industrial emancipation of woman will be the frank admission on the part of the true and chivalric man that she is the sole and rightful owner of her own being in every respect, and that whatever companionship may exist between her and man shall be as thoroughly honorable to her as to him.

Miss Harriet May Mills (N. Y.) gave a paper on The Present Political Status of Woman, which showed the trained mind and logical method of thought one would expect from a graduate of Cornell University. The last address of the convention was given by the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, entitled The America Undiscovered by Columbus. This, like so many of Miss Shaw's unsurpassed lectures, will be lost to posterity because unwritten and not stenographically reported.

In her report as vice-president-at-large Miss Shaw announced that she had given during the year 215 lectures for which she had received pay, twenty-five of these for suffrage associations and the rest for temperance and literary organizations, but on every occasion it had been a suffrage lecture. In addition she had given gratuitously to the service of this cause lectures which at her regular price would have amounted to $1,265. She also related the following incident: "I was present at the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union in Denver, and Miss Willard introduced me as a fraternal delegate from the National Suffrage Association. I made my little speech and the whole convention arose and waved their handkerchiefs at the message sent by this body. One woman jumped to her feet and moved that a telegram be returned from that convention, giving its sisterly sympathy. Miss Willard got up and said, 'Shoo, ladies; this is different from what it was in Washington in 1881, when you refused to let me have Miss Anthony on my platform. Things are coming around, girls.'"

The corresponding secretary, Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery, announced that thirty-three State associations were auxiliary to the national. Miss Adelaide Johnson was introduced as the sculptor who had modeled the fine busts of Lucretia Mott, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony, which were on the platform. Miss Laura Clay reported on the work that had just been commenced in the Southern States, which she considered a most hopeful field. In the discussion on Press Work, when it was proposed that the association start an official paper, Miss Anthony said with much feeling: "I had an experience in publishing a paper about twenty-five years ago and I came to grief. I never hear of a woman starting a suffrage paper that my blood does not tingle with agony for what that poor soul will have to endure--the same agony I went through. I feel, however, that we shall never become an immense power in the world until we concentrate all our money and editorial forces upon one great national daily newspaper, so we can sauce back our opponents every day in the year; once a month or once a week is not enough.

The resolutions presented by the chairman, Mrs. Dietrick, were adopted without dissent,[94] except the last:

WHEREAS, The Constitution of the United States promises noninterference with the religious liberty of the people; and

WHEREAS, Congress is now threatening to abridge the liberties of all in response to ecclesiastical dictation from a portion of the people; therefore,

Resolved, That this association enters a protest against any national attempt to control the innocent inclinations of the people either on the Jewish Sabbath or the Christian Sunday, and this we do quite irrespective of our individual opinions as to the sanctity of Sunday.

Resolved, That we especially protest against this present attempt to force all the people to follow the religious dictates of a part of the people, as establishing a precedent for the entrance of a most dangerous complicity between Church and State, thereby subtly undermining the foundation of liberty, so carefully laid by the wisdom of our fathers.

This precipitated the discussion as to the opening of the World's Fair on Sunday which had been vigorously waged during two preceding conventions without resulting in definite action. It was now continued during three sessions and then, by majority vote, indefinitely postponed. Mrs. Avery, chairman of the Columbian Exposition Committee,[95] closed her report as follows: "As we are to be represented in so many ways during the World's Fair--i. e., at the World's Congress of Representative Women, in the Suffrage Congresses, in the meetings to be held in the auditorium of the Woman's Building, in the program to be presented by us for the approval of the Committee on General Meetings of the Board of Lady Managers--I would strongly urge against attempting to hold a separate Suffrage Congress, either national or international, during the Exposition." This was agreed to.

The Congressional Committee, through Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, reported that 375 letters had been sent to members of Congress asking for an expression on the question of woman suffrage. Of those who responded fifty-nine were in favor of full suffrage; twenty-five of qualified suffrage; sixty-five wholly opposed. The remainder did not reply, although stamps were enclosed. This committee also arranged for the printing, purchasing and distributing of 23,000 copies of the Senate and House hearings. The report concluded: "The time has come when women wanting legislation must proceed exactly as men do who want it. No man procures an office for himself or a friend, nor does any man or association get an Act passed, unless the claim is persistently pressed, not only upon the members of the committee in charge of it but upon his friends and acquaintances in Congress. There is no use in supposing the justice or right of a question, without persistent work, is going to bring about a reform."[96]

Mrs. Colby, chairman of the Committee on Federal Suffrage, appointed to urge the legal right of women to vote for Representatives under the U. S. Constitution, reported that she had sent a copy of Francis Minor's argument to every member of the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, with a personal letter asking for an opinion, and that not one replied. Petitions were sent from twenty States, including suffrage associations, temperance societies, granges, etc. Letters asking an opinion were written to nineteen Senators who were considered friendly to the enfranchisement of women, and only one answered, Joseph N. Dolph of Oregon. Miss Sara Winthrop Smith (Conn.) opened the discussion.[97]

The motion of Miss Alice Stone Blackwell to amend the constitution so that it would not be obligatory to hold every annual convention in Washington, was amended by Mrs. Avery to the effect that "the annual delegate convention shall be held in Washington during the first session of each Congress, in order to influence national legislation; the meeting of the alternate conventions to be left an open question." Miss Anthony was greatly opposed to holding any of the national meetings outside of Washington, and in a forcible speech she said:

The sole object, it seems to me, of this organization is to bring the combined influence of all the States upon Congress to secure national legislation. The very moment you change the purpose of this great body from National to State work you have defeated its object. It is the business of the States to do the district work; to create public sentiment; to make a national organization possible; and then to bring their united power to the capital and focus it on Congress. Our younger women naturally can not appreciate the vast amount of work done here in Washington by the National Association in the last twenty-five years. The delegates do not come here as individuals but as representatives of their entire States.

We have had these conventions here for a quarter of a century, and every Congress has given hearings to the ablest women we could bring from every section. In the olden times the States were not fully organized--they had not money enough to pay their delegates' expenses. We begged and worked and saved the money and the National Association paid the expenses of delegates from Oregon and California in order that they might come and bring the influence of their States to bear upon Congress.

Last winter we had twenty-three States represented by delegates. Think of those twenty-three women going before the Senate committee, each making her speech, and showing these Senators the interest in all these States. We have educated at least a part of three or four hundred men and their wives and daughters every two years to return as missionaries to their respective localities. I shall feel it a grave mistake if you vote in favor of a movable convention. It will lessen our influence and our power; but come what may, I shall abide by the decision of the majority.

Miss Anthony was strongly supported by Miss Shaw, Mrs. Colby, Mrs. Louisa Southworth, Mrs. Rosa L. Segur, Mrs. Olivia B. Hall, Mrs. Jean Brooks Greenleaf and others.

Mrs. Claudia Quigley Murphy (O.) expressed the sentiment of the other side in saying:

It seems better to sow the seed of suffrage throughout the country by means of our national conventions. We may give the people mass meetings and district and State conventions and various other things, but we can never give them anything as good as the national convention. We must get down to the unit of our civilization, which is the individual voter or person. We have worked for twenty-five years here among the legislators at Washington; we have gone to the halls of Congress and to the Legislatures, and we have found the average legislator to be but a reflex of the sentiment of his constituents. If we wish representation at Washington we can send our delegation to the halls of Congress this year and next year, the same as we have done in the past. This great convention does not go to Congress; it sends a committee.... Let us get down to the people and sow the seed among them. It is the people we want to reach if we expect good results.

The amendment was warmly advocated by Mr. and Miss Blackwell, Miss Clay, Mrs. Dietrick, Mrs. Esther F. Boland and others. It was finally adopted by a vote of 37 yeas, 28 nays.

Among the many excellent State reports that of Kansas, prepared by Mrs. Laura M. Johns and read by Miss Jennie, daughter of Representative Case Broderick, was of special interest, as a suffrage campaign was imminent in that State and the National Association had resolved to contribute speakers and money. It spoke of the great canvass of thirty conventions the previous year, with Mrs. Johns as chairman and a large corps of speakers from outside and inside the State; of their cordial reception by the Republican State Convention; of the benefits of Municipal Suffrage; and ended with an earnest appeal for the friends to rally to the support of Kansas.

Brief remarks were made by the wives of Representatives John G. Otis of Kansas and Halbert S. Greenleaf of New York. Letters of greeting were received from Mrs. Annie Besant of England, and many others. Bishop John F. Hurst, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in regretting that it was impossible to accept the invitation to address the convention, said: "I have the fullest sympathy with your work and have had for many years. I believe that every year brings nearer the great achievement when women will have the right of the ballot if they please to use it."

FOOTNOTES:

[88] Bishop Phillips Brooks, who declared himself unequivocally for woman suffrage, died the week following the convention.

[89] See History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 482.

[90] For other instances see Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, pp. 132, 251.

[91] The Rev. Anna Oliver left $1,000 to the National Suffrage Association.

[92] For the part of Miss Anthony and others in securing this board, see Chap. XIV.

[93] As Mrs. Chapman Catt spoke always without MS., it is impossible to give extracts from her speeches, which were among the ablest made at the national conventions.

[94] Resolved, That without expressing any opinion on the proper qualifications for voting, we call attention to the significant facts that in every State there are more women who can read and write than the whole number of illiterate male voters; more white women who can read and write than all negro voters; more American women who can read and write than all foreign voters; so that the enfranchisement of such women would settle the vexed question of rule by illiteracy, whether of home-grown or foreign-born production.

Resolved, That as all experience proves that the rights of the laboring man are best preserved in governments where he has possession of the ballot, we therefore demand on behalf of the laboring woman the same powerful instrument, that she may herself protect her own interests; and we urge all organized bodies of working women, whether in the field of philanthropy, education, trade, manufacture or general industry, to join our association in the endeavor to make woman legally and politically a free agent, as the best means for furthering any and every line of woman's work.

Resolved, That in all States possessing School Suffrage for women, suffragists are advised to organize in each representative district thereof, for the purpose of training and stimulating women voters to exercise regularly this right, using it as a preparatory school for the coming work of full-grown citizenship with an unlimited ballot. We also advise that women everywhere work for the election of an equal number of women and men upon school boards, that the State in taking upon itself the education of children may provide them with as many official mothers as fathers.

WHEREAS, Many forms of woman suffrage may be granted by State Legislatures without change in existing constitutions; therefore,

Resolved, That the suffragists in every State should petition for Municipal, School and Presidential Suffrage by statute, and take every practicable step toward securing such legislation.

Resolved, That we urge all women to enter protest, at the time of paying taxes, at being compelled to submit to taxation without representation.

[95] Rachel Foster Avery, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Stone Blackwell, Ellen Battelle Dietrick, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, the Rev. Florence Kollock, Lida A. Meriwether, the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, May Wright Sewall, Mrs. Leland Stanford, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Jane H. Spofford, Harriet Taylor Upton.

[96] During the years when Mrs. Upton's father, the Hon. Ezra B. Taylor of Ohio, was in Congress, she made it her especial business to press this matter upon the members. At least two favorable reports were due to her efforts, and the association greatly missed her congressional work when she left Washington.

[97] The arguments for Federal Suffrage are contained in Chapter I.

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XIV. THE NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1894

The Call for the Twenty-sixth annual convention contained this paragraph of hope and joy: "The Government's recognition of women on the Board of Managers for the World's Columbian Exposition; the World's Congress of Representative Women--the greatest convocation of women ever assembled; their participation in the entire series of Congresses; the gaining of Full Suffrage in Colorado--all give to our demand for equality for women unprecedented prestige in the world of thought."

The meetings were held in Metzerott's Music Hall, Washington, D. C., Feb. 15-20, 1894. An excellent summary of the week was given by the secretary, Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, in the Woman's Journal, of which she was editor:

Over the platform was draped a large suffrage flag, bearing two full stars for Wyoming and Colorado, and two more merely outlined in gold for Kansas and New York, which have equal suffrage amendments now pending and hope to add their stars to the galaxy next November. Instead of "Old Glory," the equal rights banner might be called "New Glory." Beside it hung the American flag, the great golden flag of Spain with its two red bars, the crimson flag of Turkey with its crescent and star, and the British flag--these last three in honor respectively of Senorita Catalina de Alcala of Spain, Madame Hanna Korany of Syria and Miss Catherine Spence of Australia, who were on the program. At one side the serene face of Lucy Stone looked down upon the audience. On the afternoon of the memorial service the frame of the portrait was draped with smilax, entwining bunches of violets from South Carolina, and beneath stood a jar of great white lilies....

Kansas and New York divided the interest of the convention, and the importance of the two campaigns was ably presented by the respective State presidents, stately Mrs. Greenleaf and graceful Mrs. Johns. The appeals of the former were warmly supported by Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake, and of the latter by Mrs. Annie L. Diggs. Mrs. Johns is a strong Republican, and Mrs. Diggs an equally ardent Populist, but they were perfectly agreed in their devotion to the woman suffrage amendment and in their desire that help should be given to the Kansas campaign. Both are small women of gentle and feminine aspect, though known as mighty workers; and when Mrs. Diggs, a soft-voiced, bright-eyed morsel of humanity, said in presenting the needs of the Kansas Equal Suffrage Association, "Mrs. Johns is our president, and I am vice-president; she is the gentle officer, I am the savage one; my business is to frighten people"--the audience roared with laughter. The New York women generously declared that they would carry the financial burden of their own campaign and would ask no outside help except in speakers and sympathy. This left the field clear for Kansas and more than $2,200 were raised at one session towards the expenses of the campaign....

The two delegates from Colorado, Mrs. Ellis Meredith and Mrs. Hattie E. Fox, were the objects of much interest and of hearty congratulations. They seemed very happy over their recent enfranchisement, as they well might be. Mrs. Meredith, who is very small, looked up brightly at a tall Maryland lady, who was congratulating her, and said, "I feel as tall as you." These two ladies looked just like other women and had developed no horns or hoofs or other unamiable and unfeminine characteristics in consequence of their having obtained the right to vote.... The Southern women have distinguished themselves in the national suffrage conventions during the last few years. This year, on "presidents' evening," among a number of brilliant addresses that of Mrs. Virginia D. Young of South Carolina fairly brought down the house....

A beautiful silk flag, bearing the two suffrage stars, was presented to Miss Anthony in honor of her seventy-fourth birthday, on the first evening of the convention, a gift from the enfranchised women of Wyoming and Colorado. One of these women had been called upon to act as a judge of elections and had received three dollars for her services. She spent two dollars on shoes for her little boy and sent the third dollar as her contribution toward the suffrage flag.

It was a pleasure to see the gathering of the clans--so many good and able and interesting women assembled together to report their work for equal rights and to plan more for the future. One with a pleasant, honest face and wistful brown eyes, had been lecturing in the interest of the amendment in the country districts of New York, riding from village to village in an open sleigh, with the thermometer many degrees below zero, and speaking sometimes in unwarmed halls. She did not expect to take a day's rest until the 6th of next November, and then if the amendment carried, she said quietly, she should be willing to lie down and die....

It is pleasant also to note the increasing number of bright, sensible, earnest young women coming from all parts of the country to aid the older workers and to close up their thinning ranks. The sight would be a revelation to that Massachusetts legislator who was lately reported as saying that the petitioners who had been asking for suffrage for so many years were fast dying off, and soon there would be none left. He would have seen how greatly he was reckoning without his host--or his hostesses. A sound and righteous reform does not die with any leader, however beloved.

The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw pronounced the invocation at the opening session. In the course of her president's address Miss Susan B. Anthony said:

For the twenty-sixth time we have come together under the shadow of the Capitol, asking that Congress shall take the necessary steps to secure to the women of the nation their right to a voice in the national government as well as that of their respective States. For twelve successive Congresses we have appeared before committees of the two Houses making this plea, that the underlying principle of our Government, the right of consent, shall have practical application to the other half of the people. Such a little simple thing we have been asking for a quarter of a century. For over forty years, longer than the children of Israel wandered through the wilderness, we have been begging and praying and pleading for this act of justice. We shall some day be heeded, and when we shall have our amendment to the Constitution of the United States, everybody will think it was always so, just exactly as many young people believe that all the privileges, all the freedom, all the enjoyments which woman now possesses always were hers. They have no idea of how every single inch of ground that she stands upon to-day has been gained by the hard work of some little handful of women of the past.

This was Miss Anthony's birthday and Mrs. Chapman Catt concluded her little speech in presenting a silk flag by saying: "And now, our beloved leader, the enfranchised women of Wyoming and Colorado, upon this the seventy-fourth anniversary of your life--a life every year of which has been devoted to the advancement of womankind--have sent this emblem and with it the message that they hope you will bear it at the head of our armies until there shall be on this blue field not two stars but forty-four. They have sent it with the especial wish that its silent lesson shall teach such justice to the men of the State of New York that in November they will rise as one man to crown you, as well as their own wives and daughters, with the sovereignty of American citizenship."

For a few moments Miss Anthony was unable to reply and then she said: "I have heard of standard bearers in the army who carried the banner to the topmost ramparts of the enemy, and there I am going to try to carry this one. You know without my telling how proud I am of this flag and how my heart is touched by this manifestation." Large boxes of flowers were sent her from Georgia and South Carolina, a telegram of greeting was received from ex-Governor and Mrs. Routt of Colorado, and there were many other pleasant remembrances.

The convention was welcomed by the Hon. John Ross, commissioner of the District of Columbia. Miss Catherine H. Spence of South Australia said in speaking of the suffrage there: "This country was not only the birthplace of the Australian ballot, by which you now vote in the United States, but it was the birthplace of woman suffrage, because six years before the Municipal Franchise was granted to women in England it was in effect in the towns and cities in South Australia." At a later session Miss Spence gave a practical illustration of what is known as proportional representation. Miss Windeyer also represented the women electors of Australia.

In response to Mrs. Young, bearing the greetings of South Carolina, Miss Anthony said with much feeling:

I think the most beautiful part of our coming together in Washington for the last twenty-five years has been that more friendships, more knowledge of each other, have come through the hand-shakes here than would have been possible through any other instrumentality. I shall never cease to be grateful for all the splendid women who have come up to this great center for these twenty-six conventions, and have learned that the North was not such a cold place as they had believed; I have been equally glad when we came down here and met the women from the sunny South and found they were just like ourselves, if not a little better. In this great association we know no North, no South, no East, no West. This has been our pride for all these years. We have no political party. We never have inquired what anybody's religion is. All we ever have asked is simply, "Do you believe in perfect equality for women?" This is the one article in our creed.

Senator Joseph M. Carey of Wyoming and Representative Lafayette Pence of Colorado referred with great pride to the enfranchisement of the women of their respective States. Mrs. Johns was introduced by Miss Anthony as "the general of the Kansas army;" Mrs. Greenleaf as the Democratic nominee for member of the N. Y. Constitutional Convention; Mrs. Henry as the woman who received 4,500 votes for Clerk of the Supreme Court of Kentucky. Miss Anthony's spicy introductions of the various speakers were always greatly relished by the audiences.

No more impressive or beautiful memorial service ever was held than that in remembrance of Lucy Stone. The principal address was made by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe (Mass.), in the course of which she said:

In all action taken under her supervision, Mrs. Stone was most careful that the main issue should be constantly presented and kept in view. While welcoming every reform which gave evidence of the ethical progress of the community, she yet held to woman suffrage, pure and simple, as the first condition upon which the new womanhood should base itself. Efforts were often made to entangle suffrage with the promise of endless reforms in various directions, but firm as Cato, who always repeated his words that Carthage should be destroyed, Lucy Stone always asked for suffrage because it is right and just that women should have it, and not on the ground of a swiftly-coming millennium which should follow it....

When Lucy Stone first resolved to devote her life to the rehabilitation of her sex, to what a task did she pledge herself! The high road to reform which she held so dear was not even measured before her. The ground was covered with a growth of centuries. Could this small hand that held a sickle hope to cut down those forests of time-honored prejudice and superstition? What had she to work with? A silver voice, a winning smile, the great gift of a persuasive utterance. What had she to work from? A deep and abiding faith in divine justice and in man's ability to follow its laws and to execute its decrees.

The prophetic sense of good to come, vouchsafed to her in the morning of life, did not forsake her at its close. Her mind was of a very practical cast and in her many days of labor her eyes were always fixed upon her work. But when her work was taken from her, she saw at once the heavens open before her and the eternal life and light beckoning to her to go up higher. With a smile she passed from the struggle of earthly existence to the peace of the saints made perfect. Here she was still debarred the right to cast her ballot at the polls, but lo, in the blue urn of heaven her life was received, one glowing and perfect vote for the rights of women, for the good of humanity, for the Kingdom of God on earth.

A few sentences may be given as the key-note of the eulogy of the Hon. Wm. Dudley Foulke (Ind.): "Her career, while different from that of most women, was characterized throughout by entire and consistent womanliness. Among the many admirable qualities that she possessed, it is difficult to single out the one for which she will hereafter be best remembered, but as dauntless moral courage is a rarer quality perhaps than any other, it seems to me that this will remain her brightest jewel."

In the address of Mrs. Josephine K. Henry (Ky.) she referred to the marriage of Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell as follows:

Their matrimonial contract is the grandest chart of the absolute equality of man and woman that has ever been made, and it throws a new halo of consecration and sanctity around the institution of marriage. It has not yet been written in our ecclesiastical and civil codes that every woman shall retain and dignify her own name through life, but civilization is preparing now to issue this edict. The coming woman will not resign her name at the marriage altar, and it will be told in future years of these two great souls who were the first to recognize the dignity of human individuality. The domestic life of this couple who set up the standard of absolute equality of husband and wife was an exquisite idyl, fragrant with love and tenderness, a poem whose rhythm was not marred, a divine melody that rose above the discords and dissensions of domestic life upon the lowlands where man is the ruler and woman the subject.

In the touching tribute of Miss Laura Clay (Ky.) she said: "Lucy Stone is one of those who paid what must be paid for liberty or for any high good of humanity. She made sacrifices and did things that none of us to-day would be called upon to do, did them bravely, did them without shrinking, did them almost without knowing that she was doing anything which would call forth the blessing, the gratitude of the human race."

Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.) referred more especially to the domestic qualities, saying:

When the gift of a little child came it was more to her than all else beside. For a while the world centered in that tiny cradle, and the hand which rocked that cradle had rather perform this gentle office than rule the world. It will ever be thus. With the true woman, dearer than wealth or fame is the touch of baby hands, sweeter than the applause of multitudes is the ripple of a baby's laughter. As the years passed by, the mother gave more of her life to the public, but always with the thought of the young girl who was growing up beside her and making of her home the dearest and most sacred spot.

This part of the memorial services appropriately closed with the tender reminiscences of forty-five years of married life, by the husband, Mr. Blackwell.

Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (N. Y.) sent an eloquent tribute to the memory of Lucy Stone, Leland Stanford, George W. Childs, Elizabeth Oakes Smith and Elizabeth Peabody. After reciting the contributions of each in the cause of woman, she closed with these words from The Prince of India in reference to the last great record: "There is thy history and mine, and all of little and great and good and bad that shall befall us in this life. Death does not blot out the records. Everlastingly writ, they shall be everlastingly read; for the shame of some, for the glory of others."

Mrs. Lucretia L. Blankenburg of Philadelphia told of the loyalty to women of Mr. Child's paper, the Public Ledger, and of his many benefactions. Frederick Douglass gave the offering of his eloquence and ended as follows:

It is not alone because of the goodness of any cause that men can safely predicate success. Much depends on the character and quality of the men and women who are its advocates. The Redeemer must ever come from above. Only the best of mankind can afford to support unpopular opinions. The common sort will drift with the tide. No good cause can fail when supported by such women as were Lucretia Mott, Abby Kelly, Angelina Grimke, Lydia Maria Child, Maria W. Chapman, Thankful Southwick, Sally Holly, Ernestine L. Rose, E. Oakes Smith, Elizabeth Peabody and the noble and gifted Lucy Stone. Not only have we a glorious constellation of women on the silent continent to assure us that our cause is good and that it must finally prevail, but we have such men as William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, William Henry Channing, Francis Jackson, Gerrit Smith, Samuel J. May, Samuel E. Sewall--now no longer with us in body, but in spirit and memory to cheer us on in the good work of lifting women in the fullest sense to the dignity of American liberty and American citizenship.

Miss Anthony closed the services with heartfelt testimonials to Mrs. Myra Bradwell, one of the first woman lawyers and founder and editor of The Legal News; Miss Mary F. Seymour, founder of The Business Woman's Journal; and Col. John Thompson, a founder of the Patrons of Husbandry, the first national organization of men to indorse woman suffrage.

At one of the evening sessions Miss Anthony presented Dr. John Trimble, secretary of the National Grange, and Leonard Rhone, chairman of its executive committee. The latter said in course of a few brief remarks: "When the farmers of this country organized they took with them their wives and daughters, and for twenty-seven years we have tried woman suffrage in the Grange and it has worked well. What we have demonstrated by experience in our organization we are ready to indorse, and by almost a unanimous vote at our last national convention we passed a resolution in favor of woman suffrage."

Mrs. Orra Langhorne read a clever paper on House Cleaning in Old Virginia, describing present social and political conditions and showing the need of woman's participation. Mrs. Mary Lowe Dickinson (N. Y.), secretary of the King's Daughters, gave a talk which sparkled with anecdotes and illustrations, every one scoring a point for woman suffrage. Madame Hanna Korany, from Syria, told in her soft, broken English how the women of the old world looked to those of America to free them from the slavery of customs and laws.

Mrs. Miriam Howard DuBose took for her subject Some Georgia Curiosities, which she showed to be "men who love women too dearly to accord them justice; women who are deceived by such affection; the self-supporting woman, who crowds all places where there is any money to be made without encountering the masculine frown and declares she has all the rights she wants. Georgia's motto should read: Unwisdom, Injustice, Immoderation."

Miss Harriet A. Shinn (Ills.), president of the National Association of Women Stenographers, gave unanswerable testimony from employers in many different kinds of business expressing a preference for women stenographers. Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates (Me.) illustrated how class distinctions, public schools, religious liberty and social life have been affected by the thought of the times, by fashionable thought. The official report said: "So bristling with humor was this address that there were several times when the speaker had to stop and wait for the laughter to subside. At the conclusion, her effort was acknowledged by long applause."

Miss Shaw closed an evening which had been full of mirth, saying in the course of her vivacious remarks:

I spoke at a woman's club in Philadelphia yesterday and a young lady said to me afterwards: "Well, that sounds very nice, but don't you think it is better to be the power behind the throne?" I answered that I had not had much experience with thrones, but a woman who has been on a throne, and who is now behind it, seems to prefer to be on the throne.[98] Mr. Edward Bok, editor of the Ladies' Home Journal, says that by careful watching for many years, he has come to the conclusion that no woman has had any business relations with men who has not been contaminated by them; and this same individual who does not want us to have business relations with men, lest we be contaminated by the association, wants us to marry these same men and live with them three hundred and sixty-five and one-fourth days a year!

On Sunday Mrs. Chapman Catt gave a sermon in the People's Church, Mrs. Ellen Battelle Dietrick in All Soul's Church (Unitarian), and the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw in Metzerott's Music Hall. At the last named meeting Mrs. Howe offered the prayer and, at the close, recited her Battle Hymn of the Republic. Miss Shaw preached from the text, "Let no man take thy crown."

....Since the beginning of the Christian era those who have expounded the Scriptures have been principally men, and the Gospel has been presented to us from the standpoint of men. In all these interpretations Heaven has been peopled with men, God has been pictured as a man, and even the earth has been represented as masculine.

In the beginning this was wise, because people have always been more impressed by law, order, system and government than by the spirit of faith. But we have passed the stage of force in nature, of force in physical life, and have arrived at the age of spiritual thought and earthly needs when the mother comes to the front. In the Old World I have seen venerable men, strong men, and women kneeling together at the shrine of Mary pouring out their sufferings into the mother heart of the Virgin and rising refreshed and solaced. What Catholicism has done for its church, Protestantism must do for Christianity everywhere, by revealing the mother-life and the mother-spirit of divine nature. In the lesson of life there is not only a father but a mother-love.

Jesus Christ, we are told, was a man and so were His disciples, and this is given as the reason why men only should preach the Gospel, yet the Scriptures tell us that the first divinely-ordained preacher was a woman. All the way down in the history of Christianity are found women side by side with men, always ready and willing to bear the burdens and sorrows of life in order to better their fellows. In this country every reformation has been urged by women as well as men. The names of William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips will go down to posterity linked with those of Lucretia Mott, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Susan B. Anthony. In the great temperance movement the name of Gough will at once bring to mind Frances E. Willard. There is no name more prominently identified in the effort to uplift the Indian than that of Helen Hunt Jackson. Wherever there has been a wrong committed there have always been women to defend the wronged. Julia Ward Howe gave us the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," while Lucy Stone's last words should be the motto of every young girl's life, "Make the world better."

With respect to my text, "Let no man take thy crown," these words were written to the church, and not to the men alone, and the command should be obeyed by every woman. If the churches then were anything like the churches of to-day, they were composed of three-fourths women. Hence this injunction was intended especially for women. This crown, I take it, means the crown of righteousness, of regeneration, of redemption, of purity, and applies to the whole body of the church. I believe the crown of womanhood in its highest sense means womanly character and nature. We never can wear a higher or nobler crown than pure and womanly womanhood....

The world has always been more particular how we did things than what things we did.... All human beings are under obligations first to themselves. If self-sacrifice seems best, then we should practice that; while if self-assertion seems best, then we should assert ourselves. The abominable doctrine taught in the pulpit, the press, in books and elsewhere, is that the whole duty of women is self-abasement and self-sacrifice. I do not believe subjection is woman's duty any more than it is the duty of a man to be under subjection to another man or to many men. Women have the right of independence, of conscience, of will and of responsibility.

Women are robbed of themselves by the laws of the country and by fashion. The time has not passed when women are bought and sold. Social custom makes the world a market-place in which women are bought and sold, and sometimes they are given away. In the marriage ceremony woman loses her name, and under the old Common Law a married woman had no legal rights. She occupied the same position to her husband as the slave to his master. These things degraded marriage, but the home would be the holiest of spots if the wife asserted her individuality and worked hand-in-hand with her husband, each uplifting the other. Women are robbed of the right of conscience. Their silence and subjection in the church have been the curse not only of womanhood but of manhood. No other human being should decide for us in questions pertaining to our own moral and spiritual welfare. Women are beginning to believe that God will listen to a woman as quickly as to a man. The time has come when councils of women will gather and do their work in their quiet way without regard to men.

No person is human who may not "will" to be anything he can be. When the woman says "I will," there is not anything this side of the throne of God to stop her, and the girls of the present day should learn this lesson. Now there is placed upon women the obligation of service without the responsibility of their actions. The man who leads feels the responsibility of his acts, and this urges him to make them noble. Women should have this same responsibility and be made to feel it. The most dangerous thing in the world is power without responsibility....

Monday night's session was designated "president's evening" and many short, clever talks were given.[99] James L. Hughes, Superintendent of Schools in Toronto and president of the Equal Suffrage Association of that city, told how the women of Canada voted, sat on the public and High School boards and even served as president of the Toronto board.

At the Tuesday evening meeting Miss Anthony introduced Senator W. A. Peffer and Representatives Jerry Simpson, John C. Davis, Case Broderick and Charles Curtis of Kansas, and Henry A. Coffeen of Wyoming. Ex-Senator Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi was invited to the platform and responded by saying he hoped to see the day when every qualified woman could exercise the suffrage. The Hon. Simon Wolf, commissioner of the District, urged equality of rights for women.

Grace Greenwood was presented as one of the pioneer woman suffragists. Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell (N. Y.), the heroine of many campaigns, in a stirring speech related her varied experiences and said: "Ours is one of the greatest wars of the centuries. Indeed, it is a continuation of the same battle which has been waged almost since the world began but carried on with different tactics. It stands unique. No cannon is heard. No smoke tells of defeat or victory. No bloody battlefields lift their blushing faces to the heavens. It is a battle of ideas, a battle of prejudices, the right and the wrong, the new and the old, meeting in close contact. It is the 'war of the roses,' if you so please to call it. It is the motherhood of the republic asking for full political recognition."

The last address of the convention was made by the Rev. Ida C. Hultin, on the Crowning Race, whose men and women should be equally free. Gov. Davis H. Waite of Colorado sent a letter in relation to the enfranchising of women the previous year, in which he said:

The Populists more than any other political party in Colorado favored equal suffrage, but many Republicans and Democrats also voted for it, and in my opinion the result may be considered as due to the enlightened public sentiment of the common people of the State. The more I consider the matter the more it grows upon me in importance, and the more I realize the fact that all the patriotism, all the intelligence and all the virtue of the commonwealth are necessary to preserve it from the corrupt and mercenary attacks made upon it from all points by corporate trusts and monopolies. Equal suffrage can not fail to encourage purity in both private and public life, and to elevate the official standard of fitness.

A letter from Mrs. May Wright Sewall, regretting her enforced absence, closed by saying:

Many of you know that the last few months I have spent in editing the papers presented at the World's Congress of Representative Women, held in Chicago last May. It is a remarkable and to me quite an unexpected fact that the papers upon the subject of Civil and Political Reform are hardly more earnest appeals for political equality than are the addresses to be found in every other chapter. Hereafter if one asserts that the interest in the woman suffrage movement is not growing, let him be cited to this galaxy of witnesses, whose testimony is all the more valuable because in the large majority of instances it proceeds from women who never have identified themselves with it, and are not at all known as advocates of political equality. The meaning of the entire report is equality, co-operation, organization; that is, the demand made by the National Suffrage Association is the demand borne to us by the echoes of that great congress.

Among the committee reports that of Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery, Chairman of Columbian Exposition Work, attracted especial attention and was in part as follows:

There is a most valuable and interesting bit of unpublished history which seems to me to form an integral part of your committee's report. It concerns the origin of the Board of Lady Managers, and this association should be proud to be able to feel that to our president is largely due the recognition of women in official capacity at the World's Fair. The fact that women were not officially recognized during the Centennial Exposition in 1876 was a great disappointment to all interested in the advancement of womankind, and while it was suggested on every side that women must have a voice in the management of the World's Fair in 1893, it remained for Susan B. Anthony to take the initiatory step which led to the creation of the Board of Lady Managers. She had invitations sent to women of official and social position to meet in the Riggs House parlors to consider this matter, in December, 1889. At this meeting Mrs. Conger, wife of Senator Omar D. Conger of Michigan, was made chairman, and Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, secretary. Miss Anthony was not present, fearing lest her well-known radical views might hinder the progress of affairs in the direction she wished them to take, but she restlessly walked about her room in the hotel anxiously awaiting the result.

Several meetings followed this and a committee was appointed to wait upon Congress, asking that the commission should consist of both men and women. Meanwhile the World's Fair Bill had been brought before the House and Miss Anthony soon saw that there would not be time for this committee to act. She therefore prepared petitions, sent them to women in official life and asked them to obtain signatures of official people.[100] On the strength of these petitions there was added to the bill, in March, 1890, an amendment providing for the appointment of women on the Board.

Miss Anthony's self-effacement was perhaps the wisest thing under the circumstances, for the Board, as appointed, being unconnected with woman suffrage, proved an immense source of education to the conservative women of the whole world--an education not needed by the radical women of our own ranks. I think the time has surely come when the truth of this history should be known to all.

The election of officers resulted in Miss Anthony's receiving for president 139 out of 140 possible votes; Miss Shaw for vice-president-at-large, 130; Rachel Foster Avery for corresponding secretary, unanimous; Alice Stone Blackwell for recording secretary, 136; Harriet Taylor Upton for treasurer, unanimous.

During the convention the death of Miss Anna Ella Carroll was announced. A resolution of sympathy with her sister was adopted and a collection was taken up, as had been done for Miss Carroll a number of times during the past twenty-five years, which resulted in over forty dollars.

Mrs. Sallie Clay Bennett (Ky.), the faithful champion of Federal Suffrage, insisted that, instead of asking for an amendment to confer suffrage, we should demand protection in the right already guaranteed by the U. S. Constitution: "Even when asking for Municipal Suffrage, we never should fail to assert that it is already ours under the Constitution, and that there is strength enough in our national government to protect every woman in the Union provided the men had interpreted the laws right." Miss Sara Winthrop Smith (Conn.) supported Mrs. Bennett, saying: "It is useless labor to petition for a Sixteenth Amendment--we do not need it. Our fundamental institutions most adequately protect the rights of all citizens of the United States, irrespective of sex. In the twenty-four years since the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, 300 amendments to the Constitution have been introduced into Congress which never met with any approval from either House. I think it is wasted time for us to continue in this work, and therefore I feel that it concerns our dignity as a part of the people of this great United States that we declare and ask only for that which recognizes the dignity of such citizens." Mrs. Diggs, Mrs. Dietrick, Mrs. Colby and others supported this view.

In expressing his dissent Mr. Blackwell said: "I do not believe in Federal Suffrage. I agree with the State's Rights party in their views." Miss Blackwell and others took the same position, and Miss Anthony closed the debate by saying: "There is no doubt that the spirit of the Constitution guarantees full equality of rights and the protection of citizens of the United States in the exercise of these rights, but the powers that be have decided against us, and until we can get a broader Supreme Court--which will not be until after the women of every State in the Union are enfranchised--we never will get the needed liberal interpretation of that document." The majority concurred in this view.

The most spirited discussion of the convention was in regard to the place of holding the next annual meeting. Urgent invitations were received from Detroit and Cincinnati, but the persuasive Southern advocates, Claudia Howard Maxwell, Miriam Howard DuBose and H. Augusta Howard, three Georgia delegates, carried off the prize for Atlanta.

This was the first and last appearance on the suffrage platform of Miss Kate Field, who was introduced by Miss Anthony with her characteristic abruptness: "Now, friends, here is Kate Field, who has been talking all these years against woman suffrage. She wants to tell you of the faith that is in her." Miss Field responded quickly:

I take exception to what Miss Anthony has said, because I think she has misconstrued my position entirely. I never have been against woman suffrage. I have been against universal suffrage of any kind, regardless of sex. I think that morally woman has exactly as much right to the suffrage as man. It is a disgrace that such women as you and I have not the suffrage, but I do think that all suffrage should be regarded as a privilege and should not be demanded as a right. It should be the privilege of education and, if you please--I will not quarrel about that--of a certain property qualification. I have not changed my opinion, but I did say that I was tired of waiting for men to have common sense, that there evidently never would be any restriction in suffrage and that I should come in for the whole thing, woman included. Now, that is my position.... I withdraw my former attitude and take my stand on this platform.

The usual able "hearings" were held. Before the Senate committee--Senators Hoar, Teller, Wolcott, Blackburn and Hill--the speakers were the Rev. Ida C. Hultin, Miss Blackwell, Mrs. Lucretia Mitchell, Mrs. Diggs, Mrs. Phoebe C. Wright, Miss Alice Smith, Mrs. Bennett, Mrs. Colby, Representative John C. Davis of Kansas. Although the majority of the committee were in favor of woman suffrage no report was made.

The Hon. Isaac H. Goodnight (Ky.) was in the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, which was addressed by the Reverends Miss Shaw and Miss Hultin, Mrs. Young, Mrs. Emily G. Ketcham, Miss Lavina A. Hatch, Prof. Jennie Gifford, Mrs. Alice Waugh, Mrs. Pickler, Miss Howard, Mrs. Meredith, Mrs. Greenleaf, Mr. Blackwell. Miss Anthony presented the speakers and closed the discussion. Later Mr. Goodnight submitted an adverse report for a majority of the committee.

FOOTNOTES:

[98] The Hawaiian ex-queen, then in the United States endeavoring to have her throne restored to her.

[99] Among the speakers were Mrs. Mary L. Bennett, Mrs. Lucretia L. Blankenburg, Miss Laura Clay, Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby, Mrs. Etta Grymes Farrah, Mrs. Jean Brooks Greenleaf, Mrs. Florence Howe Hall, Mrs. Rebecca Henry Hayes, Mrs. Laura M. Johns, Mrs. Emily B. Ketcham, Mrs. Claudia Howard Maxwell, Mrs. Ellis Meredith, Mrs. Mary Bentley Thomas, Mrs. Emmeline B. Wells, Mrs. Virginia D. Young.

[100] Miss Anthony herself also went among prominent persons of her own acquaintance obtaining signatures. In a few days 111 names were secured of the wives and daughters of Judges of the Supreme Court, the Cabinet, Senators, Representatives, Army and Navy officers--as influential a list as the national capital could offer. These names may be found in the published minutes of this convention of 1894, p. 135.

At the time Miss Anthony secured this petition no organization of women had considered the question and, if she had not been on the ground and taken immediate action, there is every reason to believe that the bill would have passed Congress without any provision for a board of women. For a further account of this matter, and for a description of this great Congress of Women, see Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, Chap. XLI; also chapter on Illinois in this volume of the History.

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