VI. NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1906…

VI. NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1906

The Thirty-eighth annual convention held in Baltimore Feb. 7-13, 1906, was notable in several respects. It had gone into the very heart of conservatism and a larger number of eminent men and women took part in its proceedings than had ever before been represented on a single program.[44] There were university presidents and professors, men and women; office holders, men and women; representatives of other large movements, men and women, and more distinguished women than had ever before assembled in one convention. It was especially memorable because of the presence on the platform together for the first and only time of the three great pioneers, Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton and Julia Ward Howe, and never to be forgotten by suffragists as the last ever attended by Miss Anthony. Here was sung the Battle Hymn of the Republic in the presence of the woman who wrote it, Mrs. Howe; and the Star Spangled Banner in the home of its author, Francis Scott Key.

The meetings were held in the beautifully decorated Lyric Theater with appreciative and enthusiastic audiences. The arrangements had been made by the Maryland Suffrage Association and its president, Mrs. Emma Maddox Funck. Ministers of nearly all denominations asked blessings on the various sessions and the best musical talent in the city gave its services. The papers were most generous with space and fair and friendly in their reports. Through the influence and efforts of Dr. M. Carey Thomas, president of Bryn Mawr College, the remarkable representation of Women's Colleges was secured. Baltimore's most prominent woman, Miss Mary E. Garrett, was largely responsible for the social prestige which is especially necessary to success in a southern city. It was a convention long to be remembered by those who were so fortunate as to be a part of it.

The convention opened on the afternoon of February 7 with Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, president of the association, in the chair and was welcomed by Mrs. Funck, who said in a graceful speech: "You have come to the conservative South. Conservative--what a sweet-sounding word, what an ark for the timid soul! So you must expect to find a good many folks who mean well but who have not discarded their silver buckles and ruffles, but nothing will more clearly indicate the development of our people from provincialism and bigotry than their generosity of spirit and kindly intent towards the gathering of our clans in this convention. Most people have come to realize that to be a great nation we must have that catholicity of spirit which embraces all ologies and all isms.... From the suffrage pioneers we have learned the lessons of fair play and equal rights."

Fraternal greetings were offered by Mrs. Albert L. Sioussat, president of the State Federation of Women's Clubs; Mrs. Hattie Hull Troupe, president of the Women's Twentieth Century Club of Baltimore; Mrs. Rosa H. Goldenberg, president of the Maryland section Jewish Council of Women, and Mrs. Mary R. Haslup, president of the Baltimore Woman's Christian Temperance Union. As the vice-president of the association, Dr. Annice Jeffreys Myers of Oregon, who was to respond, had been delayed en route. Dr. Shaw took her place, saying in answer to certain of the greetings: "In all my experience I have observed that those people are most likely to have their prayers answered who do everything they can to help God answer them; so while we may try by prayer to bring about the highest good not only in the State but in education and philanthropy, we hope to add to our prayers the citizen's power of the ballot.... We have never had a more generous welcome or a warmer hospitality offered to us and we thank you with all our heart. Whatever may happen while we are here, nothing can take away from us the beauty of the sunshine and the kindliness of your welcome."

The first evening session was opened with prayer by the Rev. John B. Van Meter, dean of the Woman's College, Baltimore, and music by a chorus of two hundred voices under the direction of William R. Hall. Governor Edwin Warfield made an eloquent address in which he said: "A man who would not extend a welcome to such a body of women would not be worthy the name of Maryland, which we consider a synonym of hospitality. Our doors are always wide open to friends and strangers, especially strangers. We are delighted to have you here. While I may not agree with all your teachings, I recognize one fact, that there never has been assembled in Baltimore a convention composed of women who have been more useful in this country and who have done more for the uplift of humanity. It was proper for you to come to Maryland, a State that was named for a woman, whose capital was named for a woman and whose motto is 'Manly deeds and womanly words.'" He paid glowing compliments to the splendid public service of Maryland women and said he would not have been elected Governor but for their kindly influence. He declared that he had been almost persuaded by the charming words of Mrs. Howe and said his wife was a "convert" and he "had been voting as a proxy for some time." He believed "the final solution of the question would be a referendum to the women themselves."

Dr. Shaw could not resist saying when she rose to introduce the next speaker: "So many have told us, as the Governor has, about being proxy-voters, that we think it is time they should be relieved of that role and have an opportunity to do their own voting while we women attend to ours." Mayor Timanus was indisposed and the welcome for the city was given by the Hon. William F. Stone, Collector of the Port. He vied with the Governor in the warmth of his greeting and his splendid tributes to women and acknowledged his indebtedness for "all that he was or expected to be to his sainted mother and beloved wife," but, like the Governor, he could not give his full sanction to woman suffrage. When he had finished Dr. Shaw said with her winning smile and melodious voice: "We have the testimony of Governor Warfield and of Collector Stone that the best each has been able to accomplish has been due to the influence of good women. Now if a good woman can develop the best in an individual man, may not all the good women together develop the best in a whole State? I am glad of this strong point in favor of enfranchising women."

Miss Anthony was to have presided at this meeting and in referring to her absence on account of illness Dr. Shaw said: "I am not taking Miss Anthony's place this evening--there is only one Susan B. Anthony, but it is also true that there is only one Clara Barton and but one Julia Ward Howe and these grand women we have with us." Miss Barton, who, in her soft plum-colored satin with fichu of white lace, her dark hair parted smoothly over her forehead, did not seem over sixty although she was eighty-four, was enthusiastically received and said in part: "What greater honor and what greater embarrassment than to be asked to take ever so small a step on a platform that Susan B. Anthony had expected to tread. As I stand here tonight my thoughts go back to the time when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Miss Anthony were pioneers struggling for this righteous cause. I think the greatest reforms, the greatest progress ever made for any reforms in our country have been along the lines on which they worked. Miss Anthony's has been a long life. She has trod the thorny way, has walked through briars with bleeding feet, but it is through a sweet and lovely way now and the hearts of the whole country are with her. A few days ago some one said to me that every woman should stand with bared head before Susan B. Anthony. 'Yes,' I answered, 'and every man as well.' I would not retract these words. I believe that man has benefited by her work as much as woman. For ages he has been trying to carry the burden of life's responsibilities alone and when he has the efficient help of woman he will be grateful. Just now it is new and strange and men cannot comprehend what it would mean but the change is not far away. The nation is soon to have woman suffrage and it will be a glad and proud day when it comes."

Mrs. Howe in the dignity of her eighty-seven years made a lovely picture in a gown of mauve satin with a creamy lace scarf draped about her head and shoulders. She was escorted to the front of the platform by the Governor and said in her brief response: "Madam president and you dear suffrage friends, and the rest of you who are going to become suffrage friends before we leave this city, I give you thanks for this friendly greeting. I am very, very glad to meet you all. I am not going to preach a sermon but I have a text from the New Testament, a question that the Lord asked when the crowd came to see him, 'What came ye out to see? A reed shaken with the wind?' No, it was a prophet that they came to see and hear. When you come to these suffrage meetings you do not come to see reeds shaken by the wind. We do not any of us claim to be prophets but you do come to hear a prophecy, a very glad prophecy which some of us have believed in and followed for years, and all the way of that following has been joyous and bright though it has not been popular. I remember many years ago going with Mrs. Livermore and Lucy Stone to a meeting in New England and the report was sent out that 'three old crows were coming to disturb the town with their croakings.' I can never forget that evening. When Mary Livermore looked the audience over in her calm and dignified manner they quieted down as if by magic. When reasonable measures are proposed in a reasonable way there are always some people who will respond and be convinced. We have no desire to put out of sight the difficulties of government. When we talk about woman suffrage people begin to remember how unsatisfactory manhood suffrage is, but I should like to see what men would do if there was an attempt to take it away. We might much improve it by bringing to it the feminine mind, which in a way complements the masculine. I frankly believe that we have half the intelligence and good sense of humanity and that it is quite time we should express not only our sentiments but our determined will to set our faces toward justice and right and to follow these through the thorny wilderness if necessary--follow them straight, not to the 'bitter end,' for it will not be bitter but very sweet and I hope it will come before my end comes."

For the second time Dr. Shaw had written her president's address but although it was a statesmanlike document the audience missed the spontaneity, the sparkle of wit, the flashes of eloquence that distinguished her oratory above that of all others, and there was a general demand that hereafter she should give them the spoken instead of the written word. She complied and while it was a gain to the audiences of her day and generation it was a great loss to posterity. Even extended quotations can give little idea of this address which filled over ten columns of the Woman's Journal.

For the first time in the history of our association we meet to protest against the disenfranchisement of women in a State in which the first public demand for a part in the conduct of our government was made by a woman. It was in an impassioned appeal to your Assembly, that in 1647 Mistress Margaret Brent demanded "a part and voyce" as representative of the estate of her kinsman, Lord Baltimore, whose name your city bears. Here Mary Catherine Goddard published Baltimore's only newspaper through all the severe struggle of the Revolutionary War, and it is stated upon good authority that when Congress, then in session in Baltimore, sent out the official Declaration of Independence, with the names of the signers attached, it was published by official order in Miss Goddard's paper; that her name was on the sheet which was officially circulated throughout the country; but, although a memorial sheet was afterwards placed in the Court House, Miss Goddard's name was not left on it. This omission is but one of many evidences that in the compilation of the world's historic events it has been customary to overlook the part performed by women.

Dr. Shaw took up the section on Labor in President Roosevelt's recent message to Congress in which he recommended a thorough investigation of the condition of women in industry, saying: "There is an almost complete dearth of data on which to base any trustworthy conclusions," and then drawing this one: "The introduction of women into industry is working change and disturbance in the domestic and social life of the nation; the decrease in marriage and especially in the birth-rate have been coincident with it." Dr. Shaw's comment was in part:

This is unquestionably true but it is also true that this has been coincident with the wider discovery of gold and the application of steam and electricity to mechanics ... and to draw sweeping and universal conclusions in regard to a matter upon which there is an "almost complete dearth of data" is never wise. Is it true that there is a lower birth-rate among working women than among those of the wealthy class? Are not the effects of over-work and long hours in the household as great as are those of the factory or the office? Is the birth-rate less among women who are engaged in the occupations unknown to women of the past? Or is the decline alike marked among those who are pursuing the ancient occupations but under different conditions?... If conditions surrounding their employment are such as to make it a "social question of the first importance" it is unfortunate the President had not seen that women should constitute at least a part of any commission authorized to investigate it.

One can not but wish that with his expressed desire for "fair play" and his policy of "a square deal" it had occurred to the President that, if five million American women are employed in gainful occupations, every principle of justice would demand that they should be enfranchised to enable them to secure legislation for their own protection. In all governments a subject class is always at a disadvantage and at the mercy of the ruling class. It matters not whether its name be Empire, Kingdom or Republic, whether the rulers are one or many; and in a democracy there is no way known for any class to protect its interests or to be secure in its most sacred rights except through the power of the ballot....

There had been about this time in high places an outburst of attacks on woman suffrage and predictions as to its dangerous possibilities. Dr. Shaw referred to their authors as Oracles and said: "The great difficulty is that when one Oracle claiming to be divinely inspired has laid down a specific line of conduct which if implicitly followed would lead to the proper development of woman, the happiness of man, the good of the family and the well-being of the State, another Oracle also divinely enlightened lays out a different path by which these ends may be secured, and then another and another until poor women if they should try to follow these self-appointed divine revealers would not only have to be hydra-headed to see these devious paths but hydra-footed to walk in them." Referring to Cardinal Gibbons, she said:

The Oracle of Baltimore tells us that the education and culture of women are good up to a certain point, no further, but he sagely fails to define the point, simply declaring that "too much education of the head is apt to cool the heart; the cultivation of the soul is too much neglected in the higher education; the head and the heart and the body should all be educated together; then they develop equally." There certainly can be no disagreement among us as to the latter statement but why is it more applicable to women than to men? The Oracle does not leave us in doubt as to his view, for in response to the question, "What do you think of the societies and club organizations which attract women so largely just now?" he replies: "A society like the Daughters of the American Revolution I heartily approve of, for it tends to foster patriotism and keep it alive, but other clubs of all kinds for women I strictly disapprove of."

The Oracle of Princeton, ex-President Cleveland, who has gained the most notoriety for his heavy diatribes against women's clubs, also admits that there are a few societies which it might be well for women to encourage and keep alive--religious organizations and those which administer to the needs of the heathen in a foreign land. The Oracle of Brooklyn, Dr. Lyman Abbott, adds a few more to the list and includes philanthropic, reform and social clubs. Would it be unwomanly to ask why there should have been such wide divergence in the Divine Illumination which each Oracle received?

Dr. Shaw quoted from Mr. Roosevelt: "The President of the United States does not absent himself from the country during the term of his presidency, it is his domain. So should it be with woman; she is queen of her empire and that empire is the home," and after reminding him that the President's term lasts but four or eight years she asked: "What do men mean by saying that women should remain contentedly in their homes? They do not intend us to understand that we are never to leave them, for they are frequently calling us forth when conditions become so intolerable that even men can no longer endure them. Then they call upon women to come out from the seclusion and protection of their homes and aid them to 'save the city and the State.'" She pointed out the difference between the time when the home was "a protective and industrial center" and now when "the results of electricity and steam have scattered the households," but in picturing the advance that women had made in their own domain she said: "There never was a time when there was as large a number of good housekeepers and homemakers; when there was as much intelligence shown in the scientific preparation of food; such knowledge of household sanitation; such reverence for individual life; such painstaking study of the needs and rights of childhood; when there was so much thought given to the development of the finer and more permanent qualities of character; when such good comradeship existed between children and their parents; when marriage had so deep a spiritual and human meaning as at the present time. The home ideal of today is the best the world has yet known and it will continue to develop as larger freedom and broader culture come to all who share in its life...."

The manner in which politics enters the modern home was pointed out and the contempt which was shown for the political opinions of women and then in a rousing appeal to women the speaker said: "A few days since I was asked by a compiler of other people's thoughts to express for him my opinion of the greatest need of American women and I replied, 'self-respect.' ... The assumption that woman have neither discernment nor judgment and that any man is superior in all the qualities that make for strength, stability and sanity to any woman, simply because he is a man and she is a woman, is still altogether too common. The time has come when women must question themselves to learn how far they are personally responsible for this almost universal disrespect and then set about changing it."

Dr. Shaw told of the organization of the College Women's Equal Suffrage League and asked: "Who can compute the loss sustained by our country every year by the addition of unrestricted, ignorant and often criminal male voters and the exclusion of the vast number of college and high-school graduates through the disfranchisement of women? If the stability of a government depends upon the morality and intelligence of its voting citizens, how long can the foundations of ours remain secure if we continue to enfranchise ignorance and vice and disfranchise intelligence and virtue?" The action of Legislatures in past years was depicted as "playing shuttlecock and battledore with the amendment, passing it in one House to defeat it in another, in a hypocritical desire to appear favorable and inspire us with hope in order to retain the small amount of influence they think we possess, and yet compelling us to begin the work all over again." After reviewing the long struggle of American women for political freedom she ended with an impassioned peroration of which only a portion can be quoted:

No class of men in any nation have ever been compelled to wage such an arduous and difficult struggle for their political freedom. Through the influence of the Democratic party, without an effort on their own behalf, white working men were enfranchised; and by an Act of Congress under Republican leadership the newly emancipated men slaves were protected in their right of suffrage. The same Act placed in the Constitution of the United States for the first time the word "male," which robbed women of the protection guaranteed to every other class of citizens in the most sacred right of citizenship--the right to a voice in the Government.

Such is the boasted chivalry of the Land of Freedom, which has left its women to strive against tradition, prejudice, conservatism, self-interest, political power and in addition all the forces of corruption combined, to secure the privilege which was conferred upon vast numbers of men who never even demanded it and many of whom knew nothing of its significance after it was granted. I claim, and fear no contradiction, that the women of this land are better qualified to exercise the suffrage with intelligence, honesty and patriotism than were any other class of citizens in the world at the time when it was conferred upon them.

Must women, unaided, continue the struggle for forty years longer until they have rounded out a century, assailing the bulwarks of prohibitive constitutions in the forty-one States yet to be won? Or will not some brave, consistent and freedom-loving President, recognizing the duty the Government owes to the disfranchised millions of patriotic women, recommend to Congress to submit an amendment to the Federal Constitution forbidding disfranchisement on account of sex? And will not the time speedily come when Congress, recognizing the great injustice which was inflicted upon the women of the land when by enfranchising a race of slave men they riveted the fetters of disfranchisement upon educated and patriotic women, redeem the nation from this stigma? It was the most ungrateful and unjust act ever perpetrated by a republic upon a class of citizens who had worked and sacrificed and suffered as did the women of this nation in the struggle of the Civil War only to be rewarded at its close by such unspeakable degradation as to be reduced to the plane of subjects to enfranchised slaves....

I stand here tonight to say that we have never known defeat; we have never been vanquished. We have not always reached the goal toward which we have striven, but in the hour of our greatest disappointment we could always point to our battlefield and say: "There we fought our good fight, there we defended the principles for which our ancestors and yours laid down their lives; there is our battlefield for justice, equality and freedom. Where is yours?"

While the eminent speakers attracted the largest audiences that ever had attended the conventions of the association, according to the opinions of the older suffragists, the delegates themselves were equally interested in the morning meetings devoted to the reports and other business. The corresponding secretary, Miss Kate M. Gordon, a keen student of politics and organization, in speaking of factors in success, said: "There is great necessity for a personal acquaintance between the leaders in our suffrage work in the States and the prominent politicians in the States; the personal acquaintance also of the editors and managers of our great public-opinion-forming newspapers; a pleasant working relation in women's clubs and all movements for better social conditions in our respective communities; a more intimate acquaintance with the educational influences, the teachers in our public schools and the college life of our communities."

Miss Gordon made a special plea for cooperation in the efforts for Child Labor legislation and she ended by saying: "But means and methods for the future of our work pale into insignificance in the need of the hour, which is Oregon. Funds for this campaign must be a matter of conscience with every believer. In proportion to the gratitude you feel for the comfortable position which women occupy today, measure your contribution; no sacrifice can be too great at this crucial moment in our onward history." Throughout the convention the work in Oregon, where an amendment to the State constitution would be voted on in November, was the uppermost thought. The treasurer made a special appeal for funds; the chairman of the Press Committee told of it; it was discussed and planned for in the business meetings and different speakers referred in hopeful words to its probable success.

An amendment to the constitution abolishing proxies empowered to cast the full vote to which the State was entitled and providing that delegates present should cast only their own vote caused a spirited discussion, with Mrs. Catt and eastern delegates in favor and Dr. Shaw and western delegates opposed and was lost by a vote of 68 to 11. No change of officers was made at this convention. Reports of Committees on Libraries, Literature, Enrollment, Presidential Suffrage, etc., were presented by their chairmen. A lively discussion on the use of the union label on literature, stationery, etc., resulted in an almost unanimous decision to retain it. Very interesting reports of work in the States were made by their respective presidents. Invitations for the next convention were received from the Chamber of Commerce of Wheeling, W. Va., the Chamber of Commerce, Bar Association and Suffrage Club of Oklahoma City and the Commission for celebrating the founding of Jamestown, Va.

Miss Antoinette Knowles (Cal.), chairman of the Committee on Church Work, said that by standing for temperance many churches could be obtained for meetings that would not be opened for those purely on suffrage. She gave a list of orthodox churches which had been thus secured; told of successful addresses she had made on the relation between woman suffrage and temperance and urged the appointment of a church committee in every State. The report of Miss Elizabeth J. Hauser, headquarter's secretary, told of the usual large amount of work, which included the distribution of 62,000 copies of the quarterly publication, Progress; 106,753 pieces of literature and many thousands of suffrage stamps, picture postals and souvenirs. Speakers and fraternal delegates had been sent to a large number of national conventions throughout the country and cordially received. Many of these had adopted resolutions for woman suffrage including the American Federation of Labor, National Association of Letter Carriers, National Grange, National Council of Jewish Women, Supreme Commandery Knights of Temperance, National Associations of Universalists and of Spiritualists. The State conventions of various kinds that had endorsed it were almost without number and excellent work had been done at county fairs, granges, farmers' institutes, summer assemblies and educational and religious societies. It was voted to make Progress the official organ of the association and issue it monthly. The national headquarters in Warren, O., had been removed to a spacious room on the ground floor of the county court house, formerly used for a public library.

The chairman of the Press Committee, Mrs. Elnora M. Babcock, made her last report, as the press work was henceforth to be done at the national headquarters with its excellent staff and facilities. For twelve years Mrs. Babcock had carried on this work, which in her capable hands had reached an immense volume and become a leading feature of the National Association. She reported that over 5,000 papers were now using the material sent out from the press bureau and that it was very difficult to respond to all the calls for it. In answer to the second broadside of former President Cleveland in the Ladies' Home Journal, which refused to publish anything from anybody on the other side, 2,000 copies of articles by different persons and 1,000 of the excellent refutation by Representative John F. Shafroth of Colorado had been distributed. The report stated that Mrs. Ida Porter Boyer, the efficient chairman of Pennsylvania, had been sent by the National Association to supervise the press work of the Oregon campaign. It urged that grateful recognition should be shown to papers that favor woman suffrage saying: "Editors are called upon for help and are not thanked for the kindness and good they do nearly as much as they should be." The convention gave Mrs. Babcock a rising vote of thanks for her long and faithful work.

The Executive Committee recommended in its Plan of Work that the States work for a uniform resolution in favor of a Sixteenth Amendment; that they endeavor to secure Initiative and Referendum laws; that in each Legislature measures be introduced for full suffrage or for some form of suffrage; that efforts be continued to obtain equalization of property and intestate laws, also co-guardianship of children; that the working forces of the association be concentrated where there are State campaigns for suffrage; that each club organize one new one and each individual member secure one more; that all present lines of work be continued and extended; that there be a more systematic and liberal distribution of literature; that hearings be obtained before all kinds of organizations. It was voted that "the Board of Officers consider the propriety of recommending all the States to make a concerted effort to secure Presidential suffrage for women in the election of 1908." But one work conference was held, that on Press, Miss Hauser presiding. One of the most important conferences of the week was that of State presidents, at which each told of the most effective work within the year, and the discussion which followed gave much practical and helpful information.

At the second afternoon session Dr. Shaw read a number of letters from Governors of the equal suffrage and other States answering favorably an appeal from the California Suffrage Association that they would appoint one or more women to the national commission soon to meet to consider uniform marriage and divorce laws. She had emphasized this necessity in her president's address. The report of Mrs. Florence Kelley, chairman of the Committee on Industrial Problems Affecting Women and Children, was heard with deep interest and feeling. As executive secretary of the National Consumers' League for many years and a close student of labor conditions, she spoke with accurate knowledge when she told of the employment of children. A Baltimore woman in her welcome to the convention had said that Maryland women were satisfied with what they could secure by petition without the ballot, and Mrs. Kelley, referring with fine sarcasm to the "sadly modest results of their petitions," said:

Last night while we slept after our evening meeting there were in Maryland many hundred boys, only nominally fourteen years old, working all night in the glass-works; and here in Baltimore the smallest messenger boys I have ever seen in any city were perfectly free to work all night. No law was broken in either case, for the women of Maryland have not yet by their right of petition brought to the children of the State protection from working all night. Here in this city children must go to school until they are nominally twelve years old but outside of Baltimore and three other counties there is no limit whatever to the work of any child. Moreover, here in Baltimore where the law nominally applies children are free to work at any age if they have a dependent relative or if they are liable to become dependent themselves!

It is five years since the first delegation of women went to Atlanta to ask for legislation on behalf of the working children of Georgia, carrying petitions with them, and they have gone in vain every year since. Each year the number of women joining in the protest has been greater and, alas, the number of little girls under ten years old, who work in Georgia cotton mills all night, has also been greater. The number of working children grows faster than the number of petitioning women.... In New York, where women can vote on school questions in the country only, not in the city, children five, six, seven and eight years old, who ought to be in the kindergarten and public schools, are working in cellars and garrets, under the sweating system, sewing on buttons and making artificial flowers. So many such children are not in the schools that no city administration in the last ten years has dared to make a school census; and we are striving in vain, (all the philanthropic bodies), to induce the present Tammany administration just to count the children of school age but they dare not reveal the extent to which they are failing to provide for them....

We Americans do not rank among the enlightened nations when we are graded according to our care of our children. We have, according to the last census, 580,000 who cannot read or write, between the ages of ten and fourteen years, not immigrant but native-born children, and 570,000 of them are in States where the women do not even use their right of petition. We do not rank with England, Germany, France, Switzerland, Holland or the Scandinavian countries when we are measured by our care of our children, we rank with Russia. The same thing is true of our children at work. We have two millions of them earning their living under the age of sixteen years. Legislation of the States south of Maryland for the children is like the legislation of England in 1844.... Surely it behooves us to do something at once or what sort of citizens shall we have?

Miss Gertrude Barnum, secretary of the Women's National Trade Union League, followed with an earnest address on Women as Wage Earners. She began by saying that although this would be called a representative audience, wage-earning women were not present. "A speaker should have been chosen from their ranks," she said. "We have been preaching to them, teaching them,'rescuing' them, doing almost everything for them except knowing them and working with them for the good of our common country. These women of the trade unions, who have already learned to think and vote in them, would be a great addition, a great strength to this movement. The working women have much more need of the ballot than we of the so-called leisure class. We suffer from the insult of its refusal; we are denied the privilege of performing our obligations and we have as results things which we smart under. The working women have not only these insults and privations but they have also the knowledge that they are being destroyed, literally destroyed, body and soul, by conditions which they cannot touch by law...." Miss Barnum discussed "strikes," the "closed shop," conditions under which factory women work, the domestic problem, the trade unions, and said: "I hope that this body, which represents women from all over the country, will take this matter back to their respective States and cities and try to make the acquaintance of this great half of our population, the working people. You must bring them to your conferences and conventions and let them speak on your platform. They will speak much better for themselves than you can get any one to speak for them...."

An animated discussion took place, many of the delegates asking sympathetic questions. Mrs. Ella S. Stewart (Ill.) followed with a delightfully caustic address on Some Fallacies; Our Privileges. The reporters were so carried away by her "sweetness and beauty" that they almost forgot to make notes of her speech, of which one of them said: "She picked up Grover Cleveland, Lyman Abbott and other anti-suffragists from the time of Samuel Johnson and figuratively spun them around her finger, to the joy of the audience." In paying her tribute to chivalry she said: "Of what benefit was the chivalry of the knights toward their ladies of high degree to the thousands of peasant women and wives of serfs hitched up with animals and working in the fields? Of no more value now is the protection given to the wives and daughters of the rich by men who are grinding down and taking advantage of those of the poor. In Chicago women have no vote except once in four years for a trustee of the State university, yet every day if we try to take a street car we are overrun and trampled down by men who get on the cars before they stop, and when we finally limp in we see them comfortably seated reading the papers while we dangle from the straps. We are crowded in stores and smoked in restaurants; in fact the only place of late where I was not crowded was at the polls when I went to cast my vote!"

Mrs. Mary E. Craigie (N. Y.) closed the session with a serious, impressive address on Our Real Opposition; Ignorance and Vice, the Silent Foe. She pointed out the "indirect alliance between the anti-suffragists and the vicious elements, opponents of all reform, fearful that if women vote good will prevail over evil." "The chief foes of woman suffrage," she said, "are the saloon keepers, scum of society, barred from fraternal organizations, social clubs and even from some of the insurance societies."

The Biography of Miss Anthony contains this paragraph.[45]

When Miss Anthony had visited President M. Carey Thomas, of Bryn Mawr College, and Miss Mary E. Garrett the last November she had talked of the approaching convention, expressed some anxiety as to its reception in so conservative a city and urged them to do what they could to make it creditable to the National Association and to Baltimore. They showed much interest, asked in what way they could be of most assistance and talked over various plans. Both belonged to old and prominent families in that city, Miss Garrett had the prestige of great wealth also, and Dr. Thomas of her position as president of one of the most eminent of Women's Colleges. Miss Anthony was desirous of having the program in some way illustrate distinctly the new type of womanhood--the College Woman--and eventually Dr. Thomas took entire charge of one evening devoted to this purpose, which will ever be memorable in the history of these conventions. A day or two after Miss Anthony's visit she received a letter from Miss Garrett saying: "I have decided--really I did so while we were talking about the convention at luncheon yesterday--that I must open my house in Baltimore for that week in order to have the great pleasure of entertaining you and Miss Shaw under my own roof and to do whatever I can to help you make the meeting a success."

At a good-bye reception given for Miss Anthony in Rochester the evening before she left home for Baltimore she took cold and immediately after reaching Miss Garrett's she became very ill and was under the care of physicians and trained nurses. On the second night, however, the College Evening for which elaborate preparations had been made, she summoned the will power for which she had always been noted, rose from her bed, put on a beautiful gown and went to the convention hall. Quoting again from the Biography: "When she appeared on the stage and the great audience realized that she actually was with them their enthusiasm was unbounded. She was so white and frail as to seem almost spiritual but on her sweet face was an expression of ineffable happiness; and it was indeed one of the happiest moments of her life for it typified the intellectual triumph of her cause."

The Baltimore American thus began its account: "With the great pioneer suffrage worker, Susan B. Anthony, on the platform, surrounded by women noted in the college world for their brilliant attainments, as well as those famed for social work and in other professions, and with a large audience, the session of the woman suffrage convention opened last evening in the Lyric Theater. If the veteran suffragist thought of more than the pleasure of the event it must have been the contrast of this occasion with the times past, when, unhonored and unsung, she fought what must have often seemed a losing fight for principles for which the presence of these women proclaimed victory.... It had been announced as 'Colloge evening' but it might just as well have been called 'Susan B. Anthony evening,' for, while the addresses dealt with various phases of the woman question, all evolved into one strong tribute to Miss Anthony."

The following remarkable program was carried out:

COLLEGE EVENING

February 8, 1906

Presiding Officer Ira Remsen, Ph.D., LL.D., President of Johns Hopkins University.

Ushers Students of the Woman's College of Baltimore in Academic Dress.

Addresses Mary E. Woolley, A.M., Litt.D., L.H.D., President of Mount Holyoke College. Lucy M. Salmon, A.M., Professor of History, Vassar College. Mary A. Jordan, A.M., Professor of English, Smith College. Mary W. Calkins, A.M., Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, Wellesley College. Eva Perry Moore, A.B., Trustee Vassar College; President of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae (over three thousand college women). Maud Wood Park, A.B. (Radcliffe College), President of the Boston Branch of the Equal Suffrage League in Women's Colleges and Founder of the League. M. Carey Thomas, Ph.D., LL.D., President of Bryn Mawr College.

A tribute of gratitude from representatives of Women's Colleges.

What has been accomplished for the higher education of women by Susan B. Anthony and other woman suffragists.

The statement is sometimes questioned that all of the advantages which women enjoy today had their inception in the efforts of the pioneers suffragists. The addresses made on this occasion by some of the most distinguished women educators of the country certainly should sustain this claim so far as the higher education is concerned. It seems a sacrilege to use only brief quotations from these important contributions to the literature of the movement for woman suffrage.

PRESIDENT WOOLLEY: It will not be possible in the limited time given to the representatives of colleges for women to do more than suggest what has been accomplished for the higher education of women by Miss Anthony and other suffragists, but it is a pleasure to have this opportunity to add our tribute of appreciation....

At a meeting called in 1851 at Seneca Falls, N. Y., to consider founding a People's College, Miss Anthony, Lucy Stone and Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton were determined that the constitution and by-laws should be framed so as to admit women on the same terms as men and finally carried their point. The college, however, before it was fairly started was merged in Cornell University. Five years later Miss Anthony's lecture on "Co-education" brought that subject most forcibly to the attention of the public.... It was no part of Miss Anthony's plan to have work given to women for which they were not fitted but rather that they should be prepared to do well whatever they attempted. There were not to be two standards of efficiency, one for the man and another for the woman. "Think your best thoughts, speak your best words, do your best work, looking to your own conscience for approval," was her charge to women forty years ago.... The higher education of women should be added to the list of causes for which she and other women struggled. She has lived to see the work of her hands established in the gaining of educational and social rights for women which might well be called revolutionary, so momentous have been the changes....

It seems almost inexplicable that changes surely as radical as giving to women the opportunity to vote should be accepted today as perfectly natural while the political right is still viewed somewhat askance.... The time will come when some of us will look back upon the arguments against the granting of the suffrage to women with as much incredulity as that with which we now read those against their education. Then shall it be said of the woman, who with gentleness and strength, courage and patience, has been unswerving in her allegiance to the aim which she had set before her, "Give her of the fruit of her hands and let her own works praise her in the gates."

PROFESSOR SALMON: The personal experience will perhaps be pardoned if it is considered representative of the possibly changing attitude of other college women toward the subject. The natural stages in the development seem to have been, opposition, due to ignorance; rejection, due to conscientious disapproval; indifference, due to preoccupation in other lines of work; acceptance, due to appreciation of what the work for equal suffrage has accomplished. It has been a work positive rather than negative, active rather than destructive, and thus it is coming to appeal to the judgment and reason of college women. They are coming to realize that they have been taught by these pioneers, both by precept and example, to look at the essential things of life and to ignore the unessential and for this they are grateful....

The college woman is beginning to wonder whether it is worth while to reckon the mint, anise and cummin while the weightier matters of the law are forgotten. For a larger outlook on life we are all indebted to Miss Anthony, to Mrs. Howe and to their colleagues. We are indebted to them in large measure for the educational opportunities of today. We are indebted to them for the theory, and in some places for the reality, of equal pay for men and women when the work performed is the same. We are indebted to them for making it possible for us to spend our lives in fruitful work rather than in idle tears. We are indebted to these pioneer women for the substitution of a positive creed for inertia and indifference. From them we also inherit the weighty responsibility of passing on to others, in degree if not in kind, all that we have received from them.

Professor Jordan, after considering the woman's college, said: "The suffragists lent us Maria Mitchell and they felt severely the loss they sustained in her increasing absorption in the class room and in the requirements of modern scientific work. When we had taken Maria Mitchell they turned to us in friendship, Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Miss Anthony, Miss Elizabeth Peabody, Mrs. Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Mrs. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Lois Anna Green, Mary Dame--and never failed to stir our minds with their urgent appeals for our thoughtful consideration of the causes they presented and the interest they took for granted. The last was their strong point. They simply implicated us in whatever was good and true. Their enthusiasm was infectious and we 'caught' it--to our own lasting spiritual benefit.... I do not believe that I was over-fanciful when I used to feel that Lucy Stone and you, Miss Anthony, looked at us as if you would say, 'Make the best of your freedom for we have bought it with a great price.'"

PROFESSOR CALKINS: I wish to indicate this evening the definite form in which I think the gratitude of all college women might be expressed to Miss Anthony and to the other leaders of the equal suffrage movement for their service to the cause of women's education. In other words, I wish to ask what have these veteran equal suffrage leaders a right to expect from university and college students, and in particular from the students and graduates of our women's colleges?... Equal suffragists, if I may serve as interpreter, demand just this, that women trained to scientific method shall make equal suffrage an object of scientific analysis and logic and ask of college women that they cease being ignorant or indifferent on the question; that they adopt, if not an attitude of active leadership or of loyal support, at least a position of reasoned opposition or of intelligent hesitation between opposing arguments. To ask less than this really is an insult to a thinking person, man or woman.... The student trained to reach decisions in the light of logic and of history will be disposed to recognize that, in a democratic country governed as this is by the suffrage of its citizens and given over as this is to the principle and practice of educating women, a distinction based on difference of sex is artificial and illogical, and thus suspicious.... For myself, I believe that the probabilities favor woman suffrage.

MRS. MOORE: The women of today may well feel that it is Miss Anthony who has made life possible to them; she has trodden the rough paths and by unwearied devotion has opened to them the professions and higher applied industries. Through her life's work they enjoy a hundred privileges denied them fifty years ago; from her devotion has grown a new order; her hand has helped to open every line of business to women. She has spoken at times to thousands of girls on the public duties of women.... Her life story must epitomize the victorious struggle of women for larger intellectual freedom in the last century.... The world does move. Those who are aware of the great and beneficent changes made in the laws relating to the rights of property, in the civil and industrial laws pertaining to women and children, may estimate the good accomplished by these pioneers.

MRS. PARK: I suppose it is true that all through history individual women have been able, sometimes by cajolery, sometimes by personal charm, sometimes by force of character, to get for themselves privileges far greater than any that the most radical advocates of woman's rights have yet demanded. But in the case of Miss Anthony and the other early suffragists all that force of character was turned not to individual ends, not to getting large things for themselves, but to getting little gains, step by step, for the great mass of other women; not for the service of themselves but for the service of the sex and so of the whole human race.... The object of the College Women's League is to bring the question of equal suffrage to college women, to help them realize their debt to the women who have worked so hard for them and to make them understand that one of the ways to pay that debt is to fight the battle in the quarter of the field in which it is still unwon; in short, to make them feel the obligation of opportunity.

PRESIDENT THOMAS: In the year 1903 there were in the United States 6,474 women studying in women's colleges and 24,863 women studying in co-educational colleges. If the annual rate of increase has continued the same, as it undoubtedly has, during the past three years, there are in college at the present time 38,268 women students. Although there are in the United States nearly 1,800,000 less women than men, women already constitute considerably over one-third of the entire student body and are steadily gaining on men. This means that in another generation or two one-half of all the people who have been to college in the United States will be women; and, just as surely as the seasons of the year succeed one another or the law of gravitation works, just so surely will this great body of educated women wish to use their trained intelligence in making the towns, cities and States of their country better places for themselves and their children to live in; just so surely will the men with whom they have worked side by side in college classes claim and receive their aid in political as well as home life. The logic of events does not lie. It is unthinkable that women who have learned to act for themselves in college and have become awakened there to civic duties should not care for the ballot to enforce their wishes.

The same is true of every woman's club and every individual woman who tries to obtain laws to save little children from working cruel hours in cotton mills or to open summer gardens for homeless little waifs on the streets of a great city. These women, too, are being irresistibly driven to desire equal suffrage for the sake of the wrongs they try to right.... It seems to me in the highest degree ungenerous for women like these in this audience, who are cared for and protected in every way, not to desire equal suffrage for the sake of other less fortunate women, and it is not only ungenerous but short-sighted of such women not to desire it for their own sakes. There is nothing dearer to women than the respect and reverence of their children and of the men they love. Yet every son who has grown up reverencing his mother's opinion must realize, when he reaches the age of twenty-one, with a shock from which he can never wholly recover, that in the most important civic and national affairs her opinion is not considered equal to his own....

I confidently believe that equal suffrage is coming far more swiftly than most of us suspect. Educated, public-spirited women will soon refuse to be subjected to such humiliating conditions. Educated men will recoil in their turn from the sheer unreason of the position that the opinions and wishes of their wives and mothers are to be consulted upon every other question except the laws and government under which they and their husbands and children must live and die. Equal suffrage thus seems to me to be an inevitable and logical consequence of the higher education of women. And the higher education of women is, if possible, a still more inevitable result of the agitation of the early woman suffragists....

We who are guiding this educational movement today owe the profoundest debt of gratitude to those early pioneers--Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe and, above and beyond all, to Susan B. Anthony. Other women reformers, like other men reformers, have given part of their time and energy. She has given to the cause of women every year, every month, every day, every hour and every moment of her whole life and every dollar she could beg or earn, and she has earned thousands and begged thousands more.

Turning to the honored guest of the evening Dr. Thomas said:

To most women it is given to have returned to them in double measure the love of the children they have nurtured. To you, Miss Anthony, belongs by right, as to no other woman in the world's history, the love and gratitude of all women in every country of the globe. We, your daughters in the spirit, rise up today and call you blessed.

In those far-off days when our mothers' mothers sat contented in the darkness, you, our champion, sprang forth to battle for us, equipped and shining, inspired by a prophetic vision of the future like that of the apostles and martyrs, and the heat of your battle has lasted more than fifty years. Two generations of men lie between the time when, in the early fifties, you and Mrs. Stanton sat together in New York State, writing over the cradles of her babies those trumpet calls to freedom that began and carried forward the emancipation of women--and the day eighteen months ago when that great audience in Berlin rose to do you honor, thousands of women from every country in the civilized world, silent, with full eyes and lumps in their throats, because of what they owed to you. Of such as you were the lines of the poet Yeats written:

"They shall be remembered forever, They shall be alive forever, They shall be speaking forever, The people shall hear them forever."

Miss Anthony was profoundly moved. This wonderful scene--the magnificent audience in one of the oldest and most conservative of cities; this group of the most distinguished women educators; the president of one of the leading universities of the world in the chair; the large number of college women in the audience, free, independent, equipped for life's highest work--represented the culmination of what she had striven for during half a century. Her Biography gives this account: "After the applause had ended there was a moment of intense silence and then, as Miss Anthony came forward, the entire audience rose and greeted her with waving handkerchiefs, while tears rolled down the cheeks of many who felt that she would never be present at another convention. 'If any proof were needed of the progress of the cause for which I have worked,' she said, in clear, even tones, distinctly heard by all, 'it is here tonight. The presence on the stage of these college women, and in the audience of all those college girls who will some day be the nation's greatest strength, will tell their own story to the world. They give the highest joy and encouragement to me. I am not going to make a long speech but only to say thank you and good night.' It was all she had the strength to say but she never would publicly confess it."

Interesting State reports, conferences and addresses filled the mornings, afternoons and evenings of this unparalleled week. The Initiative and Referendum was presented by an acknowledged authority, George H. Shibley of Washington, director of the department of representative government in the bureau of economic research. He congratulated the association on having endorsed the new experiment that would rapidly further the woman suffrage cause, in which he had long believed. The system of questioning candidates and publishing their replies, developed by the Anti-Saloon League, was now being used with great success, he said, by many organizations. He described the carefully worked-out system in detail and declared that this, with the Initiative and Referendum, would terminate "machine" rule in politics, and whatever did this would promote the advance of woman suffrage. The address called forth an animated discussion in which it was shown that when women questioned a candidate they had no constituency back of them to influence his answers.

A valuable conference was opened with a comprehensive paper by Mrs. Mary Kenney O'Sullivan (Mass.), prominently identified with the women's trade unions, on the best methods of securing from Congress the submission of the Federal Suffrage Amendment. The question, if each State should secure an endorsement from its Legislature of a uniform resolution calling for this submission would it not influence Congress and also compel favorable recommendation in the national platforms of the dominant political parties, was unanimously answered in the affirmative.

Miss Hauser, the new chairman, presided over the press conference, which was opened with a paper by Miss Jane Campbell, a veteran suffragist, president of the Philadelphia County Suffrage Club of 600 members, on The Unbiased Editor, which bristled with the humorous sarcasm in which she was unsurpassed. She said in the course of it: "As the result of close observation I may state that the calm, judicial mind of the unbiased editor is never more in evidence than when he bends his energies to a consideration of the woman question--that is, the woman question in reference to politics. Then he is on sure ground and he always is actuated by a desire to serve the best interests of women. Does it come under his ken that a woman has the temerity to suggest even in faint tones the advisability and feasibility, the common sense and justice of being allowed to cast a ballot, then the opportunity of the unbiased editor has come and the rash claimant is admonished in fatherly, protecting tones to 'Remember that only in the Home'--he always spells home with a capital in this connection--'should a woman be in evidence.' He almost weeps when he pictures the dire consequences that would inevitably result should women enter the uncleanly pool of politics. Chivalry would become extinct--chivalry being the guiding principle, according to the unbiased editor, on which men act--and then would tired men no longer give up their seats in trolley cars to masculine women and no longer would they accord equal pay for equal work, as they chivalrously do now!"

Turning her shafts on Mr. Bok, editor of the Ladies' Home Journal, and ex-President Cleveland's articles in it, Miss Campbell evoked so much laughter and applause that Miss Hauser became anxious as to the effect on the representatives of the press who were there and called on Mrs. Upton to calm the tempestuous waters, who offered some "golden precepts" for dealing with editors, among them the following: "Keep the paper fully informed of all suffrage news. If there is something unpleasant in it and the reporter tells you that the editor and not himself is responsible for it, smile and believe him. Take the reporter into your confidence and let him absorb the impression that you trust him implicitly. The result will be that you and your cause will get the best of it. In a word, treat the newspaper reporter as you would any other gentleman and in the long run you will profit by it. If you are the press representative of your local organization try to have from time to time items of news pertaining to matters other than that of woman suffrage. Use the telephone lavishly and let your home be a sort of stopping place for the reporter in his routine work. When you present such an attitude toward the press the editors cannot find it in their hearts to refuse if you want a little space for yourself and your cause." The Baltimore Evening Herald commented: "From the foregoing it will be observed that in the dark and devious avocation of working the unsophisticated editor, Mrs. Upton is truly a past mistress, entitled to wear the regalia and jewels of the superlative degree."

Mrs. May Arkwright Hutton of Idaho told of the excellent results of woman suffrage on the politics of that State. Mrs. Lucia Ames Mead, chairman of the Committee on Peace and Arbitration, gave her usual able report describing her extensive work during the past year, which neither in this or any other year was exceeded by that of any one individual. After her return from the International Peace Congress in London she succeeded in having the presidents of the suffrage associations in fifteen States appoint supervisors of peace work and others were about to do so. The educational authorities in every State had been requested to arrange celebrations for May 18, the anniversary of the first Hague Conference, and she should notify the suffrage clubs to do this. Equal suffragists will aid the cause of justice for themselves in the nation by working also for justice between the nations. The abolition of war will do more than anything else to make women respected and influential. It will substitute moral force for brute force, reason for passion and will forever remove one of the most popular arguments against giving political power to those who are incapable of military service."

Mrs. Isabel C. Barrows (Mass.), the well known writer on social and economic subjects, took part in the symposium that followed. Miss Alice Stone Blackwell presided over the conference on What the Home Needs for its Protection--Women on Health Boards, School Boards and in the Police Department, and these subjects were considered by Mrs. Susan S. Fessenden (Mass.), Mrs. Upton and Mrs. Barrows. It closed with a paper by the Rev. Marie Jenney Howe on Woman's Municipal Vote.

One of the most important evening sessions was devoted to the question of Municipal Government, with Dr. William H. Welch, Professor of Pathology in Johns Hopkins University, presiding. A leading feature was the address of the Hon. Frederick C. Howe of Cleveland, O., The City for the People. He reviewed the mismanagement and political corruption of the large cities, "controlled by great financial interests and yet filled with eager, energetic people, struggling to organize a good democratic movement of humanity focused on a democratic ideal." In voicing the hope for the future he said:

There is an upward movement in all our cities. We are endeavoring to work out democracy and are doing amazingly well. When it is possible to organize the ideals of this new democratic movement it will be a city not for men alone but for men and women. It is business which has made our cities take the illogical position that women should not participate in municipal affairs as the chief corrective of the evils which underlie most of our municipal problems. I believe in woman suffrage not for women alone, not for men alone, but for the advantage of both men and women. Any community, any society, any State that excludes half of its members from participating in it is only half a State, only half a city, only half a community. So, you see, woman suffrage does not interest me so much because woman is a taxpayer or because of justice as because of democracy; because I believe in the fullest, freest, most responsible democracy that it is possible to create. The city of the people will be a man and woman city. It will elect its officials for other than party reasons and will keep men and women in office who give good service.

The Hon. Rudolph Blankenburg, Philadelphia's noted reformer, who was to speak on Municipal Regeneration, was detained at home and his wife, Mrs. Lucretia L. Blankenburg, president of the Pennsylvania Suffrage Association, told of the big campaign of the preceding autumn for better government in that city and the important part women had in it and said: "The men claimed that the women helped them a great deal but when the day came for the jubilation after the election, not a woman was invited to sit on the platform or to take part in the jubilee, except in the audience. In one of our suburbs the successful people gave a banquet and they did condescend to invite the women who had helped them win the election to sit in the gallery after the banquet and hear the speeches.... We are to have an election very soon and when I left home to come to this convention our city party was holding meetings in churches and halls and parlors and the chairman of the committee chided me for deserting my 'home work.' I told her that it was a greater work to try to get the right to vote and increase my influence."

The Hon. William Dudley Foulke, president of the National Civil Service Commission, spoke informally on An Object Lesson in Municipal Politics, describing the revolution of the citizens against the corrupt government of his home city, Richmond, Ind., and the valuable assistance rendered by the women, and, as always, demanding the suffrage for them.

It was at this meeting that Miss Jane Addams of Hull House, Chicago, made the address on The Modern City and the Municipal Franchise for Women, which was thenceforth a part of the standard suffrage literature. Quotations are wholly inadequate.

It has been well said that the modern city is a stronghold of industrialism quite as the feudal city was a stronghold of militarism, but the modern cities fear no enemies and rivals from without and their problems of government are solely internal. Affairs for the most part are going badly in these great new centres, in which the quickly-congregated population has not yet learned to arrange its affairs satisfactorily. Unsanitary housing, poisonous sewage, contaminated water, infant mortality, the spread of contagion, adulterated food, impure milk, smoke-laden air, ill-ventilated factories, dangerous occupations, juvenile crime, unwholesome crowding, prostitution and drunkenness are the enemies which the modern cities must face and overcome, would they survive. Logically their electorate should be made up of those who can bear a valiant part in this arduous contest, those who in the past have at least attempted to care for children, to clean houses, to prepare foods, to isolate the family from moral dangers; those who have traditionally taken care of that side of life which inevitably becomes the subject of municipal consideration and control as soon as the population is congested. To test the elector's fitness to deal with this situation by his ability to bear arms is absurd. These problems must be solved, if they are solved at all, not from the military point of view, not even from the industrial point of view, but from a third, which is rapidly developing in all the great cities of the world--the human-welfare point of view....

City housekeeping has failed partly because women, the traditional housekeepers, have not been consulted as to its multiform activities. The men have been carelessly indifferent to much of this civic housekeeping, as they have always been indifferent to the details of the household.... The very multifariousness and complexity of a city government demand the help of minds accustomed to detail and variety of work, to a sense of obligation for the health and welfare of young children and to a responsibility for the cleanliness and comfort of other people. Because all these things have traditionally been in the hands of women, if they take no part in them now they are not only missing the education which the natural participation in civic life would bring to them but they are losing what they have always had.

The Sunday afternoon service was held in the Lyric Theater, whose capacity was taxed with an audience "representing every class of society, every creed and no creed," according to the Baltimore papers. It was preceded by a half-hour musical program by Edwin M. Shonert, pianist, and Earl J. Pfonts, violinist. The Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell made the opening prayer; the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw read the Scripture lesson and gave the day's text: "Be strong and very courageous; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest." The Battle Hymn of the Republic was beautifully read by the Rev. Olympia Brown and sung by Miss Etta Maddox, the audience joining in the chorus. Mrs. Maud Ballington Booth gave the principal address on the work of the Volunteers of America for the men and women in prisons and after they are discharged. At its beginning she said: "I have never before stood on the platform with these leaders in the struggle for woman suffrage but I sympathize with any movement whose motive is, like theirs, the uplifting of humanity." Her beauty, her sweet voice and her rare eloquence made a deep impression on the audience, who responded with a generous collection for her Hope Halls. The meeting closed with the congregational singing of America and the benediction by the Rev. Marie Jenney Howe. All of the women ministers occupied the pulpits of various churches in the morning or evening, and, according to the reporter for the News, "astonished the large congregations which assembled to do them honor with their facility of expression and the soundness of their logic!"[46]

The resolutions offered by Henry B. Blackwell, chairman of the committee, covered a wide and rather unusual range of subjects, showing the broad scope of the work of the association and expressing its pleasure at the world-wide indications of progress. Deep regret was expressed for the death of the friends of the cause during the year, among them George W. Catt of New York, husband of Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt; Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell of New York; Mrs. Jane H. Spofford of Maine; Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller of Maryland; Mrs. Sarah M. Perkins of Ohio; John K. Wildman of Pennsylvania, and Speaker Frederick S. Nixon of the New York Legislature.

Fraternal greetings were brought from the Ladies of the Maccabees by Mrs. Melva J. Caswell, State Commander of the District of Columbia, Maryland and Delaware; from the National W. C. T. U., by Miss Marie C. Brehm, president for Illinois, and from the American Purity Alliance by its president, Dr. O. Edward Janney of Baltimore. A letter was read by Mrs. Mary Bentley Thomas (Md.), from Governor Warfield expressing his thanks for the opportunity of meeting so many distinguished women and his enjoyment of the convention. Letters and telegrams were read. A letter of greeting was sent to Mrs. Ellen Clark Sargent, a veteran suffragist of San Francisco, and letters to Miss Laura Clay and Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, regretting their absence. A special vote of appreciation was given to Dr. and Mrs. William Funck and a letter of thanks was sent to Dr. Thomas and Miss Garrett for their part in the unsurpassed success of the convention.

A comprehensive report of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, organized in Berlin in 1904, was given by its president, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, showing that "the agitation throughout Europe for a broader democracy has naturally opened the way for the discussion of woman suffrage and the subject is being considered as never before in Europe." [See Chapter on the Alliance.] The Evening with Women in History was opened by Mrs. Catt, who said: "One idea is the mainspring of the opposition to woman suffrage--that women are by nature of the inferior sex. Even Darwin, so scientific that he tried to see all things fairly, entertained this unjust view. When women have had the same inspiration and opportunity as men their work has been equal in merit."

The program assuredly showed no inferiority of mental power. Mrs. Belle de Rivera (N. Y.) depicted Women of Genius, quoting Sappho, Margaret of Navarre, Vittoria Colonna, Angelica Kauffman and others eminent in the annals of history. A newspaper report said of Mrs. Oreola Williams Haskell (N. Y.): "The thoroughness of her address gave the lie to any intimation of frivolity made by her youth and beauty, the pink crepe de chine dress and the giddy pink bow in her fluffy brown hair." In discussing Women in Politics she said that, "even though debarred from Parliaments and Congresses women will take part in politics because political situations and public events vitally affect their lives" and concluded:

The student, remembering the laws that strove to make women nonentities, the tremendous force of adverse public opinion, the lack of training and preparation, must repudiate forever the usual query of the scoffer. "Why have there not been more eminent women?" and in amazement ask himself, "How does it happen that there have been any?" To those women who would do great things, who sigh for the old days, when the political queen ruled from the salon or the throne, we may say that today woman stands on the threshold of a broader and more real political life than she has ever known. In the future there may be no Sarah Jennings or Mme. de Maintenons, but when to the million-and-a-quarter of the women of our time, who in the United States, in Australia and in New Zealand are exercising the mighty power of the ballot as fully and freely as their brothers, we shall be able to add other enfranchised women of the world, we will have a mighty political sisterhood, free to realize their patriotic dreams and powerful to bring about better conditions for humanity.

Miss Campbell described in an able and interesting manner Women Scholars of the Middle Ages. Miss Brehm pictured Heroes and Heroines. Mrs. Maud Nathan, who had as a subject Women Warriors, according to the reporter, "remarked as she took off her long white kids that she could not handle it with gloves." Declaring that she did not approve of war, she said that nevertheless whenever there was a fight for municipal reform in New York she was in the thick of it. After showing how women had led wars and fallen in battles she concluded:

In the middle ages, when the electors were called upon to defend their cities at the point of the bayonet, we can understand why men considered that women should be debarred from the privilege of citizenship; but today our cities are not walled, our foes are not without the gates trying to scale the walls. The enemies are within, often found sitting in high places. Today citizens are called upon to fight, not warriors, but vice and corruption and low standards. Are not our mothers quite as capable as our fathers to wage warfare against these, the enemies in our midst?

When I was in The Hague last summer I visited the only kind of battleground which any intelligent, progressive, self-respecting nation ought to show with pride.... There in the peaceful little House in the Wood national disputes are settled, not by sacrificing the lives of thousands of innocent, helpless young men, not by creating thousands of widows and orphans, but by threshing out all matters relating to the dispute in a rational, calm, judicial and honorable way.... It seemed to me that this 20th century battleground, this quiet, peaceful House in the Wood, augured well for a new era, one in which our swords will indeed be turned into ploughshares and our spears into pruning hooks, and the angels of peace and righteousness will hover over us.

The social features of the convention were of an unusually interesting character. The Garrett family mansion had been closed for the winter but Miss Garrett opened it completely, invited as home guests Miss Anthony, Mrs. Howe, Miss Addams, Dr. Thomas and other distinguished visitors and gave a series of entertainments that conferred on the convention a prestige which added much to its influence in that conservative city. In order that its representative men and women might meet the officers and delegates Miss Garrett had a luncheon and dinner every day, the formal invitations reading: "To meet Miss Susan B. Anthony and Governor and Mrs. Warfield"; "To meet Miss Anthony and the speakers of the College Evening," etc.,--on each invitation Miss Anthony's name preceding those of the other guests of honor. All of the speakers on the College Women's evening were her house guests and after the meeting she gave a large reception. To quote again from the Biography: "No one present will ever forget the picture of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Howe sitting side by side on a divan in the large bay window, with a background of ferns and flowers. At their right stood Miss Garrett and Dr. Thomas, at their left Dr. Shaw and the line of eminent college women, with a beautiful perspective of conservatory and art gallery.... There was nothing in the closing years of Miss Anthony's life that offered such encouragement and hope as to see women possessing the power of high intellectual ability, wealth and social position taking up the cause which she had carried with patient toil through poverty and obscurity to this plane of recognition."

While Miss Anthony was a guest in the home of Miss Garrett she and Dr. Thomas asked her what was the greatest service they could render to advance the movement for woman suffrage. She answered that the strongest desire of her later years had been to raise a large fund for the work, which was constantly impeded for the lack of money, but her impaired health had prevented it. This need was frequently discussed during the week, and before the convention closed they promised her that they would try to find a number of women who, like themselves, were unable to take an active part in working for woman suffrage but sincerely believed in it, who would be willing to join together in contributing $12,000 a year for the next five years to help support the work and to show in this practical way their gratitude to Miss Anthony and her associates and their faith in the cause.[47]

The officers, speakers and delegates accepted invitations of President Remsen to visit Johns Hopkins University and received every possible attention; to a special exhibit at the Maryland Historical Art Gallery; to a handsome afternoon tea at the Arundel Club, welcomed by its president, Mrs. William M. Ellicott; to a large reception by the Baltimore Woman Suffrage Club and to other pleasant functions.

The report of Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton called attention to the receipts of $2,000 for 1893 and $12,150 during the past year, a period of thirteen years during which she had been treasurer. "The fact that nowadays the association always has funds," she said, "gives us a standing with the bankers and business men which works largely to our credit." She spoke of the bequests, which had been put at interest, and told of persons who refused to contribute a dollar while they remained unspent. It was the hope of the officers, she said, that they could be used for campaigns and other emergencies and that contributions should pay the running expenses, which was now nearly accomplished. The disbursements during the year, including money advanced for the Oregon campaign, had been $16,565, the amount above receipts being taken from the bequests.

The College Women's meeting took place on Thursday and Miss Anthony was unable to attend the convention the next day. "At the Saturday morning session," the Biography relates, "Dr. Shaw expressed the great regret of all at her enforced absence and their gratitude for the excellent care she was receiving at the home of Miss Garrett; but when the afternoon session opened, in she walked! She had learned that the money was to be raised at this time and she knew she could help, so she conquered her pain and came. When contributions were called for she was first to respond and holding out a little purse she said: 'I want to begin by giving you my purse. Just before I left Rochester my friends gave me a birthday party and made me a present of eighty-six dollars. I suppose they wanted me to do as I liked with the money and I wish to send it to Oregon.'" Under this inspiration the pledges soon reached $4,000. Afterwards Miss Anthony's seventeen five dollar gold pieces were sold for $10 each, and later some of them for $25.

Miss Anthony was not able to leave the house for the next two days, to her great sorrow. The leading feature of the Monday evening session was to be an address by Mrs. Howe but she also was too ill to appear, and realizing the intense disappointment this would be to the audience Miss Anthony made another heroic effort and took her place on the platform. The Rev. Herbert S. Bigelow came from Cincinnati to give an address on The Power of an Idea, in which he said: "If the world were never again to get another new idea, progress would be at an end.... The birth and growth and struggle and triumph of one great idea after another--this is the story of human progress. For more than half a century the men and women who championed the idea of woman suffrage were made the butt of ridicule, yet in the light of history how ridiculous are the enemies of this idea. Fifty years ago no American college but Oberlin was open to women. Now a third of the college students in the United States are women." Mrs. Fessenden of Boston spoke eloquently on The Mount of Aspiration, and Mrs. Lydia A. Coonley Ward of Chicago represented the strong, practical side in her address on The Nearest Duty. Miss Alice Henry of Melbourne gave an interesting account of woman suffrage in Australia, where women now possessed the complete franchise, which had been followed by very advanced laws.

It was not supposed that Miss Anthony would be able to speak, but, stimulated by the occasion and longing no doubt to say what she felt might be her last words, she came forward near the close of the meeting. A report of the occasion in the New York Evening Post said:

The entire house arose and the applause and cheers seemed to last for ten minutes. Miss Anthony looked at the splendid audience of men and women, many of them distinguished in their generation, with calm and dignified sadness. "This is a magnificent sight before me," she said slowly, "and these have been wonderful addresses and speeches I have listened to during the past week. Yet I have looked on many such audiences and in my lifetime I have listened to many such speakers, all testifying to the righteousness, the justice and the worthiness of the cause of woman suffrage. I never saw that great woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, but I have read her eloquent and unanswerable arguments in behalf of the liberty of womankind. I have met and known most of the progressive women who came after her--Lucretia Mott, the Grimke sisters, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone--a long galaxy of great women. I have heard them speak, saying in only slightly different phrases exactly what I heard these newer advocates of the cause say at these meetings. Those older women have gone on and most of those who worked with me in the early years have gone. I am here for a little time only and then my place will be filled as theirs was filled. The fight must not cease; you must see that it does not stop."

There were indeed Miss Anthony's last words to a woman suffrage convention and they expressed the dominant thought which had directed her own life--the fight must not stop!

The address of Mrs. Howe was read at a later session by her daughter, Mrs. Florence Howe Hall, who expressed her mother's extreme disappointment at not being able to be present in person and said: "She regarded this convention as probably the last she should attend and she hoped to clasp hands with many whom she has known in former years and with many whom she has not known. She has heard with joy of its success and sends you her affectionate greeting and glad congratulations." In the course of this scholarly address Mrs. Howe said:

I can well recall the years in which I felt myself averse to the participation of women in political life. The feminine type appeared to me so precious, so indispensable to humanity, that I dreaded any enlargement of its functions lest something of its charm and real power should therein be lost. I have often felt as if some sudden and unlooked for revelation had been vouchsafed to me, for at my first real contact with the suffragists of, say, forty years ago, I was made to feel that womanhood is not only static but also much more dynamic, a power to move as well as a power to stay. True womanliness must grow and not diminish, in its larger and freer exercise. Whom did I see at that first suffrage meeting, first in my experience? Lucy Stone, sweet faced and silver voiced, the very embodiment of Goethe's "eternal feminine"; William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, noble advocates of human freedom; Lucretia Mott, eloquent and beautiful in her holy old age. What did I hear? Doctrine which harmonized with my dearest aspirations, extending as it did the hope which I had supposed was for an elect and superior few to all the motherhood of the human race. The new teaching seemed to me to throw the door open for all women to come up higher, to live upon a higher plane of thought and to exercise in larger and more varied fields the talents, wonderful indeed, to which such limited scope had hitherto been allowed. I felt, too, that the new freedom brought with it an identity of interest which formed a bond of sisterhood and that the great force of cooperation would wonderfully aid the promotion of objects dear to all true women alike....

I have sat in the little chapel in Bethlehem in which tradition places the birth of the Saviour. It seems fitting that it should be adorned with offerings of beautiful things but while I mused there a voice seemed to say to me, "Look abroad! This divine child is no more, he has grown to be a man and a deliverer. Go out into the world. Find his footsteps and follow them. Work, as he did, for the redemption of mankind. Suffer as he did, if need be, derision and obloquy. Make your protest against tyranny, meanness and injustice!"

The weapon of Christian warfare is the ballot, which represents the peaceable assertion of conviction and will. Society everywhere is becoming converted to its use. Adopt it, oh, you women, with clean hands and a pure heart! Verify the best word written by the apostle; "In Christ Jesus there is neither bond nor free, neither male nor female, but a new creature," the harbinger of a new creation!

On the last evening Senorita Carolina Holman Huidobro told of The Women of Chili and Argentina in the Peace Movement. Mrs. Mead spoke on The World's Crisis, and, with an unsurpassed knowledge of her subject, pointed out the vast responsibility of the United States in the cause of Peace and Arbitration, saying in part: "Protected by two oceans, with not a nation on the hemisphere that dares to attack her; with not a nation in the world that is her enemy, rich and with endless resources, this most fortunate nation is the one of all others to lead the world out of the increasing intolerable bondage of armaments. If the United States will take a strong position on gradual, proportional disarmament the first step may be made toward it at the second Hague conference soon to be held.... Of all women the suffragists should be alert and well informed upon these momentous questions. Our battle cry today must be 'Organize the world!' War will cease when concerted action has removed the causes of war and not before."

Mrs. Pauline Steinem, an elected member of the Toledo (O.) school board, showed convincingly the need for Women's Work on Boards of Education. Miss Harriet May Mills (N. Y.) made a clear, logical address on The Right of Way, and Mr. Blackwell (Mass.) discussed from his knowledge of politics The Wooing of Electors.

In closing the convention Dr. Shaw expressed the hope that if it had brought no other truth to the people of Baltimore it had shown that women want the ballot as a means for accomplishing the things that good men and women wish to accomplish. She made an earnest appeal for a deeper interest in the highest things of life and more consecrated work for all that contributes to the progress of humanity.

* * * * *

In order to have the usual hearings before committees of Congress on the submission of a woman suffrage amendment to the Federal Constitution a large delegation went to Washington on February 14, the next day after the convention closed, and the hearing was held the morning of the 15th, Miss Anthony's birthday. She was not able to attend, greatly to her own disappointment and that of the older speakers, whose inspiration she had been for so long on these occasions. She had arranged the first one ever held in 1869 and had missed but two in thirty-seven years.

The hearing before the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage took place in the Marble Room, as usual, Senator Augustus O. Bacon of Georgia in the chair and Dr. Shaw presiding. The speakers were Senorita Huidobro of Chili; Mrs. Elizabeth D. Bacon, president of the Connecticut Suffrage Association; Mrs. Mary Bentley Thomas (Md.); the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell (N. J.); Miss Anne Fitzhugh Miller (N. Y.); Mrs. Upton, Mrs. Steinem and Mrs. Fessenden.

The hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, the Hon. John J. Jenkins (Wis.), chairman, was in charge of Mrs. Florence Kelley, first vice-president of the association. Mrs. Blankenburg told of the herculean efforts of over 2,000 women at the last November election of Philadelphia. Mrs. Harriet A. Eager spoke of the work of a woman's Committee of Moral Education in Boston where there was no law prohibiting the circulation of any kind of literature. They went to the Legislature for such a law with a petition from 32,000 of the representative women of Massachusetts and stayed there six weeks working for it only to have it refused. She told how the women of the State petitioned fifty-five years for a law giving mothers equal guardianship of their children and pointed out the helpless position of women without political power.

Miss Kate M. Gordon of New Orleans, corresponding secretary of the association, began: "My message this morning was particularly for the southern members of the committee but I shall have to ask others present to carry it to them, as I do not believe any of them are here although seven are members." She protested against the attitude of southern members of Congress toward woman suffrage and expressed the deep resentment of southern women at their classification with the disfranchised, saying that their men more than all others should feel the responsibility of lifting them from their present humiliating position. Mrs. Ella S. Stewart, president of the Illinois Suffrage Association, based her argument on simple justice, and said in conclusion: "Your power is absolute and your responsibility correspondingly great. Humiliating as it is for me to beg for what is mine from strangers, I would a thousand times rather be a defrauded mendicant than to hold in my hand the rights, the destiny and the happiness of millions of human beings and have the heart to deny their just claims."

Mrs. Mary Kenney O'Sullivan (Mass.) spoke "as one representing 3,000,000 women who have been forced out of the home through necessity," and said in the course of her strong speech: "I know that the working women of this country are not receiving the highest wages because they have not a vote. Right here in Washington, in your big bindery of the Government, a trade to which I gave the larger part of my life, the women who do equal work with the men do not receive equal pay. The Government more than any other employer has taken advantage of women of my class because they have not a vote.... The workmen, more than any other men, even more than those who are supposed to be statesmen, have seen the necessity for women to have a vote. Ever since 1890 the convention of the American Federation of Labor has unanimously adopted a resolution favoring woman suffrage. I do not believe that any one will deny that the workingmen are the thinking men of the country. I am asking you, in the name of the women I represent at least, to do for us what our working brothers are trying to do--give us our rights."

Mrs. Lucia Ames Mead said in the course of a long address: "The man who talks about home today as if it still gave ample opportunity for woman's productive activity as it once did, is talking about a condition which is as obsolete as the conditions before we had railroads and telegraphs. Woman's educational opportunities and productive capacity are so altered as to require her political status to be altered.... There is a class of women who do not need to earn their living and have a large leisure. They are not idle, they are as active as fireflies, but they are not obliged to be productive as every human being should be.... They have more time than men to study and to apply the principles of justice and mercy and to do that preventive, educational work which is a better defense of country than a squadron of battleships. The suffrage has done much to develop man; the woman of leisure needs it to develop her; the working woman needs it to obtain salutary conditions under which to earn her living; the woman working for reforms needs it so as to accomplish in a year what otherwise she may wait for twenty-five years of pleading and 'influence' to obtain."

Miss Alice Stone Blackwell began her address: "We are not here to ask you to extend suffrage to women but to give to the State Legislatures an opportunity to vote on it, and probably some practical considerations should be offered to show that public sentiment has arrived at a point where it seems to be timely and worth while that this question should be submitted to them. We would like to convince you that this is only right. If three-fourths of them are not prepared to give us suffrage, we shall not get it. If three-fourths of them are prepared, then public sentiment has arrived at a point where we ought to have it." She reviewed the advance of the movement and said: "We could keep this committee here until next week reading to them testimony from representative men and women as to the good results of woman suffrage where it is in operation." The unimpeachable testimony which she then presented from the equal suffrage States filled several pages of the printed record.

Introducing Mrs. Kelley, Chairman Jenkins had spoken of her father, William D. Kelley, known as the Father of the House, and she said:

It is quite true that my father, Judge Kelley of Pennsylvania, came to Congress in the year in which President Lincoln was first elected and for twenty-five years he patiently introduced at every session a resolution preliminary to a hearing for the woman suffragists. Through all that period of ridicule, when the hearings were not conducted so respectfully or in so friendly a manner as this one has been, he continued to introduce that resolution. In 1890 death removed him from the House of Representatives and I come here as the second generation. I assure you that I and the rest of the women throughout the country will come from generation to generation, just so long as it is necessary. Next year my oldest son will vote and that generation will take up the task on behalf of the enfranchisement of the women of this country.... Every time we come there is some gain to record, but, between the times, at least 1,000,000 new immigrants have come into this country who will have to be brought to the American way of thinking about women before they will vote to give the ballot to those who are born here and whose forefathers have asked that we be enfranchised.

It is an ignominious way to treat us, to send us to the Chinaman in San Francisco, to the enfranchised Indians of other western States, to the negroes, Italians, Hungarians, Poles, Bohemians and innumerable Slavic immigrants in Pennsylvania and other mining States to obtain our right of suffrage. There yet remain forty-three States in which women are not enfranchised and it looks as if it might take us a hundred years, at the present rate of progress, before we can relieve you and your successors from these annual hearings. What we are asking today is that you shall take a short cut and not oblige our great-grandchildren to come here and ask for a Federal Amendment.

Although the women received courteous treatment and a respectful hearing from both committees no report was made by either, and the only advantage gained was that as usual thousands of franked copies of the hearings were sent to the national suffrage headquarters to be distributed throughout the States.

* * * * *

For some time arrangements had been under way to celebrate the birthday of Miss Anthony in the city where this had been so often done and which she loved above all others. By carefully conserving her strength she was able to attend the evening ceremonies in the Church of Our Father (Universalist) where many suffrage conventions had been held and where six years before, at the age of 80, she had resigned the presidency and laid down the gavel for the last time. Letters of congratulation were read from President Roosevelt, Vice-President Fairbanks, members of Congress and other prominent men; from Mrs. Russell Sage, Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick and other eminent women, and from organizations in this and other countries. Well known men and women brought their greetings in person. To quote again from her Biography:

"On account of her extreme weakness it was not expected that Miss Anthony would speak but at the close of the evening she seemed to feel that she must say one last word, and rising, with a tender, spiritual expression on her dear face, she stood beside Miss Shaw and explained in a few touching words how the great work of the National Association had been placed in her charge; turning to the other national officers on the stage she reached out her hand to them and expressed her appreciation of their loyal support, and then, realizing that her strength was almost gone, she said: 'There have been others also just as true and devoted to the cause--I wish I could name every one--but with such women consecrating their lives'--here she paused for an instant and seemed to be gazing into the future, then dropping her arms to her side she finished her sentence--'failure is impossible!' These were the last words Miss Anthony ever spoke in public and from that moment they became the watchword of those who accepted as their trust the work she laid down." One month later to the day she was laid to rest with her loved ones.

FOOTNOTES:

[44] Part of Call: Never have we had so much cause to issue a thanksgiving proclamation. Never has it been so easy to love our enemies, for they have combined to fight for us in their courses.

The inevitable logic of events is with us. All over the world intelligent women are interested in securing better protection for their homes and their children.... They are called upon to take part in civic affairs, and social and economic conditions force them into the world's broad field of battle where there is no place for non-combatants. The time has gone by for subterfuge and indirection.... The American Republic settles its questions in the light of day at the ballot box. No one, man or woman, has ever lost influence by the possession of power. We do not ask the ballot simply as a right, though if it be a right it cannot be rightfully denied us; we do not ask it as a privilege, though if it be a privilege it must be ours unless we admit the existence of a privileged class. We demand it because it is a duty and one which no good citizen has a right to shirk.

If you are indifferent come and be convinced. What we ask is not revolutionary but is the reasonable and just demand of every being living under a democratic form of government. If you are opposed, come and let us reason together, consider our points of agreement and waive for a moment those of difference.... Let us have the truth for authority and we shall not need authority for truth....

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, Honorary President. ANNA HOWARD SHAW, President. FLORENCE KELLEY, Vice-President-at-Large. KATE M. GORDON, Corresponding Secretary. ALICE STONE BLACKWELL, Recording Secretary. HARRIET TAYLOR UPTON, Treasurer. LAURA CLAY, } Auditors. ANNICE JEFFREYS MYERS, }

[45] Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, by Ida Husted Harper, Volume III, page 1383.

[46] The clergymen of the city gave cordial assistance to the convention and among those who opened different sessions with prayer were the Reverends Dr. Van Meter of the Woman's College; George Scholl, D.D., Lutheran Church; Lloyd Coblentz, St. Paul's Reformed Church; John Y. Dobbins, Grace M. E. Church; E. L. Watson, Harlem Park M. E. Church; Alfred R. Hussey, First Independent Church; Peter Ainslee, Christian Temple; Oliver Huckel, Associate Congregational Church; Rabbi Adolf Guttmacher, Madison Avenue Temple; Marshall V. McDuffie, North Avenue Baptist Church; Ezra K. Bell, First English Lutheran Church; Edward W. Wroth, All Saints' Episcopal Church.

[47] Although Miss Anthony lived only one month longer every day was made happy by the thought that those who would carry on the work would have the great assistance of this fund. A committee was formed the following summer with Miss Garrett as chairman and Dr. Thomas as treasurer and the work of securing subscriptions was begun on Miss Anthony's birthday the next year, 1907. By May 1 the $60,000 had been subscribed and put at the disposal of the national board of officers. The sum was completed by a subscription of $20,000 from "a friend" and not until after the death of Mrs. Russell Sage, who had headed the list with $5,000, was it known that she was the donor. Mrs. Sage had made generous subscriptions at other times. The full list of donors will be found in Miss Anthony's Biography, page 1401.

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VII. NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1907

The six preceding chapters have described at length and in detail the annual conventions of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in order to show that those who took part in them were the representative women and men of the day. Their addresses, reports of committees, resolutions adopted and other proceedings demonstrate the wide scope of the activities of this organization, which from 1869 was the foundation and the bulwark of the vast movement to obtain equality of rights for women. The Thirty-ninth convention met in Music Hall, Fine Arts Building, Chicago, Feb. 14-19, 1907, and received a cordial welcome to the State of Lincoln, who in 1836 was almost the first public man in the United States to declare in favor of suffrage for women.[48] Lorado Taft's bust of Susan B. Anthony, its pedestal draped in the Stars and Stripes, adorned the platform and a portrait of Lucy Stone looked down on the speakers in serene benediction. The national president, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, was in the chair and addresses of welcome were made for Illinois by Mrs. Ella S. Stewart, president of the State Equal Suffrage Association; for the churches by the Right Rev. Samuel E. Fallows, Presiding Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church; for the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union by Mrs. Susanna M. D. Fry, its corresponding secretary. Mrs. Fannie J. Fernald, president of the Maine Suffrage Association, and Mrs. Mary S. Sperry, president of that of California, responded and in introducing them Dr. Shaw said: "These responses from the Atlantic and the Pacific Coasts represent greetings from all the women between them." The presidents of the Chicago North Side, the South Side and the Evanston Political Equality Clubs were presented and received with applause. Bishop Fallows expressed the wish that what he should say could be voiced by the ministers of all the churches in the land and said: "I am proud that from the period of the Civil War and a little before, when the cause of the emancipation of the slave was the foremost question of the time and was only settled by the horrors of a long struggle--from that time I espoused the cause of woman suffrage. I hope there will be no need to fight for it as we fought during those long years but at least there should be a war of words until women have the power to deposit a ballot, until they have complete enfranchisement. Your case is just; yours is a righteous cause. I cannot help believing that the exercise of the suffrage by women is necessary to the welfare and growth of the nation. Your cause stands for the home; it stands for political purity, for civic righteousness, for everything that is for the betterment of the State, and I should be guilty of high treason to my deepest convictions if I did not bid a hearty God-speed to your efforts until every State shall recognize the equality of woman before the great law of civic redemption, as God has recognized her right before the great law of human redemption."

The appointment of the usual committees was followed by a symposium on Municipal Suffrage, at this time a vital issue in Chicago, as a spirited campaign was in progress to secure a clause giving it to women in the new city charter which a convention was preparing.[49] Mrs. Ellen M. Henrotin was to preside but she yielded to Mrs. Florence Kelley, who had to leave the city, and later took Mrs. Kelley's place in presiding over the symposium on Industrial Conditions. Professor Sophonisba Breckinridge (Ky.), of Chicago University, gave an able address on Municipal Housekeeping, saying in the course of it:

In all the things that make the city a good place in which to work, the woman is as much concerned as any one. When it comes to the questions which affect women, she has of course a peculiar ability to speak, a peculiar responsibility and an obligation to assume every right necessary to carry out that responsibility. It is incumbent upon her to secure the power to move in the most direct way upon the obstacles which lie in her path in the controlling of conditions.... It is to the housekeeper that I want to call your attention, rather than to the working woman. She has to decide how she will use her time, energy and money to promote the life, health, comfort and welfare of her family. The little group must live in a house. If she resides in a city, it is a matter of concern what shall be the structure of it, whether made of material endangering the household or not; if in an apartment house, she is concerned in the regulations under which such houses are built and controlled, in the fire escapes, the sort of gas, the dimensions of the apartments, the order of the rooms, the plumbing, etc.

It is obvious that today no woman can be a competent housekeeper unless she has an intelligent knowledge of these subjects. She must exercise a control over the ordinances and have something to say about the men who make these ordinances and who enforce them. She has not the power she needs as a housekeeper unless she feels that the officials of the city are as much responsible to her, although they are not chosen by her alone, as are the domestic servants whom she does select. Her collective responsibility is just as great as her individual responsibility.... Women cannot stop either at the bottom or the top by asking for Municipal suffrage. If woman is going to be a complete housekeeper she must be a member of a political group and that leads to the demand for Municipal, State and Federal suffrage.

Miss Kate M. Gordon (La.) told of the remarkable work the women of New Orleans had been able to do with their taxpayers' right to vote on matters of special taxation. "If the women of one part of the country more than another need the suffrage," she declared, "it is those of the South." The Chicago Tribune commented: "As Miss Gordon sat down all the women clapped, many waved handkerchiefs and the applause continued several minutes." Mrs. Lilla Day Monroe described the excellent effects of the Municipal suffrage enjoyed by all women in Kansas, the only State where it existed in full. She called attention to the fact that the next day, February 15, would be the 20th anniversary of its granting by the Legislature. Miss Anna E. Nicholes of Chicago spoke on The Ballot for Working Women, saying in part:

The women who work in our city have a special claim to Municipal enfranchisement, inasmuch as they not only help create Chicago's wealth but are subject to the industrial conditions regulated by the city voters....

Legislation is becoming more and more industrial in its aspect. Abating sweating and its evils, inspection of toilets, hygienic conditions in shops are now matters frequently controlled by our city fathers. Women are more and more coming into the industrial field. The 5,000,000 now gainfully employed in the United States represent one-fifth of the total number of wage-earners and this number are non-voters. This is a serious handicap to labor in its efforts to secure humane industrial legislation.... To these working women this matter of suffrage is an economic question--a bread-and-butter necessity. It is a fact, acknowledged by many large employers of labor and stated also by Carroll D. Wright in Government bulletins, that one of the leading reasons for the preference of women wage-earners to men is that they can be secured more cheaply. Employers are frank in acknowledging that the women work for less, that they are more reliable, more temperate, less inclined to strike and more faithful.

It was quite as much for the industrial opportunity as for maintaining personal liberty that Lincoln insisted on the necessity of enfranchising the negroes. Such prominent economists as the Webbs of England, Carroll D. Wright and Richard T. Ely of our own country state that woman's lack of the ballot is one of the determining causes in placing her in the ranks of the cheap laborer with all its attending evils. So placed she becomes a menace in industry and drags down the wages of the men. At the last convention of the American Federation of Labor this necessity of the ballot for the working woman was recognized when the resolution was adopted stating that woman would never come into the full wage scale until she came into her full rights of citizenship.... To the large body of women in our city who have to shift for themselves as completely as men do Municipal suffrage would mean a higher rating industrially, a fairer compensation for their labor and more possible living conditions.

Mrs. Kelley, who, as executive secretary of the National Consumers' League for years and before that as State Factory Inspector of Illinois, had an unsurpassed knowledge of the conditions that affect women and children, gave a scathing review of the failure of Congress to enact protective laws and of the reactionary decisions of Supreme Courts. "Do we ask what this has to do with Municipal suffrage?" she inquired and answered:

If we are not to be given power to help determine our own laws by electing men to Congress in the larger field of the republic; and if, one by one, the States are to repeal or annul the legislation that once gave some slender protection to women and youth, there remains at least the city. It should be our immediate demand that in all matters of the life of a city we shall have a word. The greatest numbers of working people are in the cities. If our boards of health, our school boards, our street-cleaning departments, our water boards--if all these local bodies which have most to do with the health of working people, as with the health of other people, in the great centers of population--can be given the additional stimulus which comes from the lively interest of women, (both those who support themselves and those who have more leisure), then a very large proportion of the working women can have more adequate care for life and health and the children will have education beyond that which we have as yet achieved.

Does any one here believe that if the women had power to make themselves felt in the administration of school affairs we should have 80,000 children on half-time in New York City? Truly, if the mothers of these school children, as well as their fathers, spoke in the elections, the interest in the schools would be quite a different one. Does any one believe that if the women of this community could make themselves felt more effectively than by "persuasion," if they could make their will felt, we should have such a smoky sky as characterizes Chicago? Does any one believe that we should have to boil all the water before we dared to drink it? It would make a vast difference if women in American cities could enforce their will and conscience by the ballot instead of by the indefinitely slow work of persuasion.

The first evening was devoted to a more extended welcome and to the president's address. On behalf of the city Dr. Howard S. Taylor represented Mayor Edward F. Dunne and in an eloquent speech he reviewed the various epochs in the country's history. "Take, for instance," he said, "the first chapter, when the old Liberty Bell clanged out to the world the doctrine that 'all men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and to secure these rights governments are established among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.' There is no casuistry, however dextrous, that can take woman out of that charter." He referred to pioneer days and the heavy part borne by women and said: "But when the foundations had been established and the pioneer fathers got down to writing the constitutions they left the pioneer mothers out." He spoke of the time in the '50's when "the Government invited the people from all over the world to come and help us settle our political, social and commercial questions but did not invite American mothers, sisters, wives and daughters." "Then came the Civil War," he said, "and the large part taken in it by women and when the war was over the Government made the great army of emancipated slaves citizens and gave the men the ballot but forgot the patriotic white women of the country." "I know," he said in conclusion, "that if the women of Chicago and Illinois were enfranchised the corruption of the city council and the Legislature would be much less than it is. We should have a higher state of morals among public men and better laws on the statute books."

When the speaker finished Dr. Shaw observed: "We ought to thank Mayor Dunne for substituting a man like Dr. Taylor for himself." This brought Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch to her feet to say: "Mayor Dunne would have made just as good a suffrage speech as Dr. Taylor." "I did not intend any reflection on the Mayor," answered Dr. Shaw with a quiet smile, "but I think he showed excellent judgment."

The Chicago Woman's Club of over a thousand members, a recognized force in the great city, sent its greetings through its president, Mrs. Gertrude E. Blackwelder. Mrs. Minnie E. Watkins, as president of the State Federation of Women's Clubs, gave a welcome in the name of its membership of 294 clubs and told of the increasing growth of suffrage sentiment among them. "Through the work of our Industrial, Civil Service and Legislative Committees," she said, "we have learned our need of the ballot." The Rev. Charles R. Henderson, Professor of Sociology, an earnest suffragist, welcomed the convention, saying in part:

As I am to represent the University of Chicago, it will not do for me to make a speech on either side. No one person can represent the sentiments of four hundred men, who all the time are in an attitude of friendly hostility to anything that comes up. I think, however, there is one point of sympathy with us who are engaged in the work of investigation, trying to get beyond the frontier of present knowledge of all the sciences. It is this: As soon as anything comes to be in the possession of the majority, it loses interest for us; as long as there is something to do, we are interested in it. When the effort for woman suffrage is a thing of the past, then the people will take care of it. Our duty is to make the public sentiment and let some one else put it into legal form....

They say that women cannot manage the great questions of government. That has yet to be submitted to the final scientific test of experiment. As a matter of fact, today the one highest, finest, noblest task of society, if not of government, is the task of education and the inculcation of religion and of ideals; and in this land, which in most respects leads all lands, woman has the first word in this matter, as hers is the strongest and the wisest word, and her influence, her thought and her character lead upward and on. I need not, in this presence, argue the question.

I do not speak merely for the University of Chicago. I am proud to belong to a university of letters, a republic that has its branches in all parts of the civilized world. And I am glad that, from the time I started to learn to read, in my own education in this Middle West, from my childhood with my mother, through the church, the Sunday school, the elementary and secondary schools, the college and now the university, I have seen women side by side with men, sharing the same teaching and having the same teachers. That is what we stand for in the Middle West.... The foundation of our institutions throughout the West is this fundamental law, not to be changed, that if there is any advantage to be had, women shall have it now and forever.

Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, national recording secretary, and Miss Jane Campbell, secretary of the Pennsylvania Association, responded. The Hon. Oliver W. Stewart spoke on The Logic of Popular Government. He pointed out that there has been a steady movement of mankind toward government by the people for the people and said in part:

In our own country we can see this growth clearly. Take the election of the President. There was at first no thought that the people should elect him but do you not see how quickly they assimilated the machinery which was provided? We have not changed the machinery but we have changed the spirit, so that instead of the electoral college deliberating and choosing a President, it is scarcely more than a stenographer to take the dictation of the public. The people have absorbed the power themselves, and you can write it as true that they do not surrender any power which they have acquired as the result of their own struggles. If any change should come it would be to give the people a more direct voice rather than a more indirect voice. Take the change in the convention system toward direct primaries. Do you not see how, in spite of politicians, the people have been writing direct primary laws? It is a part of the general movement toward popular government....

There is a steady drift in this direction the world over and it would be an anomalous condition if that movement could exist and there could be at the same time a retrograde movement as to the rights of women.... I have grown philosophical with reference to the temporary defeats that we suffer. The thing to do is to commiserate those who bring about the defeats. I look at the black disgrace with which they will live in history who said they would die for their own rights and yet were tyrants enough to deny the rights of others.... The hour is quickly coming when the genius of our government, where it is true to itself, will have to give the ballot to womankind. May that day come speedily!

This was Dr. Shaw's 60th birthday and many pleasant references had been made to it by the delegates. She began her president's address by saying: "We have never before been more enthusiastic than today. Victory has not come in the United States but we are not working for ourselves alone. Wherever freedom comes to any woman that is our victory and when the new constitution of Finland granted absolute equality to its woman citizens, that was our victory." Municipal suffrage had been given to the women of Natal, South Africa, she said: "and now at the foot of Mt. Ararat, where the ark rested, the Catholicos, or High Priest of that conservative people and religion, the Armenians, has issued an edict that the women of the church shall not only have a voice in the election of its officers but also shall be eligible to official position." She referred to the recent defeat of the suffrage amendment in Oregon and said: "All honor to those 37,000 men who voted for it; their descendants will not be ashamed of their fathers' act. There are today organizations of Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution and there will some day be one of 'Sons and Daughters of the Evolution of Women's Freedom,' but there will never be one of the Tories who fought against that Revolution or this Evolution," and she continued:

This year I took for my motto those splendid words: "Truth loses many battles but always wins its war." We did not win save as those who fight for the truth are always the people who win. There never was, there never will be greater defeat in any human life than the victory which comes to the man or woman who is fighting against the truth, and there never can be a greater victory to any human soul than the fact that it is fighting for the truth, whether it wins or not.... This has been a year of victory in that more women have been enfranchised than in any preceding year. We have the largest membership that we have ever had. We come together in hope and in the firm determination that we will fight it out on this line if it takes all summer and all the summers of our life, and then the battle will not be finished unless the victory is absolutely won for all women.... While we have cause to rejoice we have also cause for sorrow. As an organization it has been the saddest year we have known or ever can know, for there has gone out from among us the visible presence of her who was our leader for over fifty years, and I have just come with others directly from the home in Rochester where we attended the funeral services of the dear sister Mary, who was the first of the two to enter the movement and was always the faithful co-worker and home-maker. Both have folded their hands in rest since our last convention. Each gave her whole life to the cause of woman and each in passing away left all she had to this cause. The sorrow is ours, the peace and the triumphal reward of loving service are theirs. I hope we shall spend no time in mourning and turning to the past but with our faces toward the future, strengthened by the inspiration we have received from our great leader, go on fighting her battle and God's battle until the complete victory is won.

With two exceptions this was the only national convention during the thirty-nine years that had not been animated by the presence of Miss Anthony and the second day--February 15, her 87th birthday--was largely devoted to her.[50] There were three reports on Memorials. One was presented by Mrs. May Wright Sewall (Ind.) for the Executive Committee of the National Council of Women and contemplated a bust to be executed in marble by the sculptor, Adelaide Johnson, who had made the one in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. A second was presented by Mrs. Mary T. Lewis Gannett of Rochester, N. Y., for an Anthony Memorial Building for the women students of the university of that city, who had been admitted largely through the effort of Miss Anthony. [Life and Work, page 1221.] A third was for a $100,000 Memorial Fund for the work of the National American Association. The report of the committee for this third fund, which was presented by Mrs. Avery, stated that the nearness of success for woman suffrage now depended on securing the money to do the necessary work of propaganda, organization, publicity, etc., and that the most fitting memorial to Miss Anthony would be a fund of not less than $100,000 to be used exclusively for "the furtherance of the woman suffrage cause in the United States in such amounts and for such purposes as the general officers of the association shall from time to time deem best." It also provided that the officers should be permitted to select eleven women to act as trustees of this fund, six of whom should be from the official board. This report was unanimously adopted. Mrs. Upton, the national treasurer, at once appealed for pledges and the delegates responded with about $24,000. The business committee of the association elected as its six members Dr. Shaw, Mrs. Avery, Mrs. Upton, Miss Blackwell, Miss Gordon and Miss Clay. Mrs. Henry Villard of New York; Mrs. Pauline Agassiz Shaw of Boston and Miss Jane Addams of Chicago were the only others selected.[51]

According to the custom for a number of years Miss Lucy E. Anthony was requested to present in the name of the association framed portraits of Miss Anthony to various institutions--in this instance to Hull House and the Chicago Political Equality League. Telegrams were received from the Mayor of Des Moines, Ia.; from the Utah Council of Suffrage Women; from the Interurban Woman Suffrage Council of Greater New York, saying they had observed the day by opening headquarters, and from a number of other sources telling that the birthday was being celebrated in ways that would have been pleasing to Miss Anthony.

The evening memorial services were beautiful and impressive. Mason Slade at the organ rendered the great chorus--Guilmant; Cantilene--Wheeldon; Marche Militaire--Schubert. The Rev. Mecca Marie Varney of Chicago offered prayer. During the evening Miss Marie Ludwig gave an exquisite harp solo and Mrs. Jennie F. W. Johnson sang with deep feeling Tennyson's Crossing the Bar, a favorite poem of Miss Anthony's. A telegram of greeting from the International Woman Suffrage Alliance was sent through its president, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt. A tribute of an intimate and loving nature was paid by Miss Emily Howland of Sherwood, a friend of half a century, in which she said: "The first time I ever met Miss Anthony was at an anti-slavery meeting in my own shire town of Auburn, N. Y., which was broken up by a mob and we took refuge with Mrs. Martha Wright, a sister of Lucretia Mott." She spoke of Miss Anthony's "genius for friendship" and quoted the lines: "The bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the daring." Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery gave a number of instances during their travel in Europe which showed Miss Anthony's strong humanitarianism.

Mrs. Fannie Barrier Williams of Chicago paid touching tribute in behalf of the colored people, in which she said: "My presence on this platform shows that the gracious spirit of Miss Anthony still survives in her followers.... When Miss Anthony took up the cause of women she did not know them by their color, nationality, creed or birth, she stood only for the emancipation of women from the thraldom of sex. She became an invincible champion of anti-slavery. In the half century of her unremitting struggle for liberty, more liberty, and complete liberty for negro men and women in chains and for white women in their helpless subjection to man's laws, she never wavered, never doubted, never compromised. She held it to be mockery to ask man or woman to be happy or contented if not free. She saw no substitute for liberty. When slavery was overthrown and the work of reconstruction began she was still unwearied and watchful. She had an intimate acquaintance with the leading statesmen of the times. Her judgment and advice were respected and heard in much of the legislation that gave a status of citizenship to the millions of slaves set free."

The principal address was made by the Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones of Chicago, a devoted friend, with whose courageous and independent spirit Miss Anthony had been in deep sympathy.[52] Tributes were paid to other devoted adherents to the cause who had died during the year and Henry B. Blackwell in closing his own said: "The workers pass on but the work remains." Dr. Shaw took up the words, making them the text of a beautiful memorial address, calling the long list one by one, beginning with the Anthony sisters and Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker and naming among the other veteran workers: Rosa L. Segur, Ohio; Emily B. Ketcham, Michigan; the Hon. H. S. Greenleaf, Professor Henry A. Ward, Eliza Thayer, Emogene Dewey and Mrs. James Sargent, New York; Virginia Durant Young, South Carolina; Ellen Powell Thompson, District of Columbia; Laura Moore, Vermont; Mrs. Henry W. Blair and Mrs. Oliver Branch, New Hampshire; Susan W. Lippincott, New Jersey, and many others.

The all-pervading spirit of the convention was that of carrying forward Miss Anthony's work. The board of officers was re-elected almost unanimously except that Dr. Jeffreys Myers, who wished to retire as second auditor, was replaced by Mrs. Mary S. Sperry of San Francisco. Mrs. Avery, for twenty-one years corresponding secretary, had returned from a long sojourn in Europe and the desire was so strong to have her on the board again that the office of second vice-president was created. At Mrs. Florence Kelley's insistence she was allowed to yield the first vice-presidency to Mrs. Avery and take the second place as having less responsibility.

The report of the headquarters secretary, Miss Elizabeth J. Hauser, told of the sending out of 19,000 letters and 182,264 pieces of literature within the year. It gave the names of many eminent men and women who were contributors to this literature, much of which first appeared in prominent magazines and newspapers, and spoke of the excellent propaganda work of The Public, edited by Louis F. Post. It emphasized the important accession of the North American Review and the Harper publications, which had come under the management of Colonel George Harvey. The report told of the bequest of Miss Anthony to the National American Association of all the remaining bound volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage, which had been sent to the headquarters and weighed ten tons.[53] Fifty sets had been sold during the year. Files of the Reports of the national conventions from 1900 to 1906 inclusive had been placed in one hundred of the largest libraries in the United States. The association arranged with Mrs. Harper for the exclusive sale of the Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony. The convention voted that Progress, edited by Mrs. Upton, should be changed to a weekly and enlarged, and every suffrage club was urged to subscribe for Jus Suffragii, the official paper of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. Thousands of copies of new and valuable literature had been sold. After the press work was turned over to the headquarters 1,200 copies of articles of national interest were supplied each week to the fifty-eight State chairmen of the press committee from July to January and 28,875 copies of 118 news items and 50 special articles were sent to prominent newspapers.

The important work with organizations and their conventions was not neglected and during the past year they were asked specifically for a resolution calling on Congress to submit a Federal Woman Suffrage Amendment, with the following result:

The American Federation of Labor at its annual meeting in Minneapolis covered this request in a series of carefully worded resolutions. Other important organizations which gave official endorsement within the year are the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union, National Purity Conference, National Free Baptist Woman's Missionary Society, Spiritualists of the United States and Canada, Ladies of the Modern Maccabees, International Brotherhood of Bookbinders, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Patrons of Husbandry, National Grange, and the United Mine Workers of America. To these we may add the fourteen other national organizations reported in previous years which have received fraternal delegates from our association or given formal endorsement, making a total of twenty-five large associations which responded favorably to our "convention resolutions" requests.

For the first time the General Federation of Women's Clubs invited our president to take part in the program at the Biennial. Resolutions have been reported to headquarters from the State W. C. T. U.'s of seven States; the Letter Carriers' Associations of Illinois, Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania; the State Granges of thirteen States; the State Federations of Labor of fifteen States. The Prohibitionists of eight States have had woman suffrage in their party platforms; the Socialists always declare for it and in California the Democrats, the Independence League and the Union Labor parties incorporated planks in their State platforms. The State Teachers' Associations of California and Illinois, the Sons of Temperance of Connecticut and Illinois, the Good Templars of Maine, the Congress of Mothers and the Federations of Women's Clubs of Illinois and New Hampshire are among other organizations which have acted favorably on some phase of the woman suffrage question.[54]

Saturday afternoon was devoted entirely to social affairs. They began with a luncheon given at Hull House by Miss Jane Addams to officers, delegates and alternates, after which the activities of this remarkable institution were explained. Systematic sight-seeing was carried out, groups of the guests being personally conducted to the Field Columbian Museum, the Art Museum, the big department stores and other points of interest. One group went to Chicago University, where Dr. Shaw addressed the students of the Women's Union and the College Girls' Suffrage Club. Afterwards they were entertained by the Dean of Women, Miss Marian Talbot. In the evening the Chicago Woman's Club gave a large reception, its president, Mrs. Blackwelder, and the chairman of the Social Committee, Miss Clara Dixon, being assisted in receiving by the officers of the association. Its handsome club rooms in the Fine Arts Building were placed at the service of the delegates throughout the convention.

Ministers of Chicago who opened the sessions with prayers were Dr. J. A. Rondthaler of the Normal Park Presbyterian Church; Dr. Austin K. de Blois of the First Baptist Church, and the Rev. Jean F. Loba of the First Congregational Church, Evanston. A number of pulpits in the city were filled by officers and delegates Sunday morning. The Studebaker Theater was taken for the regular service of the convention in the afternoon in order to accommodate the large audience. The Rev. Kate Hughes of Chicago offered prayer. Dr. Shaw presided and read a message from Miss Mary S. Anthony dictated a few days before her death, when Miss Shaw asked her what word she would like to send to the convention. It said in part:

Until we, a so-called Christian nation, put into practice those principles of justice which we claim are the foundation of our national greatness, we cannot hope to inspire confidence in the people of the world in our lofty pretensions of freedom and fair play for all. The wrong which today outranks all others is the disfranchisement of the mothers of the race. So long as this injustice toward women continues, just so long will men fail to recognize justice in its application to each other. This one question puts all else into the background and until we can establish equality between men and women we shall never realize the full development of which manhood and womanhood are capable. Because I believe this so thoroughly I have given the best of myself and the best work of my life to help obtain political freedom for women, knowing that upon this rests the hope not only of the freedom of men but of the onward civilization of the world. I therefore urge upon the delegates and members of the National Association not to lose courage, no matter what befalls, but to work on in hope and faith, knowing well that the time of the coming of woman's political liberty depends largely upon the zeal and unwearying service of those who believe in its justice.

The Rev. Herbert S. Bigelow of Cincinnati in a strong address showed the Value of the Ballot. Miss Addams told with much feeling of the recent campaign for the Municipal franchise, the objections they had to meet, the character of the opposition and how hard it was for women to be patient.

Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch gave an able address under the title "Why Not?" a study in Prejudice and Superstition, reviewing the objections to woman suffrage and finding their origin in Orientalism, in the military ideal, in political expediency. He ended his refutation of all of them by saying: "All our American institutions will be protected and benefited when we open the doors and give women, who never should have been denied it, the right to govern themselves, to govern the country in conjunction with men and to decide the issues that affect their own interests. Men have had this right for themselves alone too long. The day will come, my sisters, when the conscience of the world will be aroused to such a degree that no one will dare question the justice of your movement."

Many greetings were received through letters, telegrams and fraternal delegates. Prof. John A. Scott, representing president A. M. Harris of Northwestern University, Evanston, brought an invitation for speakers to address the students and Miss Gordon and Miss Caroline Lexow responded. In his greeting Professor Scott said: "I believe in woman suffrage because I believe in the home.... I don't care a whit for the argument that women with property should have a vote. Property will always be represented and it does not so much matter whether the property-holding women have a vote or not but it is of immense importance to those women who work for their living. That they have no representation is a great menace to those who are nominally free but who must compete with slaves. Women are economic entities and they should be represented. Labor without representation is as wrong as taxation without representation."

E. M. Nockels, fraternal delegate from the American Federation of Labor, addressed the convention and read a letter from its president, Samuel Gompers, expressing the hope of universal suffrage for women. Mrs. Emma S. Olds brought greetings from the Ladies of the Maccabees of the World, and Mrs. Martin Barbe, the first vice-president, from the National Council of Jewish Women. A letter from Mrs. Mary Wood Swift (Calif.), president of the National Council of Women, gave its fraternal greetings. A cordial letter was read from Mrs. Mary B. Clay of Kentucky and telegrams from Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford, Dr. Frances Woods, Mrs. Ida Porter Boyer and the Canadian Woman Suffrage Association. Telegrams of appreciation were sent to Julia Ward Howe, Clara Barton, Caroline E. Merrick, Emily P. Collins, Col. T. W. Higginson, Margaret W. Campbell, Judith W. Smith, Caroline M. Severance, Emma J. Bartol, Armenia S. White, Elizabeth Smith Miller, Ellen S. Sargent, Sarah L. Willis and Charlotte L. Pierce, all old and beloved suffrage workers.

The symposium on Industrial Conditions of Women and Children, with Mrs. Henrotin presiding, occupied one afternoon. She pointed out the revolution in the work of women by its being taken from the home into the open market where they had to follow; described their handicaps, the immense importance of their labor, the business ability that many had developed, the property they had accumulated, the taxes they pay; she said if they had a voice in deciding how these taxes should be spent it would not only be a splendid thing for the city financially but morally, and urged that they should have the power of the suffrage. Graham Romeyn Taylor of Chicago paid high tribute to the work of women's organizations in all movements for civic improvement and described that of the Women's Clubs in Chicago; spoke of the Consumer's League also and declared the Women's Trade Union League most effective of all in bettering the condition of working women. He predicted close cooperation between this League and the National Suffrage Association. Miss Alice Henry of Australia spoke very effectively from her knowledge of the conditions of labor in her own country and the investigation she was making in the United States. Miss Casey, president of the Chicago Working Women's Suffrage Association, gave facts from personal knowledge showing their need of the vote. James C. Kelliher, former president of the National Letter Carriers' Association, spoke briefly and to the point. Miss Mary McDowell of Chicago made the principal address entitled The Working Women as a National Asset, in which she showed how little conception Congress and the Courts had of the legislation needed in their behalf and the sins of omission and commission that had resulted. In closing she said:

We need a body of facts so strong that the Judiciary will see the light. We need a body of facts that will teach housekeepers not to scorn these women because they can not get a cook. We need a body of facts to teach working men that this work of women is something which has come to stay. There are going to be more women earning their living in the future than in the past. These girls are pioneers in a movement that we do not yet quite understand. I do not believe that our Heavenly Father permits so large a movement as these five million women in one country earning their own living without there being in it something that is for the best.... As a means to our work we want the suffrage. We all get very tired of the woman question. I will discuss the human question with any one but I will not discuss the woman question, because I think that is past. If women are going into industry, if they are going to have their places of responsibility, then they must more and more meet the responsibility that their brothers have with whom they work. It is not fair to the working brother to let the girls come in and cut down the wages and have no sense of responsibility, no feeling of permanency. It is a very great danger. Therefore, working women should have the ballot to make them feel that they, too, are responsible citizens....

All reverence to the work that the suffragists have done! We have always honored dear Miss Anthony and we all owe gratitude to you women who have been so long in this cause making a way for the rest of us. The working women are joining your ranks because they know that they must do so.

The report of the Congressional Committee, Mrs. Catt chairman, was read by Mrs. Kelley. It said that after the excellent hearings before the committees of Congress the preceding winter had no effect it was decided to ask the cooperation of the General Federation of Women's Clubs. This was done and its Industrial Advisory Board agreed to send out a circular letter. The association's Congressional Committee prepared one which the federation's board sent to 4,000 individual clubs asking them to question the members of Congress from their districts as to their opinion of a Federal Woman Suffrage Amendment and the request was largely complied with. A resolution was adopted that the association urge concerted action among the State auxiliaries to secure the submission by Congress of a Sixteenth Amendment forbidding disfranchisement on account of sex and that they be recommended to make it a feature of their work to obtain from their Legislatures a resolution in favor of such an amendment. A telegram of greeting was sent to Mrs. Catt and she was appointed fraternal delegate to the Peace Conference in New York in April.

Hard and conscientious work was shown in the reports of the chairmen of all the committees: Legislation for Civil Rights, Mrs. Lucretia L. Blankenburg; Peace and Arbitration, Mrs. Lucia Ames Mead; Presidential Suffrage, Henry B. Blackwell; Libraries, Mrs. Ida Porter Boyer; Literature, Miss Alice Stone Blackwell; Enrollment, Mrs. Oreola Williams Haskell; Membership, Miss Laura Clay, and others. Miss Clay urged that the organization of the political parties be taken as a model by the suffrage societies. As usual the State reports were among the most interesting features of the convention, for they gave in detail the nation-wide work that was being done for woman suffrage. At this time that of Oklahoma, Mrs. Kate L. Biggars, president, had a prominent place, as the association had been helping its women during the past year in an effort to have the convention which was framing a constitution for statehood put in a clause for woman suffrage. A corps of able national workers was there for months while the most strenuous work was done but the only result was the franchise on school matters.

The report on Oregon was read by the corresponding secretary, Miss Gordon. The campaign there for a woman suffrage amendment to the State constitution was possibly the most strenuous that had ever been made for this purpose and the National Association had given more assistance, financial and otherwise, than to any other, a number of its officers going there in person. Among them were Miss Clay and Miss Gordon, who made full reports.[55]

The report of Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, national treasurer, showed that the receipts of the association for 1906 had been $18,203 and it had expended on the Oregon campaign $18,075, a sum equal to its year's income. A portion of the money, however, was taken from the reserve fund and $8,000 had been subscribed directly for this campaign by individuals and States. The total disbursements for the year had been $25,933. The power of the association to rise above defeat and its courage and determination, so many times shown, were strikingly illustrated on this occasion when the convention voted to raise a fund of $100,000 and pledged $24,000 of this amount before it adjourned.

The Resolutions presented by Mr. Blackwell, chairman of the committee, covered a wide range of subjects, among them the following:

In view of the fact that in only 14 of our States have married mothers any legal right to the custody, control and earnings of their minor children, we urge the women of the other States to work for laws giving to mothers equal rights with fathers.

The traffic in women and girls which is carried on in the United States and in other countries is a heinous blot upon civilization and we demand of Congress and our State Legislatures that every possible step be taken to suppress the infamous traffic in this country.

We urge upon Congress and State Legislatures the enactment of laws prohibiting the employment of children under 16 years of age in mines, stores or factories.

We favor the adoption of State amendments establishing direct legislation by the voters through the initiative and referendum.

Inasmuch as in the second Hague Peace Conference there will be offered the greatest opportunity in human history to lessen the burden of militarism, therefore we request the President of the United States to approve the recommendations for the action of that conference which were presented by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, to-wit: (1) An advisory world congress; (2) a general arbitration treaty; (3) the limitation of armaments; (4) protection of private property at sea in time of war; (5) investigation by an impartial commission of difficulties between nations before declaration of hostilities.

The convention at one evening session listened to interesting addresses by Mrs. Mary E. Coggeshall, president of the Iowa Suffrage Association, Then and Now; Professor Emma M. Perkins of Western Reserve University (Ohio), Educational Ideals; Louis F. Post, editor of The Public, The Denatured Woman. Mrs. Avery gave a much enjoyed report of the Congress of the International Suffrage Alliance in Copenhagen the preceding August. On the last evening addresses were made by John Z. White of Chicago; Mrs. Upton on What Next? Miss Lexow on The Place of Equal Suffrage in Higher Education. Dr. Shaw closed the convention with a few eloquent words of encouragement, hope and prophecy for the success of the cause to which they gladly gave to the utmost their time, their labor and the best of everything they possessed.

FOOTNOTES:

[48] Part of Call: The friends of equal rights will come together on this occasion with an outlook even more than usually bright. During the last year full suffrage has been granted to the women of Finland, the greatest victory since full national suffrage was given to the women of Federated Australia in 1902. Within the past year the Municipal franchise has been given to women in Natal, South Africa; national associations have been organized in Hungary, Italy and Russia and the reports at the recent meeting of the International Alliance at Copenhagen showed a remarkable increase in the agitation for woman suffrage all over Europe. In England, out of the 670 members of the present House of Commons, 420 are pledged to its support.

In the United States widely circulated newspapers and magazines representing the most opposite political views have lately declared for woman suffrage; the National Grange and the American Federation of Labor have unanimously endorsed it. In Chicago 87 organizations with an aggregate membership of 10,000 women have petitioned for a Municipal suffrage clause in the new charter and the men and women most prominent in the city's good works are supporting the plea.

Men and women are natural complements of one another. American political life today is marked by executive force and business ability, qualities in which men are strong, but it is often lacking in conscience and humanity. These a larger infusion of the mother element would supply. We believe that men and women in co-operation can accomplish better work than either sex alone....

ANNA HOWARD SHAW, President. FLORENCE KELLEY, Vice-President-at-Large. KATE M. GORDON, Corresponding Secretary. ALICE STONE BLACKWELL, Recording Secretary. HARRIET TAYLOR UPTON, Treasurer. LAURA CLAY, } ANNICE JEFFREYS MYERS, } Auditors.

[49] The proposition was defeated during the suffrage convention by a tie, with the chairman, Milton J. Foreman, giving the deciding vote against it. [See Illinois, Volume VI.]

[50] Miss Anthony helped arrange for the first National Woman Suffrage Convention and it was held in Washington in January, 1869. From that time to 1906 she missed but two of these annual meetings, when she was speaking in the far West under the auspices of a lecture bureau, and each time she sent the proceeds of a week's lectures as her contribution.

[51] Through lack of initiative and effort the money for the bust was never raised. For Mrs. Gannett's report and other matter about the Memorial Building see the Appendix to this chapter. See also page 442, Volume VI. Reports on the Memorial Fund were made to the convention year after year. The intention at first was to create a fund and use only the interest but immediate demands were so urgent that the money subscribed was appropriated as needed and an audited account given by the national treasurer at each annual convention.

[52] In the Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony Chapter LXXIV begins: "The death of no woman ever called forth so wide an editorial comment as that of Miss Anthony, except possibly that of Queen Victoria, whose years in public life numbered about the same. On the desk where this is written are almost one thousand editorials, representing all the papers of consequence in the United States and many in other countries, and they form what may be accepted without reserve as the consensus of thought in the early years of the twentieth century in regard to Miss Anthony and the work she accomplished."

Over eighty pages of extracts from these editorials are given and several memorial poems. A large number of magazines in this and other countries contained sketches and articles from which quotations are made. Tributes of her biographer were published in the April numbers of the Review of Reviews and the North American Review, and on the week following her death in Collier's and the New York Independent.

In Chapter LXXI and following in the Biography are full accounts of Miss Anthony's death and funeral services.

[53] By vote of the convention these volumes were to be presented to the club or individual member under whose auspices a new club of not less than twenty paid up members had been formed and remained in active existence for not less than a year and was properly certified. The following year the Executive Committee voted to place 300 sets in public libraries.

[54] This work was continued year after year until the list became far too large to publish. Not one organization, save a few connected with the liquor business, ever adopted a resolution against woman suffrage except the anti-suffrage societies themselves.

[55] One of the striking features of the recent national suffrage convention in Chicago was the large number of very close votes on woman suffrage bills that were announced from different States, all taking place at about the same time. While the convention was in session, the Chicago charter convention defeated woman suffrage by a tie vote. The Nebraska delegates got word that it had been lost in their Lower House by a vote of 47 to 46, with a tie in the Senate. In the Oklahoma constitutional convention, where the gambling and liquor forces as usual lined up against woman suffrage, it came so near passing that a change of seven votes would have carried it. In the West Virginia Legislature, where the last time it was smothered in committee, the House vote this time stood 38 yeas to 24 nays. In South Dakota the measure passed the Senate and came so near passing the House that a change of seven votes would have carried it. In the Minnesota House the vote showed a small majority for suffrage but not the constitutional one required. All these close legislative votes followed hard upon the remarkable vote in Vermont, where the suffrage bill passed the House 130 to 25 and came so near passing the Senate that a change of three votes would have carried it.--Woman's Journal.

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VIII. NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1908

The Fortieth annual convention, Oct. 15-21, 1908, celebrated a notable event, as it was the 60th anniversary of the first Woman's Rights Convention, that famous gathering of July 19-20, 1848, in Seneca Falls, N. Y., the home of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The celebration was appropriately held in Buffalo, the largest city in the western part of the State, and was one of the most interesting and successful of the organization's many conventions.[56] The evening before it opened the president and directors of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy gave a large reception to the officers, delegates, members and friends of the association.

The convention met in the Young Men's Christian Association building but this proved to be entirely too small for the evening sessions, which were held in the large Central Presbyterian Church. The excellent program was the work of Miss Kate Gordon, national corresponding secretary, and the admirable arrangements were due to Mrs. Richard Williams, president for the past eight years of the Political Equality Club, with a corps of local helpers, but an accident on the first day prevented her from welcoming the convention or taking part in its proceedings. With the national president, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, in the chair, it was opened with prayer by the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell.[57] Mrs. Helen Z. M. Rodgers, a lawyer of Buffalo, extended a welcome from women in the professions, who, she said, "had only penetrated the ante-rooms and the annexes--the teachers never able to reach the salaries paid to men; the doctors shut out from the advantage of hospital positions; the lawyers allowed to help interpret the laws but not to help make them." "To get much further," she said, "we must be invested with full citizenship."

Mrs. John Miller Horton gave a cordial welcome for the City Federation of Women's Clubs, of which she was president, and for the Buffalo Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Niagara Frontier Chapter of the Daughters of 1812 and the Nellie Custis Branch of the Children of the Revolution, as regent of each of them. She presented to Dr. Shaw a large cluster of American Beauty roses tied with the blue and gold of the federation and the blue and white of the D. A. R., which was accepted in the name of Susan B. Anthony and reverently laid over her portrait that stood on an easel. Dr. Ida C. Bender, president of the Women Teachers' Association, spoke earnestly in behalf of "the army of teachers who are training the future citizens of the republic," and Dr. Shaw commented: "Political nonentities can hardly be expected to inspire a political entity with enthusiasm."

The Western Federation of Women's Clubs gave its welcome through its president, Mrs. Nettie Rogers Shuler, of whom the Woman's Journal said: "She spoke with an accent of unaffected sincerity and self-forgetfulness that recalled the spirit of the pioneers." She referred with pride to the fact that this organization, with nearly 100 clubs and about 32,000 members, was the first Federation of Women's Clubs to admit suffrage societies. Mrs. Lucretia L. Blankenburg, president of the Pennsylvania Suffrage Association and officer of the General Federation, brought its greeting, the first it had ever sent to a national suffrage convention. Mrs. Frances W. Graham, president of the New York State Woman's Christian Temperance Union, gave its greeting and spoke of the close cooperation which had always existed between the workers for temperance and suffrage. Dr. Shaw asked that she would convey the cordial greetings and best wishes of the association to the National W. C. T. U., to whose convention in Denver she was en route. Mrs. Ella Hawley Crossett, for the sixth term president of the New York State Suffrage Association, united with Dr. Shaw in responding to the welcoming addresses and spoke with deep feeling of the courage and persistence of the pioneers and of the pride with which the State where the movement for woman suffrage had its birth welcomed the convention to celebrate the event.

Miss Emily Howland of Sherwood, N. Y., reformer, educator and philanthropist, a co-worker and friend of the early suffragists, gave a delightful address on The Spirit of 1848, "herself a living embodiment of that spirit," in which she said:

"Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends!" These are the words that come to me as I essay to speak of the Spirit of '48! Was it not something of this love which inspired that immortal Declaration made at the Woman's Rights Convention on July 19-20, 1848? "This," says Mrs. Stanton in her autobiography, "was the initial step in the most momentous reform that has yet been launched upon the world--the first organized protest against the injustice which had brooded for ages over the character and destiny of one-half of the race. No words could express our astonishment on finding a few days afterward that what seemed to us so timely, so rational and so sacred should be a subject for sarcasm and ridicule in the entire press of the nation. The anti-slavery papers alone stood by us manfully."

The Declaration had been signed by many, the audiences being large, but when pulpit and press ridiculed and reproved do we marvel that one by one the women withdrew their names and "joined the persecutors?" Much I fear that our own organization would shrivel to pitiful proportions if today submitted to the ordeal from which they recoiled. Indeed even Mrs. Stanton confessed that if she had had the slightest premonition of all that would follow this convention, she feared her courage would not have been equal to it. Fortunate ignorance, if she did not underrate her bravery, for she and a goodly number of the other signers were steadfast. They chose to side with truth and take the consequences.

Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery (Penn.), corresponding secretary of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, presented a long and valuable report of its recent congress in Amsterdam. [See chapter on Alliance.] The convention then adjourned for the reception given by Mrs. Horton, whose handsome home on Delaware Avenue was decorated with American Beauty roses, the dining room with yellow chrysanthemums. She was assisted in receiving by Dr. Shaw, Mrs. Crossett and Mrs. Allison S. Capwell, president of the Erie County Suffrage Association.

At the evening session Mrs. Elizabeth Smith Miller (N. Y.), presided, daughter of Gerrit Smith, who was a staunch advocate of woman suffrage from the time the movement for it began. Hundreds were turned away for lack of room. The convention was officially welcomed to the city by Mayor J. N. Adams and the welcome on the part of the State was expressed by Senator Henry W. Hill, a consistent supporter of the legislative work for suffrage. The principal feature of the evening was the president's address of Dr. Shaw, of whom the report in the Buffalo Express said: "The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw has set a new standard for womanhood. She is one of the most wonderful women of her time, alert, watchful, magnetic, earnest, with a mind as quick for a joke as for the truth. She points her arguments with epigrams and tips the arrows of her persuasion with a jest.... Even the unbelievers are carried away with her brilliancy, eloquence and mental grasp." There was no adequate report of her address but she began by saying:

We are scarcely able today to understand what those brave pioneers endured to secure the things which we accept as a matter of course. They started the greatest revolution the world has ever witnessed. During these last sixty years more changes have been wrought for the benefit of women, more opportunities for education have been secured and more all-round enlightenment than in the 6,000 years preceding. There are women who accept these advantages and the positions that have been obtained because of this early movement who have no conception of what it has meant to open the highways of progress for them. Some of those who oppose the suffrage say: "These things would have come; men would have given woman these opportunities as civilization advanced." Why did they not come sooner if men were so willing? Why should they have grown more in the last sixty years than in all the years before?... But the women in all this long time of struggle have not stood entirely alone. There have always been some men to stand by their side and they owed it to do so, for ever since the world began women have stood by men in their efforts to achieve the right. Never was there a great leader who had not some woman by his side. Woman was first at the cradle, last at the cross and first at the tomb. Women have stood shoulder to shoulder with men always in their efforts.... Some tell us that we have not made great progress. It is impossible to change the attitude of all the conflicting elements of humanity in three-score years. If Christianity in 1900 years, with the teaching of such a Leader, has not yet made Peace Congresses unnecessary, what can be expected of other reforms?

The secretary's report of Miss Gordon contributed this bit of history:

At this junction of the work a question arising upon the advisability of securing a petition of a million signatures to present to President Roosevelt in order to influence a recommendation of suffrage for women in his annual message, a request was made that he receive at Oyster Bay a committee from our association. The President reasonably declined to have his vacation interrupted with committees but offered to receive our request in writing. Your secretary accordingly wrote him to the effect that we wished to know--before going to the labor and expense involved in securing such a petition--whether its influence would have any weight in leading him to recommend woman suffrage in his message. Courteously but emphatically came the reply that it would not, but at the same time extending an invitation for the National Association to appoint a committee to see him on his return to Washington. The committee appointed was composed of your national treasurer, Mrs. Upton, Mrs. Henry Dickson Bruns of New Orleans, Mrs. Katharine Reed Balentine of Maine and your corresponding secretary, and at the appointed time it was received by the President, who again reiterated his opinion on the absolute valuelessness of such a petition. In so doing he ignored what for the women of this republic is their only right--the right of petition. The interview was fruitful of no suggestion beyond the time-honored recommendation to "get another State." Women who worship as a fetish the power of this right to petition may well catalogue this fallacy with those other American fallacies that "taxation without representation is tyranny"; that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," and that the Government guarantees "equal rights for all and special privileges for none."

Miss Gordon told how the last convention had changed the plan for forty years of holding the national convention in Washington during the first session of a new Congress and therefore the corresponding secretary had been obliged to arrange for representative women to go there and have a hearing before the committees of Senate and House. Mrs. Balentine, who was staying in Washington, and Miss Emma Gillett, a lawyer of that city, took charge and hearings were granted March 3. They lacked the inspiration of the presence of delegates from all parts of the country and the convention lost the pleasure and benefit.

The Work Conferences were continued under the name of Round Table Conferences. The subjects considered were: Increase of membership; press work; 16th Amendment as a line of policy; finance; State legislative methods. An organizers' symposium discussed "A comparison of conditions today with those of ten years ago; the building of a State association; the personal touch; preliminary arrangements for meetings."

The usual comprehensive report was made by the headquarters secretary, Miss Elizabeth J. Hauser, who told of the vast amount of work done, which included the sending out of 13,000 letters and 207,410 pieces of literature, exclusive of matter for the press. Progress had been issued monthly, the Political Equality Leaflets and twenty other kinds had been published and a card catalogue of 5,696 names completed; the convention reports edited and distributed, the sales of the Life of Miss Anthony and the History of Woman Suffrage looked after and an endless amount of other work done. Miss Hauser told also of the extensive effort with organizations. Ten great national associations during 1907, twenty-four State associations and ninety-three labor unions had passed resolutions for woman suffrage, and thus far in 1908 nine national and thirty-six important State associations had done so. She gave an equally encouraging report of the work with the press, which was done through committee chairmen in thirty-two States, who had furnished thousands of articles to hundreds of newspapers. Part of this material was local but the national headquarters had supplied 69,244 pages. Suitable matter had been sent to religious, educational and other specialized papers and over a thousand letters to editors. A long list was given of the leading magazines which had published articles on woman suffrage by prominent writers during the year. The reason was that things were happening in all parts of the world directly related to this question.

Miss Hauser's report was accepted by a rising vote. She presided at the Press Conference on how to secure the publication of woman suffrage in country and in city papers; character of material; what is the greatest need in press work; should "anti" articles be answered, etc. Interesting addresses were made on Woman's Share in Productive Industry by Mrs. Anna Cadogan Etz (N. Y.); A Square Deal, by Mrs. Grace H. Ballantyne (Ia.); and one by Mrs. Clara B. Arthur, president of the Michigan State Association, reviewing the extensive work that had been done in its recent constitutional convention to secure a woman suffrage clause. Henry B. Blackwell (Mass.) began his report on Presidential Suffrage by saying: "It was the maxim of Napoleon Bonaparte to concentrate his military forces upon the point in his enemy's lines of the greatest importance and least resistance and by so doing he conquered Europe. This point in the woman suffrage battle is, under our form of government, the Presidential Suffrage, the vote for presidential electors."

The great evening of the week was the one devoted to the Commemorative Program in Honor of the 1848 Convention. This convention was called by Mrs. Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Mary Ann McClintock and Martha C. Wright--the last three Friends, or Quakers--to consider a Declaration of Sentiments and set of Resolutions which they had prepared and it adopted both.[58] Those resolutions of sixty years ago were now discussed by women who represented the two succeeding generations, still in the midst of the contest which the women who began it expected to see ended during their lifetime. The session was opened with prayer by the Rev. Olympia Brown, a veteran suffragist, and the presiding officer was Mrs. Eliza Wright Osborne (N. Y.), daughter of Martha C. Wright and niece of Lucretia Mott. Each resolution was presented and commented on in a brief, pungent speech, the speakers including Mr. Blackwell, husband of Lucy Stone, both pioneers, and another pioneer, the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, the first ordained woman minister; Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of Mrs. Stanton; Mrs. Fanny Garrison Villard, daughter of William Lloyd Garrison, a pioneer; the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer, an early leader in Rhode Island, and Miss Laura Clay, at the head of the movement in Kentucky almost from its beginning. Among the later generation were the Rev. Caroline Bartlett Crane (Mich.), Miss Julie R. Jenney (N. Y.), Mrs. Ella S. Stewart (Ill.), Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (N. Y.) and Mrs. Judith Hyams Douglas (La.).

Of most of these addresses there is no printed record. Mrs. Gilman commented on the resolution that "the laws which place woman in a position inferior to that of man are contrary to the great precept of nature," saying in part: "Woman has the same right to happiness and justice as an individual that man has and as the mother of the race she has more.... Women have a right to citizenship and to all that citizenship implies, not only for their own sake but especially because the world needs them. We have the masculine and the feminine but above them both is the human, which has nothing to do with sex. The argument for equal freedom and equal opportunities for women rests not on the law of the worthy Mr. Blackstone but on the law of nature, which is the law of God...."

Mrs. Blackwell said in response to the resolution that "as man accords to woman moral superiority it is his pre-eminent duty to encourage her to speak and teach in religious assemblies": "You cannot realize how serious a thing it was to be a minister in early days when St. Paul was taken literally. I know from personal experience that nearly all the religious world in those days believed it to be a sin for a woman to try to preach. My own mother urged me to become a foreign missionary instead; she was willing to send her daughter away to other lands rather than have her become a minister at home. At 18 I was considered as well-fitted for college as the half dozen young men among my schoolmates who were going to take a college course. At that time Oberlin, O., was the only college that admitted women. When I arrived there Lucy Stone had pretty well stirred up the whole institution. I was warned against her in advance but we soon became warm friends. One beautiful evening we walked out together and as we stood in that glorious sunset I told her that I meant to be a minister. She said: 'You can't do it; they will never let a woman be a public teacher in the church.' ... One other woman and I graduated from the theological school. For three years the authorities of the school put our names into the catalogue with a star and then they dropped us out and it took forty years to get us reinstated."

Mrs. Spencer said of the resolution that "the same transgressions should be visited with equal severity on man and woman." "Of all the notable pronunciamentos at Seneca Falls no resolutions shows a finer spiritual audacity than this. A delicious flavor of transcendentalism from beginning to end marks the phraseology. Like the Brook Farm experiment the Seneca Falls Convention was the outcome of a great wave of idealism sweeping over the world. It was seen in England and in Europe. Germany was stirring things up and Italy was seething with revolution. This new world was eager to put its idealism into immediate practical living.... Women were looking after their woman's share of it. They felt that it must be founded on spiritual ideas and this was a spiritual Declaration of Independence. We honor these pioneers because women who had been trained to follow and not to lead, and taught that wives and mothers should buy their security at the cost of a discarded fragment of their sex, dared to summon men to an equal bar and to declare that in purity, as in justice, there is no sex."

Mrs. Stewart treated with delicious wit and sarcasm the resolution of protest against "the objection of indelicacy and impropriety which is so often brought against women who address a public audience by those who encourage their appearance in the theatre and the circus." Miss Clay discussed with dignity and seriousness the resolution that "equality of human rights necessarily follows identity in capabilities and responsibilities." Mrs. Villard spoke of the great privilege of being the daughter of a reformer and said: "The cause of woman is so intimately connected with that of man that I think the men will be the gainers by its triumph even more than women." Mrs. Douglas, a brilliant young speaker from New Orleans, new to the suffrage platform, took up the resolution, "Woman has too long rested satisfied in the circumscribed limits which corrupt customs and a perverted application of the Scriptures have marked out for her, and it is time she should move in the enlarged sphere which her great Creator has assigned to her," and said in part:

Only one thing can make me see the justness of woman being classed with the idiot, the insane and the criminal and that is, if she is willing, if she is satisfied to be so classed, if she is contented to remain in the circumscribed limits which corrupt customs and perverted application of the Scriptures have marked out for her. It is idiotic not to want one's liberty; it is insane not to value one's inalienable rights and it is criminal to neglect one's God-given responsibilities. God placed woman originally in the same sphere with man, with the same inspirations and aspirations, the same emotions and intellect and accountability.... The Chinamen for centuries have taken peculiar means for restricting women's activities by binding the feet of girl babies and yet there remains the significant fact that, after centuries of constraint, God continues to send the female child into the world with feet well formed, with a foundation as substantial to stand upon as that of the male child. As in this instance, so in all cases of restriction put upon women--they do not come from God but from man, beginning at birth.... For thousands of centuries woman has heard what sphere God wanted her to move in from men, God's self-ordained proxies. The thing for woman to do is to blaze the way of her sex so thoroughly that sixteen-year-old boys in the next generation will not dare ask a scholarly woman incredulously if she really thinks women have sense enough to vote. Woman can enter into the larger sphere her great Creator has assigned her only when she has an equal voice with man in forming public opinion, which crystalizes customs; only when her voice is heard in the pulpit, applying Scripture to man and woman equally, and when it is heard in the Legislature. Only then can be realized the full import of God's words when He said, "It is not well for man to be alone."

Mrs. Douglas analyzed without mercy the pronouncements of Paul regarding women and said: "The pulpits may insist that Paul was infallible but I prefer to believe that he was human and liable to err." When she had finished Dr. Shaw remarked dryly: "I have often thought that Paul was never equalled in his advice to wife, mother and maiden aunt except by the present occupant of the Presidential chair" [Roosevelt].

To Mrs. Blatch was given the privilege of speaking to the resolution so strenuously insisted upon by her mother: "It is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise." In the course of an animated speech she said:

Mrs. Stanton was quick to see and, what is greater, quick to seize the psychological moment, and in that July of 1848 she had not only the inspiration but the determination to grasp the opportunity to set forth a resolution asking "votes for women." How clear was her vision, how perfect her sense of balance! Property rights might be gained, rights of person protected, guardianship of children achieved, but without the ballot she saw all would be insecure. What was given today might be taken away tomorrow unless women themselves possessed the power to make or remake laws. Women are getting the sense of solidarity by being crowded together in the workshop; they are learning the lesson of fellowship. Brought side by side in the college and in the business world, they are beginning to learn that they have a common interest. They know now that they form a class. The anti-suffragist is the isolated woman, she is the belated product of the 18th century. She is not intentionally, viciously selfish, she has merely not developed into 20th century fellowship. She is unrelated to our democratic society of today.... How shallow, in the face of that idea of duty in fulfilling our obligations of citizenship, sound the words of Governor Hughes that "when women want the vote they will get it!" Want it? That is no measure of social need. It was death to the nation to have slavery within its bounds but no one advised waiting until the enslaved negroes wanted to be free before this dire disease should be cured. The State needs the attention of women, their thought, their service, and so it becomes the duty of all who have the best interests of the State at heart to seek to bind women to it in closest bonds of citizenship.

In response to Resolution Eleven that, being held morally responsible, woman had therefore a right to express herself in public on all questions of morals and religion, the Rev. Mrs. Crane began with fine sarcasm: "To women has always unquestionably been allowed the being good. They are called too good to enter the slimy pool of politics. They are complimented often in the spirit of the man who said to his wife: 'Angelina, you get up and make the fire; it will seem so much warmer if laid by your fair hands!' To women is also conceded the right to be religious and unfortunately it often happens that all the religion a man has is in his wife's name. Ruskin said: 'If you don't want the kingdom of heaven to come, don't pray for it but if you do want it to come you must do more than pray for it.' Women must vote as well as pray. Whoever is able to make peace in this distracted world is the one who should be allowed to do it."

A full report of the work among the churches was made at a morning meeting by Mrs. Lucy Hobart Day (Me.), chairman of the committee, which showed that eighteen States had appointed branch committees. These had organized suffrage circles in different churches, encouraged debates among the young people, arranged meetings, distributed literature, obtained hearings before many kinds of religious bodies, secured resolutions and tried to have official recognition of women in the churches. Ministers had been requested to preach sermons in favor and many had done so, twenty-five in San Francisco alone. Mrs. Pauline Steinem (Ohio), chairman of the Committee on Education, reported on its efforts in organizing Mothers' and Parents' Clubs and working through these for suffrage; putting pictures of the pioneers in schools and securing the cooperation of the teachers for brief talks about them; supplying books containing selections from suffrage speeches, poems, etc., to be used in the schools. It was also proposed to see that text books on history and civics are written with a proper appreciation of the work of women.

Part of an afternoon was devoted to a discussion led by Dr. Rosalie Slaughter Morton (N. Y.), delegated representative of Prince Morrow and the American Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis. In an eloquent address she described the terrible devastation, especially among women and children, from diseases which until lately had been concealed and never mentioned. She attributed these conditions partly to the fact that boys and girls were left in ignorance and this was often because the mothers were ignorant. The chief cause of the wide prevalence of these diseases was the double standard of morals, the belief that a chaste life for a man is incompatible with health and that the consequences of immorality end with themselves and will not be transmitted. She urged women to unite in the demand for a higher standard of morals among men. Mrs. Gilman spoke strongly on the necessity for more vigorous measures for a quarantine of the infected and health certificates for every marriage and she laid a large share of the cause of immorality at the door of the economic dependence of women. Mrs. Florence Kelley, executive secretary of the National Consumers' League, whose life was being spent in improving the economic position of women, said: "How are we dealing with this monstrous evil? Are we going to wait patiently and rear a whole generation of children and grandchildren and trust to their gradual increase in strength of character?" She told of the mothers who bring up children in the best and wisest manner but the environment outside the home, which they have no power to shape, nullifies all their teaching. "That is a very slow way of dealing with a cancer," she said. "Women have tried for forty years to get the power to have the laws enforced and that is our greatest need today." A principal feature of this important discussion was the strong, analytical address of the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer, in the course of which she said:

The formation of the New York Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis marked an important era. For the first time the physicians as a whole assumed a social duty to promote purity. They had done it as individuals, but this was the first instance of their banding themselves together on a moral as well as a sanitary plane to enlighten the public as to the causes of social disease.... Dr. Prince Morrow should be everlastingly honored by every woman.... I consider no woman guiltless, whether she lives in a suffrage State or not, if she does not hold herself responsible for guarding less fortunate women. Corrupt custom has rent the sacred, seamless robe of womanhood and cast out part of the women, abandoning them to degradation. We must learn to recognize the responsibility of pure women for the fallen women, of the woman whose circumstances have enabled her to stand, for the woman whom adverse conditions have borne down. We should oppose the sacrifice of womanhood, whether of an innocent girl sacrificed with pomp and ceremony in church, or of a poor waif in the street; and the great protection is the ability of young girls to earn their living by congenial labor. All the social purity societies do not equal the trade schools as a preventive....

We must not look at this matter from only one point of view or say that we can do nothing about it until we are armed with the ballot. I am a suffragist but not "high church," I am a suffragist and something else. We ought to have the ballot, we are at a disadvantage in our work while we are deprived of it, but even without it we have great power. We must stamp out the traffic in womanhood, it is a survival of barbarism. Womanhood is a unit; no one woman can be an outcast without dire evil to family life. What caused the doctors to come together in a Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis? It was because the evil done in dark places came back in injury to the family life.... We must make ourselves more terrible than an army with banners to despoilers of womanhood.... Men are no longer to be excused for writing in scarlet on their foreheads their incapacity for self-control. None of us is longer to be excused for cowardice and acquiescence in the sacrifice of womanhood. Not even that woman--vilest of all creatures on the face of the earth I do believe--the procuress, shall be beyond the pale of sympathy, for she is merely the product of the feeling on the part of men that they owe nothing to women or to themselves in the way of purity, and the feeling on the part of women that they have no right to demand of men what men demand of them. If women are going to amount to anything in government, they would better begin to practice here and now and band themselves together with noble men to bring about this reform.

Of equal interest with Pioneers' Evening and in striking contrast with it was the College Evening. One commemorated the first efforts to obtain a college education for women, the other the full fruition of these efforts in the announcement of a National College Women's Equal Suffrage League with branches in fifteen States. Dr. Shaw, possessing three college degrees, opened the session, and the founder of the League, Mrs. Maud Wood Park, a graduate of Radcliffe College, presided. "With the exception of Oberlin and Antioch," she said, "not one college was open to women before the organized movement for woman suffrage began." She gave statistics of the large number now open to them and said: "Such facts as these help us to understand the service which the leaders of the suffrage movement performed for college women and it is fitting that these should make public recognition of their debt. It was with this idea of responsibility for benefits received that the first branch of this League was formed in Massachusetts in 1900. The League realizes that the best way to pay our debt to the noble women who toiled and suffered, who bore ridicule, insult and privation, is for us in our turn to sow the seed of future opportunities for women."

In introducing Dr. Sophonisba P. Breckinridge, dean of the Junior Women's College of the University of Chicago, Mrs. Park said that she had half the letters of the alphabet attached to her name representing degrees. Dr. Breckinridge also paid a tribute of gratitude to the National Suffrage Association and began her address: "My faith has three articles. I believe it is the right and the duty of the wage-earning woman to claim the ballot and to have her claim recognized to participate in the political life of her community. Her status as a worker depends in part upon it and only thus can she protect the interests of her group. I believe it is the right and duty of the wife and mother to claim the ballot, for as a housekeeper and carer of her children she cannot do her work economically and satisfactorily without it. It is easy to see why the wage-earning women and the housekeepers need the ballot; but why should we, who do not belong to either of those groups, want it? Every woman should want it because tasks lie before the public so difficult that they can not be fulfilled without the cooperation of all the trained minds in the community, and these problems can be met only by collective action. We want to get hold of the little device that moves the machinery."

Miss Caroline Lexow, president of the New York branch of the league, a graduate of Barnard College, a part of Columbia University, "charmed the audience with her girlish simplicity and with the tribute she paid to the women who more than half a century ago sowed the seeds which have yielded so rich a harvest for the women of today," to quote from an enthusiastic reporter. Of another young speaker the Buffalo Express said: "To the front of the platform stepped a sweet-faced, bright-eyed, rosy English girl, Miss Ray Costello, a graduate of Newnham College, Cambridge University, who spoke on Equal Suffrage among English University Women. She had captured her audience before she started to describe the energetic work of the college women." "In England as in the United States," Miss Costello said, "the pioneers in the demand for higher education were also pioneers in the demand for votes. When the action of the 'militant' suffragettes brought the question into such prominence that the opponents began to state their objections, the college women were aroused and became more and more active, but as a whole they were in favor of peaceful rather than militant tactics." She told also of the growth of favorable sentiment in the men's colleges.

This was the first appearance at a national suffrage convention of Mrs. Frances Squire Potter, professor of English in the University of Minnesota, and her address on Women and the Vote was one of the ablest ever given before this body which was accustomed to superior addresses. Limited space forbids extended quotation:

Louis XIV said an infamous thing when he declared: "I am the State," but he announced his position frankly. He was an autocrat and he said so. It was a more honest and therefore less harmful position than that of a majority of voters in our country today. Can it help but confuse and deteriorate one sex, trained to believe and call itself living in a democracy, to say silently year by year at the polls, "I am the State"? Can it help but confuse and deteriorate the other sex, similarly trained to acquiescence year after year in a national misrepresentation and a personal no-representation? This fundamental insincerity of our so-called democracy is as insidious an influence upon the minds and morals of our franchised men, our unfranchised women and our young Americans of both sexes, as hypocrisy is to a church member or spurious currency to a bank. It is to be remembered that the evils which are pointed out in our commonwealth today are not the evils of a democracy but of an amorphous something which is afraid to be a democracy. Whether the opposition to women's voting be honestly professed or whether it is concealed under chivalrous idolatry, distrust and skepticism are behind it.... When pushed to the wall, objectors to woman suffrage now-a-days take refuge behind one of two platitudes: The first is used too often by women whose public activities ought logically to make them suffragists--the assertion that equal suffrage is bound to come in time but that at present there are more pressing needs. "Let us get the poor better housed and fed," these women say. "Let us get our schools improved and our cities cleaned up and then we shall have time to take up the cause of equal suffrage." Is not this a survival of that old vice of womankind, indirection?... The suffrage issue should not be put off but should be placed first, as making the other issues easier and more permanent....

This brings me to the other platitude. How often we are told, "Women themselves do not want it; when they do it will be given to them." That is to say, when an overwhelming majority of women want what they ought to have, then they can have it. Extension of suffrage never has been granted on these terms. No great reform has gone through on these terms. In an enlightened State wanting is not considered a necessary condition to the granting of education or the extension of any privilege. Such a State confers it in order to create the desire; unenlightened States, like Turkey and Russia, hold off until revolution compels a reluctant, niggardly abdication of tyranny.... We have the conviction that that which has come in Finland and Australia, which is coming in Great Britain, will come in America, and there is a majesty in the sight of a great world-tide which has been gathering force through generations, which is rising steadily and irresistibly, that should paralyze any American Xerxes who thinks to stop it with humanly created restraints.

Dr. M. Carey Thomas, president of Bryn Mawr College, received an ovation. "The formation of this National College League," she said, "indicates that college women will be ready to bear their part in the stupendous social change of which the demand for woman suffrage is only the outward symbol," and she continued:

Sixty years ago all university studies and all the charmed world of scholarship were a man's world, in which women had no share. Now, although only one woman in one thousand goes to college even in the United States, where there are more college women than in any other country, the position of every individual woman in every part of the civilized world has been changed because this one thousandth per cent. have proved beyond the possibility of question that in intellect there is no sex, that the accumulated learning of our great past and of our still greater future is the inheritance of women also. Men have admitted women into intellectual comradeship and the opinions of educated women can no longer be ignored by educated men.... Women are one-half of the world, but until a century ago the world of music and painting and sculpture and literature and scholarship and science was a man's world. The world of trades and professions and work of all kinds was a man's world. Women lived a twilight life, a half-life apart, and looked out and saw men as shadows walking. Now women have won the right to higher education and to economic independence. The right to become citizens of the State is the next and inevitable consequence of education and work outside the home. We have gone so far; we must go farther. Why are we afraid? It is the next step forward on the path toward the sunrise--and the sun is rising over a new heaven and a new earth.

The National College Women's Equal Suffrage League was formally organized as auxiliary to the National American Association, with Dr. Thomas president, Miss Lexow secretary; Dr. Margaret Long, of Smith College, treasurer; Mrs. Park chairman of the organization committee; Dr. Breckinridge, Mrs. C. S. Woodward, adviser to women in the University of Wisconsin, and Miss Frances W. McLean of the University of California were among the vice-presidents. Three thousand dollars were appropriated for its work the first year from the Anthony Memorial Fund. The following day Mrs. George Howard Lewis gave a beautiful luncheon at the Twentieth Century Club in honor of Dr. Shaw, Dr. Thomas and the college women and it included the officials of the national and State suffrage associations. The tables were decorated with orchids and yellow chrysanthemums and there were corsage bouquets of violets for the guests of honor.

The women ministers in attendance and some of the delegates spoke in various churches Sunday morning. A departure was made from the usual custom of holding religious services in the afternoon and they were replaced by an industrial meeting. One of the city papers thus introduced its account: "Any theatre after a packed house had better advertise a woman's meeting with the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw presiding. At the Star Theatre, where an industrial mass meeting was held under the auspices of the National Suffrage Association yesterday afternoon, when Dr. Shaw stepped to the front of the stage to call it to order, men, as well as women, filled all the seats on the ground floor and packed the galleries and boxes, while many stood during the entire program and many more were turned away. It was the largest meeting in the cause of equal suffrage that Buffalo has ever known. After prayer by the Rev. Robert Freeman and a musical selection by the choir of the First Unitarian Church, Dr. Shaw announced that the audience would rise while Julia Ward Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic was sung. She stood with bowed head as she listened. "Some one asked me this morning if I am very happy," said Dr. Shaw, "and I said yes, for I have everything in the world that is necessary to happiness, good faith, good friends and all the work I can possibly do. I think God's greatest blessing to the human race was when He sent man forth into the world to earn his bread by the sweat of his face. I believe in toil, in the dignity of labor, but I also believe in adequate compensation for that toil."

The report of the committee on Industrial Problems Affecting Women and Children was given by its chairman, Mrs. Kelley, executive secretary of the National Consumers' League, in which she said: "In New York woman can not be deprived of the sacred right to work all night in factories on pain of dismissal. Such is the recent decision of the Court of Appeals. On the other hand the same Court has within a week held that the law is constitutional which restricts to eight hours the work of men employed by the State, the county or the city. I wish the women who think that 'persuasion' is all-sufficient might have our experience in New York City; we worked for twelve years to get inspectors who should look after the women and children in stores and mercantile establishments. At last an act was passed by which inspectors were to be appointed and for about a year and a half they really inspected and looked after the children and young girls in the stores. Then a great philanthropist, Nathan Straus, who was connected with an establishment employing many young people, got himself appointed, as he frankly said, in order to get the salaries of the inspectors stricken out of the budget and to get sterilized milk put into it. He got the salaries out and the sterilized milk in and then he resigned. The next year his successor got the sterilized milk out and there we were, back just where we had been at the beginning. We had to set to work again and labor for years longer, petitioning all the changing and kaleidoscopic officials who have to do with the finances of New York; and one mayor said frankly to us--to the Consumers' League: "Ladies, why do you keep on coming? You know you will never get anything--there isn't a voter among you!..." Mrs. Kelley said the Consumers' League had been investigating the condition of girls working in stores, away from home, and she gave a heartbreaking account of their destitution and semi-starvation. "Only nineteen States protect grown women at all," she said. "I am very tired of 'persuasion' and from this time on I mean to try other methods."

Intense interest was manifested in the address entitled Noblesse Oblige by Miss Jean Gordon, factory inspector for New Orleans, in which she said in part:

One of the strongest and truest criticisms brought against our American leisure class is that they are absolutely devoid of a proper appreciation of what is conveyed in the expression, "Noblesse Oblige." In no country in the world are there so many young women of education, wealth and leisure, free as the winds of heaven to do as they wish. In no country are there more interesting problems to be solved and one would think such work would appeal to this very class, especially as most of them are the daughters of men who by their large constructive minds have created conditions and opportunities and developed them into the great industries for which America is justly famous; and it would seem by the law of cross inheritance that these daughters would inherit some of the great creative ability of their fathers and fairly burn to apply their leisure and education to working out the social problems which are besetting more and more this great country. But unfortunately, with a few exceptions, they rest contented with playing the Lady Bountiful and their only appreciation of the spirit of Noblesse Oblige has been the old, aristocratic idea of charity....

Think what it would mean to bring their trained minds and great wealth and leisure to the study of the economic conditions which are represented in the underpaid services and long hours of their less fortunate sisters in the mills and factories throughout this broad land! Think what it would mean if from the protection with which their wealth and position surround them they took their stand on the great question of the dual code of morality! Think what it would mean to the little children being stunted mentally and physically in our mills and factories, if these thousands of young women, many of them enjoying the wealth made out of these little human souls, refused to wear or buy anything made under any but decent living conditions! Think what it would mean if they decided that every child should have a seat in school, that every neighborhood should have a play-ground and a public bath!

Too long the men and women of leisure and education in America have left the administration of our public affairs to fall into the hands of a class whose conception of the duties involved in public service is of the lowest order.... Instead of being regarded as only fitted for women of ordinary position and intellect, all offices such as superintendents of reformatories, matrons and women factory inspectors, should be filled by women of standing, education, refinement and independent means. Such women would be above the temptation of graft or the fear of losing their positions. They are on a social footing with the manufacturers and no mill or factory owner likes to meet the factory inspector at a reception or dining in the home of a mutual friend if he is trying to evade the law. American women of leisure must awaken to an appreciation of the democratic idea of Noblesse Oblige.

Mrs. Blatch was introduced as "president of the Self-Supporting Women's Suffrage League and the only one in it who was not self-supporting in the accepted sense of the term." "When I hear that there are 5,000,000 working women in this country," said Dr. Shaw, "I always take occasion to say that there are 18,000,000 but only 5,000,000 receive their wages." Mrs. Blatch traced the changes of the years which have made it necessary for women to go out of the home to earn their bread in factory, shop and mercantile establishments. "Cooperation is the only way out of the present condition of the working women," she asserted. "President Thomas said last night that the gates of knowledge had swung wide open for women. They have not done so for the working girls." She pointed out the many opportunities for the boys to learn the trades which are denied to the girls. "There is only one way to redress their wrongs and that is by the ballot," she declared, and in closing she said: "Of all the people who block the progress of woman suffrage the worst are the women of wealth and leisure who never knew a day's work and never felt a day's want, but who selfishly stand in the way of those women who know what it means to earn the bread they eat by the sternest toil and who, with a voice in the Government, could better themselves in every way."

The last address was made by Dr. Shaw and even the cold, prosaic official report of the convention said: "It was one of the greatest speeches of the entire week." She began by telling of the immense demonstration in London during the past summer when 10,000 women marched through the streets to prove to the Government that women did want to vote, and then she proceeded to tell why American women wanted it and how they were determined to compel some action by the Government. In the evening the officers held a reception for the delegates, speakers and friends in the Lenox Hotel, convention headquarters.

In the Monday afternoon symposium the stock objections to woman suffrage were considered by Miss Lexow, Miss Laura Gregg (Kans.), Mrs. William C. Gannett (N. Y.), Mrs. Kelley and Miss Maude E. Miner, a probation officer in New York. Miss Miner said in answering the objection to "the immoral vote": "Is the fact that immoral women would have the vote a real objection? I do not believe that it is. In the first place such women are a very small proportion of the whole. Fifty to one hundred a night are brought into the night court but we see the same faces over and over again. There are perhaps 5,000 such women in New York City in a population of four million but there is less reason against enfranchising the woman than for disfranchising some of the men, as there are at least 4,000 men who are living wholly or in part on these women's earnings.... I do not believe that all women who have fallen would use their votes for evil. I have dealt with 250 of them and I am often surprised to see how much sense of honor some of them have and how intelligent they are. At present they are the slaves of the saloon-keepers, and the Raines law hotels and the saloons are at the root of the evil. We ought to do more to protect them from such a life.... It seems to be women's work to deal with such problems and to secure legislation along these lines and we can only do this by having the ballot. With it we can do much more in the way of breaking up the power of the saloon in politics, which is at the bottom of all."

Dr. Shaw was quickly on her feet to say that Miss Miner had touched upon the vital spot in the whole suffrage movement; that the liquor interests were at the bottom of the opposition to it and that in the States where it had been defeated they were responsible. Mrs. Kelley spoke for The Woman at the Bottom of the Heap, who had even greater need of the ballot than her more fortunate sisters. Mrs. Gannett, wife of the Unitarian minister, William C. Gannett of Rochester, N. Y., both loving friends of Miss Anthony, considered the assertion that "women do not want to vote," saying in part:

They tell us that women can bring better things to pass by indirect influence. Try to persuade any man that he will have more weight, more influence, if he gives up his vote, allies himself with no party and relies on influence to achieve his ends! By all means let us use to its utmost whatever influence we have, but in all justice do not ask us to be content with this. Facts show that a large body of earnest, responsible women do want the ballot, a body large enough to deserve very respectful hearing from our law-makers, but there certainly are many women who do not yet want to vote. We think they ought to want it; that women have no more right than men to accept and enjoy the protection and privileges of civilized government and shirk its duties and responsibilities. They say they do not thus shirk, that woman's sphere lies in a different place, and we answer: "This is true but only part of the truth." ... Municipal government belongs far more to woman's sphere than to man's, if we must choose between the two; it is home-making and housekeeping writ large, but just as the best home is that where father and mother together rule, so shall we have the better city, the better State, when men and women together counsel, together rule. No mother fulfills her whole mother duty in the sight of God who is not willing to do her service, to take her share of direct responsibility for the good of the whole. She can not fully care for her own without some care for all the children of the community. Her own, however guarded, are menaced so long as the least of these is exposed to pestilence or is robbed of his birthright of fresh air and sunshine.

The hard struggle and toil of our honored pioneers was for Woman's Rights. We of the coming day must take up the cry of Woman's Duty. We live in the new age; new obligations are laid upon us. We must labor until no woman in the land shall be content to say, "I am not willing to pay the price I owe for the comfort and safety of my life"; until every woman shall be ashamed not to demand equal duties and equal responsibilities for the common weal; until none can be found of whom it can with truth be said, "They do not want to vote."

Miss Gregg discussed The Real Enemy, and, while endorsing all that had been said, asserted that "this enemy is among our own sex." "It is not the anti-suffragist," she said, "she is our unwilling ally, for when there is danger that we might fall asleep she arouses us by buzzing about our ears with her misrepresentations. It is not the indifferent suffragist, she can be galvanized into life. Our real enemy is the dead or dormant suffragist," and then she preached a stirring sermon on the necessity for hard, incessant, faithful work by all who were enlisted heart and soul in this cause.

Mrs. Upton, the treasurer, called attention to the mistaken idea conveyed through the newspapers that the association had unlimited funds. The report that it intended to raise $100,000 had been made to read that it had raised it, and the Garrett-Thomas fund of $12,000 a year had caused many to cease their subscriptions.[59] The new opportunities for effective work caused larger demands for money than ever before and the year 1907 had been the most anxious the board had known. The expenditures had been larger than the receipts and most of the balance that was in the treasury had been used. Even this strong statement, backed by an appeal from Dr. Shaw, brought pledges only to the amount of $3,600, a less amount than for years, the delegates, many of small means, still feeling that their former subscriptions were not necessary. Dr. Shaw then read to the convention a letter to herself from Mrs. George Howard Lewis of Buffalo, who expressed the pleasure of the New York State suffrage clubs that the 60th anniversary of the first Woman's Rights Convention had been held in this city, at Miss Anthony's expressed wish, and ended: "In memory of Susan B. Anthony will you accept the enclosed check for $10,000 to be used as the national officers deem best in the work, so dear to her and to all true lovers of justice, for the enfranchisement of women?" As she showed the enclosure Dr. Shaw said: "This is the largest check I ever held in my hand." The convention rose in appreciation of Mrs. Lewis's generous gift.

The report of Mrs. Ida Porter Boyer, chairman of the Libraries Committee, the result of a month's research in the Library of Congress in Washington and another month in the Public Library of Boston, was most interesting, as it dealt with old manuscripts and books on the Rights of Women written in the 16th and 17th centuries. The valuable report of Mrs. Lucretia L. Blankenburg, chairman of the Committee on Legislation and Civil Rights, embodied those of presidents of twenty-three State Suffrage Associations, covering school, labor, factory and temperance laws, mercantile inspection, juvenile courts, educational matters, protection of wives and many others relating to the welfare of women and children, most of them showing advance.

The speakers at the Monday evening session were Miss Harriet Grim, winner of the Springer prize for the best essay written by an Illinois college student, who described "The Womanly Woman in Politics"; Mrs. Katharine Reed Balentine (Me.), daughter of Thomas B. Reed, the famous Speaker of the lower house of Congress and a staunch suffragist, and the brilliant orator, Mrs. Philip Snowden of England. Mrs. Balentine said in beginning her address that now women were voting in Russia she had the courage to hope that they would sometime obtain the suffrage in New York, Massachusetts and Maine, and continued in part:

In England the last final argument, that women do not themselves want the franchise, has in the light of recent events become ridiculous. On June 13, 15,000 suffragists paraded through the streets of London and it is said that the woman suffrage meeting of June 21 was the largest public meeting ever held for any cause. Fifty thousand women have just stormed Parliament.... No one now doubts that the women of England want and intend to have votes. It is said that history repeats itself but this particular phenomenon--the world-wide claim of women to political equality with men--has never appeared before; it has no historic precedent....

Does disfranchised influence, unsteadied by the responsibility of the ballot and the broadening experience of public service, make for the greatest good to the greatest number, which is the aim of true democracy? Can women, and do the average, every-day women in their present condition as subjects take a very lively interest in the real welfare of the State? Hardly, and are not men and children affected by this indifference? It could scarcely be otherwise. It may be said that average men, notwithstanding their possession of the ballot, are indifferent to the public weal, but are they not rendered doubly so by continually associating with a class that feels no allegiance to the State?... In the political subjection and consequent political ignorance and indifference of women, men are unconsciously forging their own fetters. They can not retain their rights unless they share them with women. This is the true significance of the woman suffrage movement throughout the world. It is a vast attempt at the establishing of real government by the people of republics which, being real, shall endure; and as such it is as much a movement for men's rights as for women's.

The "militant" suffrage movement in Great Britain, at this time in its early stage, was attracting world-wide attention and Mrs. Snowden devoted much of her address to explaining it, saying in part: "Our methods may seem strange to you, for perhaps you do not fully understand. We have the Municipal vote and have used it for many years. Today an Englishwoman may vote for every official except a member of Parliament; she may sit in every political body except the Parliament and we are after that last right. We have 420 members out of 670 of its members pledged to this reform. When the full suffrage bill went to its second reading the votes stood three to one in favor. We want that vote put through but it is the British Cabinet we must get at to approve finally the act when it has passed the two Houses. It is the Government we are trying to annoy. Our Government never moves in any radical way until it is kicked. Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman, when prime minister, advised the women to harass the Government until they got what they wanted and that is just what we are doing today. The Liberal Government, helped into power by at least 80,000 tax-paying women, promised to grant their rights. How have they kept that promise?"

Speaking of the two "militant" societies Mrs. Snowden said: "Our policy of aggressiveness has been justified by its results. When we began almost every newspaper in England was against us. Now, with one exception, the Times, the London papers are all for us. The 'militancy' thus far has consisted chiefly in 'heckling' speakers; assembling before the House of Commons in large numbers; getting into the gallery and into public meetings and calling out 'Votes for Women' and breaking windows in government buildings, a time-honored English custom of showing disapproval. Many suffragists in the United States, knowing the contemptuous manner in which those of Great Britain and Ireland have been treated by the Government, have felt a good deal of sympathy with these measures." At this convention and the one preceding sympathy was expressed by Dr. Shaw and others and resolutions to this effect were adopted.

One of the Buffalo papers said in regard to the election of officers: "If the way the women vote at the national convention may be taken as a criterion of what they will do when they gain the ballot, there will be very little electioneering. Yesterday's election was characterized by entire absence of wire-pulling. The balloting was done quickly and there was no contest for any office, the women voting as they wished and only a few scattered ballots going for particular friends of voters. The election of the president, first vice-president, corresponding secretary and treasurer was unanimous and the others so nearly so that there was no question of result by the time half the ballots had been counted." Mrs. Sperry retired from the office of second vice-president and Mrs. Ella S. Stewart, president of the Illinois suffrage association, was chosen in her place.

The paper on Some Legal Phases of the Disfranchisement of Women by Mrs. Harriette Johnston Wood, a New York lawyer, was regarded as so important that it was ordered to be printed for circulation. She quoted from Federal and State constitutions and court decisions to prove that "if properly construed the laws specify the rights and privileges of 'persons' and no distinction is made as to 'sex' in provisions relating to the elective franchise." She encouraged women to try to register for voting and qualify for jury service and urged that bills be presented to legislative bodies covering the following points: First, that citizens shall equally enjoy all civil and political rights and privileges; second, that in the selection of jurors no discrimination shall be made against citizens on account of sex; third, that representation be based on the electorate and that non-voters be non-taxpayers; fourth, that husband and wife have equal right in each other's property; fifth, equal rights in the property of a child; sixth, in case of separation, equal rights to the custody of the children. A visit to the Albright Art Gallery and an automobile ride along the lake front, through Delaware Park and the many handsome avenues of the city, was a much-enjoyed part of this afternoon's program.

At one evening session Miss Grace H. Ballantyne, attorney in the noted City Hall case at Des Moines, Iowa, gave a spirited account of the way in which the women's right to vote on issuing bonds was sustained. Mrs. Kate Trimble Woolsey (Ky.), who had resided some years in England, compared the condition of women in that country and the United States to the disadvantage of the latter, "where," she said, "the women did not profit by the Declaration of Independence but on the contrary lost when the colonies were supplanted by the republic. In this they discover that a republic may endure as a political institution to the end of time without conferring recognition, honors or power on women; that it can exist as an oligarchy of sex, and they say: 'Why should we be loyal to this government?' Thus through women republicanism itself is imperiled and I tell you that if an amendment is not added to the National Constitution giving women the power to vote, this republic, within the living generation, will find that prophecy, 'Woman is the rock upon which our Ship of State is to founder,' will be fulfilled."

As chairman of the Committee on Peace and Arbitration Mrs. Lucia Ames Mead gave a report of its many activities. In 1907 she had attended a plenary session at The Hague Peace Conference, which she described in glowing terms, and she went as a delegate in September to an International Peace Conference in Munich. In July, 1908, she went to one in London, where Mrs. Belva A. Lockwood of Washington, D. C., presented a paper on the Central American Peace Congress, held in that city, and the recently established Arbitration Court, which formed the basis of three resolutions adopted by the congress. She told of the new society, the American School Peace League to improve the teaching of history and in every way promote international fraternity, sympathy and justice.

During business meetings the following were among the recommendations adopted: To recommend to States to continue a systematic and specialized distribution of literature; to secure and present to Congress at an early date a petition asking for a 16th Amendment enfranchising women, the chair to appoint a committee to superintend this work; to try to obtain the appointment of a U. S. Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage favorable to it; to send letters simultaneously to the President of the United States in advance of the time for writing his message, followed by telegrams one week preceding the opening of Congress, expressing the wishes of women for the ballot; to ask their Legislatures for some form of suffrage and follow up this request with systematic legislative work; to urge that States having any form of partial suffrage take measures to secure the largest possible use of it by women. It was decided to appropriate $125 for two months' work in South Dakota to ascertain conditions with a view to the submission of a State amendment.

The resolutions presented by Mr. Blackwell, chairman of the committee, reviewed the wonderful progress made by women since the first convention whose 60th anniversary they were celebrating. They told of the progress of suffrage, as outlined in the Call for the convention, and said: "When that first convention met, one college in the United States admitted women; now hundreds do so. Then there was not a single woman physician or ordained minister or lawyer; now there are 7,000 women physicians and surgeons, 3,000 ordained ministers and 1,000 lawyers. Then only a few poorly-paid employments were open to women; now they are in more than three hundred occupations and comprise 80 per cent. of our school teachers. Then there were scarcely any organizations of women; now such organizations are numbered by thousands. Then the few women who dared to speak in public, even on philanthropic questions, were overwhelmingly condemned by public opinion; now the women most opposed to woman suffrage travel about the country making speeches to prove that a woman's only place is at home. Then a married woman in most of our States could not control her own person, property or earnings; now in most of them these laws have been largely amended or repealed and it is only in regard to the ballot that the fiction of woman's perpetual minority is still kept up."

Mrs. Catt's powerful address was entitled The Battle to the Strong but nothing is preserved except newspaper clippings. She ended by saying: "In all history there has been no event fraught with more importance for the generations to follow than the present uprising of the women of the world.... Every struggle helps and no movement for right, for reform in this country or in England but has made the woman's movement easier in every other land. We have brought the countries of the world very close together in the last few years. Papers and cables and telegraph spread the news almost instantly to the centres of the earth and then to the obscure corners, so that the women of other nations know what the women here are doing and what they are doing in every other part of the world.... The suffrage campaign in England has become the kind of fanaticism that caused the American Revolution. These women are no longer reformers, they are rebels, and they are going to win.... Woman's hour has struck at last and all along the line there is a mobilization of the woman's army ready for service. We are going forward with flags flying to win. If you are not for us you are against us. Justice for the women of the world is coming. This is to be a battle to the strong--strong in faith, strong in courage, strong in conviction. Women of America, stand up for the citizenship of our own country and let the world know we are not ashamed of the Declaration of Independence!"

A newspaper account said: "And then Anna Howard Shaw stepped forward, the light of a great purpose shining in her eyes. 'Our International president has asked for recruits,' she said. 'Never have we had so many as now.' She spoke of the immense gains to the suffrage cause within the last few months in America and of the suffrage pioneers and their sufferings, and ended: 'The path has been blazed for us and they have shown us the way. Who shall say that our triumph is to be long delayed? It is the hour for us to rally. We have enlisted for the war. Ninety days? No; for the war! We may not win every battle but we shall win the war. Happy they who are the burden-bearers in a great fight! Happy is any man or woman who is called by the Giver of all to serve Him in the cause of humanity! Friends, come with us and we will do you good; but whether you come or not we are going, and when we enter the promised land of freedom we will try to be just and to show that we understand what freedom is, what the law is. 'God grant us law in liberty and liberty in law!'"

FOOTNOTES:

[56] Part of Call: Since we met last in convention women in Norway have won full suffrage; tax-paying women in Iceland have been granted a vote and made eligible as municipal councillors; Municipal suffrage has been given to women in Denmark and they now vote for all officers except members of Parliament; women in Sweden, who already had the Municipal vote, have been made eligible to municipal offices; a proxy in the election of the Douma has been conferred on women of property in Russia. In Great Britain, where they have long possessed Municipal suffrage, women have been made eligible as mayors, county, borough and town councillors and their heroic struggle for Parliamentary suffrage is attracting the attention of the world.

In our own country during the past year, 175,000 women of Michigan appealed for full suffrage to its constitutional convention and a partial franchise was given; in Oregon women obtained the submission of a constitutional amendment for suffrage to a referendum vote. Though no large victories were won the advocates of equal suffrage have never felt more hopeful, as public sentiment is in closer sympathy with them than ever before. Five hundred associations of men, organized for other purposes and numbering millions of voters, have officially declared for woman suffrage; only one, the organized liquor traffic, has made a record of unremitting hostility to it and the domination of the saloon in politics has wrested many victories from our grasp....

We cordially invite all men and women who have faith in the principles of the American government and love liberty and justice to meet with us in convention in Buffalo.

ANNA HOWARD SHAW, President. RACHEL FOSTER AVERY, First Vice-President. FLORENCE KELLY, Second Vice-President. KATE M. GORDON, Corresponding Secretary. ALICE STONE BLACKWELL, Recording Secretary. HARRIET TAYLOR UPTON, Treasurer. LAURA CLAY, } MARY SIMPSON SPERRY,} Auditors.

[57] Other ministers who officiated at different times were the Reverends Anna Howard Shaw, Anna Garlin Spencer and Olympia Brown of the convention, and the Reverends Richard W. Boynton, Robert Freeman, L. O. Williams, E. H. Dickinson and F. Hyatt Smith of Buffalo.

[58] For full account see History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I, page 67.

[59] This fund had been raised primarily to pay salaries to officers who now had to devote their whole time to the increased work of the association and who had hitherto for the most part given their service gratuitously. Dr. Shaw received $3,500; the secretary $1,000, the treasurer $1,000. This left $6,500 for other purposes each year.

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