XX. THE NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1900…

XX. THE NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1900

The Thirty-second annual convention of the suffrage association, held in Washington, D. C., Feb. 8-14, 1900, possessed two features of unusual interest--it closed the century and it marked the end of Miss Susan B. Anthony's presidency of the organization. The latter event attracted wide attention. Sketches of her career and of the movement whose history was almost synonymous with her own, appeared in most of the leading newspapers and magazines of the country; special reporters were sent to Washington, and the celebration of her eightieth birthday at the close of the convention was in the nature of a national event. On the opening morning the Post said in a leading editorial:

Washington entertains the National Woman Suffrage Association from year to year with entire complacency, apart from any political prejudice, without any sense of partisanship and in a spirit of keen interest in the great propaganda which is being thus conducted. There was a time, not so very long ago, when the plea for suffrage was ridiculed far and wide; but the women have worked ahead undaunted by the scoffings of the world, until they have actually won the battle in such a marked degree as to give them unbounded assurance for the future....

The world is beginning to take a new view of this suffrage question. The advent of women into the professions and even the trades, their appearance as wage-earners in virtually every branch of modern activity, and their success in these various enterprises which they have entered, have worked a reform even more significant than the absolute and universal grant of the suffrage would have been. It can not be denied by men to-day that the women have become economic factors of marked importance, and this appreciation has had a great influence in softening the sentiments of the male population toward the suffragists.

One of the foremost arguments formerly urged against the extension of the suffrage to women was that it would be harmful to woman's moral nature to thrust her into contact with the rough conditions of campaigning. The women answered that their entrance would perhaps redeem the immoral character of the politics of many communities. In the minds of impartial observers the argument was a stand-off. But this economic, professional tendency of the women has done much to destroy the force of the men's plea to preserve the women from contaminating contact with harsh conditions. The security of the average woman worker in the various lines of honest activity which the sex has fearlessly entered has worked a revelation. The close of the century is witnessing a great change in public sentiment in this regard. The demand of the suffragists can not but be strengthened by the demonstrated fact that women can become workers in competition with men without becoming demoralized.

Just where this new tendency will lead in an economic direction is a serious question, to be answered by facts rather than by theories. Some students of the science believe that it is working a revolution and is affecting the whole business fabric. There may be a reaction against it, affecting in turn the now moderate attitude of most men toward the suffrage question; but in any event it is clear that this great agitation, carried on by the association now in session, has been of serious importance and not without palpable fruits.

The advocates of woman's enfranchisement never were brighter, happier or more hopeful and courageous. All of the States but four were represented by the 173 delegates in attendance. Some of them were white-haired and wrinkled and had been coming to Washington for the whole thirty-two years. Others were in the prime and vigor of life and had entered the movement after the heaviest blows had been struck and the hardest battles had been won, but now they had enlisted until the end of the war. And now there were a large number of beautiful and highly-educated young women, graduates of the best colleges, filled with the zeal of new converts, bringing to the work well-trained and thoroughly-equipped minds and giving to the old members the comforting assurance that the vital cause would still be carried forward when their own labors were ended.

The Woman's Journal in recounting the gains for suffrage concluded: "In this year, 1900, the woman suffragists, after a half-century of unbroken national organization, can go before Congress and claim the support of members from four States who were elected in part by the votes of women. They can enforce their pleas before presidential nominating conventions with the concrete fact that thirteen members of the electoral college have a constituency of women voters."

Miss Anthony presided at three public sessions daily and at all the executive and business meetings, went to Baltimore and held a one-day's conference and made a big speech, addressed a parlor meeting, attended several dinners and receptions, participated in her own great birthday festivities, afternoon and evening, and remained for nearly a week of Executive Committee meetings after the convention had closed.

As she rose to open the convention, clad as usual in soft black satin, with duchesse lace in the neck and sleeves and the lovely red crepe shawl falling gracefully from her shoulders, there were many a moist eye and tightened throat at the thought that this was the last time. Her fine voice with its rich alto vibrations was as strong and resonant as fifty years ago, and her practical, matter-of-fact speech, followed by the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw's lively stories, soon dispelled the sadness and put the audience in a cheerful mood. Miss Anthony commenced by saying:

I have been attending conventions in Washington for over thirty years. It is good for us to come to this Mecca, the heart of our nation. Here the members of Congress from all parts of the country meet together to deliberate for the best interests of the whole government and of their respective States. So our delegates assemble here to plan for the best interests of our cause in the nation and in their respective States. We come here to study how we may do more and more for the spread of the doctrine of equality, but chiefly to study how to get the States to concentrate their efforts on Congress. Our final aim is an amendment to the Federal Constitution providing that no citizen over whom the Stars and Stripes wave shall be debarred from suffrage except for cause. I am always glad when we come to Washington, and in our little peregrinations over the country I have been more and more impressed with the conviction that, while we should do all the good work we can in our own States, we ought to hold our annual meeting in the national capital.

In beginning her vice-president's address, which as usual defied reporting, Miss Shaw said:

Before giving my report I want to tell a story against Miss Anthony. We suffragists have been called everything under the sun, and when there was nothing else quite bad enough for us we have been called infidels, which includes everything. Once we went to hold a convention in a particularly orthodox city in New York, and Miss Anthony, wishing to impress upon the audience that we were not atheists, introduced me as "a regularly-ordained orthodox minister, the Rev. Anna H. Shaw, my right bower!" That orthodox audience all seemed to know what a "right bower" is, for they laughed even louder than you do. After the meeting Miss Anthony said to me, "Anna, what did I say to make the people laugh so?" I answered, "You called me your right bower." She said, "Well, you are my right-hand man. That is what right bower means, isn't it?" And this orthodox minister had to explain to her Quaker friend what a right bower is.

The chief event of last summer was the quinquennial meeting of the International Council of Women in London. The Woman's National Council of the United States is made up of about twenty societies with an aggregate membership of over a million women. It was only allowed two delegates besides its president, and it is not a suffrage association, yet it honored two women who have been known for some years as suffragists, Miss Anthony and myself, by making us its delegates to London. They said they did this because they wanted women who did not represent anything too radical!

That Congress was the greatest assemblage of women from all parts of the world that ever had taken place, and therefore the biggest suffrage convention ever held. Suffrage seemed to take possession of the whole meeting, as it does at every great gathering of women. From this point of view it was a decided and emphatic success. The largest meeting of all was the one held by the Suffrage Association and every suffrage heart would have swollen so large it could hardly have been kept within the bounds of the body if it had heard the applause with which Miss Anthony was greeted. She could not speak for ten minutes....

In England I entered upon a role I had never filled before, or had any ambition for--I "entered society," and for ten days I was in it from before breakfast till after midnight; and I prayed the prayer of the Pharisee--I thanked the Lord that I was not as other women are who have to go into society all the time. I had thought that traveling up and down the country with gripsack in hand was hard enough; but it is child's play to hand-shaking and hob-nobbing with duchesses and countesses. However, the experience was good for us, and it was especially good for those American women who had thought that they knew more than other women till they met them and found that they didn't.

I came home, spent three days there, and then took my grip in hand and started out again lecturing--mostly for the Redpath bureau, and for people who did not want to hear about suffrage; so I spoke on "The Fate of Republics," "The American Home," "The New Man," etc. Under these titles I gave them stronger doses of suffrage than I ever do to you here, and they received it with great enthusiasm, because it was not called suffrage. I spoke the other day in Cincinnati to about 3,000 people and they were delighted, and did not suspect that I was talking suffrage. They don't know what woman suffrage is. They think it only means to berate the men. In this way I have perhaps done the best suffrage work I possibly could.

Later in the session Miss Anthony made her report as delegate from the National Council of Women of the United States to this International Congress in London, in which she said:

During the last seventeen years there has been a perfect revolution in England. When Mrs. Stanton and I went there for the first time, in 1883, just a few families were not afraid of us--the Brights, Peter Taylor's household, and some of the old abolitionists who knew all about us. When it was proposed to get up a testimonial meeting for us, even the officers of the suffrage societies did not dare to sign the invitation. They thought we Americans were too radical....

This time when we reached London we were the recipients of testimonials not only from the real, radical suffrage people, but also from the conservatives. At that magnificent Queen's Hall meeting of the Suffrage Association, with Mrs. Fawcett presiding, three or four thousand people packed the hall. It was a representative gathering. Australia and New Zealand were there to speak for themselves, and they had me to speak for the United States. I tried to have them call on Miss Shaw instead, but they would not do it....

Every young woman who is to-day enjoying the advantages of free schools and opportunities to earn a living and the other enlarged rights for women, is a child of the woman suffrage movement. This larger freedom has broadened and strengthened women wonderfully. At the end of the Council, Lady Aberdeen, who had been its president for six years, in a published interview summing up the work of the women who had been present, said there was no denying that the English-speaking women stood head and shoulders above all the others in their knowledge of Parliamentary law, and that at the very top were those of the United States and Canada--the two freest parts of the world. I said: "If the women of the United States, with their free schools and all their enlarged liberties, are not superior to women brought up under monarchical forms of government, then there is no good in liberty." It is because of this freedom that Europeans are always struck with the greater self-poise, self-control and independence of American women. These characteristics will be still more marked when we have mingled more with men in their various meetings. It is only by the friction of intellect with intellect that these desirable qualities can be gained.

The public sessions of the Council were all that heart could wish. I was present at only a few of them because the business meetings came at the same hour, and were held miles away. But every day people would say to me, "Miss Anthony, you yourself could not have made a stronger suffrage speech than So-and-So made to-day in such-and-such a section"--industrial, professional, etc. In the educational section, one of the best speeches was made by Miss Brownell, dean of Sage College, Cornell University, on co-education.

It was a great occasion. Here were the advocates of this movement for absolutely equal rights received and entertained by the nobility of England--American women at the head. Among many others a reception was given by the Lord Bishop of London at his home, Fulham Palace. In talking with Lady Battersea, daughter of a Rothschild, I caught myself repeatedly addressing her as "Mrs. Battersea," and I said, "I suppose I shock you very much by forgetting your title." She answered emphatically: "Not at all. I like an American to be an American. It is much pleasanter than when they come cringing and crawling and trying to conform to our customs." When all sorts of notables were giving us receptions, I said to Lady Aberdeen: "If this great Council of Women of ten nations were meeting in Washington, we would be invited to the White House. Can't you contrive an interview with the Queen?"

Miss Anthony then described the reception of the Congress by the Queen at Windsor Castle, the serving of tea in the great Hall of St. George, and all the incidents of that interesting occasion, and concluded: "What I want most to impress upon you is this: If we had represented nothing but ourselves we should have been nowhere. Wendell Phillips said: 'When I speak as an individual, I represent only myself, but when I speak for the American Anti-Slavery Society, I represent every one in the country who believes in liberty.' It was because Miss Shaw and I represented you and all which makes for liberty that we were so well received; and I want you to feel that all the honors paid to us were paid to you."

A paper to be remembered was that of Mrs. Isabel C. Barrows (Mass.) on Woman's Work in Philanthropy. After tracing the various lines of philanthropic effort in which women had been distinguished, she said in conclusion that no woman who ever had lived had done more in the line of philanthropy than Susan B. Anthony.

Miss Harriet May Mills (N. Y.) gave a fine address on The Winning of Educational Freedom, saying in part:

Abigail Adams said of the conditions in the early part of the nineteenth century: "Female education in the best families went no farther than reading, writing and arithmetic and, in some rare instances, music and dancing." A lady living in the first quarter of the century relates that she returned from a school in Charleston, where she had been sent to be "finished off," with little besides a knowledge of sixty different lace stitches....

The majority of women were content, they asked no change; they took no part in the movement for higher education except to ridicule it. This, like every other battle for freedom which the world has seen, was led by the few brave, strong souls who saw the truth and dared proclaim it. In 1820 the world looked aghast upon "bluestockings." Because a young woman was publicly examined in geometry at one of Mrs. Emma Willard's school exhibitions, a storm of ridicule broke forth at so scandalous a proceeding. It was ten years after Holyoke was founded before Mary Lyon dared to have Latin appear in the regular course, because the views of the community would not allow it. Boston had a high school for girls in 1825, which was maintained but eighteen months, Mayor Quincy declaring that "no funds of any city could stand the expense." The difficulty was that "too many girls attended." ...

In 1877 President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard protested against the opening of the Boston Latin School to girls, saying: "I resist the proposition for the sake of the boys, the girls, the schools and the general interest of education." Nearly twenty years later, he said to the Radcliffe graduates: "It is a quarter of a century since the college doors were open to women. From that time, where boys and girls have been educated together, it has become a historical fact that women have taken a greater number of honors, in proportion to their numbers, than men." It is to be hoped that the next twenty years may work further conversion in the mind of this learned president, and lead him to see that equality in citizenship is as desirable as equality in education.

One learned man prophesied that all educated women would become somnambulists. Another declared that the perilous track to higher education would be strewn with wrecks. There are now over thirty thousand of these college-educated wrecks, the majority of them engaged in the active work of the world. It was found in 1874, when Dr. E. H. Clarke's evil prophecies as to higher education were attracting attention, that at Antioch, opened to women in 1853, thirteen and one-half per cent. of the men graduates had died, nine and three-fourths per cent. of the women. This did not include war mortality or accidental death. Three of the men then living were confirmed invalids; not one of the women was in such a condition. The Association of Collegiate Alumnae has compiled later and fuller statistics. The results show an increase during the college course of from three to six per cent. in good health, and the health after graduation to be twenty-two per cent. higher among graduates than among women who have not been in college....

Elizabeth Blackwell applied to twelve colleges before she gained admittance to the Geneva (N. Y.) Medical School in 1846, and secured the first M. D. ever given to a woman in this country. To-day 1,583 women are studying medicine. Not so full a measure of freedom has been won in law or theology. In 1897, 131 women were in the law schools, 193 in the theological schools, but women are still handicapped in these professions....

Unfortunately, educational freedom has not been followed by industrial freedom. Of the leading colleges for women but four have women presidents; but one offers a free field to women on its professional staff. In the majority of co-educational colleges which give women any place as teachers, they appear in small numbers as assistant professors and, more often, as instructors....

With educational freedom partially won has come general interest among collegiate and non-collegiate women in furthering the movement. Large gifts have been bestowed for scholarships and for colleges, both co-educational and separate. Within the last year thirty-four women have given $4,446,400 to the cause of education. Mrs. Stanford's munificent benefactions, and other lesser ones, swell the amount to more than fifty millions from women alone. As a result of the struggle for educational freedom, we have 35,782 women in the colleges of the country.[120]

Educational freedom without political freedom is but partial. Minerva sprang fully armed from the head of Jove; not only had she wisdom, but she had the spear and the helmet in her hands--every weapon of offense and defense to equip her for the world's conquest. Standing on the threshold of the new century, we behold the woman of the future thus armed; we see the fully educated woman possessed of a truer knowledge of the fundamental principles of government; we see her conscious of her responsibilities as a citizen, and doing her part in the making of laws and in the fulfilment of the ideal of democracy. Educational freedom must lead to political freedom.

Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford, a leader among Colorado women, spoke eloquently on The Social Transformation, following the stages in evolution expressed in the words, "I dare, I will, I am." Describing the effects of woman suffrage, she said:

I wish I could make you all understand that the home is not touched. Equal suffrage does not mean destruction or disintegration but the radiation of the home--carrying it out into the wider life of the community. The ideal of the family must pervade society; and that is what equal suffrage is gradually bringing about. I know you hear all sorts of things about woman suffrage in Colorado. Not very long ago certain Eastern papers gave great prominence to an interview with a "distinguished citizen of Colorado," who gave a highly unfavorable account of the workings of woman suffrage there. The "distinguished citizen" in question was a prize-fighter who had killed three men--a gambler driven out by woman suffrage; and he naturally said that woman suffrage was a failure.... The great Woman's Club of Denver is a power for good in the city; it is carrying on schools in "the bottoms," night schools, kitchen gardens, traveling libraries; it secured the establishment of the State Home for Dependent Children, the removal of the emblems from the Australian ballot, and other good things....

I would that you could all go out to Colorado and see how subtly, yes, and how swiftly, the social transformation is going on. It is the home transforming the State, not the State destroying the home. A Denver paper lately said the men had found out that in determining all questions of morality, sanitation, etc., if the women were consulted, better results were obtained. We have more intelligent homes because of equal suffrage. Where children see their father and mother go to the polls together, and hear them talk over public questions, and occasionally express different views, they learn tolerance. A party slave will not come out from such a home. The children will grow up seeing that it is un-American to say that everybody in the opposite party is either a fool or a knave. The two best features of equal suffrage are the improvement of the individual woman and the prospective abolition of the political "boss."

Introducing Henry B. Blackwell (Mass.) to report on Presidential Suffrage, Miss Anthony said: "Here is a man who has the virtue of having stood by the woman's cause for nearly fifty years. I can remember him when his hair was not white, and when he was following up our conventions assiduously because a bright, little, red-cheeked woman attracted him. She attracted him so strongly that he still works for woman suffrage, and will do so as long as he lives, not only because of her who was always so true and faithful to the cause--Lucy Stone--but also because he has a daughter, a worthy representative of the twain who were made one."

On Friday evening Mrs. Ida Husted Harper gave a portion of her paper, The Training of the Woman Journalist, which she had presented at the International Congress in London. Miss Anna Barrows (Mass.), literary editor of The American Kitchen Magazine, spoke on New Professions for Women Centering in the Home:

The main objection made by conservative people to definite occupations or professions for women has been that such callings would inevitably tend to destroy the home. Once let women prove that they can follow a trade or profession and yet make a home for themselves and others, and such objectors have no ground left.... The fear is sometimes expressed that the club movement is drawing women away from home interests; but the general attention now given to household economics by all the women's clubs proves that women are realizing that knowledge of history, art and science is needed to give the broad culture necessary for the proper conduct of the home life. Although as yet few women's colleges offer adequate courses in home economics, nevertheless after marriage the college women begin to study household problems with all the energy brought out by the college training.

A very general comment on woman's desire for a share in municipal and national government is that the servant question is yet unsolved; that, since she has not succeeded in governing her own domain, she has no rights outside of it. By going outside of her home as an employee herself she is learning to deal with this problem. It has been necessary for women to have thorough business training in other directions before they could discover how unbusinesslike were the methods pursued in the average household. The more women have gone out of their homes into new occupations, the more they have realized that the home is dependent upon the same principles as the business world. The business woman understands human nature, and therefore can deal successfully with the butcher, the baker and other tradespeople. She has a power of adapting herself to new conditions which is impossible to her sister accustomed only to the narrow treadmill of housework.

Specialization is the tendency of the age, and by wise attention to this in the household, as elsewhere, enough time should be saved to each community for the world's work to be done in fewer hours, and for men and women to have time besides to be homemakers and good citizens. Little by little one art and craft after another has been evolved into the dignity of a profession, while housework as a whole has been left to untrained workers. Needle work, cookery and cleaning are dependent on the fundamental principles of all the natural sciences.... There is need also of trained women to lead public sentiment to recognize the dignity of manual labor.

The statesmanlike paper of Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker (Conn.) on the Duty of Woman Citizens of the United States in the Present Political Crisis, was read by Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell (N. Y.), who enforced its sentiments by earnest and stirring remarks of her own. Mrs. Mary Church Terrell, A. M. of Oberlin College, president of the National Association of Colored Women and a member of the Washington School Board, considered the Justice of Woman Suffrage:

....To assign reasons in this day and time why it is unjust to deprive one-half of the human race of rights and privileges freely accorded to the other, which is neither more deserving nor more capable of exercising them, seems like a reflection upon the intelligence of the audience. As a nation we professed long ago to have abandoned the principle that might makes right. Before the world we pose to-day as a government whose citizens have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And yet, in spite of these lofty professions and noble sentiments, the present policy of this government is to hold one-half of its citizens in legal subjection to the other, without being able to assign good and sufficient reasons for such a flagrant violation of the very principles upon which it was founded.

When one observes how all the most honorable and lucrative positions in Church and State have been reserved for men, according to laws which they themselves have made so as to debar women; how, until recently, a married woman's property was under the exclusive control of her husband; how, in all transactions where husband and wife are considered one, the law makes the husband that one--man's boasted chivalry to the disfranchised sex is punctured beyond repair.

These unjust discriminations will ever remain, until the source from which they spring--the political disfranchisement of woman--shall be removed. The injustice involved in denying woman the suffrage is not confined to the disfranchised sex alone, but extends to the nation as well, in that it is deprived of the excellent service which woman might render....

The argument that it is unnatural for woman to vote is as old as the rock-ribbed and ancient hills. Whatever is unusual is called unnatural, the world over. Whenever humanity takes a step forward in progress, some old custom falls dead at our feet. Nothing could be more unnatural than that a good woman should shirk her duty to the State.

If you marvel that so few women work vigorously for political enfranchisement, let me remind you that woman's success in almost everything depends upon what men think of her. Why the majority of men oppose woman suffrage is clear even to the dullest understanding. In all great reforms it is only the few brave souls who have the courage of their convictions and who are willing to fight until victory is wrested from the very jaws of fate.

In treating of Women in the Ministry, the Rev. Ida C. Hultin (Mass.) considered what is known as "the woman movement" from a broad and philosophical standpoint, which carried conviction and disarmed opposition.

At the opening of the Saturday evening meeting a telegram was read from the Executive Committee of the National Anti-Trust Conference, in session at Chicago: "Hearty congratulations to the distinguished president of the Woman Suffrage Association, and hopes that Miss Anthony may enjoy many years of added happiness and honor. This cordial salutation includes Elizabeth Cady Stanton and all of the noble souls who have wrought so great a work in the liberation and advancement of the women of this country." A letter was read also from Frank Morrison, secretary of the American Federation of Labor, with the following resolution, which was passed by the convention held in Detroit, Mich., the previous December:

WHEREAS, Disfranchised labor, like that of the enslaved, degrades all free and enfranchised labor; therefore,

Resolved, That the American Federation of Labor earnestly appeals to Congress to pass a resolution submitting to the Legislatures of the several States a proposition for a Sixteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution that shall prohibit the States from disfranchising United States citizens on account of sex.

Miss Anthony expressed her satisfaction that equal suffrage was endorsed by "the hard-working, wage-earning men of the country, each of them with a good solid ballot in his hand."

Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby (D. C.) gave a historical sketch of Our Great Leaders, replete with beauty and pathos. Miss Kate M. Gordon spoke entertainingly on the possibilities of A Scrap of Suffrage.[121] In presenting her Miss Anthony said: "The right of taxpaying women in Louisiana to vote upon questions of taxation is practically the first shred of suffrage which those of any Southern State have secured, and they have used it well. They deserve another scrap, and I think they will get it before some of us do who have been asking for half a century."

Miss Gail Laughlin, a graduate of Wellesley and of the Law Department of Cornell University, discussed Conditions of the Wage-Earning Women of Our Country, saying in part:

"Wage-earner" among women is used in a broad sense. All women receiving money payment for work are proud to be called wage-earners, because wage-earning means economic independence. The census of 1890 reports nearly 400 occupations open to women, and nearly 4,000,000 women engaged in them. But government reports show the average wages of women in large cities to be from $3.83 to $6.91 per week, and the general average to be from $5.00 to $6.68. In all lines women are paid less than men for the same grade of work, and they are often compelled to toil under needlessly dangerous and unsanitary conditions. If the people of this country want to advance civilization, they have no need to go to the islands of the Pacific to do it.

How are these evils to be remedied? By organization, suffrage, co-operation among women, and above all, the inculcation of the principle that a woman is an individual, with a right to choose her work, and with other rights equal with man. Our law-makers control the sanitary conditions and pay of teachers. Here is work for the women who have "all the rights they want." When one of these comfortably situated women was told of the need of the ballot for working women, she held up her finger, showing the wedding ring on it, and said, "I have all the rights I want." The next time that I read the parable of the man who fell among thieves and was succored by the good Samaritan, methought I could see that woman with the wedding ring on her finger, passing by on the other side.

It is said that every woman who earns her living crowds a man out. That argument is as old as the trade guilds of the thirteenth century, which tried to exclude women. The Rev. Samuel G. Smith of St. Paul, who has recently declared against women in wage-earning occupations, stands to-day just where they did seven hundred years ago....[122]

Mrs. Helen Adelaide Shaw (Mass.), in A Review of the Remonstrants, was enthusiastically received. Young, handsome and a fine elocutionist, her imitation of the "remonstrants" and their objections to woman suffrage convulsed the audience and was quite as effective as the most impassioned argument.

The speakers of the convention were invited to fill a number of pulpits in Washington Sunday morning and evening. In the Unitarian Church, where the Rev. Ida C. Hultin preached, there was not standing room. The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw gave the sermon at the Universalist Church, of which the Post said:

Never in the history of the church had such a crowd been in attendance. The lecture rooms on either side of the auditorium had been thrown open, and these, as well as the galleries, were crowded almost to suffocation. Women stood about the edges of the room, and seats on window sills were at a premium. Outside in the vestibules of the church women elbowed one another for points of vantage on the gallery stairs, where an occasional glimpse might be caught of the handsome, dark-eyed, gray-haired woman who looked singularly appropriate at the pulpit desk. The congregation hung upon every word, and her remarks, sometimes bitter and caustic, were met with a hum of approval from the crowded auditorium.

Perhaps eight-tenths of the congregation were women. Miss Shaw's pulpit manner is easy, but her words are emphasized by gestures which impress her hearers with a sense of the speaker's earnestness. Her voice, while sweet and musical, is strong, and carries a tone of conviction. Her subject last night was "Strength of Character." The text was chosen from Joshua, 1:9: "Have I not commanded thee? Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed; for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest."

In the opening remarks the speaker said it was now time that women asserted their rights. "Men have no right to define for us our limitations. Who shall interpret to a woman the divine element in her being? It is for me to say that I shall be free. No human soul shall determine my life for me unless that soul will stand before the bar of God and take my sentence. Men who denounce us do so because they are ignorant of what they do. Woman has broken the silence of the century. Her question to God is, 'Who shall interpret Thee to me?' The churches of this day have not begun to conceive of what Christianity means.

"It is not true that all women should be married and the managers of homes. There is not more than one woman in five capable of motherhood in its highest possible state, and I may say that not one man in ten is fitted for fatherhood. We strongly advocate that no woman and man should marry until they are instructed in the science of home duties. Instead of woman suffrage breaking up families, it has just the opposite effect. In the State of Wyoming where it has existed thirty years, there is a larger per cent. of marriages and a less of divorces than in any other State in the Union. Because a woman is a suffragist is no reason that she may not be a good housekeeper. The two most perfect housekeepers I ever knew in my life were members of my congregation in New England--one was a suffragist and the other had no thought of the rights of women." ...

After the services almost every woman in the congregation crowded forward to shake the hand of the speaker.

On Monday evening the national character of the convention was conspicuously demonstrated, as the speakers represented the East, the South, the Middle West and the Pacific Slope. Mrs. Florence Howe Hall (N. J.), the highly educated daughter of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, read a charming farce entitled The Judgment of Minerva, the suffragists and the antis, as goddesses, bringing their cause before Jupiter, with a decision, of course, in favor of the former. Miss Diana Hirschler, a young lawyer of Boston, presented Woman's Position in the Law in a paper which was in itself an illustration of the benefit of a legal training. Mrs. Virginia D. Young (S. C.) told the Story of Woman Suffrage in the South, and sketched the history of the progressive Southern woman, beginning as follows:

The woman suffragists of the South have suffered in the pillory of public derision. It has been as deadly a setting up in the stocks as ever New England practiced on her martyrs to freedom. The women who have led in this revolt against old ideals have had to be as heroic as the men who stormed San Juan heights in the contest for Santiago de Cuba....

It is out of date to be carried in a sedan chair when one can fly around on a bicycle, and though in our conservative South, we have still some preachers with Florida moss on their chins, who storm at the woman on her wheel as riding straight to hell, we believe, with Julian Ralph, that the women bicyclists "out-pace their staider sisters in their progress to woman's emancipation."

Clark Howell, the brilliant Georgian, in his recent address before the Independent Club, set people to talking about him, from Niagara Falls in the East to the Garden of the Gods in the West, by his elucidations of "The Man with his Hat in his Hand;" but I propose to show you to-night a greater--the Woman With Her Bonnet Off, who speaks from the platform in a Southern city. You know how the women of the stagnant Orient stick to their veils, coverings for head and face, outward signs of real slavery. The bonnet is the civilized substitute for the Oriental veil, and to take it off is the first manifestation of a woman's resolve to have equal rights, even if all the world laugh and oppose.

In South Carolina the first newspaper article in favor of woman suffrage written by a woman over her own name, was met by the taunt that she had imbibed her views from the women of the North. But this was merely ignorance of history, for the story of woman suffrage in the South really antedates that in New England. The new woman of the new South, who asks for equal rights with her brother man, is in the direct line of succession to that magnificent "colonial dame," Mistress Margaret Brent of Maryland, who asked for a vote in the Colonial Assembly after the death of her kinsman, Lord Baltimore, who had endowed her with powers of attorney. Margaret Brent antedated Abigail Adams by over a century.

Mrs. Annie L. Diggs, State librarian, depicted Municipal Suffrage in Kansas, with the knowledge of one who had been a keen observer and an active participant.[123] Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway described the work which had been and would be done in the interest of the approaching suffrage amendment campaign in Oregon.

On Tuesday evening Mrs. Mabel Loomis Todd (Mass.), under the head of The Village Beautiful, told what might be accomplished toward the beautifying of towns and cities if the authority and the means were allowed to women. This was followed by a strong, clear business talk from Mrs. A. Emmagene Paul, superintendent of the Street-Cleaning Department of the First Ward, Chicago, who told how "crooked contractors and wily politicians" at first began to cultivate her. They found, however, that they could not shake her determination to make them live up to their contracts; they had agreed to clean the streets, they were receiving pay for that purpose, and she, as an inspector, was there to see that the contracts were lived up to. Mrs. Paul was appointed when the municipal government adopted a civil service system, and holds her position by virtue of its examination. She has checkmated the contractor and politician, and has accomplished a long-needed reform in the street-cleaning department of Chicago.[124]

An interesting description of The Russian Woman was given by Madame Sofja Levovna Friedland, who said that there is little suffrage for either men or women in Russia, but such as there is both alike possess. Mrs. Amy K. Cornwall, president of the Colorado Equal Suffrage Association, related the work accomplished by the women of her State since they had been enfranchised; "only six years," she said, "and yet we are expected to have cleaned up all Colorado, including Denver." Grace Greenwood (Mrs. Sara J. Lippincott) was introduced by Miss Anthony as a suffragist of thirty years' standing. The audience was greatly amused by her recital of the answers which she had made to the "remonstrants" more than a quarter of a century ago, showing that they were using then exactly the same objections which are doing service to-day. Several of the speakers having failed to appear, a very unusual occurrence, Mrs. May Wright Sewall, president of the International Council of Women, was pressed into service by Miss Anthony. She introduced her address gracefully by saying: "We women think we believe in freedom, but we are often told that we love best the tyrant who can make us obey, and I can testify to the truth of it," motioning toward Miss Anthony. She then made an eloquent and convincing plea for the enfranchisement of women.

The mornings were devoted to committee reports and to ten-minute reports from each of the States, often the most interesting features of the convention. The afternoons were given to Work Conferences, when all the various details of the work were discussed under the leadership of those who had proved most competent--methods of organization, of holding conventions, etc. The treasurer, Mrs. Upton, stated that the receipts for the past year were $10,345; that the association had an indebtedness of about $1,400, and Miss Anthony, desiring to leave it entirely free from debt, had raised almost all of this amount herself; that the books now showed every bill to be paid. Before the close of the convention almost $10,000 were subscribed toward the work of the coming year. It was decided to hold a National Suffrage Bazar in New York City before the holidays in order to add to this fund.[125]

Mrs. Chapman Catt, chairman of the Organization Committee, reported that with the secretary of the committee, Miss Mary G. Hay, she had visited twenty States, lecturing and attending State conventions, giving fifty-one lectures and traveling 13,000 miles. Ten thousand letters had been sent out from the office.

The comprehensive report of Mrs. Elnora M. Babcock (N. Y.), chairman of the Press Committee, showing the remarkable success achieved in securing the publication of articles on suffrage, seemed to offer the best possible proof of an increasing favorable public sentiment. Articles had been furnished regularly to 1,360 newspapers; 3,675 had been prepared on the present convention and birthday celebration; altogether 31,800 weekly articles had been sent out and, so far as could be ascertained, all had been published. The number of papers which would use plate matter on suffrage was limited only by the money which could be commanded to supply it.

Miss Anthony, in reporting for the Congressional Committee, made a good point when she said:

One reason why so little has been done by Congress is because none of us has remained here to watch our employes up at the Capitol. Nobody ever gets anything done by Congress or by a State Legislature except by having some one on hand to look out for it. We need a Watching Committee. The women can not expect to get as much done as the railroads, the trusts, the corporations and all the great moneyed concerns. They keep hundreds of agents at the national Capital to further their interests. We have no one here, and yet we expect to get something done, although we labor under the additional disadvantage of having no ballots to use as a reward or punishment. Whatever takes place in Washington is felt to the circumference of the country. I have had nearly all the States send petitions to Congress asking that upon whatever terms suffrage is extended to the men of Hawaii and our other new possessions, it may be extended to the women, and it is this which has stirred up the anti-suffragists in Massachusetts, New York and Illinois to their recent demonstrations.... Mrs. Harper has culled extracts from all the favorable congressional reports we have had during the past thirty years, and we have made a pamphlet of them, which will be laid on the desk of every member of Congress.[126]

Mary F. Gist, Anna S. Hamilton and Emma Southwick Brinton were introduced as fraternal delegates from the Woman's National Press Association; Mrs. William Scott, from the Universal Peace Union; Dr. Agnes Kemp, from the Peace Society of Philadelphia; Elizabeth B. Passmore from the Baltimore Yearly Meeting of Friends. Letters of greeting were received from Mrs. Priscilla Bright McLaren of Scotland, Mrs. Mary Foote Henderson, of Washington, D. C., and many others.

Among the memorial resolutions were the following:

In reviewing the gains and losses of the past year, we recall with profound regret the loss of those tried and true workers for woman's enfranchisement, George W. and Mrs. Henrietta M. Banker of New York, who died within a few days of each other. "Lovely in life, in death they were not divided." Although we shall sorely miss their genial and inspiring presence, they will continue by the munificent provisions of their wills to aid the cause.

We are also saddened by the news just received of the decease of Dr. Elizabeth C. Sargent of San Francisco, our valued co-worker in the recent California Suffrage Campaign, and daughter of our lifelong friends, U. S. Senator Aaron A. and Mrs. Ellen Clark Sargent. All advocates of equal suffrage unite in offering to the bereaved mother their heartfelt sympathy in her loss.

A vote of thanks was passed to Bishop Spaulding of Peoria, Ills., Bishop McQuaid of Rochester, N. Y. (Catholics), and the Rev. Frank M. Bristol of the M. E. Metropolitan Church, Washington (the one attended by President McKinley), for their recent sermons referring favorably to woman suffrage. These were the more noticeable as during this convention Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore devoted his Sunday discourse to a terrific arraignment of society women and those asking for the suffrage, denouncing them alike as destroyers of the home, etc.

The National Association requested the appointment by President McKinley of Mrs. Bertha Honore Palmer as National Commissioner from the United States to the Paris Exposition, and of Mrs. May Wright Sewall as delegate to represent the organized work of women in the United States. Both of these appointments were afterwards made.

The corresponding secretary read invitations for the next annual convention from the Citizens' Business League of Milwaukee; the Business Men's League and the Mayor of Cincinnati; the Chamber of Commerce of Detroit; the Business Men's League of San Antonio; the Cleveland Business Men's Convention League; the Suffrage Society of Buffalo and the following: "The Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association takes great pride in being able to invite you most cordially to hold your annual meeting for 1901 in the city of Minneapolis. We guarantee $600 towards expenses and more if necessary. Enclosed are invitations from the Board of Trade, the Mayor and our three daily newspapers, all assuring us of financial backing." This was signed by Mrs. Martha J. Thompson, president, and Dr. Ethel E. Hurd, corresponding secretary. The invitation was accepted.

The usual hearings were held Tuesday morning, February 13, in the Marble Room of the Senate and the committee room of the House Judiciary, both of which were crowded to the doors, the seats being filled with women while members of Congress stood about the sides of the room. That before the Senate Committee--John W. Daniel (Va.), chairman; James H. Berry (Tenn.); George P. Wetmore (R. I.); Addison G. Foster (Wash.)--was confined to a historical resume of the movement for woman suffrage, the speakers being presented by Miss Anthony. The Work with Congress was carefully delineated by Mrs. Colby, who concluded: "Everything that a disfranchised class could do has been done by women, and never in the long ages in which the love of freedom has been evolving in the human heart has there been such an effort by any other class of people. Surely it ought to win the respect and support of every man in this republic who has a brain to understand the blessings of liberty and a heart to beat in sympathy with a struggle to obtain it."[127]

Municipal Suffrage in Kansas was described by Mrs. Laura M. Johns. Woman Suffrage in Colorado was presented by Mrs. Bradford. Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch told of Woman Suffrage in England, closing as follows:

We have heard about the suffrage in the Western States of America, and the reply always is: "Oh, that is all very well for thinly populated countries." Now I am going to tell you a little of the suffrage question in England, not a thinly populated country, with its 20,000,000 of people crowded in that small space.

Gentlemen of the committee, I would like to draw your attention to one thing, which is true in America as well as in England--that nothing has been given to women gratuitously. They have had at each step to prove their ability before you gave them anything else. In 1870 England passed the Education Act, which gave women the right to sit on the school boards and to vote for them. It was the first time they had had elective school boards in England; before that all the education had been controlled by church organizations, who had appointed boards of managers. Women had been appointed to those boards and so admirable had been their work that when the law was passed in 1870 many women stood for election and were elected, and in three cases they came in at the head of the polls. Five years after that a verdict was passed upon the work of those women as school officials, for in 1875, women were allowed to go on the poor-law boards. In 1894 the law was further modified so that it contemplated the possibility of a larger circle of poor-law guardians. Before that there had been a high qualification--occupation of a house of a certain rental, etc., but now that was all pushed aside. What was the result? Nearly 1,000 women are now sitting on the poor-law boards of England; 94 on the great board of London itself.

These local boards deal with the great asylums, with the great pauper schools, with the immense poorhouses and, more than that, they deal with one of the largest funds in England, the outdoor and indoor relief. What has been the verdict upon the work of those women on the poor-law board? In 1896 there was the question, when this law was extended to Ireland, whether women should be put on those boards. The vote in Parliament was 272 in favor of the women and only 8 against. Eight men only, so unwise, so foolish, left in the great English Parliament, who said it was not for women to deal with those immense bodies of pauper children, not for women to deal with this outdoor relief fund, not for women to deal with the unfortunate mothers of illegitimate children....

Women in England, qualified women, have every local vote, everything which would correspond with your State and municipal vote here, they have all except the Parliamentary vote.

In England we have opponents, just as you have here. I do not know whether they are more illogical or less so, but they certainly do one extraordinary thing--they are in favor of everything that has been won and take advantage of it. A large number of the 2,000 women who are sitting on the various local bodies in England are opposed to the Parliamentary vote for their sex, and yet they are really in political life. Now, gentlemen, if you want to have the women stop coming here, give us the vote and then we won't come; give the "antis" the vote, and then they will have the political life that they are really longing for.

Almost always, if you analyze the anti-suffrage idea in either a man or a woman you find it is anti-democratic. I have begun to think that I am the only good democrat left in America. I believe in the very widest possible suffrage. Why do I believe it? Because I have lived and seen the other thing in England, and I have seen that as democracy broadened politics was purified. That has been the history from the beginning. No politics in the world was more corrupt than the English at the beginning of this century, but as democracy has come farther and farther into the field, England has become politically one of the purest nations in the world.

The paper on Woman Suffrage in the British Isles and Colonies was prepared by Miss Helen Blackburn, editor of the Englishwoman's Review; and Woman Suffrage in Foreign Countries was described by Mrs. Jessie Cassidy Saunders. The last address was given by Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt (N. Y.), Why We Ask for the Submission of an Amendment:

A survey of the changes which have been wrought within the past hundred years in the status of women--educational, social, financial and political--fills the observing man or woman with a feeling akin to awe. No great war has been fought in behalf of their emancipation; no great political party has espoused their cause; no heroes have bled and died for their liberty; yet words fail utterly to measure the distance between the "sphere" of the woman of 1800 and that of the woman of 1900. How has the transformation come? What mysterious power has brought it?

On the whole, men and women of the present rejoice at every right gained and every privilege conceded. Not one jot or tittle would they abate the advantage won; yet when the plea is made that the free, self-respecting, self-reliant, independent, thinking women of this generation be given the suffrage, the answer almost invariably comes back, "When women as a whole demand it, men will consider it." This answer carries with it the apparent supposition that all the changes have come because the majority of women wanted them, and that further enlargement of liberty must cease because the majority do not want it. Alas, it is a sad comment upon the conservatism of the average human being that not one change of consequence has been desired by women as a whole, or even by a considerable part. It would be nearer the truth to say women as a whole have opposed every advance.

The progress has come because women of a larger mold, loftier ambitions and nobler self-respect than the average have been willing to face the opposition of the world for the sake of liberty. More than one such as these deserve the rank of martyr. The sacrifice of suffering, of doubt, of obloquy, which has been endured by the pioneers in the woman movement will never be fully known or understood....

With the bold demand for perfect equality of rights in every walk of life the public have compromised. Not willing to grant all, they have conceded something; and by repeated compromises and concessions to the main demand the progress of woman's rights has been accomplished.

There are two kinds of restrictions upon human liberty--the restraint of law and that of custom. No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion. At the beginning of our century both law and custom restricted the liberty of women.

It was the edict of custom which prohibited women from receiving an education, engaging in occupations, speaking in public, organizing societies, or in other ways conducting themselves like free, rational human beings. It was law which forbade married women to control their own property or to collect their own wages, and which forbade all women to vote. The changes have not come because women wished for them or men welcomed them. A liberal board of trustees, a faculty willing to grant a trial, an employer willing to experiment, a broad-minded church willing to hear a woman preach, a few liberal souls in a community willing to hear a woman speak--these have been the influences which have brought the changes.

There is no more elaborate argument or determined opposition to woman suffrage than there has been to each step of progress.... Had a vote been taken, co-education itself would have been overwhelmingly defeated. In 1840, before women had studied or practiced medicine, had it been necessary to obtain permission to do so by a vote of men or women, 8,000 graduated women physicians would not now be engaged in the healing art in our country. In 1850, when vindictive epithets were hurled from press, pulpit and public in united condemnation of the few women who were attempting to be heard on the platform as speakers, had it been necessary to secure the right of free public speech through Legislatures or popular approval, the voices of women would still be silent.... The rights of women have come in direct opposition to the popular consensus of opinion. Yet when they have once become established, they have been wanted by women and welcomed by men.

There are a few fanatics who, if they could, would force the women of this generation back into the spheres of their grandmothers. There are some pessimists who imagine they see all natural order coming to a speedy end because of the enlarged liberties and opportunities of women. There are sentimentalists who believe that the American home, that most sacred unit of society, is seriously imperiled by the tendencies of women to adopt new duties and interests. But this is not the thought of the average American. There are few intelligent men who would be willing to provide their daughters no more education than was deemed proper for their grandmothers, or who would care to restrict them to the old-time limited sphere of action. Thinking men and women realize that the American home was never more firmly established than at the present time, and that it has grown nobler and happier as women have grown more self-reliant. The average man and woman recognize that the changes which have come have been in the interest of better womanhood and better manhood, bringing greater happiness to women and greater blessings to men. They recognize that each step gained has rendered women fitter companions for men, wiser mothers and far abler units of society.

The public acknowledges the wisdom, the common sense, the practical judgment of the woman movement until it asks for the suffrage. In other words, it approves every right gained because it is here, and condemns the one right not yet gained because it is not here.

Had it been either custom or statutory law which forbade women to vote, the suffrage would have been won by the same processes which have gained every other privilege. A few women would have voted, a few men and women would have upheld them, and, little by little, year after year, the number of women electors would have increased until it became as general for women to vote as it is for men. Had this been possible the women would be voting to-day in every State in the Union; and undoubtedly their appearance at the polls would now be as generally accepted as a matter of fact as the college education. But, alas, when this step of advancement was proposed, women found themselves face to face with the stone wall of Constitutional Law, and they could not vote until a majority of men should first give their consent. Indeed the experiment was made to gain this sacred privilege by easier means. The history of the voting of Susan B. Anthony and others is familiar to all, but the Supreme Court decided that the National Constitution must first be amended. It therefore becomes a necessity to convert to this reform a majority of the men of the whole United States.

When we recall the vast amount of illiteracy, ignorance, selfishness and degradation which exists among certain classes of our people the task imposed upon us is appalling. There are whole precincts of voters in this country whose united intelligence does not equal that of one representative American woman. Yet to such classes as these we are asked to take our cause as the court of final resort. We are compelled to petition men who have never heard of the Declaration of Independence, and who have never read the Constitution, for the sacred right of self-government; we are forced to appeal for justice to men who do not know the meaning of the word; we are driven to argue our claim with men who never had two thoughts in logical sequence. We ask men to consider the rights of a citizen in a republic and we get the answer in reply, given in all seriousness, "Women have more rights now than they ought to have;" and that, too, without the faintest notion of the inanity of the remark or the emptiness of the brain behind it.

When we present our cause to men of higher standing and more liberal opinion, we find that the interest of party and the personal ambition for place are obstacles which prevent them from approving a question concerning whose popularity there is the slightest doubt.

The way before us is difficult at best, not because our demand is not based upon unquestioned justice, not because it is not destined to win in the end, but because of the nature of the processes through which it must be won. In fact the position of this question might well be used to demonstrate that observation of Aristotle that "a democracy has many striking points of resemblance with tyranny...."

It is for these reasons, gentlemen, that we appeal to your committee to aid in the submission of a Sixteenth Amendment. Such an amendment would go before the Legislatures of our country where the grade of intelligence is at least higher than we should find in the popular vote.

Though you yourselves may doubt the expediency of woman suffrage, though you may question the soundness of our claim, yet, in the name of democracy, which permits the people to make and amend their constitutions, and in the name of American womanhood, prepared by a century of unmeasured advance for political duties, we beg your aid in the speedy submission of this question. We ask this boon in the direct interest of the thousands of women who do want to vote, who suffer pangs of humiliation and degradation because of their political servitude. We ask it equally in the indirect interest of the thousands of women who do not want to vote, as we believe their indifference or opposition is the same natural conservatism which led other women to oppose the college education, the control of property, the freedom of public speech and the right of organization.

Years ago George William Curtis pleaded for fair play for women. It is the same plea we are repeating. We only petition for fair play, and this means the submission of our question to the most intelligent constituency which has power to act upon it. If we shall fail, we will abide by the decision. That is, we will wait till courage has grown stronger, reason more logical, justice purer, in the positive knowledge that our cause will eventually triumph. As the daughters of Zelophehad appealed to Moses and his great court for justice, so do the daughters of America appeal to you.

Miss Anthony closed the hearing in a speech whose vigor, logic and eloquence were accentuated in the minds of the hearers by the thought that for more than thirty years she had made these pleas before congressional committees, only to be received with stolid indifference or open hostility. She began by saying: "In closing I would like to give a little object lesson of the two methods of gaining the suffrage. By one it is insisted that we shall carry our question to what is termed a popular vote of each State--that is, that its Legislature shall submit to the electors the proposition to strike the little adjective "male" from the suffrage clause. We have already made that experiment in fifteen different elections in ten different States. Five States have voted on it twice." She then summarized briefly the causes of the defeats in the various States, and continued:

Now here is all we ask of you, gentlemen, to save us women from any more tramps over the States, such as we have made now fifteen times. In nine of those campaigns I myself, made a canvass from county to county. In my own State of New York at the time of the constitutional convention in 1894, I visited every county of the sixty--I was not then 80 years of age, but 74....

There is an enemy of the homes of this nation and that enemy is drunkenness. Every one connected with the gambling house, the brothel and the saloon works and votes solidly against the enfranchisement of women, and, I say, if you believe in chastity, if you believe in honesty and integrity, then do what the enemy wants you not to do, which is to take the necessary steps to put the ballot in the hands of women....

I pray you to think of this question as you would if the one-half of the people who are disfranchised were men, if we women had absolute power to control every condition in this country and you were obliged to obey the laws and submit to whatever arrangements we made. I want you to report on this question exactly as if the masculine half of the people were the ones who were deprived of this right to a vote in governmental affairs. You would not be long in bringing in a favorable report if you were the ones who were disfranchised and denied a voice in your Government. If it were not women--if it were the farmers of this country, the manufacturers, or any class of men who were robbed of their inalienable rights, then we would see that class rising in rebellion, and the Government shaken to its very foundation; but being women, being only the mothers, daughters, wives and sisters of men who constitute the aristocracy, we have to submit.

The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw (Penn.) presided over the hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.[128] The Constitutional Argument was made by Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.), who said in the course of a long and logical address:

We find that it is declared in Article IV, Section 4, that "the United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of Government." What is a republican form of Government? In a monarchy, the theory is that all power flows directly from the monarch; even in constitutional monarchies each concession has been obtained "by consent of our gracious sovereign." When the laws are based on the idea that the caprices of the ruler regulate the privileges granted to the people, it is at least logical, even if it is cruel, to refuse the right of suffrage to any class of the community. You will agree that this is not a monarchy, where power flows from the sovereign to the people, but a republic, where the sovereign people give to the Executive they have chosen the power to carry out their will. Can you really claim that we live under a republican form of government when one-half the adult inhabitants are denied all voice in the affairs of the nation? It may be better described as an oligarchy, where certain privileged men choose the rulers who make laws for their own benefit, too often to the detriment of the unrepresented portion of our people, who are denied recognition as completely as was ever an oppressed class in the most odious form of oligarchy which usurped a government.

Article XIV, Section 2, provides that "Representation shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians, not taxed." What sort of justice is there in excluding from the basis of representation Indians who are not taxed and including in this basis women who are taxed? The framers of this amendment were evidently impressed with the tenet that taxation and representation should be associated, and that as the Indian paid no taxes, and was not, therefore, forced to carry the burdens of citizenship, he might, with justice, be denied the privileges of citizenship. But by what specious reasoning can any one maintain that it is honest to tax the great body of women citizens, to count them in the basis of representation, and yet deny to them the right of personal representation at the ballot box? What excuse can be made for this monstrous perversion of liberty? Each one of you, gentlemen, sits here as the representative of thousands of women who, by their money, have helped to build this Capitol in which you assemble and to pay for the seats in which you sit; nay, more, they pay a part of the salary of every man here, and yet what real representation have they? How often do you think of the women of your States and of their interests in the laws you pass? How much do you reflect on the injustice which is daily and hourly done them by denying to them all voice in this body, wherein you claim to "represent the people" of your respective States....

Some years ago, when the bill regulating affairs in Utah was under discussion Senator Edmunds said, "Disfranchisement is a cruel and degrading penalty, that ought not to be inflicted except for crime." Yet this cruel and degrading penalty is inflicted upon practically all the women of the United States. Of what crime have we been guilty? Or is our mere sex a fault for which we must be punished? Would not any body of men look upon disfranchisement as "a cruel and degrading penalty?" Suppose the news were to be flashed across our country to-morrow that the farmers of the nation were to be disfranchised, what indignation there would be! How they would leave their homes to assemble and protest against this wrong! They would declare that disfranchisement was a burden too heavy to be borne; that if they were unrepresented laws would be passed inimical to their best interests; that only personal representation at the ballot box could give them proper protection; and they would hasten here, even as we are doing, to entreat you to remove from them the burden of "the cruel and degrading penalty of disfranchisement."

And now, I desire to call your attention to a series of declarations in the Constitution which prove beyond all possibility of contravention that the Government has solemnly pledged itself to secure to the women of the nation the right of suffrage.

Article XIV, Section 1, declares that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." The women of this country are, then, citizens thereof and entitled to all the rights of citizens.

Article XV speaks of "the right of a citizen to vote," as if that were one of the most precious privileges of citizenship, so precious that its protection is embodied in a separate amendment.

If we now turn to Article IV, Section 2, we find it declares that "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States."

What do these assertions mean? Is there one of you who can explain away these noble guarantees of the right of individual representation at the ballot box as mere one-sided phrases, having no significance for one-half the people? No. These grand pledges are abiding guarantees of human freedom, honest promises of protection to all the people of the republic.

You, gentlemen, have sworn to carry out all the provisions of the Constitution. Does not this oath lay upon you the duty of seeing that this great pledge is kept and that the Fifty-sixth Congress sets its mark in history by fulfilling these guarantees and securing the ballot to the millions of women citizens, possessing every qualification for the intelligent use of this mighty weapon of liberty?

The Dome of this Capitol is surmounted by a magnificent statue representing the genius of American freedom. How is this mighty power embodied? As a majestic woman, full-armed and panoplied to protect the liberty of the republic. Is not this symbol a mockery while the women of the country are held in political slavery? We ask you to insist that the pledges of the republic shall be redeemed, that its promises shall be fulfilled, and that American womanhood shall be enfranchised.

Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (N. Y.), as had been her custom during all the years since she had ceased to appear in person before these committees, sent a strong appeal for justice, beginning as follows:

In adjusting the rights of citizens in our newly-acquired possessions, the whole question of suffrage is again fairly open for discussion in the House of Representatives; and as some of the States are depriving the colored men of the exercise of this right and all of the States, except four, deny it to all women, I ask Congress to submit an amendment to the National Constitution declaring that citizens not allowed a voice in the Government shall not be taxed or counted in the basis of representation.

To every fair mind, such an amendment would appear pre-eminently just, since to count disfranchised classes in the basis of representation compels citizens to aid in swelling the number of Congressmen who may legislate against their most sacred interests. If the Southern States that deny suffrage to negro men should find that it limited their power in Congress by counting in the basis of representation only those citizens who vote, they would see that the interests of the races lay in the same direction. A constitutional amendment to this effect would also rouse the Northern States to their danger, for the same rule applied there in excluding all women from the basis of representation would reduce the number of their members of Congress one-half. And if the South should continue her suicidal policy toward women as well as colored men, her States would be at a still greater disadvantage....

By every principle of our republic, logically considered, woman's emancipation is a foregone conclusion. The great "declarations," by the fathers, regarding individual rights and the true foundations of government, should not be glittering generalities for demagogues to quote and ridicule, but eternal laws of justice, as fixed in the world of morals as are the laws of attraction and gravitation in the material universe.

In regard to the injustice of taxing unrepresented classes, Lord Coke says: "The supreme power can not take from any man his property without his consent in person or by representation. The very act of taxing those who are not represented appears to me to deprive them of one of their most sacred rights as free men, and if continued, seems to be in effect an entire disfranchisement of every civil right; for what one civil right is worth a rush when a man's property is subject to be taken from him without his consent?

Woman's right to life, liberty and happiness, to education, property and representation, can not be denied, for if we go back to first principles, where did the few get the right, through all time, to rule the many? They never had it, any more than pirates had the right to scour the high seas, and take whatever they could lay hands upon.

Miss Elizabeth Sheldon Tillinghast (Conn.) considered The Economic Basis of Woman Suffrage:

....However we may explain it, and whether we like it or not, woman has become an economic factor in our country and one that is constantly assuming larger proportions. The question is now what treatment will make her an element of economic strength instead of weakness as at present. The presence of women in business now demoralizes the rate of wages even more than the increase in the supply of labor. Why? Principally because she can be bullied with greater impunity than voters--because she has no adequate means of self-defense. This seems a hard accusation, but I believe it to be true.

Trade is a fight--an antagonism of interests which are compromised in contracts in which the economically stronger always wins the advantage. There are many things that contribute to economic strength besides ability, and among them the most potent is coming more and more to be the power which arises from organization expressing itself in political action. Without political expression woman's economic value is at the bottom of the scale. She is the last to be considered, and the consideration is usually about exhausted before she is reached.

She must do better work than men for equal pay or equal work for less pay. In spite of this she may be supplanted at any time by a political adherent, or her place may be used as a bribe to an opposing faction. Women are weak in the business world because they are new in it; because they are only just beginning to learn their economic value; because their inherent tendencies are passive instead of aggressive, which makes them as a class less efficient fighters than men.

For these reasons women are and must be for years, if not for generations, economically weaker than men. Does it appeal to any one's sense of fairness to give the stronger party in a struggle additional advantages and deny them to the weaker one? Would that be considered honorable--would it be considered tolerable--even among prize-fighters? What would be thought of a contest between a heavy-weight and a feather-weight in which the heavy-weight was allowed to hit below the belt and the feather-weight was confined to the Marquis of Queensberry's rules? And yet these are practically the conditions under which women do business in forty-one of our States.

While the State does not owe any able-bodied, sound-minded man or woman a living, it does owe them all a fair--yes, even a generous opportunity to earn their own living, and one that shall not be prolonged dying. I do not claim that woman suffrage would be a panacea for all our economic woes. But I do claim that it would remove one handicap which women workers have to bear in addition to all those they share in common with men. I do claim that the men of the future will be healthier, wiser and more efficient wealth-producers if their mothers are stimulated by a practical interest in public affairs. I do claim that that nation will be the strongest in which the economic conditions are the most nearly just to all, and in which co-operation and altruism are the most completely incorporated in the lives of the people.

Mrs. Hala Hammond Butt (Miss.) discussed The Changed Intellectual Qualifications of the Women of this Century, with the intense eloquence of Southern women, and closed as follows:

There are mighty forces striving within our souls--a latent strength is astir that is lifting us out of our passive sleep. Defenseless, still are we subject to restrictions, bonds as illogical in theory as unjust in practice. Helpless, we may formulate as we will; but demonstrate we may not. The query persists in thrusting itself upon my mind, why should I be amenable to a law that does not accord me recognition? Why, indeed, should I owe loyalty and allegiance to a Government that stamps my brow with the badge of servility and inferiority?

Our human interests are identical--yours and mine; our paths not far apart; we have the same loves, the same hates, the same hopes, the same desires; a common origin, a common need, a common destiny. Our moral responsibilities are equal, our civil liabilities not less than yours, our social and industrial exactions equally as stringent as yours, and yet--O, crowning shame of the nineteenth century!--we are denied the garb of citizenship. Gentlemen, is this justice?

Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch, auditor of the National Suffrage Association and a member of the Chicago bar, demonstrated The Protective Power of the Ballot:

The spirit of struggle against oppression and dependence is in the air, and all have breathed it in--women as well as men. They, too, feel the desire for freedom, opportunity, progress; the wish for liberty, a share in the government, emancipation. The practical method by which these aspirations can be realized is through the ballot. It is the insignia of power. The Outlander wants it; so does the Filipino, the Slav, the Cuban; so do women. Women need the ballot not only for the honor of being esteemed peers among freemen, but they want it for the practical value it will be in protecting them in the exercise of a citizen's prerogatives....

But, it is asked, "Have not women had some sort of protection without the ballot?" Yes, but it has been only such protection as the caprice or affection of the voting class has given, gratuities revocable at will. The man of wealth or power defends his wife, daughter or sweetheart because she is his, just as he would defend his property. His own opinions, not her views, decide him concerning the things from which she should be protected. Should she ever need protection against "her protector," there is no one to give it....

Entrance into remunerative employments in many instances has been denied women. In many of the States the professions of law, medicine, dentistry and all the elective offices are closed by statute. Appointive positions, also, which women might legally hold are practically withheld from them because of their lack of the ballot. The appointing power--president, governor, mayor, judge or commissioner--all owe their own positions to voters who expect some minor appointment in acknowledgment of service.

Even large private corporations not supposed to be influenced by politics have occasionally desired and received governmental help and protection. In return, the employes of these enterprises have been advised to vote for the party which has protected their employers' business. At a caucus, a street parade and on election day, the 500 or 10,000 or 100,000 persons employed in a certain industry make a considerable political showing if they are all voters. On such occasions women employes are of no value. Women refused employment in various enterprises not alone are injured in their feelings, but they are not protected in their right to earn food, shelter and clothes.

There are many different kinds of employment which do not debar women, but even in these they need protection in securing a fair return for their labor. In an investigation conducted by the U. S. Department of Labor concerning the wages received by men and women it appeared that in 75 per cent. of the 782 instances investigated, men received 50 per cent. higher wages than did women laboring with the same degree of efficiency on the same kind of work.

Women also need protection of their property. A man who knows the inside truth says, "Widows and minors are always assessed higher than men." If the assessor desires re-election, one of the easiest methods of securing it is to lower the assessments of the politicians who control most voters....

Women also want protection for the one sphere which even the most conservative loudly proclaim should be theirs--the home. That the water supply is good and abundant, that the sewage is carried away properly and speedily, that contagious cases are isolated, that food is pure in quality and reasonable in price, that inspection of food is honest and scientific, that weights and measures are true, that gas and electricity are inexpensive, that buildings are strongly constructed--these are all matters under the control of certain officials elected by voters....

Women, too, want protection for the children, proper regulations in regard to the schools, the trains at crossings, seducers, tramps and child abductors. They want strict laws against obscene literature and the unhealthy cigarette; and what is equally important, honest enforcement of such laws and ordinances....

One class can not, will not, legislate better for all classes than they can do for themselves. So men alone can not legislate better for women and men than can the two for both. Women need the ballot to protect themselves and all that they hold dear.

The hearing was closed by Miss Shaw, who said in ending her remarks:

Dire results have been predicted at every step of radical progress. When women first enjoyed higher education the cry went out that the home would be destroyed. It was said that if all the women were educated, all would become bluestockings, and if all women became bluestockings all would write books, and if all women wrote books what would become of the homes, who would rear the children? But the schools were opened and women entered them, and it has been discovered that the intelligent woman makes a wiser mother, a better homemaker and a much more desirable companion, friend and wife than a woman who is illiterate, whose intellectual horizon is narrowed.

In many of the States where the statutes were based on the old English common law, the husband absorbed the wife's property as he absorbed her personal rights. Then came the demand for property rights for wives, but the cry went up they will desert their homes. Then it was found there were thousands of women who could have no home if they were not permitted to pursue avocations in the outside world. And then it was said that the moral life of women would be degraded by public contact. Yet the statistics show that in those occupations in which women are able to earn a livelihood in an honorable and respectable manner they have raised the standard of morality rather than lowered it.

The results have not been those which were predicted. The homes have not been broken up; for human hearts are and always will be the same, and so long as God has established in this world a greater force than all other forces combined--which we call the divine gravity of love--just so long human hearts will continue to be drawn together, homes will be founded, families will be reared; and never so good a home, never so good a family, as those founded in justice and educated upon right principles. Consequently the industrial emancipation of women has been of benefit to the home, to women and to men.

The claim is made that we are building a barrier between men and women; that we are antagonistic because men are men and we are women. This is not true. We believe there never was a time when men and women were such good friends as now, when they esteemed each other as they do now. We have coeducation in our schools; boys and girls work side by side and study and recite together. When coeducation was first tried men thought they would easily carry off the honors; but soon they learned their mistake. That experience gave to men a better opinion of woman's intellectual ability.

There is nothing in liberty which can harm either man or woman. There is nothing in justice which can work against the highest good of humanity; and when on the ground of expediency this measure is opposed, in the words of Wendell Phillips, "Whatever is just, God will see that it is expedient." There is no greater inexpediency than injustice....

We do not ask the ballot because we do not believe in men or because we think men unjust or unfair. We do not ask to speak for ourselves because we believe men unwilling to speak for us; but because men by their very nature never can speak for women. It would be as impossible for all men to understand the needs of women and care for their interests as it would be for all women to understand the needs and care for the interests of men. So long as laws affect both men and women, both should make the laws.

Gentlemen, we leave our case with you. I wish those who oppose this measure could know the great need of the power of the ballot in the hands of those who struggle in the world's affairs. I thank you in the name of our association for your kindness in listening to us. There will never be laid before you a claim more just--one more in accord with the fundamental principles of our national life.

No one can read the arguments for the enfranchisement of women as presented before these two committees without a profound conviction of the justice of their cause and the imperative duty of those before whom they pleaded it to report in favor of submitting the desired amendment. This report would simply have placed the matter before the respective Houses of Congress. But neither committee took any action whatever and as far as practical results were concerned these eloquent pleas fell upon deaf ears and hardened hearts.

A unique feature was added to the hearings this year because, for the first time, the advocates of woman suffrage were opposed before the committees by a class of women calling themselves "remonstrants." The Woman's Journal said:

About a dozen women from New York and Massachusetts, with one from Delaware, came to Washington and made public speeches before Congressional Committees to prove that a woman's place is at home. They said they were led to take this action by their alarm at the activity of the National-American W. S. A.

The party of "antis" who came to the Senate hearing in the Marble Room would not have been able to get in but for Miss Anthony. As this room accommodates only about sixty persons, admission was by tickets, and these had been issued to delegates only. The "antis," having no tickets, were turned away; but Miss Anthony, learning who they were, persuaded the doorkeeper to admit them, introduced them herself to the chairman of the committee, and placed them in good seats near the front, where they certainly heard more about the facts of equal suffrage than they ever did before.[129]

Mrs. Arthur M. Dodge and Miss Bissell addressed the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage, and Mr. Thomas Russell, Mrs. A. J. George, Miss Emily Bissell and Mrs. Rossiter Johnson addressed the House Judiciary Committee. In each case they secured the last word, to which they were not entitled either by equity or custom, by asking to speak at the conclusion of the suffrage hearing. It was trying to have to listen to egregious misstatements of fact, and to hear the Woman's Journal audaciously cited as authority for them, without a chance to reply.

The time for these hearings belonged exclusively to the suffrage delegates, the chairmen of the two congressional committees stating that they would appoint some other day for the "remonstrants." The delegates, however, declaring that they had no objections, the "antis" were permitted to read their papers at the close of the suffrage hearing, thus having the benefit of the large audiences, but furnishing a vast amount of amusement to the suffragists.[130]

The Woman's Journal said in its perfectly fair description:

The chairman of the House Committee asked Mrs. A. J. George of Massachusetts, who conducted the hearing for the "antis," a number of questions that she could not answer, and Thomas Russell of that State had to prompt her repeatedly. The chairman would ask a question; Mrs. George would look nonplussed; Mr. Russell would lean over and whisper, "Say yes," and she would answer aloud "Yes." The chairman would ask another question; Mr. Russell would whisper, "Say no," and Mrs. George would answer "No." This happened so often that both the audience and the committee were visibly amused, and several persons said it was Mr. Russell who was really conducting the hearing. He is a Boston lawyer who has conducted the legislative hearings for the "antis" in Massachusetts for some years.

Mrs. Dodge, in her speech, begged the committee not to allow the "purely sentimental reasons of the petitioners" to have any weight, and said: "The mere fact that this amendment is asked as a compliment to the leading advocate of woman suffrage on the attainment of her eightieth birthday, is evidence of the emotional frame of mind which influences the advocates of the measure, and which is scarcely favorable to the calm consideration that should be given to fundamental political principles." Miss Anthony's birthday had not been mentioned by any speaker before either committee, and the suffragists under her leadership had been making their pleas and arguments for a Sixteenth Amendment for over thirty years.

As the suffrage speakers were not permitted to answer the misstatements and prevarications of the "remonstrants" at the time of the hearings and these were widely circulated through the press, the convention passed the following resolutions on motion of Miss Alice Stone Blackwell:

WHEREAS, At this morning's Congressional hearing letters were read by the anti-suffragists from two men and one woman in Colorado, asserting equal suffrage in that State to be a failure; therefore,

Resolved, That we call attention to a published statement declaring that the results are wholesome and that none of the predicted evils have followed. This statement is signed by the Governor and three ex-Governors of Colorado, the Chief Justice, all the Judges of the State Supreme Court, the Denver District Court and the Court of Appeals; all the Colorado Senators and Representatives in Congress; President Slocum of Colorado College, the president of the State University, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Attorney-General, the mayor of Denver, prominent clergymen of different denominations, and the presidents of thirteen of the principal women's associations of Denver. The social science department of the Denver Woman's Club has just voted unanimously to the same effect, and the Colorado Legislature lately passed a similar resolution by a vote of 45 to 3 in the House and 30 to 1 in the Senate. On the other hand, during the six years that equal suffrage has prevailed in Colorado the opponents have not yet found six respectable men who assert over their own names and addresses that it has had any bad results.

WHEREAS, At the Congressional hearing it was asserted that equal suffrage had led to no improvements in the laws of Colorado; therefore,

Resolved, That we call attention to the fact that Colorado owes to equal suffrage the laws raising the age of protection for girls to eighteen years; establishing a State Home for Dependent Children and a State Industrial School for Girls; making fathers and mothers joint guardians of their children; removing the emblems from the Australian ballot; prohibiting child labor; also city ordinances in Denver providing drinking fountains in the streets; forbidding expectoration in public places, and requiring the use of smoke-consuming chimneys on all public and business buildings.

This anecdote was related the next day: "Miss Anthony's love of the beautiful leads her always to clothe herself in good style and fine materials, and she has an eye for the fitness of things as well as for the funny side. 'Girls,' she said yesterday, after returning from the Capitol, 'those statesmen eyed us very closely, but I will wager that it was impossible after we got mixed together to tell an anti from a suffragist by her clothes. There might have been a difference, though, in the expression of the faces and the shape of the heads,' she added drily."

On Tuesday afternoon about two hundred members of the convention were received by President McKinley in the East Room of the White House. Miss Anthony stood at his right hand and, after the President had greeted the last guest, he invited her to accompany him upstairs to meet Mrs. McKinley, who was not well enough to receive all of the ladies. Giving her his arm he led her up the old historic staircase, "as tenderly as if he had been my own son," she said afterward. When she was leaving, after a pleasant call, Mrs. McKinley expressed a wish to send some message to the convention and she and the President together filled Miss Anthony's arms with white lilies, which graced the platform during the remainder of the meetings.

FOOTNOTES:

[120] The statistics used in this paper were taken from the report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education for 1899.

[121] See chapter on Louisiana.

[122] The address of Miss Laughlin created a sensation. A member of the United States Labor Commission was in the audience, and was so much impressed with the power of this young woman that shortly afterwards she was made a member of this commission to investigate the condition of the working women of the United States. Her valuable report was published in pamphlet form.

[123] See chapter on Kansas.

[124] Immediately after the convention, the New York Times published an alleged interview with Mrs. Paul, in which she was made to say that she was not a believer in suffrage for women. She at once denied this emphatically over her own signature, saying that the interview was a fabrication and that she was an advocate of the enfranchisement of women especially because of the need of their ballot in city government.

[125] This was held the first week in December, 1901, and netted about $8,000 for the association.

[126] It will be noticed in this pamphlet that all but one of the favorable reports from congressional committees were made during the years when Miss Anthony had a winter home at the Riggs House, through the courtesy of its proprietors, Mr. and Mrs. C. W. Spofford, and was able to secure them through personal attention and influence. There were always some members of these committees who were favorable to woman suffrage, but with the great pressure on every side from other matters, this one was apt to be neglected unless somebody made a business of seeing that it did not go by default. This Miss Anthony did for many years, and during this time secured the excellent reports of 1879, 1882, 1883, 1884, 1886 and 1890. The great speech of Senator T. W. Palmer, made February 6, 1885, was in response to her insistence that he should keep his promise to speak in favor of the question. In 1888-90 Mrs. Upton, who was residing in Washington with her father, Ezra B. Taylor, M. C., did not permit the Judiciary Committee to forget the report for that year, which was the first and only favorable House Report.

[127] For account of the work of the association before Congress see Chap. I.

[128] George W. Ray, N. Y., chairman; John J. Jenkins, Wis.; Richard Wayne Parker, N. J.; Jesse Overstreet, Ind.; De Alva S. Alexander, N. Y.; Vespasian Warner, Ill.; Winfield S. Kerr, O.; Charles E. Littlefield, Me.; Romeo H. Freer, W. Va.; Julius Kahn, Calif.; William L. Terry, Ark.; David A. De Armond, Mo.; Samuel W. T. Lanham, Tex.; William Elliott, S. C.; Oscar W. Underwood, Ala.; David H. Smith, Ky.; William H. Fleming, Ga.

[129] That this was a mistaken courtesy was proved by subsequent events, as afterwards Mrs. Dodge came out with a card in the New York Sun denying that they were admitted through the intervention of Miss Anthony.

[130] In the official Senate report of the hearing the arguments of the suffragists filled forty pages; those of the "antis" five pages. They consisted of brief papers by Mrs. Dodge and Miss Bissell. The former took the ground that the Congress should leave this matter to be decided by the States; that women are not physically qualified to use the ballot; and that its use by them would render "domestic tranquillity" a byword among the people. Miss Bissell began by saying, "It is not the tyranny but the chivalry of men that we have to fear," and opposed the suffrage principally because the majority of women do not want it, saying, "I have never yet been so situated that I could see where a vote could help me. If I felt that it would, I might become a suffragist perhaps."

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXI. THE NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1900 CONTINUED

It had been known for some time before the suffrage convention of Feb. 8-14, 1900, that Miss Anthony intended to resign the presidency of the national association at that time, when she would be eighty years old, but her devoted adherents could not resist urging that she would reconsider her decision. When they assembled, however, they found it impossible to persuade her to continue longer in the office. The Washington Post of February 8 said:

Miss Susan B. Anthony has resigned. The woman who for the greater part of her life has been the star that guided the National Woman Suffrage Association through all of its vicissitudes until it stands to-day a living monument to her wonderful mental and physical ability has turned over the leadership to younger minds and hands, not because this great woman feels that she is no longer capable of exercising it, but because she has a still larger work to accomplish before her life's labors are at an end. In a speech which was characteristic of one who has done so much toward the uplifting of her sex, Miss Anthony tendered her resignation during the preliminary meeting of the executive committee, held last night at the headquarters in the parlors of the Riggs House.

Although Miss Anthony had positively stated that she would resign in 1900, there were many of those present who were visibly shocked when she announced that she was about to relinquish her position as president of the association. In the instant hush which followed this statement a sorrow settled over the countenances of the fifty women seated about the room, who love and venerate Miss Anthony so much, and probably some of them would have broken down had it not been that they knew well her antipathy to public emotion. In a happy vein, which soon drove the clouds of disappointment from the faces of those present, she explained why she no longer desired to continue as an officer of the association after having done so since its beginning.

"I have fully determined," she began, "to retire from the active presidency of the association. I was elected assistant secretary of a woman suffrage society in 1852, and from that day to this have always held an office. I am not retiring now because I feel unable, mentally or physically, to do the necessary work, but because I wish to see the organization in the hands of those who are to have its management in the future." Then jestingly she continued: "I want to see you all at work, while I am alive, so I can scold if you do not do it well. Give the matter of selecting your officers serious thought. Consider who will do the best work for the political enfranchisement of women, and let no personal feelings enter into the question."

While Miss Anthony seemed at the height of her physical and mental vigor, those who loved her best felt it to be right that she should be relieved of the burdens of the office which were growing heavier each year as the demands upon the association became more numerous, and should be free to devote her time to certain lines of work which could be done only by herself. They tried to imitate her own cheerfulness and philosophy in this matter, but found it more difficult than it ever before had been to follow where she led.

The last of the resolutions, presented to the convention a few days later by the chairman of the committee, Henry B. Blackwell, read as follows: "In view of the announced determination of Miss Susan B. Anthony to withdraw from the presidency of this association, we tender her our heartfelt expression of appreciation and regard. We congratulate her upon her eightieth birthday, and trust that she will add to her past illustrious services her aid and support to the younger workers for woman's enfranchisement. We shall continue to look to her for advice and counsel in the years to come. May the new century witness the fruition of our labors."

This was unanimously adopted by a rising vote. Observing that many of the delegates were on the point of yielding to their feelings, Miss Anthony arose and in clear, even tones, with a touch of quaint humor, said:

I wish you could realize with what joy and relief I retire from the presidency. I want to say this to you while I am still alive--and I am good yet for another decade--don't be afraid. As long as my name stands at the head, I am Yankee enough to feel that I must watch every potato which goes into the dinner-pot and supervise every detail of the work. For the four years since I fixed my date to retire, I have constantly been saying to myself, "Let go, let go, let go!" I am now going to let go of the machinery but not of the spiritual part. I expect to do more work for woman suffrage in the next decade than ever before. I have not been for nearly fifty years in this movement without gaining a certain "notoriety," at least, and this enables me to get a hearing before the annual conventions of many great national bodies, and to urge on them the passage of resolutions asking Congress to submit to the State Legislatures a Sixteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution forbidding disfranchisement on account of sex. This is a part of the work to which I mean to devote myself henceforward. Then you all know about the big fund which I am going to raise so that you young workers may have an assured income and not have to spend the most of your time begging money, as I have had to do.

The convention proceeded to the election of officers. Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.), who was a candidate for president, asked permission to make a personal explanation and said: "I have received from many parts of the United States expressions of regard and esteem that have deeply touched me. But in the interests of harmony I desire to withdraw my name from any consideration you may have wished to give me." Of the 278 votes cast for president Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt (N. Y.) received 254; eleven of the remaining twenty-four were cast for Miss Anthony and ten for Mrs. Blake. The other members of the old board were re-elected almost unanimously.[131]

The Washington Post said: "There was a touching scene when the vote for Mrs. Chapman Catt was announced. First there was an outburst of applause, and then as though all at once every one realized that she was witnessing the passing of Susan B. Anthony, their beloved president, the deepest silence prevailed for several seconds. Lifelong members of the association, who had toiled and struggled by the side of Miss Anthony, could not restrain their emotions and wept in spite of their efforts at control." The Washington Star thus described the occasion:

Mrs. Blake not being in the hall, Miss Anthony was made a committee of one to present Mrs. Catt to the convention. The women went wild as, erect and alert, she walked to the front of the platform, holding the hand of her young co-worker, of whom she is extremely fond and of whom she expects great things. Miss Anthony's eyes were tear-dimmed, and her tones were uneven, as she presented to the convention its choice of a leader in words freighted with love and tender solicitude, rich with reminiscences of the past, and full of hope for the future of the new president and her work.

"Suffrage is no longer a theory, but an actual condition," she said, "and new occasions bring new duties. These new duties, these changed conditions, demand stronger hands, younger heads and fresher hearts. In Mrs. Catt you have my ideal leader. I present to you my successor."

By this time half the women were using their handkerchiefs on their eyes and the other half were waving them in the air.

The object of all this praise stood with downcast eyes and evidently was deeply moved. At length she said in response:

Good friends, I should hardly be human if I did not feel gratitude and appreciation for the confidence you have shown me; but I feel the honor of the position much less than its responsibility. I never was an aspirant for it. I consented only six weeks ago to stand. I was not willing to be the next president after Miss Anthony. I have known that there was a general loyalty to her which could not be given to any younger worker. Since Miss Anthony announced her intention to retire, there have been editorials in many leading papers expressing approval of her--but not of the cause. She has been much larger than our association. The papers have spoken of the new president as Miss Anthony's successor. Miss Anthony never will have a successor.

A president chosen from the younger generation is on a level with the association, and it might suffer in consequence of Miss Anthony's retirement if we did not still have her to counsel and advise us. I pledge you whatever ability God has given me, but I can not do this work alone. The cause has got beyond where one woman can do the whole. I shall not be its leader as Miss Anthony has been; I shall be only an officer of this association. I will do all I can, but I can not do it without the co-operation of each of you. The responsibility much overbalances the honor, and I hope you will all help me bear the burden.

It was voted on motion of Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery to make Miss Anthony honorary president, which was done with applause and she observed informally: "You have moved me up higher. I always did stand by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and my name always was after hers, and I am glad to be there again."

The press notices said of the new officer:

Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, the newly-elected president of the National Suffrage Association, is a young and handsome woman with a charming personality, and is one of the most eloquent and logical speakers upon the public platform. For the past five years she has been lecturer and organizer for the association, where she has shown rare executive ability and earnestness of purpose.

She has traveled from east to west and from north to south many times, lectured in nearly every city in the Union and has been associated with every important victory that equal suffrage has won of late years. She was in Colorado during the amendment campaign, and the women attribute their success to her more than to any other person from outside the State. She was in Idaho, where all four political parties put suffrage planks into their platforms and the amendment carried. She went before the Louisiana constitutional convention, by the earnest invitation of New Orleans women, and it gave tax-paying women the right to vote upon all questions submitted to the tax-payers.

It had been known for several years that Mrs. Chapman Catt was Miss Anthony's choice as her successor; she was considered the best-equipped woman in the association for the position, and the vote of the delegates showed how nearly unanimous was her election. The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, who for a number of years had been vice-president-at-large, could have had Miss Anthony's sanction and the unanimous vote of the convention if she would have consented to accept the office.

Mrs. Chapman Catt opened the next day's meeting by saying:

A surprise was promised as part of this afternoon's program and a pleasant duty now falls to me. It is to present Miss Anthony with the spirit of a gift, for the gift itself is not here. Suffrage people from all over the world go to see Miss Anthony at her home in Rochester, N. Y., and consequently the carpets of the parlor and sitting-room are getting a little worn. When she goes home she will find two beautiful Smyrna rugs fitting the floors of those two rooms--the gift of her suffrage friends. I am also commissioned to present her with an album. Some of our naughty officers have been making fun of it and saying that albums are all out of date; but this one contains the photographs of all the presidents of the State Suffrage Associations, and the chairmen of standing committees. No collection of "antis" could be found that would present in their faces as much intelligence and strength of character.

Miss Anthony expressed her thanks, and said: "These girls have disproved the old saying that a secret can not be kept by a woman, for I have not heard a word of a rug or a picture."

From the Utah Silk Commission composed of women came a handsome black brocaded dress pattern, the work of women, from the tending of the cocoons to the weaving of the silk. A beautiful solid silver vase was presented from "the free women of Idaho." There was also from this State an album of two hundred pages of pen drawings, water colors and pressed flowers, with a sentiment on each page, the contributions of as many individuals. California sent more than one hundred dollars. From every State came gifts of money, silver-plate, fine china, sofa cushions, books, pictures, exquisite jewelry, lace, chatelaine bags and every token which loving hearts could devise. To each Miss Anthony responded with a terse sentence or two, half tender, half humorous; the audience entered fully into the spirit of it all, and the convention was like a big family enjoying the birthday of one of its members.

Of the last session on February 14, the Washington Post said:

A vast audience consisting of both men and women witnessed at the Church of Our Father, last evening, the passing of Susan B. Anthony as president of the National Suffrage Association. It was the final evening session of the Thirty-second annual convention, which, Miss Anthony announced at its close, had been the most successful from every point of view of any ever held.

Long before the opening hour arrived the church was completely filled, and people stood eight and ten deep in the aisles, sat around the edge of the speakers' platform and filled the approaches to the church. Miss Anthony and many of the other speakers, who arrived at eight o'clock, had great difficulty in reaching the platform.

John C. Bell, member of Congress from Colorado, made the opening address in which he said: "The greatest obstruction to human progress is human prejudice. As long as men are controlled more by their prejudices than by their reason, they will be slaves to habit. If women had voted from the foundation of the Government it would now be as difficult to deprive them of this privilege as it would be to repeal the Bill of Rights, but as the men have done the voting from the beginning, the force of habit is successfully battling with both reason and justice." He refuted the charge that woman suffrage made dissension in families, saying: "You must bear in mind that the extending of the elective franchise to women not only elevates and broadens them but the men as well."

The address of Mrs. Blatch on Woman and War was among the most notable of the convention. She declared that one of the good effects of war was that "it made women work." The Post said: "Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch, a daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whose present home is in England, laid the blame of all the British reverses in the Transvaal at the door of what she termed 'the evils of an idle aristocracy.' In a most dramatic manner she denounced the course of the British Empire. After summing up the war situation she said: 'The English armies now on the battle-fields in the Transvaal have at their heads as officers sons of this idle aristocracy, who through their incompetency are not fit to be leaders. They are beneath contempt, but to the English soldier all honor is due. He is all right.'"

The speech of the pioneer Quaker suffragist, Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller (Md.), delighted the audience, and her comparison of Abraham Lincoln and Susan B. Anthony, "both having devoted their lives to freedom," was enthusiastically received. Then occurred one of the pleasant diversions so characteristic of these suffrage conventions. During the interval while the collection was being taken, Mrs. Helen Mosher James, niece of Miss Anthony, stepping to the front of the platform, said: "This is the Rev. Anna Shaw's birthday. Her friends wish to present her with an easy chair to await her when she comes back wearied from going up and down the land, satchel in hand, on her many lecture tours. Here are fifty-three gold dollars, one for each year of her life, and we wish her to buy such a chair as suits her best."

In response the little minister said in part: "I am not like Miss Anthony, so used to having gifts poured in upon me that I know just what to say. I shall buy the chair when I have been told what is the correct thing to buy by another niece of Miss Anthony's, who for twelve years has made a home for me. If you want to see a pretty little spot, come to our home, and every one of you shall sit in our chair."[132]

Then Miss Anthony, clasping the hand of Mrs. Chapman Catt, led her forward and introduced her to the audience as "president of the National-American Woman Suffrage Association." The Woman's Journal thus described the occasion:

She was received with immense applause, the great audience rising and waving handkerchiefs. She spoke on The Three I's, showing how every effort of women for improvement was called, first, indelicate, then immodest, and finally impracticable, but how all the old objections had been proved to be, in legal phrase, "incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial."

The woman's rights agitation began in the early days of the republic, and a moral warfare along that line has been waged for more than a hundred years. Each step has been fiercely contested. The advocates of every claim have been lovers of justice and the opponents have been adherents of conservatism. The warfare has been waged in three distinct battles, the weapon of the opponents always being ridicule, that of the defenders, appeals to reason.

In the early days, when colleges and public schools were closed to women and the education of girls was confined to the three R's, an agitation was begun to permit them to take more advanced studies. Society received it with the cry "indelicate." At that time delicacy was the choicest charm of woman and indelicacy was a crushing criticism. But the battle was won.

The second great battle occurred between 1850 and 1860. Upon every hand incorrigible woman, with a big W, arose to irritate and torment the conservatives of the world. She appeared in the pulpit, on the platform, in conventions, in new occupations and in innumerable untried fields. Everywhere the finger of scorn was pointed at her, and the world with merciless derision pronounced her immodest. But that battle was won.

We are now in the heat of the greatest of all battles. Woman asks for the suffrage. The world answers, "impractical." We are told that this movement is quite different from all others because there is an organized opposition of women themselves against it, but the "remonstrant" is not new. This century has witnessed ten generations of remonstrants. In 1800 the remonstrant was horrified at the study of geography. In 1810 she accepted geography but protested against physiology. In 1820 she accepted physiology but protested against geometry. In 1830 she accepted geometry but protested against the college education. In 1840 she accepted the college but remonstrated against the property laws for married women. In 1850 she accepted the property laws but remonstrated against public speaking. In 1860 she protested against the freedom of organization. In 1870 she remonstrated against the professions for women. In 1880 she protested against school suffrage. In 1890 she protested against women in office. In 1900 she accepts everything that every former generation of remonstrants has protested against and, availing herself of the privilege of free public speech secured by this women's rights movement, pleads publicly that she may be saved from the burden of voting.

The remonstrant of 1800 said "indelicate," of 1850 "immodest," of 1900 "impractical." That the forces of conservatism will surrender as unconditionally to the forces of justice in the great battle of the impractical as they did in the battle of the indelicate and of the immodest is as inevitable as that the sun will rise tomorrow.

At the close of her fine address, of which this is the barest synopsis, Miss Anthony came forward and asked triumphantly, "Do you think the three hundred delegates made a mistake in choosing that woman for president?"--a question which brought out renewed applause. She then introduced to the audience the other officers, all of whom except Mrs. McCulloch had served in their present capacity from eight to ten years, Mrs. Avery having been corresponding secretary twenty years. They were enthusiastically greeted. Afterwards she presented Miss Clara Barton, the president of the Red Cross Association, an earnest advocate of suffrage, and as the cheers for her rang out, Miss Anthony observed, "Politically her opinion is worth no more than an idiot's."

Miss Anthony came forward at the close of the program and, the audience realizing that she was about to say good-bye, there was the most profound stillness, with every eye and ear strained to the utmost tension. A woman who loved the theatrical and posed for effect would have taken advantage of this opportunity to create a dramatic scene and make her exit in the midst of tears and lamentations, but nothing could be further from Miss Anthony's nature. Her voice rang out as strong and true as if making an old-time speech on the rights of women, with only one little break in it, and she covered this up by saying quickly, "Not one of our national officers ever has had a dollar of salary. I retire on full pay!"

The Washington Post said of this occasion:

The convention closed its labors with the farewell address of Miss Anthony. The retiring president paid a magnificent tribute to the faithful women whose aid and loyal companionship she had enjoyed for so many years. Emphatically she declared that she was not going to give up her efforts in behalf of that for which she had struggled so long, and concluded: "I am grateful to this association; I am grateful to you all, and to the world, for the great kindness which has been mine. To-morrow I will have finished fourscore years. I have lived to rise from the most despised and hated woman in all the world of fifty years ago, until now it seems as if I am loved by you all. If this is true, then I am indeed satisfied."

Miss Anthony lost control of her voice for a moment. She soon regained her composure, however, and, calling the officers of the association to her side, she told of what each individual had done for the organization. It was a pretty picture. The audience caught the spirit of determination from Miss Anthony and a thunderous applause and waving of handkerchiefs followed.

The great crowd sang the doxology and even then seemed unwilling to disperse, hundreds of people staying for a hand-shake and a few personal words with the officers and delegates.

The day following the close of the convention was the eightieth anniversary of Miss Anthony's birth, and many suffrage advocates from different parts of the country had come to the national capital to assist in celebrating it. The following program was handsomely prepared for distribution and was carried out, except that Mrs. Birney and Dr. Smith were unavoidably absent.

CELEBRATION OF THE EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY OF SUSAN B. ANTHONY, AT THE LAFAYETTE OPERA HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D. C., FEB'Y 15, 1900.

Song John W. Hutchinson

Greetings from National Congress of Mothers, Mrs. Theodore Weld Birney, President National Council of Women, Fannie Humphreys Gaffney, President International Council of Women, May Wright Sewall, President

Greetings from the Professions: Ministry Rev. Ida C. Hultin Law Diana Hirschler Medicine Dr. Julia Holmes Smith

Violin Solo--Hungarian Rhapsodie (Hansen), Joseph H. Douglass Greetings from Business Women Lillian M. Hollister Colored Women Coralie Franklin Cook District Equal Suffrage Association Ellen Powell Thompson

Greetings from the Enfranchised States: Wyoming Helen M. Warren Colorado Virginia Morrison Shafroth Utah Emily S. Richards Idaho Mell C. Woods

"Love's Rosary" (poem) Lydia Avery Coonley-Ward

Greeting from Elizabeth Cady Stanton Harriot Stanton Blatch

Greeting from the National American Suffrage Association Rev. Anna Howard Shaw

Response Susan B. Anthony

TO SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

The gibe and ridicule and social frown, That through long years her faithful life assailed, Are dead and vanished; as a queen now hailed, Upon her reverend brow rests Honor's crown, A faith that faced all adverse fortune down, A courage that in trial never failed, A scorn of self that grievous weight entailed, Have blossomed into laurels of renown. As, after days of bitter storm and blast, The chilling wind becomes a breeze of balm, Billows subside, and sea-tossed vessels cast Their anchors in the restful harbor calm, So this brave life has gained its haven blest, Bathed in the sunset glories of the west. WM. LLOYD GARRISON.

Birthday Celebration Committee:

CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT, Chairman, New York. REV. ANNA HOWARD SHAW, Pennsylvania. HARRIET TAYLOR UPTON, Ohio. EMILY M. GROSS, Illinois. FRANCES P. BURROWS, Michigan. HELEN M. WARREN, Wyoming. LUCY E. ANTHONY, Pennsylvania. HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH, England. MAY WRIGHT SEWALL, Indiana. MARY B. CLAY, Kentucky. RACHEL FOSTER AVERY, Pennsylvania.

Every large newspaper in the country had a description of what might be properly considered an event of national interest. The Washington Post said: "The program, though a long one, was replete throughout with stirring tributes to Miss Anthony's great career. Eloquent women who ascribed the opportunities which they had been allowed to enjoy to the tremendous effort to which their beloved leader had devoted her whole life, stood before the audience and voiced their sentiments. Tears and applause mingled swiftly as the voices of the speakers rang through the theater, recounting the hardships, the struggles, and at last the crowning achievements of the woman whose eightieth birthday was being celebrated."

The Woman's Tribune thus began its report:

There never has been before and, in the nature of things, there can never be again, a personal celebration having the significant relation to the woman suffrage movement which marked that of Miss Anthony's eightieth birthday. When Mrs. Stanton's eightieth birthday was celebrated five years ago she had already retired from the active leadership of the organization; the program was in charge of the National Council of Women and was largely in the nature of a jubilee for the whole woman movement, although rallying around Mrs. Stanton as a center. Lucretia Mott's eightieth birthday came before the movement had gained the impetus necessary for such a celebration. Lucy Stone passed on in 1893 before reaching this ripe age, and now there is no one left in the lead who represents the earliest stage of the work but Miss Anthony.

It was the fairest and sunniest day of all the good convention weather, and Lafayette Opera House was full to the remotest part of its fourth gallery with invited guests when Mrs. Chapman Catt opened the program at 3 o'clock. On the stage were the Birthday Committee, a large number of persons who had been thirty years or more in the work, relatives of Miss Anthony and the national officers. Miss Anthony's entrance while the Ladies' Mandolin Club were playing was greeted with long-continued applause.

John W. Hutchinson was first introduced. After stating that he had known Miss Anthony for fifty-five years, had attended in Ohio in 1850 the second suffrage convention ever held, and had always sympathized with the cause, he sang with a clear, far-reaching voice a song composed by himself.

The presiding officer stated that the gains of the last half-century in all lines relating to women were largely due to the guest of the occasion and her fellow-workers, and said: "When Miss Anthony began her labors there were practically no organizations of women; now they are numbered by thousands. The crown of the whole is the union of all organizations, the National Council of Women. Its president will now address us."

Mrs. Gaffney said in her tribute:

....The Christian world reckoned by centuries is just coming of age. Therefore women are beginning to put away childish things and to realize the greatness of womanhood. They have had to let ideals wait. They submitted to conditions because they were afraid that if they did not man would take to the woods and become again a wild barbarian. They were flattered by the fact that men liked them as they were, and they failed to realize that their power to civilize was God-given.

They needed a leader to rally them, to give them the courage of their convictions; and such a leader Miss Anthony has been. She spoke to the world in tones which rang out so clear and true that they will echo down the centuries. Some who had been protected and petted were slow to rally; others who had broader views accepted sooner the doctrine of rights--not privileges--of rights for all women. Miss Anthony taught us the sisterhood of woman, and that the privileges of one class could not offset the wrongs of another....

Mrs. Sewall, president of the International Council of Women, composed of the Councils of thirteen nations, and the largest organization of women in the world, said in part:

It is proper that the International Council should remember today "to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's," and to pay tribute to the organization which it may not regard as other than its direct progenitor. There are certain incidents, simple in themselves, in which probably the actors are always at the time quite unconscious of their perennial significance, and yet which become landmarks in the evolution of the human spirit. Such are Thermopylae and Marathon and Bunker Hill. Such was that first convention at Seneca Falls.... The light from that meeting, springing from a vital source, has vitalized every point it has touched. Other torches lit by that have become beacon lights, and every one has stood for the illumination of women....

In the name and in the blended tongues of the women of the different nationalities who belong to the International Council, I salute and congratulate you.... I beg the proud honor of placing your name, Miss Anthony, among the list of Patrons of the Council as a birthday gift, where it shall one day be pronounced in every language....

The Rev. Ida C. Hultin brought the gratitude of the ministers, saying:

....Women have failed to see that the work of every woman has touched that of every other. The woman who works with the hand helps her who works with the brain. To-day we know there could be no choice of work until there was freedom of choice to work. O, beloved leader, we of the ministry, as they of all ministries of service, bring our greetings and benediction. I hear the voices which shall tell of the new gospel and among them are the glad tones of women and the intonations of this one who spake in tears, who dared to speak before other tongues were loosed. Years will never silence that voice. Woman in her highest moods will catch the cadence of its melody and in the future there shall be that which will work back and forth to the enlightenment of the world because you have lived and ever shall live....

Miss Hirschler thus closed the tribute of her profession: "In the generations to come when courts of law shall have become courts of justice, women lawyers will think of Susan B. Anthony as one who paved the way and made this possible."

Mrs. Hollister said in part: "Miss Anthony has opened the portals of activities; has dignified labor; has made it possible for women to manage their own affairs--four millions to-day earning independent incomes. Women have given their lives for philanthropies and reforms, but the one we honor to-day gave hers for woman. Olive Schreiner tells of an artist who painted a wonderful picture and none could learn what pigments he used. When he died a wound was found over his heart; he had painted his masterpiece with his own blood. Such women as Miss Anthony are painting their masterpieces with their life's blood."

Mrs. Cook, with a dignity and simplicity which won the audience, said:

....It is fitting on this occasion, when the hearts of women the world over are turned to this day and hour, that the colored women of the United States should join in the expressions of love and praise offered to Miss Anthony upon her eightieth birthday. ....She is to us not only the high priestess of woman's cause, but the courageous defender of rights wherever assailed.

We hold in high esteem her strong and noble womanhood, for in her untiring zeal, her uncompromising stand for justice to women, her unfailing friendship for all good work, she herself is a stronger and better argument in favor of woman's rights than the most gifted orator could put into words. When she first championed woman's cause, humiliation followed her footsteps and injustice barred the door of her progress among even the most favored classes of society; while among less enlightened and enslaved classes the wrongs which woman suffered were too terrible to mention. Carlyle has said, "Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker upon this earth." When Susan B. Anthony was born, a thinker was "let loose." Her voice and her pen have lighted a torch whose sacred fire, like that of some old Roman temples, dies not, but whose penetrating ray shall brighten the path of women down the long line of ages yet to come. Our children and our children's children will be taught to honor her memory, for they shall be told that she has been always in the vanguard of the immortal few who have stood for the great principles of human rights. Grander than any achievement that has crowned the work of woman in this woman's century has been that which has led her away from the narrow valley of custom and prejudice up to the lofty height where she can accept the Divine teaching that "God hath made of one blood all nations of men."

Not until the suffrage movement had awakened woman to her responsibility and power, did she come to appreciate the true significance of Christ's pity for Magdalene as well as of His love for Mary; not till then was the work of Pundita Ramabai in far away India as sacred as that of Frances Willard at home in America; not till she had suffered under the burden of her own wrongs and abuses did she realize the all-important truth that no woman and no class of women can be degraded and all womankind not suffer thereby.

And so, Miss Anthony, in behalf of the hundreds of colored women who wait and hope with you for the day when the ballot shall be in the hands of every intelligent woman; and also in behalf of the thousands who sit in darkness and whose condition we shall expect those ballots to better, whether they be in the hands of white women or black, I offer you my warmest gratitude and congratulations.

Mrs. Thompson presented $200 from the District of Columbia, with the following affectionate tribute:

....In behalf of the Suffragists of the District of Columbia, both men and women, I am happy to say I am deputized to present to you a gift which expresses their regard and love for you as well as their appreciation of the almost superhuman efforts you have made for the past fifty years to secure justice and civil and political equality for women.

The gift is in the form of what is often called "the sinews of war"--money. Not coarse, dead cash, such as passes from hand to hand in everyday transactions, but money every penny of which is alive with sincere thanks and earnest, loving wishes for happiness and continued success in all your endeavors....

We do not hail you, love you, as one who has made woman's life easier, strewn it with more rose leaves of idleness, shielded it from more stress and storm, but as one who has taken the grander, truer view, that by equally sharing stress and storm, by equal effort and work, by equality in rights, privileges, powers and opportunities with her other self--man--woman will evolve and will reach her loftiest, loveliest development. Not as an apostle of ease, parasitism and shrinking fear do we regard you, but as the apostle, the incarnation, of work, of high courage and deathless endeavor.

We wish our gift were myriad-fold greater, but it would never express more appreciation of what you stand for and what you are--a Liberator of Woman.

Mrs. Helen M. Warren, wife of the Senator from Wyoming, speaking in a fine, resonant voice which would do credit to any legislative hall, read the poem written by Miss Phoebe Cary for the celebration of Miss Anthony's fiftieth birthday, presented her with a brooch, a little American flag, made of gold and jewels, and said: "I feel honored on this, your eightieth birthday, to represent the State of Wyoming which has espoused your cause for more than thirty years. I have in my hand a flag, which bears on its field forty-one common stars and four diamonds, representing the four progressive or suffrage States--Wyoming, the banner State; Colorado, Utah and Idaho. The back of the flag bears this inscription: 'Miss Anthony. From the ladies of Wyoming, who love and revere you. Many happy returns of the day. 1820-1900.' We hope you may live to see all the common stars turn into diamonds. With kindly greetings from Wyoming I present you this expression of her esteem."

Mrs. Shafroth, wife of the Representative from Colorado, presented a gift designed and made by the women of her State, saying: "It is with great pleasure that I bring you the greeting from the sun-kissed land of the West, where the flag which we all love, and of which we all sing, really waves over the land of the free and the home of the brave. Our men are brave and generous and our women are free. You and your noble co-workers stormed the heights of ridicule and prejudice to win this freedom for woman. In behalf of our Non-Partisan Equal Suffrage Association, I beg you to accept this 'loving cup' of Colorado silver."

Mrs. Emily S. Richards brought the affectionate greetings of the women of Utah, and Mrs. Chapman Catt referred to the loving testimonials which had been sent by the Idaho women.[133] Then after an exquisite violin solo by Mr. Douglass, she said: "The liberties of the citizens of the future will be still more an outgrowth of this movement than those of the present," and to the delighted surprise of the audience the following scene occurred, as described by the Post:

The most beautiful and touching part of the program was when eighty little children, boys and girls, passed in single file across the stage, each bearing a rose. Slowly they marched, keeping time to music, and, as they reached the spot where Miss Anthony sat, each child deposited a blossom in her lap, a rose for every year. It was a surprise so complete, so wonderfully beautiful, that for a few moments she could do nothing more than grasp the hand of each child. Then she began kissing the little people, and the applause which greeted this act was deafening. The roses were distributed among the pioneers at the close of the exercises by her request.

Mrs. Coonley-Ward of Chicago gave an eloquent poem, entitled Love's Rosary, which closed as follows:

Behold our Queen! Surely with heart elate At homage given to her love and power, World-famed associate of the wise and great, She is herself the woman of the hour.

How kindly have the years all dealt with her! She proves that Bible promises are true; She waited on the Lord without demur, And He failed not her courage to renew.

Oft on the wings of eagles she uprose; On mercy's errands have her glad feet run; And yet no sign of weariness she shows; She does not faint, but works from sun to sun.

Deep in her eyes burn fires of purpose strong; Her hand upholds the sceptre of God's truth; Her lips send forth brave words against the wrong; Glows in her heart the joy of deathless youth.

Kindly and gentle, learned too, and wise; Lover of home and all the ties of kin; Gay comrade of the laughing lips and eyes; Give us new words to sing your praises in.

Yet let us rather now forget to praise, Remembering only this true friend to greet, As drawing near by straight and devious ways, We lay our hearts--love's guerdon--at her feet.

Blow, O ye winds across the oceans, blow! Go to the hills and prairies of the West! Haste to the tropics, search the fields of snow, Let the world's gift to her become your quest.

Shine, sun, through prism of the waterfall, And build us here a rainbow arch to span The years, and hold the citadel Of her abiding work for God and man.

What is the gift, O winds, that ye have brought? O, sun, what legend shines your arch above? Ah, they are one, and all things else are naught, Take them, beloved--they are love, love, love!

Mrs. Blatch spoke eloquently for her mother, saying in part:

I bring to you, Susan B. Anthony, the greetings of your friend and co-worker, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, greetings full of gracious memories. When the cause for which you have worked shall be victorious, then as is the way of the world, will it be forgotten that it ever meant effort or struggle for pioneers; but the friendship of you two women will remain a precious memory in the world's history, unforgotten and unforgettable. Your lives have proved not only that women can work strenuously together without jealousy, but that they can be friends in times of sunshine and peace, of stress and storm. No mere fair-weather friends have you been to each other.

Does not Emerson say that friendship is the slowest fruit in the garden of God? The fruit of friendship between you two has grown through half a hundred years, each year making it more beautiful, more mellow, more sweet. But you have not been weak echoes of each other; nay, often for the good of each you were thorns in the side. Yet disagreement only quickened loyalty. Supplementing each other, companionship drew out the best in each. You have both been urged to untiring efforts through the sympathy, the help of each other. You have attained the highest achievement in demonstrating a lofty, an ideal friendship. This friendship of you two women is the benediction for our century.

The last and tenderest tribute was offered by the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw who said, in rich, musical accents and with a manner which seemed almost to be inspired, what can only be most inadequately reported:

A little over a hundred years ago there came men who told us what freedom is and what freemen may become. Later women with the same love of it in their hearts said, "There is no sex in freedom. Whatever it makes possible for men it will make possible for women." A few of these daring souls went forth to blaze the path. Gradually the sunlight of freedom shone in their faces and they encouraged others to follow. They went slowly for the way was hard. They must make the path and it was a weary task. Sometimes darkness settled over them and they must grope their way. Mott, Stanton, Stone, Anthony--not one retraced her footsteps. The two who are left still stand on the summit, great, glorious figures. We ask, "Is the way difficult?" They answer, "Yes, but the sun shines on us and in the valley they know nothing of its glory. Their cry we hear and are calling back to those who are still in the valley."

Leader, comrade, friend, no name can express what you are to us. You might have led us as commander, and we might have followed and obeyed, but there still might have been wanting the divine force of unchanging love. We look up to the sunlight where you stand and say, "We are coming." When we shall be fourscore we shall still be calling to you, "We are coming," for you will still be beckoning us on as you climb still loftier heights. Souls like yours can never rest in all the eternities of God.

Then a hush fell on the people and all waited for Miss Anthony. During the afternoon she had been sitting in a large armchair that was almost covered by her cloak of royal purple velvet which she had thrown over it, the white satin lining forming a lovely background for her finely-shaped head with its halo of silver hair. No one ever had seen her so moved as on this occasion when her memory must have carried her back to the days of bare halls, hostile audiences, ridicule, abuse, loneliness and ostracism by all but a very few staunch friends. "Would she be able to speak?" many in the audience asked themselves, but the nearest friends waited calmly and without anxiety. They never had known her to fail. The result was thus described:

For a moment after gaining her feet, Miss Anthony stood battling with her emotions, but her indomitable courage conquered, and she smiled at the audience as it rose to greet her. She wore a gown of black duchesse satin with vest and revers of fine white lace in which were a few modest pinks, while she carried a large bouquet of violets. The moment she began talking the shadow passed from her face and she stood erect, with head uplifted, full of her old-time vigor.

"How can you expect me to say a word?" she said. "And yet I must. I have reason to feel grateful, for I have received letters and telegrams from all over the world.[134] But the one that has touched me the most is a simple note which came from an old home of slavery, from a woman off of whose hands and feet the shackles fell nearly forty years ago. That letter, my friends, contained eighty cents--one penny for every year. It was all that this aged person had....

I am grateful for the many expressions which I have listened to this afternoon. I have heard the grandson of the great Frederick Douglass speak to me through his violin. I mention this because I remember so well Frederick Douglass when he rose at the convention where the first resolution ever presented for woman suffrage had his eloquence to help it....

Among the addresses from my younger co-workers, none has touched me so deeply as that from the one of darker hue.... Nothing speaks so strongly of freedom as the fact that the descendants of those who went through that great agony--which, thank Heaven, has passed away--have now full opportunities and can help to celebrate my fifty years' work for liberty. I am glad of the gains the half-century has brought to the women of Anglo-Saxon birth. And I am glad above all else that the time is coming when all women alike shall have the fullest rights of citizenship.

I thank you all. If I have had one regret this afternoon, it is that some whom I have longed to have with me can not be here, especially Mrs. Stanton. I want to impress the fact that my work could have accomplished nothing if I had not been surrounded with earnest and capable co-workers. Then, good friends, I have had a home in which my father and mother, brothers and sisters, one and all, stood at my back and helped me to success. I always have had this co-operation and I have yet one sister left, who makes a home for me and aids my work in every possible way....

I have shed no tears on arriving at a birthday ten years beyond the age set for humanity. I have shed none over resigning the presidency of the association. I am glad to give it up. I do it cheerfully. And even so, when my time comes, I shall pass on further, and accept my new place and vocation just as cheerfully as I have touched this landmark.

I have passed as the leader of the association of which I have been a member for so long, but I am not through working, for I shall work to the end of my time, and when I am called home, if there exist an immortal spirit, mine will still be with you, watching and inspiring you.

Miss Anthony's words and manner thrilled every heart and left the audience in a state of exaltation.

In the evening, the Corcoran Art Gallery, one of the world's beautiful buildings, was thrown open for the birthday reception. A colored orchestra, under the leadership of Mr. Douglass, rendered a musical program. President Kauffman, of the Board of Trustees, presented the visitors to the guest of honor, and the birthday committee assisted in receiving. Although Miss Anthony had attended a business meeting in the morning, and been the central figure in the celebration of the afternoon lasting until 6 o'clock, she was so alert, happy and vivacious during the entire evening as to challenge the admiration of all. There was no picture in all that famous collection more attractive than this white-haired woman, robed in garnet velvet, relieved by antique fichu, collar and cuffs of old point lace. The city press said:

For two hours, without a moment's intermission, Miss Anthony clasped hands with those who were presented to her and listened to congratulatory expressions. A number of local organizations of women, and also the entire membership of the Washington College of Law, for women, attended the reception in a body.

On the second floor hung her fine portrait which was presented to the Corcoran Gallery of Art last night by Mrs. John B. Henderson, wife of the former Senator from Missouri. The portrait is in oil and represents Miss Anthony in full profile, attired in black with lace at the throat, and about her shoulders the red shawl which has come to be regarded as the emblem of her office as president of the National Association.

During the two hours it seemed as if every one who greeted Miss Anthony had met her at some time or at some place long ago. Everybody wanted to stop and converse with her, and in the brief minute they stood before her they plied her with countless questions. In speaking of the event after she had returned to the Riggs House, she said: "Wasn't it wonderful? It seemed as if every other person in that vast throng had met me before, or that I had during my long life been a visitor at the home of some of their relatives. It was grand. It was beautiful. It is good to be loved by so many people. It is worth all the toil and the heartaches."

From a little band apparently leading a forlorn hope, almost universally ridiculed and condemned, Miss Anthony had increased her forces to a mighty host marching forward to an assured victory. From a condition of social ostracism she had brought them to a position where they commanded respect and admiration for their courageous advocacy of a just cause. The small, curious, unsympathetic audiences of early days had been transformed into this great gathering, which represented the highest official life of the nation's capital and the intellectual aristocracy of all the States in the Union. It was a wonderful change to have been effected in the lifetime of one woman, and all posterity will rejoice that the leader of this greatest of progressive movements received the full measure of recognition from the people of her own time and generation.

FOOTNOTES:

[131] From the founding of the National Association in 1869 the presidency was usually held by Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, while Miss Susan B Anthony was either vice president, corresponding secretary or chairman of the executive committee, although she sometimes filled the presidential chair. Mrs. Stanton continued as president until 1892, when she resigned at the age of seventy six. Miss Anthony was elected that year and held the office until 1900, when she resigned at the age of eighty.

Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery served as corresponding secretary for twenty one years, from 1880 to 1901. Her resignation was reluctantly accepted and a gift of $1,000 was presented to her, the contribution of friends in all parts of the country.

The other officers since 1884 have been as follows: Vice presidents at large, Miss Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, the Rev. Olympia Brown, Phoebe W. Couzins, Abigail Scott Duniway and, from 1892, the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, treasurers, Jane H. Spofford from 1880 to 1892, and since then Harriet Taylor Upton, recording secretaries, Ellen H. Sheldon, Julia T. Foster, Pearl Adams, Julia A. Wilbur, Caroline A. Sherman, Sara Winthrop Smith, Hannah B. Sperry and, since 1890, Alice Stone Blackwell, auditors, Ruth C. Denison, Julia A. Wilbur, Eliza T. Ward, Ellen M. O'Connor, the Rev. Frederick A. Hinckley, Harriet Taylor Upton, the Hon. Wm. Dudley Foulke, May Wright Sewall, Ellen Battelle Dietrick, Josephine K. Henry, H. Augusta Howard, Annie L. Diggs, Sarah B. Cooper, Laura Clay, Catharine Waugh McCulloch. Mrs. Sewall was chairman of the executive committee from 1882 until she resigned in 1890 and Lucy Stone was elected; in 1892 she begged to be relieved as she was seventy four years old. The committee was then abolished, its duties being transferred to the business committee.

[132] Miss Shaw referred to Miss Lucy E. Anthony, who for twelve years had been her secretary and companion.

[133] The most of the numerous gifts were presented during the convention, as related earlier in the chapter.

[134] Miss Anthony received on this occasion 1,100 letters and telegrams, every one of which she acknowledged later with a personal message.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us