XXXVIII. THE SOUTH DAKOTA CAMPAIGN…

XXXVIII. THE SOUTH DAKOTA CAMPAIGN

1890.

Miss Anthony left Washington to attend the wedding of her nephew, Wendell Phillips Mosher, and Carolyn Louise Mixer, at Cleveland, O., April 17; stopped in Chicago for a day, and reached Huron, S. Dak., April 23, 1890.[59] During the early winter she had had the most urgent letters from this State, begging her to hasten her coming, that all depended upon her. "If you will come we will throw off our coats and go to work," wrote the men. "Woe to the man or woman who is not loyal to you! If ever you were needed anywhere, you are needed here now," wrote the women. When she had been in South Dakota the previous autumn, all had united in urging her to take charge of the campaign, and for months she had been receiving appeals for help. "We have not enough money to organize one county," came from a member of the executive committee. In January, from Alonzo Wardall, vice-president of the State Association, "We are very grateful for your earnest efforts in our behalf and trust you will be able to spend the coming summer with us." His wife, the superintendent of press, wrote in February: "We shall give you the credit, dear Miss Anthony, if we succeed next November."

On March 5, the president of the association, S. A. Ramsey, said in the course of a long letter: "I had begun to feel misgivings relative to our success, because we were so poorly prepared for the great conflict which is pending; but the appointment by the national convention of a special committee to aid us in our work has inspired me with great hope, especially as you were placed at the head of that committee." Mrs. H. M. Barker, State organizer, wrote March 10: "Organizing must have stopped in the third district, had it not been for the money you sent. It is utterly impossible for us to pay even $10 a week to organizers. I have been disappointed in my home workers, so many incapacitated for various reasons. We shall make suffrage a specialty in all our W. C. T. U. county and district conventions." And April 11, the State secretary, Rev. M. Barker, supplemented this with: "It is absolutely impossible to raise money in the State to pay speakers and furnish literature. This you understand. The election must go by default if it is expected."

At the Washington convention it had been ordered that all contributions should be forwarded to the national treasurer and disbursed by order of the committee. Notwithstanding this, a large proportion was sent directly to Miss Anthony with the express stipulation that it should be expended under her personal supervision. There never was a woman connected with the suffrage movement who could collect as much money as she; people would give to her who refused all others, with the injunction that she should use according to her own judgment. That which was sent her for Dakota she turned over at once to the treasurer, Mrs. Spofford, and paid all the campaign bills by checks.

The Dakota people had made the mistake of electing a suffrage board entirely of men, except the treasurer and State organizer, and, although they had not a dollar in their treasury and no prospects, they agreed to pay the secretary $100 a month for his services! When money from all parts of the country had been sent to the national treasurer, until the Dakota fund reached $5,500, the executive committee of that State suddenly discovered that they could manage their own campaign, and made a demand upon the national committee to turn the funds over to them. Miss Anthony, as chairman, already had sent them $300 for preliminary work; had written and telegraphed that the services of Miss Shaw could be had for only one month, at that time, and asked if they would arrange her routes; and had twice written them to send her their "plan of campaign," but had received no answer to any of these communications. At the last moment she was obliged herself to make out Miss Shaw's route and send her into the field with practically no advertisement. On March 29 she wrote to the State president:

Immediately on the receipt of your answer to my first letter to your executive committee, instead of sending you a personal reply I wrote again to the entire committee, answering the various points presented by you, Mr. and Mrs. Barker and others. This I did to save writing the same thing to half a dozen different people, as well as to make sure that I should get your official action upon what seemed to me most important matters; but to this date I have received not only no official answer, but no information which shows my letter to have been acted upon. Nor have I heard from any member of the committee that you have mapped out any plan of campaign, or have accepted and proposed to work on the one which I outlined last November at the Aberdeen meeting, and twice over have stated in my letters.

You, personally, say to me that you must have the national funds put into your treasury before you can plan work. Now, my dear sir, as a business man you never would give your money to any person or committee until they had presented to you a plan for using it which met your approval. Then I have had no indication of any intention on the part of your executive committee or State organizer to hold any series of suffrage meetings or conventions. The only ones written of are W. C. T. U. county and district conventions. California's suffrage lecturer, I am informed, is to be introduced to the State at the First District W. C. T. U. Convention.

Now, I want to say to you individually, and to the executive committee generally, that the National-American South Dakota committee will pay the money entrusted to them only to suffrage lecturers and suffrage conventions. We shall not pay it to any individual or association for any other purpose, or in any other name, than suffrage for women, pure and simple. We talked this over fully in your executive committee meeting at Aberdeen last fall, and all agreed that, while the temperance societies worked for suffrage in their way, the suffrage campaign should be carried forward on the basis of the one principle. Our national money will not go to aid Prohibition leagues, Grand Army encampments, Woman's Relief Corps, W. C. T. U. societies or any others, though all, we hope, will declare and work for the suffrage amendment. We can not ally ourselves with the Prohibition or Anti-Prohibition party--the Democrats or the Republicans. Each may do splendid work for suffrage within its own organization, and we shall rejoice in all that do so; but the South Dakota and the National-American Associations must stand on their own ground.

Co-operation is what our committee desire, and we stand ready to aid in holding three series of county conventions with three sets of speakers, at least one of each set a national speaker, beginning on May 1 and continuing until the school election, June 24. I am feeling sadly disappointed that every voting precinct of every county has not been visited, and will not have been by the 1st of May, as was agreed upon at Aberdeen. Still, I want to begin now and henceforth push the work; but the entire fund would not pay every single man and woman in the State who helps, hence every one who can must work without cost either to the State or national committee.

On the 7th of April Miss Anthony wrote to the State secretary:

Yours mailed April 3 is received. The National-American committee have only about $1,300 yet in hand, and we have arranged a trip through your State for Rev. Anna Shaw. When your committee did not answer my telegram, I could not wait longer for fear of losing Miss Shaw's good work before the students of your various educational institutions, and having had urgent importunities from Mrs. D. W. Mayer to send some of our very best speakers to Vermillion so that the 600 students there might be roused to thought before separating for the summer, I felt the cause could not afford to lose Miss Shaw's effective services and so mapped out her route, and telegraphed and wrote asking that she be advertised.

Now, my dear friends, once for all, I want to say on behalf of our South Dakota committee, the National-American Association, and the friends who have placed money in our hands--that we shall no more turn it over to you to appropriate as your executive committee please, without our voice or vote, than you would turn over the money entrusted to your care to our committee to spend as we choose, without your voice or vote. But while we shall retain our right to expend the national fund in accordance with our best judgment, we shall in future, as I have several times written your committee, hold ourselves ready to help defray the cost of whatever work you present to us. I have once verbally, and twice or oftener by letter, presented a plan of campaign asking your adoption of it, or of one which suited you better, telling you that we would co-operate with you in executing the plan and paying therefor; and to all of my propositions to help, the one reply has been: "The wheels are blocked until you turn the money over to us. You in Washington can not run the South Dakota campaign." Now nearly five months have elapsed, and, so far as reported, the resident committee have adopted no plan and had no organizers at work in the different counties.

Rev. Anna Shaw made her lecture tour throughout the State, and wrote Miss Anthony that the people everywhere were most anxious for her to come and there was not the slightest disaffection except on the part of two or three persons who wished to handle the funds. To these Miss Shaw said:

What our committee object to, and what they have no right to do by the vote of our convention, is to put a dollar of our money into your treasury to be spent without our consent or for any purpose of which we do not approve. For example, not one of us, myself least of all, will consent to take out of the contributions from friends of suffrage one dollar to pay towards a salary of $100 a month to any man as secretary. We do not pay our national secretary a cent, and we have no doubt there are plenty of women in the State of Dakota who would be glad to do the secretary's work for love of the cause. I understand it has been planned, and the statement has gone out, that your committee propose to cut loose from Miss Anthony. Now if you do, you cut loose from the goose that lays the golden egg for the South Dakota work; you cut loose from all the national speakers and workers and all the money given.

Miss Anthony wrote Alice Stone Blackwell:

I fully agree with you and dear Mrs. Wallace about not antagonizing the prohibition and W. C. T. U. people who made the 6,000 majority last fall in South Dakota; but I also feel that we must not antagonize the license people, for they are one-half of the voters, lacking only 6,000, and fully 6,000 of the Prohibition men are anti-suffragists and can not be converted. Hence it is also vastly important that the license men shall not have just cause to feel that our national suffrage lecturers are W. C. T. U. agents. That is my one point--that we shall not at the outset repel every man who is not a Prohibitionist.

But we shall see. I surely am as earnest a prohibitionist and total abstainer as any woman or man in South Dakota or anywhere else. But they have prohibition, and now are after suffrage; therefore it should not be the old prohibition and W. C. T. U. yardstick in this campaign, but instead it must be the woman suffrage yardstick alone by which every man and every woman shall be measured. Best assured I shall try not to offend a single voter, of whatever persuasion, for it is votes we are after now. I hope to make such a good showing of work done in this spring campaign, that our friends will feel like giving another and larger contribution to help on the fall canvass.

The editors of the two suffrage papers, the officers of the National-American Association, the largest contributors to the fund and the other members of the committee, all sustained Miss Anthony in her position. Zerelda G. Wallace published the following notice: "Having pledged to the committee on work in South Dakota one month's services in the projected suffrage campaign in that State, I wish to announce publicly that all I do there will be done under the direction of the South Dakota committee of which Susan B. Anthony is chairman."

Finally, on April 15, the executive committee of South Dakota forwarded their plan, which included a provision that "every dollar expended should pass through the State treasury, and that the State executive committee should have control of all plans of work and decide what lecturers should be engaged;" but by the time it reached Washington Miss Anthony was well on her way to South Dakota. When she arrived she found that it was just as she had been informed, the disaffection was confined to a few persons, but the body of workers made her welcome and she was cordially received throughout the State. Mrs. Emma Smith DeVoe, State lecturer and one of the ablest women, at once placed her services at Miss Anthony's disposal, and in a short time nearly all were working in harmony with the national plan.

The autumn previous, when Miss Anthony was attending a convention in Minneapolis, H. L. Loucks and Alonzo Wardall, president and secretary of the South Dakota Farmers' Alliance, had made a journey expressly to ask her to come into the State to conduct this canvass. She had replied that she never again would go into an amendment campaign unless it was endorsed and advocated by at least one of the two great political parties. They assured her that the Farmers' Alliance dominated politics in South Dakota, that it held the balance of power, and the year previous had compelled the Republicans to put a prohibition plank in their platform and, through the influence of the Alliance, that amendment had been carried by 6,000 majority. They were ready now to do the same for woman suffrage. It was wholly because of the assurance of this support that Miss Anthony took the responsibility of raising the funds and conducting the campaign in South Dakota.

When she arrived in the State, April 23, none of the political conventions had been held. In co-operation with the State executive board, she at once planned the suffrage mass meetings, arranged work for the corps of speakers, pushed the district organization and made speeches herself almost every night. The National-American Association sent into the State and paid the expenses of Rev. Anna Shaw, Rev. Olympia Brown, Laura M. Johns, Mary Seymour Howell, Carrie Chapman Catt, Julia B. Nelson and Clara B. Colby.[60] It also contributed over $1,000 to the office expenses of the State committee, paid $400 to the Woman's Journal and Woman's Tribune for thousands of copies to be sent to residents of South Dakota during the campaign, and flooded the State with suffrage literature. The speakers collected altogether $1,400 in South Dakota, which went toward their expenses. California, as her contribution to the national fund, raised $1,000 through a committee consisting of Hon. George C. Perkins, Mrs. Ellen Clark Sargent, Mrs. Knox Goodrich, Hon. W. H. Mills, Miss Sarah C. Severance and Dr. Alida C. Avery. This was used to pay the expenses of Matilda Hindman for eight months, as one of the campaign organizers and speakers.

As Miss Anthony was on her way to a meeting June 3, she received a telegram which sent her at once to Huron, where the annual convention of the Farmers' Alliance was in session. Upon arriving she found her information had been correct, that the Alliance and the Knights of Labor had combined forces and were about to form an independent party. She was permitted to address the convention and in the most impassioned language she begged them not to take this step, as it would be death to the woman suffrage amendment. She appealed to them in the name of their wives and daughters at home, doing double duty in order that the men might attend this convention; she reminded them of their pledges to herself and the other women to stand by the amendment, and showed them that, of themselves, they would not be strong enough to carry it, and that the Republican party, unless sustained by the Alliance, would not and could not support it. Her appeals fell upon deaf ears, and the old story was repeated--the women sacrificed to party expediency.

The Alliance of 478 delegates, at its State convention the previous year, November, 1889, after Miss Anthony's speech and after she had met with its business committee, had passed this resolution:

Resolved, That we will do all in our power to aid in woman's enfranchisement in South Dakota at the next general election, by bringing it before the local Alliances for agitation and discussion, thereby educating the masses upon the subject.

The Knights of Labor, at their annual convention in Aberdeen, January, 1890, had adopted the following:

Resolved, That the Knights of Labor, in assembly convened, do hereby declare that we will support with all our strength the amendment to the State Constitution of South Dakota, to be voted on at the next general election, giving to our wives, mothers and sisters the ballot.... We believe that giving to the women of our country the ballot is the first step towards securing those reforms for which all true Knights of Labor are striving.

This action was taken by both conventions after the amendment had been submitted, and it was intended as a pledge of support. And yet the following June these two bodies formed a new political party and refused to put a woman suffrage plank in their platform! H. L. Loucks was himself a candidate for governor on this Independent ticket, and in his annual address at this time never mentioned woman suffrage. Before adjourning, the convention passed a long resolution making seven or eight declarations, among them one that "no citizen should be disfranchised on account of sex," but, during the entire campaign, as far as their party advocacy was concerned, this question was a dead issue.[61]

The State Democratic Convention met at Aberdeen the following week, and a committee of representative Dakota women was sent to present the claims of the amendment. They were invited to seats on the platform and there listened to an address by Hon. E. W. Miller, of Parker county, land receiver of the Huron district, in which, according to the press reports, "he declared that no decent, respectable woman asked for the ballot; that the women who did so were a disgrace to their homes; that when women voted men would have to suckle the babies," and used other expressions of an indecent nature, "which were received with prolonged and vigorous cheers." (Argus-Leader, June 16, 1890.)[62] Judge Bangs, of Rapid City, who had brought in a minority report in favor of a suffrage plank, supported it in an able and dignified speech, but it was overwhelmingly voted down amidst great disorder. A large delegation of Russians came to this convention wearing great yellow badges (the brewers' color in South Dakota) lettered "Against woman suffrage and Susan B. Anthony."

The Republican State Convention met in Mitchell, August 27. A suffrage mass meeting was held the two days preceding, and every possible effort made to secure a plank in the platform. Most of the national speakers and a large body of earnest and influential South Dakota men and women were present. Rev. Anna Shaw graphically relates an incident which deserves a place in history:

When the Republicans had their State convention some of the leading men promised that we should have a plank in the platform, so we went down to see it through. We requested seats in the body of the house for our delegation, which was composed of most of the national speakers and the brainiest women in South Dakota, but we were informed there was absolutely no room for us. Finally a friend secured admission for ten on the very back of the platform, where we could neither see nor hear unless we stood on our chairs. We begged a good seat for Miss Anthony but no place could be made for her. Soon after the convention opened, an announcement was made that a delegation was waiting outside and that back of this delegation would probably be 5,000 votes. It was at once moved and seconded that they be invited in, and a committee was sent to escort them to seats on the floor of the house. In a moment it returned, followed by three big, dirty Indians in blankets and moccasins. Plenty of room for Indian men, but not a seat for American women!

We asked for a chance to address the delegates, but the chairman adjourned the convention, and then announced that we might speak during the recess. That night we went back again to the hall, and the resolution committee not being ready to report, the audience called for leading speakers, but none of them dared say a word because they did not yet know what would be in the platform. Finally when no man would respond they called for me, and I went forward and said: "Gentlemen, I am not afraid to speak, for I know what is in our platform and I know also what I want you to introduce into yours."

She then made her plea. It was cordially received, but the platform entirely ignored the question of woman suffrage. This was true also of the press and party speakers during the campaign, with one exception. Hon. J. A. Pickler was renominated for Congress, and in his speech of acceptance declared his belief in woman suffrage and his regret that the Republicans did not adopt it in their platform. He was warned by the party leaders, but replied that he would advocate it even if he imperilled his chances for election. He spoke in favor of the amendment throughout his campaign and was elected without difficulty. His wife, Alice M. Pickler, was one of the most effective speakers and workers among the Dakota women and, although Mr. Pickler was a candidate, she did not once speak upon Republican issues but confined herself wholly to the question of woman suffrage. She was as true and courageous as her husband. Although fair reports of the suffrage meetings were published, scarcely a newspaper in the State gave editorial endorsement to the amendment.

The adverse action of the party conventions virtually destroyed all chance for success, but the suffrage speakers usually found enthusiastic audiences, and the friends still hoped against hope that they might secure a popular vote. Miss Anthony never lost courage, and her letters were full of good cheer. "Tell everybody," she wrote, "that I am perfectly well in body and mind, never better, and never doing more work.... Anna Shaw and I are on our way to the Black Hills, and shall rush into Sioux City for a pay lecture and turn the proceeds over to the Dakota fund.... O, the lack of the modern comforts and conveniences! But I can put up with it better than any of the young folks.... All of us must strain every nerve to move the hearts of men as they never before were moved. I shall push ahead and do my level best to carry this State, come weal or woe to me personally.... I never felt so buoyed up with the love and sympathy and confidence of the good people everywhere.... The friends here are very sanguine and if I had not had my hopes dashed to the earth in seven State campaigns before this, I, too, would dare believe. But I shall not be cast down, even if voted down."

The eastern friends sent appreciative letters. "The thought of you and your fellow-workers in South Dakota in this hot weather and with insufficient funds, has lain like lead upon my heart," wrote John Hooker. "How I wish I could accept your invitation to come to you and talk to the old soldiers," said Clara Barton; "but alas, I have not the strength. My heart, my hopes, are with you and if there is a spoke I can get hold of, I will help turn that wheel before the campaign is over. My love is always with you and your glorious cause, my dear, dear Susan Anthony."

Anna Shaw wrote from Ohio in August: "I am trying to follow your magnificent example, in quietly passing over every personal matter for the sake of the greatest good for the work. Whenever I find myself giving way, I think of you and all you have borne and get fresh courage to try once more. Dear Aunt Susan, my heart is reaching out with such a great longing for my mother, now eighty years old, that I must go to her for a few days before I enter upon that long canvass, but I will come to you soon."

It was a hard campaign, the summer the hottest ever known, the distances long, the entertainment the best which could be offered, good in the towns but in the rural districts sometimes very poor, and the speakers slept more than once in sod houses where the only fuel for preparing the meals consisted of "buffalo chips." The people were in severe financial straits. A two years' drouth had destroyed the crops, and prairie fires had swept away the little which was left. "Starvation stares them in the face," Miss Anthony wrote. "Why could not Congress have appropriated the money for artesian wells and helped these earnest, honest people, instead of voting $40,000 for a commission to come out here and investigate?"

Frequently the speakers had to drive twenty miles between the afternoon and evening meetings, in the heat of summer and the chill of late autumn; at one time forty miles on a wagon seat without a back. On the Fourth of July, a roasting day, Miss Anthony spoke in the morning, drove fifteen miles to speak again in the afternoon, and then left at night in a pouring rain for a long ride in a freight-car. At one town the school house was the only place for speaking purposes, but the Russian trustees announced that "they did not want to hear any women preach," so after the long trip, the meeting had to be given up. Several times in the midst of their speeches, the audience was stampeded by cyclones, not a soul left in the house.[63] The people came twenty and thirty miles to these meetings, bringing their dinners. Miss Anthony speaks always in the highest terms of the fine character of the Dakota men and women, and of their large families of bright, healthy children.

The speakers never tire of telling their experiences during that campaign. Mary Seymour Howell relates in her own interesting way that once she and Miss Anthony had been riding for hours in a stage which creaked and groaned at every turn of the wheels, the poor, dilapidated horses not able to travel out of a walk, the driver a prematurely-old little boy whose feet did not touch the floor, and a cold Dakota wind blowing straight into their faces. After an unbroken, homesick silence of an hour, Miss Anthony said in a subdued and solemn voice, "Mrs. Howell, humanity is at a very low ebb!" The tone, the look, the words, so in harmony with the surroundings, produced a reaction which sent her off into a fit of laughter, in which Miss Anthony soon joined.

They had been warned to keep away from a certain hotel, at one place, as it was the very worst in the whole State. At the close of the afternoon meeting there, a man came up and said he would be pleased to entertain the speakers and could make them very comfortable. This seemed to be a sure escape, so they thankfully accepted his invitation, but when they reached his home, they discovered that he was the landlord of the poor hotel! Miss Anthony charged Mrs. Howell to make the best of it without a word of complaint. They went to supper, amidst heat and flies, and found sour bread, muddy coffee and stewed green grapes. Miss Anthony ate and drank and talked and smiled, and every little while touched Mrs. Howell's foot with her own in a reassuring manner. After supper Mrs. Howell went to her little, bare room, which she soon learned by the clatter of the dishes was next to the kitchen, and through the thin partition she heard the landlady say: "Well, I never supposed I could entertain big-bugs, and I thought I couldn't live through having Susan B. Anthony here, but I'm getting along all right. You ought to hear her laugh; why, she laughs just like other people!" Mrs. Howell gives this graphic description of the meetings at Madison, July 10:

In the afternoon we drove some distance to a beautiful lake where Miss Anthony spoke to 1,000 men, a Farmers' Alliance picnic. When she asked how many would vote for the suffrage amendment, all was one mighty "aye," like the deep voice of the sea. That evening we spoke in the opera house in the city. While Miss Anthony was speaking a telegram for her was handed to me, and as I arose to make the closing address I gave it to her. I had just begun when she came quickly forward, put her hand on my arm and said, "Stop a moment, I want to read this telegram." It was from Washington, saying that President Harrison had signed the bill admitting Wyoming into the Union with woman suffrage in its constitution. Before she could finish reading the great audience was on its feet, cheering and waving handkerchiefs and fans. After the enthusiasm had subsided Miss Anthony made a short but wonderful speech. The very tones of her voice changed; there were ringing notes of gladness and tender ones of thankfulness. It was the first great victory of her forty years of work. She spoke as one inspired, while the audience listened for every word, some cheering, others weeping.

When Miss Anthony was starting for South Dakota she was urged not to go, through fear of the effect of such a campaign on her health. Her reply was, "Better lose me than lose a State." A grand answer from a grander woman. And this night in South Dakota we had won a State and still had Miss Anthony with us, the central figure of the suffrage movement as she was the central figure in that never-to-be-forgotten night of great rejoicing.

As very few women were able to hire help, many were obliged to bring their babies to the meetings and, before the speaking was over, the heat and confusion generally set them all to crying. Miss Anthony was very patient and always expressed much sympathy for the overworked and tired mothers. One occasion, however, was too much for her, and Anna Shaw thus describes it:

One intensely hot Sunday afternoon, a meeting was held by the side of a sod church, which had been extended by canvas coverings from the wagons. The audience crowded up as close as they could be packed to where Miss Anthony stood on a barn door laid across some boxes. A woman with a baby sat very near the edge of this improvised platform. The child grew tired and uneasy and finally began to pinch Miss Anthony's ankles. She stepped back and he immediately commenced to scream, so she stepped forward again and he resumed his pinching. She endured it as long as she could, but at last stooped down and whispered to the mother, "I think your baby is too warm in here; take him out and give him a drink and he will feel better." The woman jerked it up and started out, exclaiming, "Well, this is the first time I have ever been insulted on account of my motherhood!" A number of men gathered around her, saying, "That is just what to expect from these old maid suffragists." Some one told Miss Anthony she had lost twenty votes by this. "Well," she replied, "if they could see the welts on my ankles where they were pinched to keep that child still, they would bring their twenty votes back."

She said to me the next day: "Now, Anna, no matter how many babies cry you must not say one word or it will be taken as an insult to motherhood." That afternoon I gave a little talk. The church was crowded and there were so many children it seemed as if every family had twins. There were at least six of them crying at the top of their lungs. The louder they cried, the louder I yelled; and the louder I yelled, the louder they cried, for they were scared. Finally a gentleman asked, "Don't you want those children taken out?" "O, no," said I, "there is nothing that inspires me so much as the music of children's voices," and although a number of men protested, I would not allow one of them taken from the room. I was bound I wouldn't lose any votes.

Among the racy anecdotes which Miss Shaw relates of that memorable campaign, is one which shows Miss Anthony's ready retort:

Many of the halls were merely rough boards and most of them had no seats. I never saw so many intemperate men as at ----, in front of the stores, on the street corners, and in the saloons, and yet they had a prohibition law! We could not get any hall to speak in--they were all in use for variety shows--and there was no church finished, but the Presbyterian was the furthest along and they let us have that, putting boards across nail kegs for seats. It was filled to overflowing and people crowded up close to the platform. One man came in so drunk he could not stand, so he sat down on the edge and leaned against the table. Miss Anthony gave her argument to prove what the ballot had done for laboring men in England and was working up to show what it would do for women in the United States, when suddenly the man roused and said: "Now look 'ere, old gal, we've heard 'nuf about Victoria; can't you tell's somethin' 'bout George Washington?" The people tried to hush him, but soon he broke out again with, "We've had 'nuf of England; can't you tell's somethin' 'bout our grand republic?" The men cried, "Put him out, put him out!" but Miss Anthony said: "No, gentlemen, he is a product of man's government, and I want you to see what sort you make."

In September Carrie Chapman Catt, one of the coolest, most logical and level-headed women who ever went into a campaign, at the request of the State executive committee gave her opinion of the situation as follows:

We have not a ghost of a show for success. Our cause can be compared with the work of prohibition, always remembering ours is the more unpopular. Last year the Methodist church led off in State conference and declared for prohibition. It was followed by every other church, except the German Lutheran and Catholic, even the Scandinavian Lutherans voting largely for it. Next the Republican, the strongest party, stood for it, because if they did not it meant a party break. The Farmers' Alliance were solid for it. The leaders were put to work, a large amount of money was collected and representative men went out in local campaigns. It was debated on the street, and men of influence converted those of weaker minds.

Now what have we? 1st.--The Lutherans, both German and Scandinavian, and the Catholics are bitterly opposed. The Methodists, our strongest friends everywhere else, are not so here. 2d.--We have one party openly and two others secretly against us. 3d.--While this county, for instance, gave $700 to prohibition, it gives $2.50 to suffrage and claims that for hall rent, the amount then not being sufficient. 4th.--When I suggested to the committee to start a vigorous county campaign and get men of influence to go out and speak, they did not know of one man willing to face the political animosities it would engender.

With the exception of the work of a few women, nothing is being done. We have opposed to us the most powerful elements in the politics of the State. Continuing as we are, we can't poll 20,000 votes. We are converting women to "want to vote" by the hundreds, but we are not having any appreciable effect upon the men. This is because men have been accustomed to take new ideas only when accompanied by party leadership with brass bands and huzzahs. We have a total lack of all. Ours is a cold, lonesome little movement, which will make our hearts ache about November 5. We must get Dakota men in the work. They are not talking woman suffrage on the street. There is an absolute indifference concerning it. We need some kind of a political mustard plaster to make things lively. We are appealing to justice for success, when it is selfishness that governs mankind....

The campaign was continued, however, with all the zeal and ability which both State and national workers could command. There were between fifteen and twenty thousand Scandinavians in the State and a woman was sent to address them in their own language--one woman! A German woman was sent among the men of that nationality. The last night before election, mass meetings were held in all the large towns, Miss Anthony and Miss Shaw being at Deadwood. In her excellent summing-up of the campaign, Elizabeth M. Wardall, State superintendent of press, gives: "Number of addresses by the national speakers, 789; by the State speakers, 707; under the auspices of the W. C. T. U., 104; total, 1,600; local and county clubs of women organized, 400. Literature sent to every voter in the State."

What was the result of all this expenditure of time, labor and money? There were 68,604 ballots cast; 22,972 for woman suffrage; 45,632 opposed; majority against, 22,660. Eight months of hard work by a large corps of the ablest women in the United States, 1,600 speeches, $8,000 in money, for less than 23,000 votes! There were 30,000 foreigners in South Dakota, Russians, Scandinavians, Poles and other nationalities. It is claimed they voted almost solidly against woman suffrage, but even if this were true they must have had the assistance of 15,000 American men. If only those men who believed in prohibition had voted for woman suffrage it would have carried, as had that measure, by 6,000 majority. The opponents of prohibition, of course, massed themselves against putting the ballot in the hands of women.

The main interest of this election was centered in the fight between Huron and Pierre for the location of the capital. There never in any State was a more shameless and corrupt buying and selling of votes, and the woman suffrage amendment was one of the chief articles of barter. The bribers, the liquor dealers and gamblers, were reinforced here, as had been the case in other State campaigns, by their faithful allies, "the Remonstrants of Boston," who circulated their anonymous sheet through every nook and corner of the State.

All of the speakers who took any prominent part in the campaign were paid except Miss Anthony.[64] She contributed her services for over six months and refused during that time an offer of $500 from the State of Washington for ten lectures and a contract from one of the largest lecture bureaus in the country at $60 per night.[65] At the close of the canvass she gave from the national fund $100 each to Mrs. Wardall and Philena E. Johnson, who had worked so faithfully without pay. Then, lacking $300 of enough to settle all the bills, she drew that amount from her own small bank account and put it in as a contribution to the campaign.

At the annual meeting of the State W. C. T. U., September 26, a strong resolution was adopted endorsing Miss Anthony's work in South Dakota and she was made an honorary member. After the election the State suffrage committee unanimously passed the following resolution: "The earnest and heartfelt gratitude of all the suffragists of South Dakota is hereby extended to Susan B. Anthony, who has devoted her entire time, energy and experience for six months to the cause of liberty and justice."

Anna Shaw said that in all her years of preaching and lecturing she had never been so exhausted as at the close of that canvass. Mrs. Catt was prostrated with typhoid fever immediately upon reaching home, and hovered between life and death for many months, in her delirium constantly making speeches and talking of the campaign. Mary Anthony said, "When my sister returned from South Dakota I realized for the first time that she was indeed threescore and ten."

FOOTNOTES:

[59] "I am homesick already," she wrote Mrs. Spofford, "and have been every minute since I left Washington. My choice would be to live there most of the year, but no! Duty first, ease and comfort afterwards, even if they never come."

[60] Mrs. Wallace was kept at home by serious illness in her family. In a letter to Miss Anthony, August 18, expressing her deep regret, she said: "Money would be no object with me if I could overcome the other difficulties in the way, but as I can not, I fear I shall have to let you think I am unreliable. I regret this, as there is no woman (except Miss Willard) whose good opinion I value so highly as yours."

[61] In order to keep her next engagement, Miss Anthony was obliged to leave Huron at 7:30 A. M., drive sixteen miles in the face of a heavy northwest wind and rain, travel all day and speak that evening. "I did the best I could," she wrote in her journal.

[62] Then E. W. Miller took the floor, and in a disgusting manner and vile language berated the women present and all woman suffragists.... Miller disgraced the name of Democracy, disgraced his constituents, disgraced South Dakota, disgraced the name of man by his brutal and low remarks in the presence of ladies and gentlemen.--Aberdeen Pioneer.

[63] At one place where this happened, the Russian sheriff had locked the court house doors, but the women compelled him to open them. He was entirely converted by the addresses of the afternoon, and in the evening when the storm was approaching, he rushed to Miss Anthony and exclaimed, "Come, quick, and let me take you to the cellar, where you will be perfectly safe." "O, no, thank you," she replied, "a little thing like a cyclone does not frighten me."

[64] Henry B. Blackwell made a speaking tour of six weeks through the State at his own expense.

[65] A letter from Mrs. Catt said: "I think you are the most unselfish woman in all the world. You are determined to see that all the rest of us are paid and comfortable, but think it entirely proper to work yourself for nothing. If some of your self-sacrificing spirit could be injected into the great body of suffragists, we would win a hundred years sooner."

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XXXIX. WYOMING--MISS ANTHONY GOES TO HOUSEKEEPING

1890-1891.

Miss Anthony accepted the defeat in South Dakota as philosophically as she had those of the past forty years, bidding the women of the State be of good cheer and continue the work of education until at last the men should be ready to grant them freedom. With Mrs. Colby and Mrs. Julia B. Nelson she went directly to the Nebraska convention at Fremont, November 12.[66] The 18th found her in Atchison with Mrs. Catt and Mrs. Colby, at the Kansas convention, "where," the Tribune says, "she took part in all the deliberations and methods of work as critically and earnestly as if she herself would have to carry them out."

Two weeks were pleasantly spent visiting at Leavenworth and Fort Scott. Thanksgiving was passed at the latter place and the next day the suffrage friends, under the leadership of Dr. Sarah C. Hall, whom Miss Anthony called "the backbone of Bourbon county," gave her a very pretty reception at the home of Mrs. H. B. Brown. Saturday she spoke, morning, afternoon and evening, at the county suffrage convention. Her time for rest and recreation was very brief, and by December 4 she and Mrs. Catt were in the midst of the Iowa convention at Des Moines. As usual when flying from one side of the continent to the other, she stopped at Indianapolis for a few days' work with Mrs. Sewall, and they sat up into the wee, sma' hours, planning and arranging for the Washington convention, the National Council and the World's Fair Congress of Women.

She arrived in Rochester Saturday morning; that evening Anna Shaw came in from her tour of lectures all along the way from South Dakota, and it would not be surprising to know that a business meeting of two was held the next day after church services. Monday evening the Political Equality Club tendered them a reception at the Chamber of Commerce, which was largely attended. On December 16 and 17 they addressed the State Suffrage Convention in this city, and soon afterwards Miss Anthony started for Washington by way of New York and Philadelphia.

The year 1890 had been eventful for the cause of woman suffrage, in spite of the defeat in Dakota. The bill for the admission of Wyoming as a State had been presented in the House of Representatives December 18, 1889. Its constitution, which had been adopted by more than a two-thirds vote of the people, provided that "the right of its citizens to vote and hold office should not be denied or abridged on account of sex." The House Committee on Territories, through Charles S. Baker, of Rochester, reported in favor of admission. The minority report presented by William M. Springer, of Illinois, covered twenty-three pages; two devoted to various other reasons for non-admission and twenty-one to objections because of the woman suffrage clause, "which provides that not only males may vote but their wives also." Incorporated in this report were the overworked articles of Mrs. Leonard and Mrs. Whitney, supplemented by a ponderous manifesto of Goldwin Smith, and it ended with the same list of "distinguished citizens of Boston opposed to female suffrage," which had several times before been brought out from its pigeonhole and dusted off to terrify those citizens of the United States who did not reside in Boston.

As it was supposed Wyoming would be Republican its admission was bitterly fought by the Democrats, who used its suffrage clause as a club to frighten the Republicans, but even those of the latter who were opposed were willing to swallow woman suffrage for the sake of bringing in another State for their party. The changes were rung on the old objections with the usual interspersing of those equivocal innuendoes and insinuations which always make a self-respecting woman's blood boil. The debate continued many days and it looked for a time as if the woman suffrage clause would have to be abandoned if the State were to be admitted. When this was announced to the Wyoming Legislature, then in session, the answer came back over the wire: "We will remain out of the Union a hundred years rather than come in without woman suffrage."[67] After every possible effort had been made to strike out the objectionable clause, the final vote was taken March 26, 1890; for admission 139; against, 127.

The bill was presented in the Senate by Orville H. Platt, of Connecticut, from the Committee on Territories, and discussed for three days. After a repetition of the contest in the House, the vote was taken June 27; in favor of admission 29; opposed 18. Woman suffrage clubs in all parts of the country, in response to an official request by Miss Anthony and Lucy Stone, celebrated the Fourth of July with great rejoicing over the admission of Wyoming, the first State to enfranchise women.

Another event of importance during 1890, was the first majority report from the judiciary committee of the House of Representatives in favor of the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which should confer suffrage upon women. Hon. Ezra B. Taylor, of Warren, O., was chairman of the committee and had exerted all his influence to secure this report, which was presented May 29 by L. B. Caswell, of Wisconsin.[68] On August 12, the Senate committee on woman suffrage again presented a majority report for a Sixteenth Amendment.

It had long been Miss Anthony's earnest desire to have suffrage headquarters in Washington, pleasant parlors where local meetings could be held and friends gather in a social way. In the midst of her great work and responsibility she exchanged many letters during 1890 with ladies in that city regarding this project, but it was finally decided that it would not be judicious to incur the expense. Out of this agitation, however, was evolved a stock company, incorporated under the name of Wimodaughsis, organized for the education of women in art, science, literature and political and domestic economy by means of classes and lectures. As Miss Anthony never gave herself to any work except that which tended directly to secure suffrage for women, she took no part in the new enterprise except to bestow upon it her blessing and $100. Rev. Anna Shaw was elected its first president. The National-American Association took two large rooms in the new club house for headquarters.

Two deaths in 1890 affected Miss Anthony most deeply. Ellen H. Sheldon, of Washington, for a number of years had served as national recording secretary and had endeared herself to all. She was a clerk in the War Department and her entire time outside business hours was devoted to gratuitous work for the association. Her reports were accurate and discriminating and Miss Anthony felt in her death the loss of a valued friend and helper. Julia T. Foster, of Philadelphia, who passed away November 16, was as dear to her as one of her own nieces. A sweet and beautiful woman, wealthy and accomplished, she was so modest and retiring that her work for suffrage and the large sums of money she contributed were known only to her most intimate friends. In remembrance Rachel Foster Avery sent Miss Anthony all the handsome furnishings of her sister's room.

Miss Anthony arrived in Washington January 3, 1891, and received the usual welcome by Mr. and Mrs. Spofford. On the 24th she went to Boston in response to an invitation to attend the Massachusetts Suffrage Convention.[69] She reached the Parker House Sunday morning, but Wm. Lloyd Garrison came at once and took her to his hospitable home in Brookline, and a most fortunate thing it was. Since leaving South Dakota she had been fighting off what seemed to be a persistent form of la grippe and the next morning she collapsed utterly, pneumonia threatened and she was obliged to keep her room for a week. She received the most loving attention from her hostess, Ellen Wright Garrison, and had many calls and numerous pleasant letters, among them the following:

What a mercy it was that you fell into the shelter and care of the Garrisons when so serious an illness came upon you. Of course everybody was disappointed that you could not be at the meeting so that they might at least see you. Now that you are convalescing and we trust on the high road to recovery we want to arrange an informal reception at our office, so that those or some of those who were sorry not to see you at the meeting, may have a chance to do so. I was too tired today to go with my two, and maybe you would have been too tired to see us if we had gone. It is not quite the same when we are seventy-two as when we are twenty-seven; still I am glad of what is left, and wish we might both hold out till the victory we have sought is won, but all the same the victory is coming. In the aftertime the world will be the better for it.

Trusting you may soon be well again, I am your fellow-worker,

LUCY STONE.

Her old comrade, Parker Pillsbury, urged her to come for a while to his home in Concord, N. H., saying: "Should you come you may be sure of a most cordial greeting in this household, and by others; but by none more heartily and cordially than by your old friend and coadjutor in the temperance, anti-slavery and suffrage enterprises." Mrs. Pillsbury supplemented this with a pressing invitation; and another came from the loved and faithful friend, Armenia S. White. Miss Anthony appreciated the kindness but there was too much work awaiting her in Washington to allow of visiting, and thither she hastened even before she was fully able to travel.

The first triennial meeting of the National Woman's Council, Frances E. Willard, president, Susan B. Anthony, vice-president, began in Albaugh's Opera House, February 22, 1891, and continued four days. It was as notable a gathering as the great International Council of 1888. Forty organizations of women were represented; "one," said Miss Willard in her opening address, "for every year during which this noble woman at my right and her colleagues have been at work." The meeting was preceded by a reception tendered by Mrs. Spofford at the Riggs to 500 guests. The services for two Sundays were conducted entirely by women, Revs. Anna Shaw, Anna Garlin Spencer, Ida C. Hultin, Caroline J. Bartlett, Amanda Deyo, Olympia Brown, Mila Tupper and, among the laity, Margaret Bottome, president of the King's Daughters, and Miss Willard. The most famous women of the United States took part in this council. Especial interest was centered in the beautiful Mrs. Bertha Honoré Palmer, president of the Board of Lady Managers of the Columbian Exposition, who occupied a seat on the stage. This board was represented also by its vice-president, Mrs. Ellen M. Henrotin and by Mrs. Virginia C. Meredith. Each great national organization sent its most representative women to present its objects and its work.

As Mrs. Stanton was still in Europe, her paper, "The Matriarchate," was read by Miss Anthony. Miss Willard introduced the reader in her own graceful way, saying: "I will not call her Mrs. Stanton's faithful Achates, for that would fail to express it, but will say that the paper written by one of the double stars of the first magnitude will be read by the other star." Miss Anthony was so happy over this great assemblage, the direct result of all her long years' work for the evolution of woman into a larger life and a catholicity of spirit which would enable those of all creeds, all political beliefs and all lines of work to come together in fraternal council, that she herself scarcely could be persuaded to make even the briefest address. Her one anxiety was that all the noted speakers present should be seen and heard.[70] The council was received by Mrs. Harrison at the White House.

The Twenty-third Annual Convention of the National-American W. S. A. commenced the morning after the council closed, and the vast audiences which filled the opera house at every session hardly knew when one ended and the other began. The interest was sufficient to sell the boxes for the latter at $10, and single seats at 50 cents. Miss Anthony presided and read Mrs. Stanton's fine address, "The Degradation of Disfranchisement," saying as she commenced that "they might imagine how every moment she was wishing they could see, instead of her own, the sunny face and grand white head of the writer." At its close she introduced Lucy Stone, who came forward amid great applause, and said that "while this was the first time she had stood beside Miss Anthony at a suffrage convention in Washington, she had stood beside her on many a hard-fought battlefield before most of those present were born." She then gave a graphic picture of the work accomplished by the suffrage advocates from 1850 to 1890.

All sections of the United States were represented at this convention; delegates were present from Canada, and Miss Florence Balgarnie, of London, spoke for the women of England.[71] Mrs. Henrotin presented an official invitation from the Board of Lady Managers for the association to take part in the Woman's Congress to be held during the World's Fair. The newspapers of Washington, and those of other cities through their correspondents, gave columns of reports, indisputable evidence of the important and stable position now secured by the question of woman suffrage. The board of officers was re-elected, Mrs. Stanton receiving for president 144 of the 175 votes; Miss Anthony's election unanimous.

The Women's Suffrage Society of England had sent official congratulations on the admission of Wyoming with enfranchisement for women, and Miss Anthony was determined they should be read in the United States Senate. This letter from Senator Blair will show how it was accomplished: "The memorial of congratulation which you sent me is not one which I could press for presentation as a matter of right, but fortunately, by a pious fraud, I succeeded in reading it without interruption, so that it will appear word for word in the Record, and it is referred to the noble army of martyrs known as the committee on woman suffrage."

At a delightful breakfast given by Sorosis at Delmonico's on its twenty-third birthday, Miss Anthony was the guest of honor, seated at the right of the president, Mrs. Ella Dietz Clymer, and in her short address recalled the fact that she had known Mrs. Clymer and their incoming president, Dr. Jennie de la M. Lozier, when they were no taller than the table.

She gave a Sunday afternoon reception at the Riggs to Mrs. Annie Besant, of London, and in his letter regretting that absence from the city would prevent his attendance, ex-Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch said: "I am sorry I can not see you often. I have been for many years a 'looker on' and I appreciate the work which you have done for the benefit of the race. You have not labored in vain and you have the satisfaction of knowing that your good work will follow you." She accepted a cordial invitation to dine at his home and received assurance of his thorough belief in suffrage for women.

Easter Sunday she went to Philadelphia to witness the christening, or consecration, of the Foster-Avery baby, by Rev. Anna Shaw, who had married the father and mother. On Monday Mrs. Avery gave a reception for her in the parlors of the New Century Club, and on the following day she addressed the 1,600 girls of the Normal School.

She made this entry in her diary May 1: "Left Washington and the dear old Riggs House today. For twelve winters this has been my home, where I have had every comfort it was possible for Mr. and Mrs. Spofford to give. For as many winters it has been the National Association's headquarters, but now both will have to find a new place, for the hotel is to pass under another management." Miss Anthony reached home the next day, and by the 12th was on hand for the State convention at Warren, O., the guest as usual of Mr. and Mrs. Upton at the home of Hon. Ezra B. Taylor. From here she went to Painesville, where she was entertained at the handsome residence of General J. S. and Mrs. Frances M. Casement, whose hospitality she had enjoyed for many years whenever her journeyings took her to that city.

After a few days at home Miss Anthony started for Meriden, to attend the Connecticut convention on May 22, and when this was over went home with Mrs. Hooker. A letter to the Woman's Tribune said:

I wish I could tell you of my journeyings. I had a pleasant visit with Mrs. Hooker at her charming home in Hartford. En route from Boston I spent a few days with Hon. and Mrs. William Whiting in their beautiful home at Holyoke. One day was devoted to a luncheon party of a hundred or more in their picturesque log cabin three miles down the river, through the lovely Connecticut valley. This cabin, with fireplace worthy the grandest old back-log and fore-stick, polished floors, and lunch served by a Springfield caterer, is not like those of our dear old grandmothers. After the tables were cleared, Mrs. Whiting called on me for a talk. Another day we visited Mount Holyoke Seminary, going through the various buildings and, in the great old kitchen, looking upon neat plateaus of light, sweet-smelling bread, biscuits and cake, all made by the girls during the morning. Each must do a certain amount of work, and all is done in memory of the sainted Mary Lyon, whose monument stands under the grand old trees which surround the buildings.

Then on Sunday I went to Cheshire, to dine with my mother's dear cousin, ninety-five years of age, bright and cheerful in her on-look. Next I hied me to the house of my Grandfather Anthony, who lived in it from the day of his marriage in 1792, to his death at the age of ninety-six.... From here I went to Saratoga and took a drink from the old Congress Spring, and Wednesday reached home. The paper tells you what happened on Thursday evening, and now I am enjoying to the fullest all the good-will of my dear friends.

"What happened" was that Miss Anthony went to housekeeping! After the mother's death, Miss Mary rented the lower part of the house, which now belonged to her, reserved the upper rooms for herself and sister, and took her meals with her tenants. This plan was followed for a number of years. Now, however, Miss Anthony had passed one year beyond the threescore and ten which are supposed to mark the limit of activity if not of life, and her friends urged that she should give up her long journeys from one end of the continent to the other, her hard State campaigns, her constant lectures and conventions. She felt as vigorous as ever but had long wished for the comforts and conveniences of her own home, and she concluded that perhaps her friends were right and she should settle down in one place and direct the work, rather than try to do so much of it herself. She thought this might be safely done now, as so many new and efficient workers had been developed and the cause had acquired a standing which made its advocacy an easy task compared to what it had been in the past, when only a few women had the courage and strength to take the blows and bear the contumely. So Miss Mary took possession of the house; masons, carpenters, painters and paper-hangers were put to work, and by June all was in in beautiful readiness.

The friends in various parts of the country were deeply interested in the new move. Letters of approval came from all directions, among them this from Mrs. Stanton in England: "I rejoice that you are going to housekeeping. The mistake of my life was selling Tenafly. My advice to you, Susan, is to keep some spot you can call your own; where you can live and die in peace and be cremated in your own oven if you desire."

When Miss Anthony returned from her eastern trip on June 11, a pleasant surprise awaited her. The Political Equality Club had taken part in the housekeeping program. Handsome rugs had been laid on the floor, lace curtains hung at the windows, easy chairs placed in the rooms, a large desk in Miss Mary's study, a fine oak table in the dining-room, all the gift of the club. Mrs. Avery had sent a big, roomy desk and Mrs. Sewall an office chair for Miss Anthony's study; Miss Shaw and Lucy Anthony, a set of china; Mr. Avery, the needed cutlery; the brother Daniel R., a great box of sheeting, spreads, bolts of muslin, table linen and towels, enough to last a lifetime. From other friends came pictures, silver and bric-a-brac without limit. The events of the evening after Miss Anthony arrived at home are thus described by the Rochester Herald:

The truth of the matter is that for a long time the Woman's Political Club has been in love with Miss Anthony, a feeling which she has not been slow to reciprocate. The affair culminated last evening, the nuptial ceremony being a housewarming tendered by the club. The reception was a complete success, and the rooms were crowded for several hours, the number of visitors being estimated at no less than 300. The house was brilliantly lighted and everywhere was a profusion of cut flowers and potted ferns. At the entrance the visitors were greeted by Mrs. Greenleaf, president of the club, who presented them to Miss Anthony. In greeting each new-comer the hostess displayed her remarkable power of memory and brilliance as a conversationalist, having a reminiscent word for every one. In the parlor before the fireplace stood the old spinning-wheel which in 1817 had been a wedding gift to her mother. It was decked with marguerites and received no small degree of attention....

A short time after the housewarming, her cousin, Charles Dickinson, of Chicago, stopped over night and, after he had gone, Miss Anthony found this note: "It makes me blush for the wealthy people of the country, that they forget their duty to others. Here art thou, with thy moderate income, spending all of it for humanity's cause, thinking, speaking, doing a work that will last forever. Please take rest enough for good health to be with thee, and to make this easier I enclose a check for $300. Call it a loan without interest, already repaid by the good done to our fellow-beings."

In June she made a long-promised visit to her friend Henrietta M. Banker at her home in the Adirondacks, which she thus describes:

Rev. Anna Shaw and I have had a lovely week. Almost every day we drove out among the mountains; one day to the Ausable lakes, through beautiful woods, up ravines a thousand feet; another to Professor Davidson's summer school, high up on the mountainside. But the day of days was when we drove to the farm-home of old Captain John Brown at North Elba. We found a broad plateau, surrounded with mountain peaks on every side. We ate our dinner in the same dining-room in which the old hero and his family partook of their scanty fare in the days when he devoted his energies to teaching the colored men, who accepted Gerrit Smith's generous offer of a bit of real estate, which should entitle the possessor to a right to vote. Of all who settled on those lands, called the "John Brown opening," only one grayheaded negro still lives, though many of their old houses and barns yet stand, crumbling away on their deserted farms.

In front of the house is a small yard and occupying one-half of it is a grand old boulder with steps leading to the top, where one sees chiseled in large letters, "John Brown, December 2, 1859." At the foot is the grave of the martyr, marked by an old granite headstone which once stood at his grandfather's grave, and on it are inscribed the names of three generations of John Browns. The vandals visiting that sacred spot chipped off bits of the granite until it became necessary to make a cover and padlock it down, so that the farmer unlocks the cap and lifts it off for visitors now. Thus is commemorated that fatal day which marks the only hanging for treason against the United States Government. John Brown was crucified for doing what he believed God commanded him to do, "to break the yoke and let the oppressed go free," precisely as were the saints of old for following what they believed to be God's commands. The barbarism of our government was by so much the greater as our light and knowledge are greater than those of two thousand years ago....

July 25 is to be Suffrage Day at Chautauqua, and dear Mrs. Wallace and Anna Shaw are to preach the gospel of equal rights. I do hope Bishop Vincent will be present and there learn from those two, who are surely "God's women," the law of love to thy neighbor--woman, as to thyself--man. I am hoping the gate receipts on that day will be greater than those of any other during the summer. Wouldn't that tell the story of the interest in this question?

In June she accepted the urgent invitation of the Ignorance Club to honor them by being their guest at their annual frolic on Manitou beach and respond to a toast which should allow her to say anything she liked. Three most enjoyable weeks were spent at home and during this time Miss Anthony addressed the W. C. T. U. She expressed herself in no uncertain tones as to the futility of third parties, declaring that the Prohibition party already had taken some of the best temperance men out of Congress, and made a speech so forcible that it lifted the bonnets of some of the timid sisters. The evening paper reported:

... Rev. C. B. Gardner said Miss Anthony had given the company some excellent political advice, but he inclined to the belief that the temperance reform could be brought about without woman suffrage. "The women would bring the men around in time; they could accomplish much by their moral influence; in this they resembled ministers." Miss Anthony wished to know if it would not be a good thing then, to disfranchise the ministers and let them depend entirely on their moral influence. She explained that in what she had said about prayer she meant prayer by action. She would not have it understood that she did not believe in prayer; she thought, however, that an emotion never could be equal to an action.

She went to Chautauqua July 25, when, for the first time in its history, woman suffrage was presented. Zerelda G. Wallace delivered a grand address and Rev. Anna Shaw gave "The Fate of Republics." Miss Anthony followed in a short speech, and the Jamestown Sunday News said: "Woman's Day was fully justified by the reception given to that intrepid Arnold Winkelreid of women." Frances Willard wrote a few days later from the assembly grounds: "Dearest Susan, I could sing hallelujah over you and our Anna Shaw and 'Deborah' Wallace! It was the best and biggest day Chautauqua ever saw. Do urge your suffragists to go in for this on next year's program."

Miss Anthony attended the golden wedding of John and Isabella Beecher Hooker, in Hartford, August 5; "a most beautiful occasion," she writes in her diary, "but to the surprise of all there was no speaking." An affair without speeches was to her what a feast without wine would have been to the ancients. On the 15th suffrage had a great day at Lily Dale, the famous Spiritualist camp meeting grounds, Miss Shaw and herself making the principal addresses. Miss Anthony thus speaks of the meeting in a letter:

... To Brother Buckley's assertion, made a short time before, that women should not be allowed to vote because the majority of Spiritualists, Christian Scientists and all false religions were women, Miss Shaw replied that there was a larger ratio of men in the audience before her than she had seen in any Methodist or temperance camp meeting or Chautauqua assembly this summer. When Mr. Buckley charged that women were too numerous in the false religions to vote, she would remind him that there were three women to one man in the Methodist church also; and she was quite willing to match the vast majorities of women in the various religions, false and true, with the vast majorities of men at the horse races, variety theaters, police stations, jails and penitentiaries throughout the country. She brought the house down with, "Too much religion unfits women to vote! Too much vice and crime qualifies men to vote!"

People came from far and near. Fully 3,000 were assembled in that beautiful amphitheater decorated with the yellow and the red, white and blue.... There hanging by itself was our national suffrage flag, ten by fourteen feet, with its regulation red and white stripes, and in the center of its blue corner just one great golden star, Wyoming, blazing out all alone. Every cottage in the camp was festooned with yellow, and when at night the Chinese lanterns on the piazzas were lighted, Lily Dale was as gorgeous as any Fourth of July, all in honor of Woman's Day and her coming freedom and equality.

Our hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Skidmore, are the center of things at Lily Dale, and right royal are they in their hospitality as well as their love of liberty for all. This camp has been in existence twelve summers, there has been no police force, and no disturbance ever has occurred. Every one is left to his own sense of propriety of behavior and every one behaves properly.

Miss Anthony still intended, however, to remain at home and in the intervals when she was not coaxed away no bride ever enjoyed more fully her first experiment at housekeeping. All the forty years of travelling up and down the face of the earth had not eradicated from her nature the domestic tastes, and she loved every nook and corner of the old home made new, going from room to room, putting the finishing touches here and there, and fairly revelling in the sense of possession. Hospitality was her strongest instinct, and during all these years she had accepted so much from her friends in Rochester and elsewhere without being able to return it, that now she wanted to entertain everybody and all at once. The diary speaks often of ten and twelve at the table for dinner or tea, and Miss Mary, who constituted the committee of ways and means, was quite overwhelmed with the new regime. The story in the journal runs like this:

Our dear old friends, Sarah Willis and Mary Hallowell, shared our first Sunday dinner with us.... Our old Abolition friends, Giles B. and Catharine F. Stebbins and three or four others took tea with us tonight.... My old friend Adeline Thomson has come to stay several weeks with us. How nice to have my own home to entertain my friends.... Anna Shaw and niece Lucy came today and we had five others to dinner. A very pleasant thing to be able to ask people to stop and dine.... Brother D. R., sister Anna and niece Maud came today for a week. It is so good to receive them in our own home. D. R. enjoys the fire on the hearth.... Had Maria Porter, Mr. and Mrs. Greenleaf and eleven altogether to tea this evening. How I do enjoy it!... Who came this day? O, yes, Mrs. Lydia Avery Coonley, of Chicago, her son and her mother, Mrs. Susan Look Avery, of Louisville, Ky. It makes me so happy to return some of the courtesies I have had in their beautiful home.... Just before noon Mrs. Greenleaf popped into the woodshed with a great sixteen-quart pail full of pound balls of the most delicious butter, and we made her stay to dinner. The girl was washing and I got the dinner alone: broiled steak, potatoes, sweet corn, tomatoes and peach pudding, with a cup of tea. All said it was good and I enjoyed it hugely. How I love to receive in my own home and at my own table!

She went to Warsaw September 17 to help the Wyoming county women hold their convention. The 23d had been set apart as Woman's Day at the Western New York Fair, held at the Rochester driving park. Mrs. Greenleaf presided; Miss Anthony and Rev. Anna Shaw were the speakers. The former spoke briefly, insisting with her usual generosity that the honors of the occasion should belong to Miss Shaw.[72] In the course of her few remarks she said: "We who represent the suffrage movement ask not that women be like men, but that they may be greater women by having their opinions respected at the ballot-box. Only men's opinions have prevailed in this government since it was founded. Enfranchisement says to every man outside of the State prisons, the insane and idiot asylums: 'Your judgment is sound; your opinions are worthy of being crystallized in the laws of the land.' Disfranchisement says to all women: 'Your judgment is not sound; your opinions are not worthy of being counted,' Man is the superior, woman the subject, under the present condition of political affairs, and until this great wrong is righted, ignorant men and small boys will continue to look with disdain on the opinion of women."

From the time that Mrs. Stanton had decided to return to America for the remainder of her days, Miss Anthony had hoped they might have a home together and finish their life-work of history and reminiscence. When she learned that her friend, with a widowed daughter and a bachelor son, contemplated taking a house in New York, she was greatly distressed, as she felt that this would be the end of all her plans. She wrote her immediately:

We have just returned from the Unitarian church where we listened to Mr. Gannett's rare dissertation on the religion of Lowell; but all the time there was an inner wail in my soul, that by your fastening yourself in New York City I couldn't help you carry out the dream of my life--which is that you should take all of your speeches and articles, carefully dissect them, and put your best utterances on each point into one essay or lecture; first deliver them in the Unitarian church on Sunday afternoon, and then publish in a nice volume, just as Phillips culled out his best. Your Reminiscences give only light and incidental bits of your life--all good but not the greatest of yourself. This is the first time since 1850 that I have anchored myself to any particular spot, and in doing it my constant thought was that you would come here, where are the documents necessary to our work, and stay for as long, at least, as we must be together to put your writings into systematic shape to go down to posterity. I have no writings to go down, so my ambition is not for myself, but it is for one by the side of whom I have wrought these forty years, and to get whose speeches before audiences and committees has been the delight of my life.

Well, I hope you will do and be as seemeth best unto yourself, still I can not help sending you this inner groan of my soul, lest you are not going to make it possible that the thing shall be done first which seems most important to me. Then, too, I have never ceased to hope that we would finish the History of Woman Suffrage, at least to the end of the life of the dear old National.

Mrs. Stanton's children would not consent to this plan, but she came to Rochester for a month's visit in September. It was desired by many friends that to the very satisfactory busts of Miss Anthony and Lucretia Mott, which had been made by Adelaide Johnson, should be added one of Mrs. Stanton, and all be placed in the Woman's Building at the World's Fair. To accomplish this Miss Anthony rented a large room in the adjoining house for a studio and invited the sculptor to her home for a number of weeks, until the sittings were finished.

During Mrs. Stanton's visit Miss Anthony entertained the Political Equality Club and a large company of guests, the evening being devoted to the subject of the admission of women to Rochester University. A number of the faculty, Congressmen Greenleaf and Baker, several ministers, the principal of the free academy--about 200 altogether were present and the discussion was very animated. Practically all of them believed in opening the doors and a letter of approval was read from David J. Hill, president of the university. The trustees were represented by Dr. E. M. Moore, who was in favor of admitting women but declared that it would be impossible unless an additional fund of $200,000 was provided beforehand. Miss Anthony insisted that the girls should first be admitted and then, when a necessity for more money was apparent, it would be much easier to raise it. In the course of his remarks Dr. Moore said it was more important to educate boys than girls because they were the breadwinners.

The Utica Sunday paper came out a few days later with a half-page cartoon representing the university campus; on the outside of the fence were Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton heading a long procession of girls, books in hand; standing guard over the fence, labeled "prejudice and old fogyism," was Dr. Moore pointing proudly to the "breadwinners," who consisted of two confused and struggling masses, one engaged in a "cane rush" and the other in a fight over a football. This little incident merely proved the oft-repeated assertion that these two women never were three days together without stirring up a controversy, in which the opposing forces invariably were worsted and public sentiment was moved up a notch in the direction of larger liberty for woman.

Together they visited the palatial home, at Auburn, of Eliza Wright Osborne, daughter of Martha C. Wright, where they were joined by Elizabeth Smith Miller, daughter of Gerrit Smith; and there were delightful hours of reminiscence and chat of mutual friends, past and present. The diary shows that Miss Anthony purchased a full set of books to join the Emerson and Browning classes this year, but there is no record of attendance save at one meeting. One entry says: "Dancing to the dentist's these days." Another tells of forgetting to go to a luncheon after the invitation had been accepted; and still another of inviting a number of friends to tea and forgetting all about it.

In November she went again to Auburn to the State convention, remaining four days. The Daily Advertiser said: "Miss Susan B. Anthony, the grand old woman of the equal rights cause, was then introduced and spoke at length upon the objects for which she had labored so faithfully all her life. Except for her gray hair and a few wrinkles, no one would suppose the speaker to be in her seventy-second year. The full, firm voice, the active manner and clear logic, all belonged to a young woman." At the close of the convention Mrs. Osborne gave a reception in her honor, attended by nearly one hundred ladies.

By invitation of the Unitarian minister, Rev. W. C. Gannett, Miss Anthony participated with himself and Rabbi Max Lansberg in Thanksgiving services at the Unitarian church. The topic was "The Unrest of the Times a Cause for Thankfulness," as indicated by "The Woman, the Social and the Religious Movements." Miss Anthony responded to the first in a concise address, considered under twelve heads and not occupying more than that number of minutes in delivery, beginning with Ralph Waldo Emerson's declaration, "A wholesome discontent is the first step toward progress," and giving a resume of women's advancement during the past forty years, due chiefly to dissatisfaction with their lot.

It had not been an easy matter for Miss Anthony to have even this fragment of a year at home. From many places she had received letters begging her to come to the assistance of societies and conventions, and she was just as anxious to go as they were to have her. The most urgent of these appeals came from Mrs. Johns, of Kansas, where a constitutional convention was threatened and the women wanted a suffrage amendment. When Miss Anthony did not go to the spring convention, Mrs. Johns wrote, April 18: "I can never tell you how I missed you, and the people--they seemed to think they must have you. Letter after letter came asking, 'Is there no way by which we can get Miss Anthony?'" When she declined to go to the fall convention, Mrs. Johns wrote, November 26: "I declare it seemed as if I did not know how to go on without you, and our women felt just as I did. We have had you with us so often that we depended on your presence more than we knew." In another long letter she said:

I hope the national association will not leave Kansas to work out her own salvation. Surely you, to whom we owe municipal suffrage, are not going to fail to come to us at this awful juncture! Dear Aunt Susan, you won't get any wounds here. I will take charge of the office and make the routes, which I am able to do well; I will speak; I will organize; I will do anything you think best, and there will be nobody inquiring what you do with funds, and there will be no disgraceful charges and counter-charges, unless I am greatly mistaken in Kansas women and in myself. We all love you here and we want the cause to succeed more than we want personal aggrandizement.

Mrs. Johns persuaded Mrs. Avery to join in her plea and finally Miss Anthony could hold out no longer, but December 11 wrote to the latter: "I have been fully resolved all along not to go to Kansas during this first campaign, because I felt that my threescore and ten and two years added ought to excuse me from the fearful exposure; still, since you and dear Laura are left so deserted and will be so heartbroken if I stick to my resolve, I will say yes, tuck on my coat and mittens and start. But alas! how soon must that be? I am thoroughly in the dark as to when and where I shall be wanted to begin, but I will do my level best."

The closing days of 1891 were devoted to the voluminous correspondence which preceded every national convention. The large number of letters on file from prominent senators and representatives show that Miss Anthony was keeping an eye on the committees and pulling the wires to have known friends placed on those which would report on woman suffrage. "I am in full sympathy with you upon the question of woman's enfranchisement," wrote Senator Dolph, of Oregon, "and also with your effort to secure a chairman of the committee who favors the movement and is able to present it with intelligence and ability." Speaker Reed closed his letter by saying, "When the eleventh hour comes, we all shall flock in, clamorous for pennies." Words of encouragement were received from many others, and Senator and ex-Governor Francis E. Warren, of Wyoming, wrote: "I am always in harness for woman suffrage wherever I may be. My spoken and written testimony for a score of years has been in its praise and of its perfect working and results in Wyoming."

FOOTNOTES:

[66] While here Miss Anthony received a letter from Rev. N. M. Mann, formerly pastor of the Unitarian church in Rochester but now residing in Omaha, which said: "Are you not coming to the metropolis of the State, when some of us here are just perishing for the sight of your face? I speak for myself and Mrs. Mann firstly, though judging from the number of parlors I go into where your picture is the first thing one sees, I fancy there are a good many others who would be hardly less glad than we to greet you. Come and spend a Sunday, and hear a good old sermon, and lecture in my church."

[67] As women had been voting in the Territory over twenty years and this answer was sent by a legislature composed entirely of men, it would seem to show that the evils predicted of woman suffrage were wholly disproved by actual experience.

[68] Mr. Taylor wrote Miss Anthony: "The delay, which seemed long to you, was absolutely necessary and I am sure you will understand that I have been faithful to the cause. My daughter Harriet, the most wonderful of all women to me, is largely influential in the result...."

[69] DEAR SUSAN ANTHONY: We are to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the First National Woman's Rights Convention in this State and want to make the meeting as useful to the cause as we can. You ought to be here. Will you come? The sheaves gathered in these forty years are to be presented, and of course there will be some reminiscences of pioneer times. We shall be glad to announce you as one of the speakers. I hope you are a little rested since the hard campaign in Dakota. Yours truly,

LUCY STONE.

[70] In her letter describing the council Mrs. Margaret Bottome wrote of Miss Anthony: "I have met, since I have been in Washington, a woman whom I have heard of since I can remember anything. We are not of the same faith--she has devoted her life to what during the past I have shrunk from--and I met her here for the first time; but I shall carry with me always the impression of her spirit upon my own, of the Christ-life, the Christ-spirit. I got it before she had said five words to me, and I could have sat down at her feet and drank in the spirit of Jesus Christ that is in her, though she does not see him just as I do."

[71] After the convention Miss Balgarnie wrote: "It has been one of the most genuine pleasures of my life to meet you, my dear Miss Anthony. I felt 'strength go out of you,' as it were, directly you took my hand."

[72] Miss Anthony was equally generous in regard to speakers of less renown. She wrote to Mrs. Blake during this year: "I felt so happy to give half of my hour at Syracuse to Mrs. C., so that splendid audience might see and hear her. And I am always glad to surrender my time to any unknown speakers whom we find promising; but first they ought to have tried their powers at their home meetings and in rural districts."

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XL. IGNORED BY THE PARTIES--APPOINTED TO OFFICE

1892.

On her way to the convention of 1892, Miss Anthony stopped in New York in response to an urgent letter from Mrs. Stanton, now comfortably ensconced in a pleasant flat overlooking Central Park, saying that unless she came and took her bodily to Washington she should not be able to go. "All the influences about me urge to rest rather than action," she wrote--exactly what Miss Anthony had feared. She was now in her seventy-seventh year and naturally her children desired that she should give up public work; but Miss Anthony knew that inaction meant rust and decay and, as her fellow-worker was in the prime of mental vigor, she was determined that the world should continue to profit by it. Her address this year was entitled "The Solitude of Self," considered by many one of her finest papers.

Mrs. Stanton received a great ovation at the opening session, January 16, but this proved to be her last appearance at a national convention. For more than forty years she had presided with a grace and dignity which never had been surpassed, and now she begged that the scepter, or more properly speaking the gavel, might be transferred to Miss Anthony, whose experience had been quite as extended as her own. The delegates yielded to her wishes and Miss Anthony was elected national president. The office of chairman of the executive committee was abolished; Mrs. Stanton and Lucy Stone were made honorary presidents, and Rev. Anna H. Shaw vice-president-at-large.

Miss Anthony presided over the ten sessions of the convention and they required a firm hand, for the discussions were spirited, as the questions considered were important. Among them were the work to be done at the World's Fair; the opening of the fair on Sunday; the proposition to hold every alternate convention in some other city than Washington; the plan to carry suffrage work into the southern States; the advisability of making another campaign in Kansas; and other matters on which there was a wide difference of opinion.

John B. Allen, of Washington, had introduced in the Senate, and Halbert S. Greenleaf in the House, a joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution extending the right to women to vote at all federal elections. The House Judiciary Committee, January 18, granted a hearing to such speakers as should be selected by the national convention then in session. Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton, Lucy Stone and Mrs. Hooker were chosen. This was the first Democratic committee before whom an appeal had been made; they listened courteously, but brought in no report on the question.

The Senate committee granted a hearing January 20, and three-minute addresses were made by eighteen women representing as many States. Before they left the room, Senator Hoar moved that the committee make a favorable report and the motion was seconded by Senator Warren, Senator Blair also voting in favor. Senators Vance, of North Carolina, and George, of Mississippi, voted in the negative. Senators Quay and Carlisle were absent.

During the convention the district suffrage society gave a reception in the parlors of the Wimodaughsis club house. Later, Mrs. Noble, wife of the Secretary of the Interior, issued cards for a reception in honor of Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton and Lucy Stone. It was attended by members of the Cabinet, Senate, House, diplomatic corps and many others prominent in official and social life.

As Miss Anthony had no longer her comfortable quarters at the Riggs House free of all expense, she did not linger in Washington, but went to Philadelphia for a week with the friends there and reached home February 6. "I send congratulations, I always wanted you to be president," wrote Mrs. Johns. "Now can't you come to our Kansas City Inter-State Convention? We do need you so and there wouldn't be standing room if you were there." And later: "Do any of my wails reach you? The Kansas City people plead for you to come if only to be looked at. Is there any hope?" Miss Anthony was perfectly willing to make a winter campaign in Kansas, but her friends insisted that there were plenty of younger women to do this work and she should wait till spring. So Anna Shaw, Mary Seymour Howell and Florence Balgarnie, of England, went to the assistance of the women there, and Rachel Foster Avery gave $1,000 to this canvass.

Every day at home was precious to Miss Anthony. Sometimes on Sunday afternoon she went to Mount Hope, on whose sloping hillsides rest the beloved dead of her own family and many of the friends of early days;[73] or she walked down to the long bridge which spans the picturesque Genesee river and commands a fine view of the beautiful Lower Falls. Occasionally a friend called with a carriage and they took the charming seven-mile drive to the shore of Lake Ontario. Sunday mornings she listened to Mr. Gannett's philosophical sermons; and through the week there were quiet little teas with old friends whom she had known since girlhood, but had seen far too seldom in all the busy years. Instead of forever giving lectures she was able to hear them from others; and she could indulge to the fullest, on the big new desk, her love of letter-writing, while the immense work of the national association was always pressing. She had a number of applications for articles from various magazines and newspapers, but her invariable reply was, "I have no literary ability; ask Mrs. Stanton;" and no argument could convince her that she could write well if she would give the time to it.

She addressed the New York Legislature in April in reference to having women sit as delegates in the approaching Constitutional Convention. In response to a request from the Rochester Union and Advertiser, she wrote an earnest letter advocating the opening of the World's Fair on Sunday, and giving many strong reasons in favor. On April 22, she joined Miss Shaw, who was lecturing at Bradford, Penn., and Sunday afternoon addressed an audience which packed the opera house. The next day she organized a suffrage club of seventy members among the influential women of that city. After leaving there Rev. Anna Shaw, herself an ordained Protestant Methodist minister, wrote her that she had been shut out of several churches because she had addressed an audience at the Lily Dale Spiritualist camp meeting. She said: "I told them that I would speak to 5,000 people on woman suffrage anywhere this or the other side of Hades if they could be got together."

The first week in May, at the urgent invitation of her good friends, Smith G. and Emily B. Ketcham, of Grand Rapids, Miss Anthony attended their silver wedding. From this pleasant affair she went to the Michigan Suffrage Convention at Battle Creek, where she visited an old schoolmate, Mrs. Sarah Hyatt Nichols. She reached Chicago in time for the biennial meeting of the General Federation of Woman's Clubs. Special trains were run from New York and Boston, Central Music Hall was crowded and numerous elegant receptions were given for the 300 delegates from all parts of the country. Many eminent women sat upon the platform, among them the president of the federation, Mrs. Charlotte Emerson Brown, Frances E. Willard, Susan B. Anthony, Julia Ward Howe, May Wright Sewall, Jenny June Croly and Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson, all of whom were heard at different times during the convention. Miss Anthony was the guest of Lydia Avery Coonley, whose mother wrote to Mary Anthony:

I have been intending for several days to tell you that however your sister may have been regarded forty years ago, she is today the most popular woman in these United States. The federation closed, as you probably know, on Friday night. During the meetings she was several times asked to come forward on the platform, which she did to the manifest gratification of the people, saying something each time which "brought down the house." On the last night a note was sent to the president asking that "Susan B.," Julia Ward Howe and Ednah D. Cheney would please step forward. They came, but only your sister spoke and what she said was vociferously cheered over and over again.

The business committee of the National Council--Miss Willard, Mrs. Sewall, Mrs. Foster Avery, Miss Anthony and others--met in Chicago the same week, the principal subject of consideration being the Woman's Congress to be held the next year during the World's Fair. While in the city Miss Anthony gave a number of sittings to Lorado Taft, the sculptor. Miss Willard had asked that he might make the bust to be placed in the gallery of famous women at the World's Fair, she herself to be responsible for all expenses. "Come and spend a week with me in my home," she wrote, "while he prepares a model of that statesmanlike head, the greatest of them all." Desirous of pleasing her, Miss Anthony agreed, but at once many of the strong-minded protested that the bust must be made by a woman.

A number of amusing letters were exchanged. From Miss Willard: "Mr. Taft is the most progressive believer in woman and admirer of you, dear Susan, that I know. He is in full sympathy with all of our ideas. I am sure that as a friend of mine, appreciated by me as highly as you are by any woman living, you will not place me in the position of declining to have this work done. Please do not take counsel of women who are so prejudiced that, as I once heard said, they would not allow a male grasshopper to chirp on their lawn; but out of your own great heart, refuse to set an example to such folly."

Mr. Taft himself wrote Miss Anthony: "I can put myself in your place sufficiently to appreciate in part the objections which you or your friends may feel toward having the work done by a man. My only regret is that I am not to be allowed to pay this tribute to one whom I was early taught to honor and revere.... Come to think of it, I believe I am provoked after all. Sex is but an accident, and it seems to me that it has no more to do with art than has the artist's complexion or the political party he votes with." Again from Miss Willard: "Do you not see, my friend and comrade, that having engaged a noble and large-minded young man, who believes as we do, to make that bust, engaged him in good faith and announced it to the public, it is a 'little rough on me,' as the boys say, for my dear sister to wish me to break my contract? We can not have too many busts of you, so let Miss Johnson go on and make hers, and let me have mine, and let those other women make theirs, and we will yet have one of them in the House of Representatives at Washington, the other in the Senate, the third in the White House!... My dear mother and Anna wish to be remembered to you, knowing that you are one of our best and most trusted friends, only I must say that you are a naughty woman in this matter of the 'statoot.'" Miss Anthony's common sense finally induced her to waive objections and she gave Mr. Taft as many sittings as he desired. When the work was finished Miss Willard wrote: "My beloved Susan, your statue is perfect. Lady Henry and I think that one man has seen your great, benignant soul and shown it in permanent material."

The 25th of May Miss Anthony attended a meeting of the Ohio association at Salem, where had been held in April, 1850, the second woman's rights convention in all history. There was present one of the pioneers who had called that convention, Emily, wife of Marius Robinson, editor of the Anti-Slavery Bugle. Miss Anthony read her paper for her, as she was over eighty years old, and added her own strong comments, of which the report of the secretary said: "Her burning words can never be forgotten, and many a soul must have responded to her call for workers to carry to glorious completion what was begun in such difficulty."

There was some talk at this time of holding a Southern Woman's Council and Miss Anthony wrote to the Arkansas Woman's Chronicle:

The New England States hold an annual suffrage convention and have done so for nearly thirty years, and I do not see any valid reason why the States of any section may not have a society or a convention. Larger numbers from the six New England States can meet and help each other in Boston, than could possibly go to Washington to get the soul-refreshing which comes through the gathering together of kindred spirits from the entire nation.

As I shall be glad to see the women of the South, of all possible aims and ends, meet in council, so I should rejoice to see them hold a southern States' suffrage convention. I say this because I want you to know that my heartiest sympathy goes with you in your effort to call together the women of your section of the Union; and I shall rejoice to see the women of the far-off northwestern States doing the same thing. Women should have their local societies and meetings, their county, State and section conventions, and then, for our great national gathering, each State should send its representatives to Washington, there to confer together and go before the committees of Congress to urge our claims. What a power women would be if all could but see eye to eye in their struggle for freedom!

She remained at home long enough to prepare the memorials to the national political conventions, and June 4 found her at Minneapolis ready for the Republican gathering. She was entertained by Mr. and Mrs. T. B. Walker, and found Mrs. J. Ellen Foster also a guest in that hospitable home. The memorial presented by the National-American W. S. A. contained the same unanswerable arguments for the enfranchisement of women which had been made for so many years, and asked for the following plank: "As a voice in the laws and the rulers under which we live is the inalienable right of every citizen of a republic, we pledge ourselves, when again in power, to place the ballot in the hand of every woman of legal age, as the only weapon with which she can protect her person and property and defend herself against all aggressive legislation."

Miss Anthony was notified that she could have a hearing before the platform committee on the evening of June 8. She was promptly on hand and was kept standing in the hall outside of the committee room until after 9 o'clock. Finally she was so tired she sent for one of the committee to ask how much longer she would have to wait. She learned that its chairman, J. B. Foraker, of Ohio, refused to preside or call the committee to order to hear any argument on woman suffrage. Senator Jones, of Nevada, then hunted him up and asked if he might preside in his place, and permission being given she was invited into the room. She spoke for thirty minutes as only a woman could speak who had suffered the persecution of an Abolitionist before the Republican party was born, who had been loyal to that party throughout all the dark days of the Civil War, who had not once repudiated its principles in all the years which had since elapsed. She pleaded that now she and the women she represented might have its support and recognition in their right to representation at the ballot-box. This committee was composed of twoscore of the most prominent men in the Republican party and, at the close of Miss Anthony's address, every one in the room arose and many crowded about her, giving her the most earnest assurance of their belief in the justice of her cause, but telling her frankly that they could not put a woman suffrage plank in their platform as the party was not able to carry the load! The plank eventually adopted read as follows:

We demand that every citizen of the United States shall be allowed to cast one free and unrestricted ballot in all public elections, and that such ballot shall be counted as cast; that such laws shall be enacted and enforced as will secure to every citizen, be he rich or poor, native or foreign, white or black, this sovereign right guaranteed by the Constitution. The free and honest popular ballot, the just and equal representation of all the people, as well as their just and equal protection under the laws, are the foundation of our republican institutions, and the party will never relax its efforts until the integrity of the ballot and the purity of elections shall be guaranteed and protected in every State.

This was identical with the one adopted in 1888, at which time a number of women had telegraphed the chairman asking if the convention intended it to apply to women, and he had answered that he did not understand it to have any such intention. Therefore the women who went to the Republican convention of 1892 asking for bread, received instead "the water in which the eggs had been boiled."

There were present at this convention two regularly appointed women delegates from Wyoming, and the difference in the attention bestowed upon them and upon those who came to press the claims of the great class of the disfranchised, ought to have been an object lesson to all who assert that women will lose the respect of men when they enter politics. Not a newspaper in the country had a slur to cast on these women delegates. The Boston Globe made this pertinent comment: "An elective queen in this country is no more out of place than one seated by hereditary consent abroad. It is no rash prediction to assert that the child is now born who will see a woman in the presidential chair. Thomas Jefferson will not be fully vindicated until this government rests upon the consent of all the governed."

After just five days at home Miss Anthony left for Chicago to attend the Democratic National Convention, June 21, which was requested to adopt the following plank: "Whether we view the suffrage as a privilege or as a natural right, it belongs equally to every citizen of good character and legal age under government; hence women as well as men should enjoy the dignity and protection of the ballot in their own hands."

Miss Anthony and Isabella Beecher Hooker took rooms at the Palmer House and the latter made arrangements for the hearing before the resolution committee, which was assembled in one of the parlors, Henry Watterson, of Louisville, chairman. The ladies made their speeches, were courteously heard, politely bowed out, and the platform was as densely silent on the question of woman suffrage as it had been during its whole history. Mrs. Hooker remained alone in the convention until 2 o'clock in the morning, hoping to get a chance to address that body. She had not been fooled as many times as Miss Anthony, who returned to the hotel and went to bed.

The Union Signal, Frances E. Willard, editor, spoke thus of the occasion:

That heroic figure, Susan B. Anthony, sure to stand out in history as plainly as any of our presidents, has given added significance to the two great political conventions of the year. Neither party has recognized her plea, but both have innumerable adherents who openly declare themselves in favor of her principles. She states that this year she felt for the first time that she had a pivot on which to hang her quadrennial plea, and that pivot was Wyoming, the men of that equal-minded State in both conventions holding up her hands. Miss Anthony's pathetic eyes reveal that she has attained to loneliness--the guerdon of great spirits who struggle from any direction toward the mountain tops of human liberty. But on the heights such souls meet God, and one day all women shall call her blessed.

The National Prohibition Convention at Cincinnati, June 30, was not visited by Miss Anthony, as she felt that the women of this party needed no assistance in looking after the interests of suffrage. The third plank in the platform there adopted read: "No citizen should be denied the right to vote on account of sex."

From Chicago she went directly to Kansas to look after the fences in that State. Mrs. Johns and Anna Shaw joined her and they spoke before the Chautauqua Assembly at Ottawa, June 27, going thence to Topeka, as Miss Anthony expressed it, "to watch the State Republican Convention." They received a hearty greeting and she was invited to address the convention June 30. The Capital said: "There were loud calls for Susan B. Anthony and as she advanced to the platform she was greeted with the most cordial applause." In the evening a reception was given in the Senate chamber to the ladies in attendance at the convention. Miss Anthony, Mrs. Johns and Mrs. May Belleville Brown addressed the resolution committee. The platform was reported with a plank favoring the submission to the voters of a woman suffrage amendment, which was enthusiastically adopted--455 to 267--in the largest Republican convention ever held in Kansas.[74]

Miss Anthony and Miss Shaw then hastened to Omaha for the first national convention of the People's party July 4. They arrived about 9 P. M., July 2, to find they were booked for speeches at the Unitarian church that evening and the audience had been waiting since 7:30, so they rushed thither, hot, dusty and tired, and made their addresses. Sunday afternoon they went to a workingwomen's meeting in the exposition building and heard Master Workman Powderly for the first time. At his invitation Miss Anthony also spoke.

The People's party, from its inception, had recognized women as speakers and delegates and claimed to be the party of morality and reform, but after a day at the convention Miss Anthony writes in her diary: "They are quite as oblivious to the underlying principle of justice to women as either of the old parties and, as a convention, still more so." The resolution committee refused to grant the ladies even an opportunity to address them, which had been done willingly by the Republicans and Democrats. Their platform contained no reference to woman suffrage except that in the long preamble occurred the sentence: "We believe that the forces of reform this day organized will never cease to move forward until every wrong is righted, and equal rights and equal privileges securely established for all the men and women of this country." This sentiment, however, was universally accepted by the delegates as including the right of suffrage.

Miss Anthony spoke at the Beatrice Chautauqua Assembly, and then returned to Rochester. She had some time before received a letter from Chancellor John H. Vincent saying: "The subject of woman suffrage will be presented at Chautauqua on Saturday, July 30, 1892. A prominent speaker will be secured to present the question as forcibly as possible. In behalf of the Chautauqua management, I take pleasure in extending to you a hearty invitation to be present and take a place upon the platform on that occasion. Trusting that you will be able to accept this invitation, I am, faithfully yours."

She had had a long, hot and fatiguing trip and her cool, spacious home was so restful that she decided to defer her visit to Chautauqua until later in the season.[75] On August 8, Miss Shaw, Mrs. Foster Avery and Miss Anthony, who had been having a little visit together, started from Rochester for Chautauqua, where the Reverend Anna was to debate the question of woman suffrage with Rev. J. M. Buckley, editor New York Christian Advocate. She gave her address amidst a succession of cheers and applause, Miss Anthony sitting on the platform with her, an honor rarely accorded at the assembly. In the evening a delightful reception was given to the three ladies in the Hall of Philosophy. Dr. Buckley made his reply the next day to an audience so cold that even his supreme self-satisfaction was disturbed. If any one thing ever has been demonstrated at Chautauqua, by those speeches and all preceding and following them on the same question, it is that the sentiment of the vast majority of the people who annually visit this great assembly is in favor of woman suffrage.

After speaking at the Cassadaga Lake camp meeting, August 24, Miss Anthony went in September to the Mississippi Valley Conference at Des Moines. It was thought that possibly by holding a great convention in the West, large numbers in that section of the country and the States along the Mississippi could attend who would find it inconvenient to go to Washington. She was glad to give her co-operation and spoke and worked valiantly through all the sessions. From Des Moines she went to Peru, Neb., at the urgent invitation of President George L. Farnham, to address the State Normal School.[76]

Early in October she began her tour of the State of Kansas under the auspices of the Republican central committee. She was accompanied one week by Mrs. Johns, and then each went with some of the men who were canvassing the State. Mrs. Johns made Republican speeches; Miss Anthony described the record of the party on human freedom and urged them to complete that roll of honor by enfranchising women. The campaign managers were very much dissatisfied because she talked suffrage instead of tariff and finance, but as she was paying her own travelling expenses and contributing her services, she reserved the right to speak on the only subject in which she felt a vital interest. If the Republicans had won the election, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Johns expected that of course they would take up the question of woman suffrage and carry it to success; but the State was carried by the newly formed People's party.

As soon as she was thoroughly rested and renovated in her own home, after this hard campaign, Miss Anthony left for the State convention at Syracuse, November 14.[77] The Standard, intending to compliment the ladies, said: "The loud-voiced, aggressive woman of other days was not here. In her place were low-voiced, quietly-dressed, womanly women, and those who expected to see the 'woman rioter' of the past failed to find one of the sort. The graceful, dignified and quiet woman of today bears no likeness to some who have gone before, who thought to break through and gain their desires."

A contemporary called the paper down as follows: "When it is remembered that Susan B. Anthony was one of the originators of the movement, that Lucy Stone and Mrs. Greenleaf and a host of others who have marched right along in the suffrage ranks from the beginning, were also the leaders in this 'low-voiced' assembly who came on tip-toe and acted in pantomime, the compliment, to say the least, has negative qualities." An interview on this statement contains the following paragraph:

"It simply shows," said Miss Anthony, smiling, "how differently the question is regarded now. Among the women who were pioneers in the movement were Elizabeth Cady Stanton and myself. I don't think it probable that we are any sweeter-faced or that our voices are any more melodious than they were thirty years ago. It is only that the whole matter was regarded with such horror and aversion then that any one connected with it was looked upon in a disagreeable light; it is very different now." Her pleasant face, with a suggestion of her Quaker descent in its soft bands of gray hair, took on a gently reminiscent expression, which her visitor could not help but contrast amusedly with the imaginary portrait of the redoubtable Amazon that in her early years was conjured up by the sound of Susan B. Anthony's name.

Thanksgiving Day she attended service at the Universalist church and comments in her diary: "Mr. Morrill, the associate pastor, spoke on 'The undiscovered Church without a Bishop;' Mr. Gannett, 'The undiscovered State without a King;' Mr. Lansberg, 'Many States in One;' all good, but all alike gave not the faintest hint of any undiscovered America, where the male head of the family should not be considered 'divinely appointed.' I had hard work to keep my peace."

The next day she went to Buffalo to address the alumnæ of the ladies' academy, and was entertained by Miss Charlotte Mulligan, founder of the missionary school for boys. During this time she was investigating the new law permitting women to vote for county school commissioners in New York, and found to her disgust that by the use of the words "county clerk" instead merely of "clerk who prints and distributes the ballots," all the women of the large towns and cities were still disfranchised; just as the law of 1880 had used the words "school meeting," which also cut off the women of the cities. This was another illustration of the manner in which every step of the way to suffrage for women has been made as difficult as possible.

In December Miss Anthony became an office-holder! It happened in this way: Her neighbor, Dr. Jonas Jones, who had been one of the trustees of the State Industrial School located at Rochester, died on the 4th. She immediately wrote to Governor Roswell P. Flower requesting that a woman be put on the board in his place, in addition to the one already serving (Mrs. Emil Kuichling), and suggested Mrs. Lansberg, wife of the rabbi; at the same time she asked Mary Seymour Howell, who resided in Albany, to see the governor and use her influence. She did so and found he was quite willing to appoint a woman but would not consider any but Miss Anthony. She, however, was away from home so much she thought that in justice to the institution she ought not take the position; but when she learned that her refusal might result in a man's being given the place, she telegraphed her willingness to accept. She was appointed at once to fill out the unexpired term of Dr. Jones, and May 4, 1893, was re-appointed by Governor Levi P. Morton for a full term. Of course numerous letters and telegrams of congratulation were received and the newspapers contained many kind notices, similar in tone to this from the Democrat and Chronicle:

It is a good appointment; a fitting recognition of one of the ablest and best women in the commonwealth. There has been a vast amount of cheap wit expended upon Miss Anthony during the past years, and although it has been almost entirely good-natured it has served to give a wrong impression to the unthinking of one of the clearest-headed and most unselfish women ever identified with a public movement.... Speaking of her appointment she said: "You see I have been regarded as a hoofed and horned creature for so long that even a little thing touches my heart, and when it comes to being recognized as an American citizen after fighting forty years to prove my citizenship, it begins to look as if we women have not fought in vain." ... A braver-hearted woman than Susan B. Anthony never lived, but those who can read between the lines of her remark will not miss the little touch of pathos in her pride, and the hint of the disappointments which have hurt in the long struggle.

A new charter for the city of Rochester had been prepared and a mass meeting of citizens was announced for December 12, to hear an exposition of its points. The morning paper said: "By far the most largely attended meeting the Chamber of Commerce has ever held was that of last evening. The large attendance was due to the announcement that the new charter would be discussed by Miss Susan B. Anthony, and the interest of the meeting was largely due to the fact that, true to her colors, she kept her engagement...." Miss Anthony's commission had been received from the governor that day, which fact was announced by President Brickner as he introduced her, and she was greeted with cheers. In the course of her speech she said:

Since promising to address this body, I have tried in vain to find some word which would settle the question with every member present in favor of so amending the charter as to give our women equal voice in conducting the affairs of the city. It seems such a self-evident thing that the mother's opinion should be weighed and measured in the political scales as well as that of her son. It is so simple and just that the wife's judgment should be respected and counted as well as the husband's. And who can give the reason why the sister's opinion should be ignored and the brother's honored?... Over 5,000 women of this city pay taxes on real estate, and who shall say they are not as much interested in every question of financial expenditure as any 5,000 men; in the public parks, street railways, grade crossings, pavements, bridges, etc.? And not only the 5,000 tax-paying women, but all the women of the city are equally interested in the sanitary condition of our streets, alleys, schools, police stations, jails and asylums....

To repair the damages of society seems to be the mission assigned to women, and we ask that the necessary implements shall be placed in their hands. But, you say, women can be appointed to see to these matters without voting. Yes, but they are not; and if they were, without the ballot they would be powerless to effect the improvements they might find necessary. If the women of this city had the right to vote, those on the board of charities, for instance, would not be compelled year after year to beg each member of every new council for the appointment of some women as city physicians, as scores of them have done for the past six or eight years. Had we the right to vote, do you suppose we should have to plead in vain before the two parties to place women in nomination for the school board?

I want this amendment of the charter first, because it is right and just to women; second, that women may have a political fulcrum on which to plant their lever for everything they wish to secure through government; third, that the opinions of the women of this city may be respected, and there is no other way to secure respect but to have them counted with those of men in the ballot-box on every possible question which is carried to that tribunal; and fourth, to free the mothers from the cruel taunt of being responsible for the character of their grown-up sons while denied all power to control the conditions surrounding them after they pass beyond the dooryards of their homes.

She continued by showing the good effects of woman's municipal suffrage in England, Canada and also in Kansas, and full suffrage in Wyoming; and closed with an earnest appeal for an amendment to the new charter which should confer the municipal franchise upon women. A few days later the board of trustees took final action on the charter, of which the Democrat and Chronicle said: "The amendment proposed by Miss Susan B. Anthony extending the suffrage to women was defeated, although by a close vote. Had there been a full meeting of the board it is a question whether it would not have been adopted, as several of the members who were not present last evening had expressed themselves as favorable."[78]

Miss Anthony addressed the Monroe County Teachers' Institute at Brighton, December 16. The diary records many visits to the Industrial School, conferences with the other fourteen trustees and much correspondence with the boards of similar institutions elsewhere. In her mail this year were letters from most of the civilized countries on the globe, among them several from the leaders of the movement in New Zealand, saying that her name was more familiar than all others there, and asking for advice and encouragement in their work of securing the ballot for women.[79] The following was received from Mrs. Kate Beckwith Lee, Dowagiac, Mich.: "Mr. Bonet, our sculptor, obtained your photograph, and we now have your grand face looking down in stone from the front of our theater, which was erected as an educator to our people and a memorial to my father, P. D. Beckwith, who was liberal toward all mankind and a believer in woman's equality, and I sincerely hope you may some time see the building." The other women sculptured on this handsome edifice are George Eliot, George Sand, Rachel, Mary Anderson and Sarah Bernhardt. Among the great mass of correspondence, this is selected:

An incident which is of no particular consequence to this inquiry, constrains me to write in the hope that you may find time to place upon paper your recollection of the connection that my father (the late George H. Thacher, then mayor of the city of Albany) had with your anti-slavery meeting in this city just before the war. I was too young to have it make a vivid impression upon me, but it has sometimes been said that was the first opportunity your organization had to freely express its views within the State of New York. I will be very grateful if you will permit your memory to go back some thirty years and recall that incident.[80] Yours,

JOHN BOYD THACHER.

This illustrates the pride which the children of the future will have in showing that their parents or grandparents rendered some assistance to the cause of woman and of freedom. Yet Mr. Thacher, who, as a member of the New York Board of General Managers of the Columbian Exposition, had the selection of those who should compose the Woman's Board of the State, did not name one who had been identified with the great movement for equal rights during the past forty years, and had made it possible for women to participate in this celebration.

A case which had been commenced in the courts of New York in 1891 and had run along through several years, may as well be described here as elsewhere. Miss Anthony had but an indirect connection with it and it is mentioned more for its utter ridiculousness than for any other reason. A woman's art association in New York City, Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson, president, Miss Alice Donlevy, secretary, had the promise of a legacy to build an academy, and they decided to place a statue or bust at each side of the entrance, representing Reform and Philanthropy. Miss Anthony was selected for the one and Mrs. Mary Hamilton Schuyler for the other. The latter, in 1852, founded the New York School of Design for Women, had been the friend and patron of art, and for many years before her death had been noted for her philanthropic work.

A serious difficulty at once arose in the opposition of Mrs. Schuyler's nephew and stepson, Philip Schuyler, who objected to the "disagreeable notoriety." He carried the matter into the courts, which of course attracted the comment of all the newspapers of the country, pro and con, and caused more "disagreeable notoriety" than a dozen statues would have done. He obtained a preliminary injunction against the art association and then took the case to the supreme court for a permanent injunction, on the ground that the "right of privacy" had been violated. The real secret of his objections, however, was exposed in his complaint before the supreme court. Among the twenty-eight grievances alleged were the following:

Twenty-second.--The said Mary M. Hamilton Schuyler took no part whatever in any of the various so-called woman's rights agitations, with which the aforesaid Susan B. Anthony was, and is, prominently identified; and that she took no interest in such agitations or movements, and had no sympathy whatever with them; and that, as the plaintiff believes, she would have resented any attempt such as is made by the defendants to couple her name with that of the said Susan B. Anthony.

Twenty-third.--The acts of the defendants in attempting to raise money by public subscription for a statue of the said Mary M. Hamilton Schuyler; in associating her name with the name of Susan B. Anthony, and in announcing that the projected statue of her is to be placed on public exhibition at the Columbian Exposition as a companion piece to a statue of the said Susan B. Anthony, constitute, and are an unlawful interference with the right of privacy, and a gross and unwarranted outrage upon the memory of the said Mary M. Hamilton Schuyler, under the specious pretense of doing honor to her memory; and that the surviving members of her family have been, and are, greatly distressed and injured thereby.

The supreme court continued the injunction, and the art association then carried the case up to the court of appeals. Here the decision of the lower court was reversed. The opinion was rendered by Justice Rufus W. Peckham, afterwards appointed by President Cleveland to the Supreme Bench of the United States. It is not often that a judge of the highest court in the State incorporates in a legal decision a compliment to a woman, and for this reason the tribute of Justice Peckham is the more highly appreciated. After holding that "persons attempting to erect a statue or bust of a woman no longer living, if their motive is to do honor to her, and if the work is to be done in an appropriate manner, can not be restrained by her surviving relatives," he continued:

Many may, and probably do, totally disagree with the advanced views of Miss Anthony in regard to the proper sphere of women, and yet it is impossible to deny to her the possession of many of the ennobling qualities which tend to the making of great lives. She has given the most unselfish devotion of a long life to what she has considered would tend most for the benefit and practical improvement of her sex, and she has thus lived almost literally in the face of the whole world, and during that period there has never been a single shadow of any dark or ugly fact connected with her or her way of life to dim the lustre of her achievements and of her efforts.

FOOTNOTES:

[73] In the center of the Anthony lot, not far from the main gateway, is a square monument of Medina granite, the four sides of its cap-stone inscribed Liberty, Justice, Fraternity, Equality.

[74] At the convention of Republican clubs a few days previous, Senator Ingalls, having been defeated for re-election to the Senate and feeling somewhat humbled, said in his speech: "I believe every man ought to be a politician; I might say every woman also. If a plank endorsing woman suffrage were inserted in the Republican platform, I would stand upon it." Ten years before, in this same city, he had declared it to be "that obscene dogma, whose advocates are long-haired men and short-haired women, the unsexed of both sexes, human capons and epicenes."

[75] Henry B. Blackwell delivered the address at Chautauqua. At its close he asked all who were opposed to woman suffrage to rise, and about twenty persons stood up. He then asked all who were in favor to stand, and the great audience, filling the huge amphitheater, rose in a body.

[76] When she spoke in the New York State Teachers' Convention in 1853, the first time a woman's voice had been heard in that body, Professor Farnham, then superintendent of the Syracuse public schools, was one of the three men who came up and congratulated her.

[77] While here Miss Anthony received a telegram: "Greeting, gratitude and good-by to the noblest Roman of them all and her brave host, from Isabel Somerset and Frances E. Willard." They had expected to stop in Rochester and visit her before leaving for England, but had gone to New York by another route.

[78] Jean Brooks Greenleaf, at this time in Washington with her husband, wrote Miss Anthony:

"I felt heart-sick when I learned the result of the charter business and I am not over it yet. I told Mr. Greenleaf I would dispose of every bit of taxable property I have in Rochester. I can not bear to think that, with so glorious an opportunity to be just, men prefer to be so unjust. They can help it if they will, those men who speak us so fair. If they would make one solid stand for our rights they could overrule the masses who are not half so unready to do women justice as they are represented. Good God! when I think of it I wonder how you have borne it all these years and not gone wild."

[79] Full suffrage was granted to the women of New Zealand in 1893.

[80] In February, 1861; see Chapter XIII.

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XLI. WORLD'S FAIR--CONGRESS OF REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN

1893.

It is not surprising that Miss Anthony writes in her journal at the beginning of the New Year, 1893: "The clouds do not lift from my spirit. I am simply overwhelmed with the feeling that I can not make my way through the work before me." Never a year in all her crowded life opened with such a mountain of things to be attended to--suffrage conventions, council meetings, the great Woman's Congress at the World's Fair, State campaigns, Industrial School matters, lecture engagements--the list seemed to stretch out into infinity, and it is no wonder that it appalled even her dauntless spirit.

The first necessity was to get the Washington annual convention out of the way. It had been set for an early date this winter, and she left home January 5. Headquarters were at Willard's Hotel and the convention opened in Metzerott's Music Hall, January 15, continuing the usual five days. At the opening session Miss Anthony read beautiful tributes by Mrs. Stanton to George William Curtis, John Greenleaf Whittier, Ernestine L. Rose and Abby Hutchinson Patton, who had died during the year, all earnest and consistent friends of woman's equality. Resolutions were adopted recognizing the splendid services of Francis Minor, Benjamin F. Butler, Abby Hopper Gibbons, Rev. Anna Oliver and a number of other active and efficient workers who also had passed away.

Miss Anthony, in her president's address, gave a strong, cheery account of the past year's work and an encouraging view of the future, and at both day and evening sessions there were the usual number of able and entertaining speeches. Reports were made by delegates from thirty-six States. At the business meeting the question again came up of holding the annual convention in Washington at the beginning of each new Congress and in some other part of the country in alternate years. This plan was vigorously opposed by Miss Anthony, who said in her protest:

The sole object, it seems to me, of this national organization is to bring the combined influence of all the States upon Congress to secure national legislation. The very moment you change the purpose of this great body from National to State work you have defeated its object. It is the business of the States to do the district work; to create public sentiment; to make a national organization possible, and then to bring their united power to the capital and focus it on Congress. Our younger women naturally can not appreciate the vast amount of work done here in Washington by the National Association in the last twenty-five years. The delegates do not come here as individuals but as representatives of their entire States. We have had these national conventions here for a quarter of a century, and every Congress has given hearings to the ablest women we could bring from every section. In the olden times the States were not fully organized--they had not money enough to pay their delegates' expenses. We begged and worked and saved the money, and the National Association paid the expenses of delegates from Oregon and California in order that they might come and bring the influence of their States to bear upon Congress.

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

Miss Anthony was warmly supported by a number of delegates but the final vote resulted: in favor, 37; opposed, 28.

Among the notable letters received by the convention was the following from Lucy Stone: "Wherever woman suffragists are gathered together in the name of equal rights, there am I always in spirit with them. Although absent, my personal glad greeting goes to every one; to those who have borne the heat and burden of the day, and to the strong, brave, younger workers who have come to lighten the load and complete the victory. We may surely rejoice now when there are so many gains won and conceded, and when favorable indications are on every hand. The way before us is shorter than that behind; but the work still calls for patient perseverance and ceaseless endeavor. The end is not yet in sight, but it can not be far away." Those who listened little thought that this would be the last message ever received from that earnest worker of fifty long years. Letters of greeting were sent to her and to Mrs. Stanton. Miss Anthony was unanimously re-elected president.

She lingered for a few days' visit with Mrs. Greenleaf, who gave a reception for her, at which Grace Greenwood was one of the receiving party. She had a luncheon at Mrs. Waite's, wife of the Chief-Justice, and after several other pleasant social functions, left Washington February 1.[81] There was now a magnet in New York City and henceforth she always arranged her hurried eastern trips so that she might spend a few hours or days with Mrs. Stanton, when as in the old time, they wrote calls, resolutions and memorials and made plans to storm the strongholds.

On February 8, Miss Anthony spoke at Warsaw, the guest of Mrs. Maud Humphrey; and for the next week the journal says: "Trying all these days to get to the bottom of my piles of accumulated letters." On her seventy-third birthday the Political Equality Club gave a reception at the pleasant home of Rev. and Mrs. W. C. Gannett, and presented her with a handsome silver teapot, spirit lamp and tray. Mrs. George Hollister gave her a set of point lace which had belonged to her mother, the daughter of Thurlow Weed; and there were numerous other gifts. She wrote to Mrs. Avery on the 23d: "It is just ten years ago this morning, dear Rachel, since we two went gypsying into the old world. Well, it was a happy acquaintance we made then and it has been a blessed decade which has intervened. Ten years of constant work and thought, but ten years nearer the golden day of jubilee!"

She arranged a meeting at the Rochester Chamber of Commerce, March 1, for May Wright Sewall, president National Council of Women, to speak on the approaching Woman's Congress at the World's Fair. On March 6 she began a brief lecture tour, speaking in Hillsdale, Detroit, Saginaw, Bay City, Grand Rapids, Lansing, Battle Creek, Charlotte and in Toledo. Nine evening addresses, several receptions, and over a thousand miles of travel in twelve days, was not a bad record for a woman past seventy-three.[82]

Among the pleasant letters received through the winter were several from the South. Miss Anthony was especially appreciative of the friendship of southern women, as her part in the "abolition" movement in early times had created a prejudice against her, and in later days the sentiment for suffrage had not been sufficient to call her into that part of the country, where she might form personal acquaintances and friendships. She had, during these months, earnest letters from the women of Italy asking for encouragement and co-operation in their struggles. Many letters came also from teachers, stenographers and other wage-earning women, full of grateful acknowledgment of their indebtedness to her. There were invitations enough for lectures to fill every month in the year, ranging from the Christian Association at Cornell to the Free-thinkers' Club in New York, and covering all the grades of belief or non-belief between the two. She was asked to contribute to a symposium on "The Ideal Man," to write an account of "The Underground Railroad," and to give so many written opinions on current topics of discussion that to have complied would have kept her at her desk from early morning until the midnight hour.

In a letter to a friend she said: "The other day a millionaire who wrote me, 'wondered why I didn't have my letters typewritten.' Why, bless him, I never, in all my fifty years of hard work with the pen, had a writing desk with pigeonholes and drawers until my seventieth birthday brought me the present of one, and never had I even a dream of money enough for a stenographer and typewriter. How little those who have realize the limitations of those who have not."

She wrote to Robert Purvis at this time: "What a magnificent opening speech Gladstone made, and how splendid his final remarks: 'It would be misery for me if I had foregone or omitted in these closing years of my life any measure it was possible for me to take towards upholding and promoting the cause--not of one party or one nation, but of all parties and all nations.' So can you and I say with Gladstone, we should be miserable but for the consciousness that we have done all in our power to help forward every measure for the freedom and equality of the races and the sexes."

In April she lectured at a number of places in New York to add to the limited fund which kept the pot boiling at home.[83] She also went to Buffalo to talk over Industrial School matters with Mrs. Harriet A. Townsend, president of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union, which had proved so great a success in that city. On the 28th she spoke before the Woman's Columbian Exposition Committee of Cincinnati, "to a very fashionable and representative audience," the Enquirer said. For this lecture she received $125. During the spring she wrote the Woman's Tribune:

How splendidly Kansas women voted, and now come suffrage amendments in Colorado, New York and Kansas! Well, we must buckle on our armor for a triple fight, and we must shout more loudly than ever to our friends all over the country for money to help these States. Although Kansas is the most certain to carry the question, nevertheless we must organize every school district of every county of each State in which the battle of the ballot for woman is to be fought. Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry from this to the day of the election.

Today's mail brought $100 to our national treasury from Mrs. P. A. Moffett, of Fredonia. How my heart leaped for joy as I read her letter and again and again looked at her check, and how I ejaculated over and over, "O that a thousand of our good women who wish success to our cause would be moved thus to send in their checks!" Only a very few can go outside to work, but many can contribute money to help pay the expenses of those who do leave all their home-friends, comforts and luxuries. If the many who stay at home and wish, could only believe for a moment that we who go out not knowing where our heads will rest when night comes, really love our homes as they love theirs, they would vie with each other to throw in their mite to make the path smooth for the wayfarers. But we, every one of us who can speak acceptably, must do all in our power to persuade the men of these States to vote for the amendment. Do let us all take to ourselves new hope and courage for the herculean task before us. Who will send the next $100? O, that we had $10,000 to start with!

Miss Anthony and Mrs. Avery met at Mrs. Sewall's for a conference on Woman's Congress matters and then went to Chicago to attend, by invitation, the formal opening of the Columbian Exposition May 1, 1893. Miss Anthony wrote: "Mrs. Palmer's speech was very fine, covering full equality for woman." Her address the year before at the dedication ceremonies contained one of the noblest tributes ever paid to women, closing with these beautiful sentences: "Even more important than the discovery of Columbus, which we are gathered together to celebrate, is the fact that the general government has just discovered woman. It has sent out a flashlight from its heights, so inaccessible to us, which we shall answer by a return signal when the exposition is opened. What will be its next message to us?" Upon this occasion she was even more eloquent. Her keen expose of the absurd platitudes in regard to woman's sphere, and her fine defence of women in the industrial world, deserve a place among the classics.

Since Miss Anthony's part in this great world's exposition must necessarily be condensed into small space, it seems most satisfactory to place it all together. It has been related in the chapter of 1876 how women were denied practically all governmental recognition in the Centennial. They were determined that this should not be the case in 1893. As early as 1889 she began making plans to this effect and conferring with other prominent women. Several officials, who were in positions to influence action on this question, had declared that "those suffrage women should have nothing to do with the World's Fair;" and as some women whose social prestige might be needed were likely to be frightened off if suffrage were in any way connected with the matter, Miss Anthony felt the necessity of moving very discreetly. As "those suffrage women" had been behind every progressive movement that ever had been made in the United States for their own sex, it was hardly possible that they would not be the moving force in this. Miss Anthony was not seeking for laurels, however, either for herself or for her cause, but only to carry her point--that women should participate in this great national celebration and that they should do this with the sanction and assistance of the national government. In her plans she had the valuable backing of Mrs. Spofford, who made it possible for her to remain in Washington every winter, gave the use of the Riggs House parlors for meetings and aided in many other ways.

Miss Anthony went quietly about among the ladies in official life whom she could trust, and as a result various World's Fair meetings were held at the hotel, participated in by Washington's influential women, and a committee appointed to wait upon Congress and ask that women be placed on the commission. She did not appear at these gatherings, and only her few confidantes knew that she was behind them. Meanwhile it was announced early in January, 1890, that the World's Fair Bill had been brought before the House, and Miss Anthony at once prepared a petition asking for the appointment of women on the National Board of Management. This was placed in the hands of ladies of influence and in a few days one hundred and eleven names were obtained of the wives and daughters of the judges of the Supreme Court, the Cabinet, senators, representatives, army officials; as distinguished a list as could be secured in the national capital.

This petition was presented to the Senate January 12. It requested that women should be placed on the board with men, but instead, the bill was passed in March creating a commission of men and authorizing them to appoint a number of women to constitute a "Board of Lady Managers." These 115 appointments were intended to be practically of a complimentary nature, it was not expected that the women would take any prominent part, and no particular rule was observed in their selection. While perhaps in some States they were not the ablest who might have been found, they were, as a board, fairly representative. To bring this great body into harmonious action and guide it along important lines of work, required a leader possessed of a combination of qualities rarely existing in one person--not only the highest degree of executive ability but self-control, tact and the power of managing men and women. They were found, however, in the woman elected to preside over this board, Mrs. Bertha Honoré Palmer, of Chicago. At the close of the exposition it was universally conceded that she had proved herself pre-eminently the one woman in all the country for this place. Her record, during the several years that she held this very responsible position, is one of the most remarkable ever made by any woman.

At the time Miss Anthony prepared her petition to Congress for representation, no action had been taken by any organized body of women in the country, and if she had not been on the field of battle in Washington and acted at the very moment she did, the bill would have passed Congress without any provision for women. They would have had no recognition from the government, no appropriations for their work, no official power, and their splendid achievements at the Columbian Exposition, which did more to advance the cause of women than all that had been accomplished during the century, would have been lost to the world. Having secured this great object, she asked no office for herself or for any other woman. On several public occasions, in the early months of the fair, she refused to speak or to sit on the platform, lest she might embarrass the President of the Board of Lady Managers by committing her to woman suffrage. Mrs. Palmer, however, showed her the most distinguished courtesy, in both public and private affairs, inviting her to the platform and including her in the social functions at her own residence. Miss Anthony soon felt that she was in full sympathy with herself in every measure which tended to secure for women absolute equality of rights, a point which Mrs. Palmer emphasized in the most unmistakable language in her eloquent address delivered in the Woman's Building, at the close of the exposition.

In these circumscribed limits it will be impossible to give any adequate account of that greatest of all accomplishments of women at the World's Fair--the Woman's Congress--whose proceedings fill two large volumes in the official report. In order that intellectual as well as material progress should be presented, it had been decided to hold a series of congresses which should bring together a representation of the great minds of the world. C. C. Bonney was made president of the Congress Auxiliary; Mrs. Palmer, president, and Mrs. Ellen M. Henrotin, vice-president of the Woman's Branch. Although women were to participate in all, Mr. Bonney desired to have one composed of them alone. To assist Mrs. Henrotin, who had been made acting president, as well as to further insure the success of this congress, Mr. Bonney appointed May Wright Sewall chairman, and Rachel Foster Avery secretary, of the committee of organization, and they were assisted by an efficient local committee.

As president and secretary of the National Council of Women, and Mrs. Sewall vice-president of the International Council, no two could have been secured with so wide a knowledge of the organizations of women throughout the world and the best methods of securing their co-operation. The magnitude of their labors can be appreciated only by an examination of the official report. The fact of their merging into this congress the International Council of Women, which was to have been held in London that year, was one of the most potent elements of its success. Miss Anthony wrote Mrs. Sewall: "The suffrage work has missed you, oh, so much, still I would not have had you do differently. I glory in Rachel's and your work this year beyond words."

The World's Congress of Representative Women, which opened May 15, 1893, was the largest and most brilliant of any of the series which extended through the six months of the fair, and was considered by many the most remarkable ever convened. Twenty-seven countries and 126 organizations were represented by 528 delegates. During the week eighty-one meetings were held in the different rooms of the Art Palace. There were from seven to eighteen in simultaneous progress each day and, according to official estimate, the total attendance exceeded 150,000 persons. The fifteen policemen stationed in the building stated that often hundreds of people were turned away before the hour of opening arrived, not only the audience-rooms but the halls and ante-rooms being so crowded that no more could enter the building, which held 10,000.

All who were in attendance at this congress, all who read the accounts in the Chicago daily papers, will testify that it is not the bias of a partial historian which prompts the statement that Susan B. Anthony was the central figure of this historic gathering. Every time she appeared on the stage the audience broke into applause; when she rose to speak, they stood upon the seats and waved hats and handkerchiefs. People watched the daily program and when she was advertised for an address, there was a rush from other halls and an impenetrable jam in the corridors. Again and again she was obliged to call upon a stout policeman to make a way for her through the throngs which pressed about her, anxious to get even a sight of her face. No matter what department of the congress she visited, whether of education, religion, philanthropy or industries, the audience demanded a speech and would not be satisfied until it was made.[84] Large numbers of the women who gave addresses in these various meetings paid tribute to her work, and the mention of her name never failed to elicit a burst of applause. At the many public and private receptions given to the congress the post of honor was assigned to her, and no guest ever was satisfied to leave without having touched her hand.

It is not too much to say that no woman in this country, or in any other, ever was so honored because of her own individual services to humanity. It was the universal recognition of her labors of nearly half a century, that had laid the foundation upon which had been reared all the great organizations represented by the women in this congress. Hers had been the pioneer work, the blazing of the pathway through the forests of custom and prejudice which for untold centuries had forbidden them to step beyond the narrow limits of domestic occupations. All of a sudden, it seemed, the women of the world had awakened to the knowledge that she had borne ridicule, abuse, misrepresentation, disgrace, that they might enter into the kingdom of woman's right to her highest development. Long-delayed though it had been, the women of her own and other countries came to lay their homage at her feet, to bow before her in loving gratitude, to rise up and call her blessed.

Letters of congratulation were received from far and wide; one from Frances E. Willard in Switzerland said:

MY BELOVED SUSAN: You are a happy woman and we are all crowing to think the people love, honor and call for you so loud and long. It suits one's sense of poetic justice; it confirms one's faith in human nature and the Heavenly Power not ourselves "that makes for righteousness." Lady Henry, Anna Gordon and I have "hoorayed" over your laurels and said, "Bless her; she is not only our Susan but everybody's." Lady Henry says you have the true sign of greatness that you are absolutely without pretension. You do not take up all the time and luxuriate in the sound of your own voice, but are glad to give the other ones a bit of breath too. She says no woman of fame has ever so thoroughly made this impression of modesty and unselfishness upon her mind. And I say Selah.[85]

In her London letter the noted correspondent, Florence Fenwick Miller, of England, wrote:

Amidst all the attractive personalities and ideas presented, the most sought of all--the one whose presence drew crowds everywhere, who was made to speak in whatever hall she entered, and who was surrounded in every corridor and every reception, just as the queen-bee is surrounded in the hive by her courtiers, was the veteran leader of the woman suffragists of America, Susan B. Anthony. At seventy-three she is as upright of form, as clear and powerful of mind, as strong of voice, as courageous and uncompromising as ever. Let our revered and beloved Miss Anthony have the last word.

The program for the Woman's Congress assigned but one session to the National-American Suffrage Association, and it was the honest intention to give no more time to the discussion of political equality than to each of the other departments. It made a place for itself, however, in practically every one of the meetings. Whether the subject were education, philanthropy, reform or some other, the speakers were sure to point out the disabilities of woman without the ballot. So strong was the desire to hear this question discussed that it became necessary to hold afternoon meetings in the large halls, aside from those on the regular morning and evening program, in order to give the eager crowds an opportunity to hear its distinguished advocates from all parts of the world. It is doubtful if the whole fifty years of agitation made as many converts to equal suffrage as did the great object lesson of the Woman's Congress.

Many pleasant letters passed between Miss Anthony and Mr. Bonney, Mrs. Palmer and Mrs. Henrotin. The last named asked her to take part in the Temperance, the Labor and the Social and Moral Reform Congresses and requested her advice and assistance. She was placed by Mr. Bonney on the advisory council of the Political, Social and Economic Congresses. Mrs. Palmer wrote: "I should like you to send us special suggestions for speakers and topics." Miss Anthony was much pleased at the selection of Mrs. Palmer for president of the Board of Lady Managers, heartily seconded all her efforts and lent no support to the dissensions made by several women who thought there should have been more recognition of those who had been pioneer workers. That this was appreciated is shown by a letter written as early as April, 1891:

I feel that I must express my thanks to you that you did not condemn us unheard, for I naturally supposed that as ---- ---- belonged to your organization you would take her view of any matter which interested her. I thank you very much for your fair-mindedness, and beg that you will read the statement which I shall send you and which will probably give you a better idea of this unpleasant matter than anything else you have seen.

I remember with great pleasure our meeting in Washington, and hope it was only the first of many such pleasant occasions for me. Thanking you again, I am most cordially yours,

Miss Anthony spoke several times at the noon-hour meetings held in the Woman's Building.[86] Mrs. James P. Eagle, chairman, who edited the report of the noon-hour addresses, wrote her: "I would not take much pleasure in publishing our book if I could not have something from your addresses to go in it. You must not deny me. One of your talks was 'Woman's Influence vs. Political Power,' another 'The Benefits of Organization.' If it is your best and easiest way, make the speeches and employ a stenographer to take them and send me the bill. I can not afford to miss them. You have been so very kind and encouraging to me all along that I shall feel it a Brutus blow if you fail me now." As she never wrote a speech in these days and could not make the same one twice, she was unable to comply with this request.

Miss Anthony was invited to speak at the Press Congress May 27, the day when the religious press as a leader of reforms was under consideration. The managers became very uneasy and began trying to find out how she meant to handle the question. Her only reply was, "I shall speak the truth." The speech, delivered before an audience containing many ministers, caused a tremendous sensation. She took up the reforms, temperance, anti-slavery, woman's rights, labor, and showed conclusively that in every one the church and the religious press, instead of being leaders, were laggards. At the close the chairman remarked apologetically that of course the speaker did not expect people in general to agree with everything she had said. The Chicago Tribune thus finished its report: "As Miss Anthony had an engagement she was obliged to leave at this point, and most of the audience went with her."

The Congress on Government convened August 7 and, at Mr. Bonney's request, Miss Anthony was present at the opening ceremony and responded to an address of welcome in behalf of the civil service commission. Five sessions of this Government Congress were devoted to a discussion of equal suffrage, the speakers being women. The chairman, Hon. Wm. Dudley Foulke, said it was not the intention to give this subject such prominence, but women had shown so much more interest than men, half of them accepting the invitation to take part and only one man in twenty responding, that he was compelled thus to arrange the program.

Soon after the adjournment of the Woman's Congress Miss Anthony left the Palmer House, which had been its headquarters, and, accepting the invitation of Mrs. Lydia Avery Coonley, enjoyed the congenial atmosphere of her beautiful home for a month. At the conclusion of her visit with Mrs. Coonley she went for six weeks with Mr. and Mrs. Sewall, who had taken a large house for the season. This was a social center and the weekly receptions were a prominent feature, bringing together distinguished people from all countries, who were in Chicago, as officials or visitors, during this wonderful summer. While at Mrs. Coonley's Miss Anthony formed two acquaintances who from that date have been among her most valued friends--Mr. and Mrs. Samuel E. Gross. After leaving the Sewalls she spent a delightful month with them at their residence on the Lake Shore drive, where she was surrounded with every luxury which wealth and affection could bestow. This added another to the homes in that city always open to her, and Mrs. Gross often wrote: "Your visits are a sweet benediction to our family."[87]

Among the most elegant of the many social affairs to which she was invited was the luncheon in the great banquet hall of the Hotel Richelieu, given by the officers of the National Council to those of the International, the foreign delegates and a few other guests, 150 in all. May Wright Sewall presided with great dignity and charm over the "after dinner speech-making" of this assemblage of the representative women from the most highly civilized nations of the world, and Miss Anthony sat at her right hand.

Once she went to Harvey and spoke at a camp meeting of 3,000 persons; and later to the Bloomington Chautauqua to give an address; then all the way to Kansas to speak at the State Fair in Topeka and fill a month's lecture engagements. Two weeks she spent in her own home visiting with relatives; then rushed down to Long Island to hurry Mrs. Stanton with her paper; and back again to Chicago to read it for her at the Educational Congress. Many days and evenings were passed among the wealth of attractions on the exposition grounds; and so the summer waxed and waned, one of the longest holidays she ever had known, and yet with not an idle hour through all the four months of delightful associations and cherished acquaintances. She writes in the diary October 30: "This was my last sight of the White City in its full glory by night."

Among the many graceful words of farewell spoken by the press of Chicago, may be quoted the following from the Inter-Ocean, which suggests the strong and graceful pen of Mary H. Krout:

It is pleasant in these reminiscent days when we talk over the glories and delights of the World's Fair, to recall the honors heaped upon Susan B. Anthony. Her personal friends vied with each other in arranging elaborate entertainments of which she was the central figure. There were dinners and luncheons, banquets and receptions, and at each and all the refined and delicate face shone above the board with a beauty and tranquillity far exceeding the mere beauty of youth and faultlessness of feature. It was the beauty of experience, sweetened and purified by success and appreciation....

It must seem a strange contrast to the woman who has worked so perseveringly in the face of untold difficulties--this change that a few years have wrought. It has not been so very long since she was the universal butt of ridicule, lampooned and caricatured, with all that malice, in its coarsest and most brutal form, could suggest. Her age was the favorite theme of the callow witling, her cause a never-failing subject for reproach and abuse. It is all over and done with, thanks to the new race of men which women themselves are training and educating. There are no words for her nowadays but those of praise and affection. She has lived to see truth survive and justice vindicated. Men no longer regard her as the arch-enemy to domestic peace, disseminating doctrines that mean the destruction of home and the disorganization of society. They perceive in her, rather, the advocate of that liberty which knows no limitations either of sex or of condition--a freedom which, achieved, means the incalculable advancement of the race.

In all the assemblages where Miss Anthony was present during those memorable months--the observed of all observers, holding a veritable court--her admirers were both men and women, and no belle at a ball was ever more unmistakably deferred to. It made her happy, as it should have done. But it made far happier those who have believed in her all these years, that she should have triumphed over ignorance and prejudice, and at threescore and ten have come into her kingdom at last. When it is asked what woman was most prominent, most honored, most in demand in all the public ceremonials and private functions held in Chicago during the Columbian Exposition, there can be but one answer--Susan B. Anthony.

Through all the summer and autumn of 1893 a campaign had been going forward in Colorado, where the legislature had submitted the question of woman suffrage to the voters. The national association was represented by Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, who rendered splendid service. Mrs. Leonora Barry Lake spoke under the auspices of the Knights of Labor. The rest of the work was done by the women of Colorado, who proved a host in themselves. Miss Anthony held herself in readiness to go at any time but the friends felt that, unless vitally necessary, she should be spared the hardships. Circumstances were favorable; there had been a vast change in public sentiment since the defeat of 1877; the question was submitted at a time when only county elections were held and there was no political excitement; Populists and Republicans not only endorsed it but worked for it; Democrats offered no party opposition and many of them gave it cordial support; more than half of the newspapers in the State advocated it. The campaign in Colorado differed from all those which had been conducted in other States in the fact that it was not left for women to carry on alone, but the most prominent men in all parties lent their assistance and made the victory possible.[88] The amendment was carried by nearly 6,000 majority, about three to one in favor. Miss Anthony received the telegram announcing the fact November 8, the day after election, and she was the happiest woman in America.

Immediately upon returning home from Chicago she went to the State suffrage convention which met in Historical Hall, Brooklyn, November 13. While in New York she was the guest of Mrs. Russell Sage at the dinner of the Emma Willard Alumnæ. Four days were given to the convention, one or two spent with Mrs. Catt, in her delightful home at Bensonhurst-by-the-Sea, and a few at the suburban residence of Mrs. Foster Avery. While here she addressed the New Century Club in Philadelphia, and for several days following was in attendance at the Pennsylvania convention. On December 18, she lectured at Jamaica; the 19th at Riverhead; the 20th at Richmond; the 22d she attended the Foremothers' Day dinner in New York and made an address; the 23d she spoke before the Women's Conference of the Ethical Society in that city.

When not lecturing she was struggling with her mass of correspondence, attending to her duties in connection with the Industrial School, and making preliminary arrangements for two big State campaigns which required the writing of hundreds of letters, all done with her own hand. Invitations came during these days to address the New York Social Purity League, the Women's Republican Association, the Pratt Institute and the National Convention of the Keeley Cure League; and requests for articles on "Why Should Young Men Favor Woman Suffrage?" for the Y. M. C. A. paper of Chicago; "What Should the President's Message Say?" for the New York World; "If you had $1,000,000 what would you do with it?" for a symposium; and at least a score of similar applications. The friendly letters included one from Judge Albion W. Tourgee, acknowledging receipt of the History of Woman Suffrage, "from one whose devotion to principle and brave advocacy of right have ever commanded my profound esteem." He also expressed his interest and belief in the principle of woman suffrage. The same mail brought a letter from Professor Helen L. Webster, asking for a copy of the History to place in the library of Wellesley College "so that it may be within reach of the students."

The Kansas legislature again had submitted a suffrage amendment and many letters were coming from the women of that State, begging Miss Anthony's help. She filled reams of paper during December, telling them how to put everybody to work, to organize every election precinct in the State, to raise money, and above all else to create a public sentiment which would demand a woman suffrage plank in the platform of each of the political parties. "I am going to make a big raid to get a fund for Kansas," she wrote, "but nothing will avail without the support of the parties." The work in Kansas was not, however, by any means the most formidable undertaking which confronted her. The women of New York were about to enter upon the greatest suffrage campaign ever attempted, and toward its success she was bending every thought, energy and effort, earnestly coöperating with the strongest and best-equipped workers in the State.

FOOTNOTES:

[81] James G. Blaine died while she was in Washington and the diary says: "He should have lived, and the Republicans should have honored him as their leader. He was that, though not chosen by them."

[82] The newspapers, almost without exception, in all these places, spoke in unqualified praise of Miss Anthony and her work, of her "royal welcome," her "packed audiences," her "masterly address," etc. Several of them, notably the Bay City Tribune, contained strong editorial endorsement of woman suffrage. At Lansing she addressed the House of Representatives and the next day the bill conferring municipal suffrage on women was voted on; 38 ayes, 39 nays. It was reconsidered, received a good majority in both Houses and was signed by the governor, but afterwards declared unconstitutional by the supreme court of the State.

[83] The diary shows a gift for this purpose, during the month, of $150 from Rachel Foster Avery and $50 from Adeline Thomson.

[84] "More than once--indeed, I believe more than a score of times--I saw speakers of eloquence and renown interrupted in the midst of a discourse by audiences who simply would not listen, after Miss Anthony's entrance into the hall, until she had been formally introduced and an opportunity given them to express their reverence by prolonged applause."--From letter of Mrs. Sewall.

[85] Lady Henry had just returned from Chicago where she had attended the World's Fair Temperance Congress and here had heard Miss Anthony for the first time. At the close of her speech declaring that there could be no effective temperance work among women until they had the ballot, Lady Henry came forward and gave it her most hearty endorsement.

[86] "As only the most gifted women will be invited to participate in these entertainments, we hope the invitation will be esteemed as an honor conferred by the Board of Lady Managers, and your acceptance will be gratefully appreciated."--Note of Invitation.

[87] As a memento of these visits Mrs. Gross presented Miss Anthony with $100; and Mrs. Coonley gave her a rich brocaded silk dress and a travelling suit, both beautifully made by her own dressmaker, with bonnets to match.

[88] The "Remonstrants" flooded the State with their literature, but as this contained a conspicuous advertisement of a large liquor establishment, it defeated itself. The headquarters of the organized opposition were located in a Denver brewery.

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XLII. THE SECOND NEW YORK CAMPAIGN

1894.

The year 1894 is distinguished in the annals of woman suffrage for two great campaigns: one in New York to secure from the Constitutional Convention an amendment abolishing the word "male" from the new constitution which was to be submitted to the voters at the fall election; the other in Kansas to secure a majority vote on an amendment which had been submitted by the legislature of 1893, and was to be voted on in November. In order to make the story as clear as possible, each of these campaigns, both of which were in progress at the same time, will be considered separately. Before entering upon either, the leading features of the twenty-sixth of the series of Washington conventions, which have run like a thread through Miss Anthony's life for more than a quarter of a century, will be briefly noticed.

On January 13, she lectured before the University Association at Ann Arbor in the great University Hall--the second woman ever invited to address that body, Anna Dickinson having been thus honored during the war. Sunday morning she spoke for the University Christian Association, in Newbury Hall. Monday morning the State Suffrage Association commenced a three days' convention, during which she gave numerous short addresses. Wednesday evening a large reception was given by her hostess, Olivia B. Hall, whose home Miss Anthony always regarded as one of her most enjoyable resting-places in her many trips through Michigan. Mrs. Hall had contributed hundreds of dollars to the cause of woman suffrage, and made a number of timely presents to Miss Anthony for her personal use.

From Michigan they went to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the suffrage association of Toledo. It is worthy of note that Miss Anthony had helped organize this society in the house of Mrs. Hall, who lived there at that time. She was here, as always when in this city, the guest of her friend, Anna C. Mott, whose father and uncle, Richard and James Mott, were her staunch supporters from the early days of the abolition movement. The papers contained long and flattering notices, which had now become so customary that to quote one is to give the substance of all.

Miss Anthony lectured in Baltimore February 13, going from there to Washington. The convention opened in Metzerott's Music Hall, February 15, welcomed by Commissioner John W. Ross, of the District. Among the speakers were Senator Carey and Representative Coffeen, of Wyoming; Senator Teller and Representatives Bell and Pence, of Colorado; Senator Peffer and Representatives Davis, Broderick, Curtis and Simpson, of Kansas; ex-Senator Bruce, of Mississippi; Hon. Simon Wolf, of the District; Catherine H. Spence, of New Zealand; Miss Windeyer, of Australia; Hannah K. Korany, of Syria; Kate Field; and Mary Lowe Dickinson, secretary King's Daughters.

Appropriate memorial services were held for the distinguished dead of the past year who had rendered especial service to the cause of woman suffrage: Lucy Stone, George W. Childs, Leland Stanford, Elizabeth Peabody, Elizabeth Oakes Smith. Eloquent tributes were offered by the various members of the convention, and Miss Anthony added one to Mary F. Seymour, founder of the Business Woman's Journal. The death of Myra Bradwell, editor Legal News, occurred too late for her honored name to be included in these services. Bishop Phillips Brooks and ex-President Rutherford B. Hayes, both of whom had unequivocally expressed themselves in favor of suffrage for women, also had died in 1893.

At the opening session, on Miss Anthony's birthday, she was presented by the enfranchised women of Wyoming and Colorado with a beautiful silk flag which bore two shining stars on its blue field. She accepted it with much emotion, saying: "I have heard of standard bearers in the army who carried the banners to the topmost ramparts of the enemy, and there I am going to try to carry this banner. You know without my telling how proud I am of this flag, and how my heart is touched by this manifestation." From the ladies of Georgia came a box of fresh flowers, and among other pleasant remembrances were seventy-four American Beauty roses from Mrs. S. E. Gross, of Chicago. A little later, when Virginia D. Young brought the greetings of South Carolina, Miss Anthony said:

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

There were many pleasant newspaper comments on Miss Anthony's re-election, among them the following from the Chicago Journal:

The national suffrage association honored itself yesterday by again electing to its presidency Susan B. Anthony. She has suffered long for a cause she believes to be right, and it is fitting that in these later years of her active life, when the cause has become popular, she should wear the honors her patient, persistent endeavor has won. Susan B. Anthony is one of the most remarkable products of this century. She is not a successful writer; she is not a great speaker, although a most effective one; but she has a better quality than genius. She is the soul of honesty; she possesses the gift of clear discrimination--of seeing the main point--and of never-wavering loyalty to the issue at hand....

For more than forty years she has led the women of America through the wilderness of doubt, and now from Pisgah's heights looks over into the Canaan land of triumphant victory. Past the allotted time of threescore years and ten, Miss Anthony may never cross the Jordan of her hopes, but she has led her hosts safely through the gravest dangers and trained up others well fitted to wear the mantle of leadership. It is the hope of all who have learned to know and appreciate this heroic woman, that her wise counsel and earnest, faithful spirit may long continue to inspire and direct the affairs of this great association.

The office of national organizer was created and Carrie Chapman Catt elected to fill it. The association accepted an invitation to hold the next meeting in Atlanta, Ga. At the close of the convention a hearing was granted by the Senate and House committees. Miss Anthony introduced the various speakers, representing all sections of the country, and at the conclusion one of the new members came to her and said earnestly: "If you had but adopted this course earlier, your cause would have been won long ago." He was considerably surprised when she informed him that they had had just such hearings as this for the past twenty-six years.

The legislature of New York had ordered the necessary measures to be taken for a delegate convention to revise the constitution. Governor Hill in 1887 and Governor Flower in 1892 had recommended that women should have a representation in this convention. The bill, as it finally passed both branches of the legislature, provided that any male or female citizen above the age of twenty-one should be eligible to election as delegate. When the district conventions were called to choose these, both Democrats and Republicans refused to nominate any woman. As the delegates would draw $10 a day for five months, the political plums were entirely too valuable to give to a disfranchised class. The Republicans of Miss Anthony's district would not consider even her nomination, although she was recognized as the peer of any man in the State in a knowledge of constitutional law. The Democrats in that district, who were in a hopeless minority, made the one exception and, as a compliment, nominated Mrs. Jean Brooks Greenleaf, who ran several hundred votes ahead of the ticket.

The women then proceeded to inaugurate a great campaign in order to create a public sentiment which would demand from this convention an amendment conferring suffrage on women. To begin this, which would require a vast amount of money, they had not a dollar. No delegate owed his election to a woman, nor could any woman further his ambition for future honors to which his record in this body might prove a stepping-stone. So far as any political power was concerned, women were of less force than the proverbial fly on the wagon wheel, and the majority of men who go into a convention of this kind do so from that particular sort of lofty patriotism which sees an official position in the near or distant future. On the other hand, the element which is forever and unalterably opposed to any move in the direction of suffrage for women, represented the dominant financial and political power in the greatest metropolis in America, whose ramifications extend to every city, village and cross-roads in the State. With its money and its votes this element can make and unmake politicians at will, and under present conditions, with the ballot in the hands of men only, it is virtually an impossibility for a candidate to be elected if this organization exert its influence against him. How to persuade the parties and the individual men to risk defeat until they succeed in the enfranchisement of women, which alone will destroy the absolute domination of this oligarchy, is a problem yet to be solved. That the women of New York dared attempt it, showed courage and determination of the highest order.

This necessarily had to be a campaign of education, of forming new public sentiment and putting into definite shape that which already existed. This could be done in four ways: by organization, by petitions, by literature and by speeches. The petitions were put into circulation in 1893.[89] As it would be necessary to use every dollar to the very best advantage, the Anthony home in Rochester was put at the service of the committee in order to save rent. Practically every room in the house was called into requisition. The parlors became public offices; the guest chamber was transformed into a mailing department; Miss Anthony's study was an office by day and a bedroom by night; and even the dining-room and kitchen were invaded. Here Mary S. Anthony, corresponding secretary, and Mrs. Martha R. Almy, vice-president-at-large, with a force of clerks, worked day and night from December, 1893, to July, 1894, sending out thousands of letters, petition blanks, leaflets, suffrage papers, etc.[90] The letter boxes were wholly inadequate, and the post-office daily sent mail-sacks to the house, which were filled and set out on the front porch to be collected. Hither came every day the State president, Mrs. Greenleaf, who toiled without ceasing from daylight till dark; and into this busy hive Miss Anthony rushed from the lecture field every Saturday to get the report of the work and consult as to the best methods for the coming week. It is not possible to describe in detail the vast amount of labor performed at these headquarters, but it is thus summed up in the report of the corresponding secretary:

... Add to the correspondence incident to the circulation of our great petition, the sending out of nearly 5,000 blank petition-books and instructions to insure the work's being properly done, literature for free distribution, the planning and arranging for sixty mass meetings in as many counties, and we have a task before which Hercules himself might well stand aghast. To accomplish this work has taken not only the entire time of your corresponding secretary, but that of our president, Mrs. Greenleaf, for a full year. Hundreds of women over all the State worked as never before, petitions in hand, travelling from house to house in all sorts of weather to secure the names of people who believe in the right of women to a voice in the government under which they live.

It has so often been asserted by those in power that when any considerable number of women wanted to vote, there would be perfect freedom for them to do so, that it was now decided thoroughly to test the truth of such assertion. Over 332,000 individual names, more than half being those of women, were thus actually obtained, neatly put up in book form and presented to the Constitutional Convention with a feeling that such a showing could not, by any possible means, fail to make the men of that convention and of the State clearly understand that women do want to vote.[91]

The entire management of New York City was put in charge of Lillie Devereux Blake, and Brooklyn in that of Mariana W. Chapman. While the petition work was going forward a great series of mass meetings was in progress, for which Miss Anthony, who knew every foot of New York State as well as her own dooryard, mapped out the routes. The management of these was placed in the hands of Harriet May Mills and Mary G. Hay, who proved remarkably efficient. Rev. Anna Shaw spoke at over forty of these meetings and Mary Seymour Howell at a large number. Several speakers from outside the State came in at different times and rendered excellent service. Carrie Chapman Catt made nearly forty speeches in New York, Brooklyn and vicinity. Miss Anthony herself, at the age of seventy-four, spoke in every one of the sixty counties of the State, beginning at Albion, January 22, and ending at Glens Falls, April 28.[92]

The campaign opened with a mass meeting at Rochester, of which the Democrat and Chronicle said in a leading editorial: "In pursuance of a call signed by over a hundred prominent citizens, a public meeting will be held January 8.... This should be largely attended, not only in honor of our distinguished townswoman, Miss Susan B. Anthony, but to declare in terms which can not be mistaken that the constitution should be revised. The negro and the Indian have been enfranchised; women alone remain under political disabilities. They demand justice. Let it be granted freely, and without any exhibition of that selfishness which has so long kept them waiting."

Judge George F. Danforth presided over this meeting and among the prominent citizens on the platform were Dr. E. M. Moore, Rev. Asa Saxe, Eugene T. Curtis, Mrs. Greenleaf, Mrs. Howell and Miss Anthony, all of whom made strong speeches in favor of the amendment. The list of vice-presidents comprised the leading men and women of the city. Forcible resolutions were presented by Henry C. Maine, and letters of approval read from Judge Thomas Raines, Rev. H. H. Stebbins, of the Central Presbyterian church, and others. The papers said, "Miss Anthony went home as happy as a young girl after her first ball."

On January 9 Miss Anthony addressed the Political Equality Club of Syracuse, and a handsome reception was given to Elizabeth Smith Miller and herself by its president, Mrs. E. S. Jenney. The next day, she went to a big rally at Buffalo, under the auspices of the city suffrage club, Dr. Sarah Morris, president, where speeches were made by Judge Stern, Rabbi Aaron, Rev. Joseph K. Mason and others. On the 22d, the great sweep of county mass meetings began.[93] The scrap-books containing the voluminous accounts show that usually the audiences were large and sympathetic; that the newspapers, almost without exception, gave full and friendly reports, and although most of them were non-committal in the editorial columns, a number came out strongly in favor of having a suffrage amendment incorporated in the constitution. "Oh, if those who attend our meetings could do the voting," wrote Miss Anthony, "it would carry overwhelmingly, but alas, the riff-raff, the paupers, the drunkards, the very chain-gang that I see passing the house on their way to and from the jail, will make their influence felt on the members of the Constitutional Convention." In another letter she said: "I am in the midst of as severe a treadmill as I ever experienced, travelling from fifty to one hundred miles every day and speaking five or six nights a week. How little women know of the power of organization and how constantly we are confronted with the lack of it!"[94]

Most of the other speakers were paid for their services but Miss Anthony would not accept a dollar for hers, and refused to take even her travelling expenses out of the campaign fund. That year she received the bequest of her friend, Mrs. Eliza J. Clapp, of Rochester, who had died in 1892, leaving her $1,000 to use as she pleased. The court costs were $55 and she received $945. Although she was drawing from her small principal for her current expenses, she gave $600 of this to the State of New York and $400 to the national association, paying the court fees out of her own pocket.

A new and gratifying feature of this campaign was the interest taken by the women of wealth and social position in New York and Brooklyn. Heretofore it had seemed impossible to arouse any enthusiasm on the question of woman's enfranchisement among this class. Surrounded by every luxury and carefully protected from contact with the hard side of life, they felt no special concern in the conditions which made the struggle for existence so difficult among the masses of women. All of a sudden they seemed to awake to the importance of the great issue which was agitating the State. This possibly may have been because it met the approval of many of the leading men of New York, for among those who signed the petition were Chauncey M. Depew, Russell Sage, Frederick Coudert, Rev. Heber Newton, Rev. W. S. Rainsford, Bishop Potter, Rabbi Gottheil, John D. Rockefeller, Robert J. Ingersoll, William Dean Howells and others of the representative men of the city. The wives of these gentlemen opened their elegant parlors for suffrage meetings, and in a short time the following card was sent to a large number of people:

A committee of ladies invite you and all the adult members of your household, to call at Sherry's on any Saturday in March and April, between 9 and 6 o'clock, to sign a petition to strike out, in our State Constitution, the word "male" as a qualification for voters. Circulars explaining the reason for this request may be obtained at the same time and place.--Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, Mrs. Joseph H. Choate, Mrs. Mary Putnam Jacobi, Mrs. J. Warren Goddard, Mrs. Robert Abbe, Mrs. Henry M. Sanders, Miss Adele M. Fielde.

Sherry, the famous restaurateur, placed one of his handsomest rooms at the disposal of the ladies and, for many weeks, one or more of them might always be found there ready to receive signatures to the petitions. The New York World expressed the situation in a strong article, saying in part:

Within the month there has been a sudden and altogether unexpected outbreak of the woman suffrage movement in New York.... Some one gave a signal and from all parts of the State rose the cry for the enfranchisement of women. It is not hard to discover the original cause which set on foot the insurrection--for in a certain sense it is an insurrection. It was an appeal which appeared in the latter part of February and was signed by many eminent men and women. Here were nearly twoscore of names, as widely known and honorable as any in this State--names of people of the highest social standing, not because of extravagant display or fashionable raiment, but because of distinction in intellect, in philanthropy and in the history of the State. The reason of the coming of the petition just at this time was, of course, plain. The meeting of the Constitutional Convention would be the one chance of the woman suffragists in twenty years....

It will be noticed that these women are in Mr. McAllister's Four Hundred, but not of it. They do not go in for frivolity. They go in for charity, for working among the masses, for elevating standards of living and morals in the slums of the city. They have awakened to the fact of the other half, and of how that other half lives, and they have expressed their indignation over the small salaries paid women for doing men's work; over the dishonest men in political places, put there because they could vote and control the votes of a number of saloon loungers; over the wretched lot of the woman school teacher, ill-paid and neglected because useless on election day.

And to go back a little further, the most of these society women are the products of that higher education which the pioneer suffragists made possible. They are women of wide reading, of independent thought, of much self-reliance. They began to wonder why they could not vote, when the sloping-shouldered, sloping-skulled youths who proposed to marry them, or had married them, had that right and did not exercise it and showed no information and no concern as to the rottenness of the local government.... The upper class of women are enlisted. Woman suffrage is the one interesting subject of discussion in the whole fashionable quarter.

This campaign brought also another surprise. In all the forty years of suffrage work, one of the stumbling-blocks had been the utter apathy of women themselves, who took no interest either for or against, but now they seemed to be aroused all along the line. In Albany a small body of women calling themselves "Remonstrants" suddenly sprung into existence. For a number of years there had been a handful of women in Massachusetts under that title, but this was the first appearance of the species in New York. They seemed to be fathered by Bishop William Croswell Doane, and mothered by Mrs. John V. L. Pruyn. Seven men and a number of women were present at the first meeting in that lady's parlor, and they formed an organization to counteract the vicious efforts of those women who were asking for political freedom. Evidently under the direction of her spiritual adviser, Mrs. Pruyn submitted a set of resolutions, which were adopted, begging the Constitutional Convention "not to strike out the word 'male';" setting forth "that suffrage was not a natural right; that there was no reason why this privilege should be extended to women; that no taxation without representation did not mean that every citizen should vote; that universal suffrage was a mistake; that the possession of the suffrage would take women into conflicts for which they were wholly unfitted; and that it would rudely disturb the strong and growing spirit of chivalry." Another branch was formed in Brooklyn with Mrs. Lyman Abbott at its head and the Outlook at its back, edited by Rev. Lyman Abbott. A society appeared in New York at about the same time and opened headquarters at the Waldorf. There was also an "Anti" club at Utica.[95]

The Democrat and Chronicle published a long interview with Miss Anthony in regard to these "Remonstrants," from which the following is an extract:

"This opposition movement is not the work of women," she said, "although it has that appearance. There was held in Albany yesterday afternoon a meeting at which resolutions condemning our work were adopted. Listen to the names of the women who were present. Do you see that they are all Mrs. John and Mrs. George and Mrs. William this and that? There is not a woman's first name in the whole list, and I do not see a Miss, either. This goes to show that the women are simply put forward by their husbands.

"Another point: These men who are stirring up the opposition would not only deny the right of women to vote but would qualify the word 'male' as it now stands in the constitution. They say in so many words in their resolutions that the right of suffrage is already extended to too many men; and they pay a doubtful compliment to the intelligence of their mothers, wives and sisters by adding that the class of undesirable voters would be swelled by giving the ballot to women. These are men of wealth who would confine the exercise of the right of suffrage to their own class--in fact would make this government an aristocracy."

These new organizations seemed to be abundantly supplied with money, but though they were able to pay for the work of circulating petitions, which with the suffrage advocates had to be a labor of love, they secured only 15,000 signatures. The petitions asking for a suffrage amendment received 332,148 individual signatures, including the 36,000 collected by the W. C. T. U. In addition to these the New York Federation of Labor sent in a memorial representing 140,000; the Labor Reform Conference, 70,000; several Trades Unions, 1,396; Granges, 50,000; total, 593,544. Added to these were petitions from a number of societies, making in round numbers about 600,000. It had been impossible, for several reasons, to make a thorough canvass, and this was especially true of New York and Brooklyn, containing half the population of the State; and yet there were over one-half as many signers as there were voters in the entire State.

The Constitutional Convention assembled in Albany, May 8, and elected Joseph H. Choate, of New York City, president. Although only a few months previous he had expressed himself favorable to woman suffrage, all his influence in the convention was used against it. Mr. Choate, according to universal opinion, accepted this office with the expectation that it would lead to his nomination as governor of the State, and he had no intention of offending the power behind the gubernatorial chair. The amendment was doomed from the moment of his election. His first move was to appoint a committee to have charge of all suffrage amendments, and on this committee of seventeen he placed twelve men, carefully selected, because they were known to be strongly opposed to woman suffrage. He appointed as chairman a man who could be depended on to hesitate at no means which would secure its defeat.[96] In all his efforts to kill the amendment beyond hope of resurrection, Mr. Choate was actively supported by his first lieutenant, Hon. Elihu Root, also of New York City.

Having ruined all the chances of the amendment, President Choate then announced that every courtesy and consideration would be extended to the ladies having it in charge. Miss Anthony was invited to address the suffrage committee May 24, and the hearing was held in the Assembly room of the Capitol. Not only the committee but most of the delegates were in their seats and a large audience was present. This was said to be one of her best efforts and she seemed to have almost the complete sympathy of her audience. She spoke for three-quarters of an hour, and then urged that those opposed should state their reasons and give her an opportunity to answer them. Although there were twelve men on the committee who even then intended to bring in an adverse report, and ninety-eight delegates who afterwards voted against it, not one could be persuaded to rise and present his objections. It was said by many that if the vote could have been taken at that moment, no power could have prevented a majority in favor.

The women of New York City were accorded a hearing May 31, and it was on this occasion, with the petitions of the 600,000 stacked on a table in front of her, that Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi made that masterly speech which ranks as a classic. Miss Margaret Livingstone Chanler, in a beautiful address, also spoke in behalf of the "Sherry contingent." The regular New York City League was ably represented by Lillie Devereux Blake and Harriet A. Keyser. The platform was filled with the distinguished women of the State, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Greenleaf and Dr. Jacobi occupying the central position.

On June 7 a hearing was granted to the women from the senatorial districts, each presenting in a five-minute speech the claims of the thousands of petitioners from her district. Among these speakers were some of the best-known women in the State, socially and intellectually; and a number of others, of equal standing, who never had taken part in public work and who now left their homes only to plead for the power which would enable women better to conserve the interests of home.[97] The State president, Mrs. Greenleaf, presided over all of these hearings, her commanding presence, great dignity and fine mental power giving especial prestige to these bodies of women, who in character and intellect could not be surpassed. The final hearing of those in favor of the amendment was held June 28, when U. S. Senator Joseph M. Carey, who had come by urgent invitation, made a most convincing speech, describing the practical workings of woman suffrage in Wyoming and urging the men of New York to enfranchise the women of the State. He was followed by Mrs. Mary T. Burt, representing the W. C. T. U., and by Mary Seymour Howell.

One hearing was given to the "Remonstrants," or "Antis," as the press had dubbed them. Because of their extreme modesty, and for other more obvious reasons, they did not make their own appeals but were represented by the male of their species. Their petition was presented by Elihu Root. Hon. Francis M. Scott, whose wife was one of the leading "Antis" in New York, made the principal address. He described pathetically the timid and shrinking class of women for whom he pleaded, insisted that the legislature never had refused women anything they asked, declared the suffrage advocates represented only an "insignificant minority,"[98] and closed with the eloquent peroration: "I vote, not because I am intelligent, not because I am moral, but solely and simply because I am a man." Rev. Clarence A. Walworth, Hon. Matthew Hale and J. Newton Fiero were the other speakers. The first individual did not believe in universal manhood suffrage and could not favor anything which would double the vote. Mr. Hale devoted most of his argument to the so-called "bad women," declaring there were over 100,000 of them in the State who would sell their votes as they did their bodies--enough to overcome the votes of the virtuous women. Mr. Fiero said woman was unfitted for the ballot because she was influenced by pity, passion and prejudice rather than by judgment. A letter was read from Hon. Abram S. Hewitt, objecting to the amendment because the majority of women do not care to vote.

These insults to their sex seemed very acceptable to the fashionably dressed "Antis" who occupied the front rows of seats. How far their influence affected the adverse vote of the convention it is of course impossible to determine. While the liquor dealers were sending to wavering members their kegs of beer and jugs of whiskey, the "Antis" supplemented their efforts with champagne suppers, flowers, music and low-necked dresses. And the suffrage advocates hoped to offset these political methods by trudging through mud and snow with their petitions and using their scanty funds to send out literature! A mistaken policy, perhaps, but the only one possible to the class of women who are asking for enfranchisement.

The committee, as had been foreordained, brought in an adverse report. The evenings of August 8, 9, 14 and 15, were devoted to a discussion of this report. The Assembly chamber was crowded at each session. The women had known for weeks that they were defeated but had not abated their efforts in the slightest degree. Their work was now finished and they assembled in large numbers to hear the final debate. The amendment had, from first to last, an able and earnest champion in Edward Lauterbach, of New York, who opened the discussion in a speech of an hour and a quarter, said to have been the ablest made in the convention. Nineteen members spoke in favor and fourteen in opposition. The debate throughout was serious and respectful and as dignified as was possible with the frivolous objections made by the opponents. The delegates showed an evident appreciation of the importance of the question at issue, which was about to be sacrificed as usual to political exigency.

The opponents were led by Elihu Root, of New York, who begged pathetically that "we be not robbed of the women of our homes;" and declared that "he would hesitate to put into the hands of women the right to defend his wife and the women he loved and respected." William P. Goodelle, of Syracuse, chairman of the committee, closed the discussion with a long speech in which he asserted that "the question was not whether large numbers of male and female citizens asked for woman suffrage, or protested against it, or are taxed or not, but was it for the benefit of the State?" This being the case, why did Mr. Goodelle not favor its being submitted to the voters of the State in order that they might decide?

It required an hour and a half to take the vote, as most of the members found it necessary to explain why they voted as they did. While it was being taken President Choate left his chair and talked earnestly with many of the delegates--probably about the weather--stopping occasionally to receive the approving smiles of the "Antis." When his name was called for the last vote he recorded himself against the amendment, and the great battle was over![99] In favor of submission 58, opposed 98.

No question before the convention had attracted so much attention throughout the State. The New York Recorder led the newspapers which championed the submission of the amendment, and Harper's Weekly and the Evening Post were prominent among the opposition, a mighty descent from the days when they were under the editorial management of George William Curtis and William Cullen Bryant. The day after the vote was taken the suffrage committee closed its Albany headquarters in the Capitol and the ladies returned to their homes. They had raised $10,000 and expended it in the most economical manner; they had given a year of the hardest and most conscientious work; and they did not regret a dollar of the money or a day of the time.[100] In her president's report Mrs. Jean Brooks Greenleaf said:

These days will never be forgotten by the trio of the State committee who daily met to work and plan--to make the campaign "bricks" without financial "straw." No one with a heart will recall the pecuniary distress of last winter without a shudder, and to those who had, what was in their estimation, a cause at stake precious as life itself, the outlook was often well nigh disheartening.... Could the full history of the past winter's work be given, the doubts expressed of woman's desire for the ballot would be set at rest forever. No more pathetic stories are told of the struggle for liberty in the days of the Revolution than could be told of the women of New York in this campaign....

In closing, we come to the name of one who, we all know, is the inspired leader of women up the heights of honor, purity and self-devotion--Susan B. Anthony. To her marvellous energy and resolution we owe both the conception and the success of this wonderful campaign. In her seventy-fifth year she started out as one of the principal speakers to be heard in the sixty counties of the State; never once did she fail to keep an appointment, never once did she cry a halt.... This noble woman, leaving a home of which she is as fond as any woman can be, travelled night or day, as the case required, not only speaking, but plying her busy pen--and all for what? Not for money, for she has stoutly refused to receive one penny of a salary, which, had it been paid, would have exceeded the sum of $3,000. She gave her services for love of liberty and justice, with the hope that New York would prove to be in truth the Empire State of the Union.

From the hour when she learned that a Constitutional Convention would be held, up to the opening of this convention, Miss Anthony had believed that it would incorporate a suffrage amendment which, in all probability, would be allowed by the voters to pass with the rest of the constitution. She found herself outwitted by the politicians, as she had been so many times before, but while this defeat was the bitterest disappointment of her life, it did not crush her dauntless spirit. It is related of her that as she came down the steps of the Capitol with the other ladies at midnight, after the vote had been taken, she began planning another campaign.

Among the many appreciative and sympathetic letters she received at this time was one from Isabella Charles Davis, secretary International King's Daughters, saying for herself and Mrs. Mary Lowe Dickinson: "I do not believe you know how tenderly we love you and in what high respect and honor we hold you. Mrs. Dickinson was present at one of those meetings at Sherry's, and she said the only thing lacking to make the occasion perfect was dear Miss Anthony's strong, brave face looking down upon the great multitude." Henry B. Blackwell wrote: "You are to be congratulated on having made a splendid fight in New York. To have secured 600,000 petitions is itself a victory."

In answer to a letter from Isabel Howland, the efficient State recording secretary, she expressed the welcome recognition which she always extended to young workers: "Well, I am truly glad for the discovery of our twin New York girls, Harriet May Mills and Isabel Howland, who promise to take up the laboring oar and pull us to the promised land. Give my warmest regards to your precious mother and aunt Emily; how I have learned to know and love the two!" She went as a guest of the Howlands for a few brief days in the Catskills, and they drove over to Eagle's Nest, in Twilight Park, where Miss Willard and Lady Henry Somerset were spending the summer.

Miss Anthony lectured at Keuka College, August 7, and on the 22d, gave the annual address on suffrage, at Cassadaga lake. The next day she found herself thus reported in the Buffalo Express:

If, instead of Spiritualists, this great body of people had been Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists or Catholics, their praises for the firm stand they have taken for the enfranchisement of half the people of this country, would have been everywhere sung in song and told in story. But the suffrage women of America always have been afraid to give voice to the "thank you" in their hearts, for Spiritualism has been fully as unpopular as woman suffrage; and they feared if they displayed too much gratitude for this endorsement the public would at once pronounce them Spiritualists and they would thus be doubly damned. But there are a few of our members who are brave enough to rejoice in the damnation of orthodox religions and orthodox politics!

Her consternation at these closing words was intensified by the letters which began coming in upon her before forty-eight hours. She wrote at once to the paper: "This is all right until you come to the last sentence. I had illustrated also the danger of expressing kind words to unpopular political parties, and then I concluded--not as printed--but with: 'There are still a few of us brave enough to rejoice in every good word and work said and done for woman, and to publicly express our thanks therefor, notwithstanding the "denunciation" (not damnation) of orthodox religionists and orthodox politicians.'" The Express published her correction, but it is doubtful if it ever was able to overtake the original statement.

Miss Anthony was very anxious to influence the next legislature, through the public sentiment which had been created, to submit a suffrage amendment. For this purpose she laid out a plan of work to continue the organization and petitions, and herself held meetings in a number of counties. It was decided by the committee to go before the Republican and Democratic State Conventions, which were to be held at Saratoga. An address was prepared and a resolution asking for an endorsement of a woman suffrage amendment. Miss Anthony, Mrs. Greenleaf and Mr. Lauterbach went before the resolution committee, September 18, which allowed five minutes for the three to present their case, and never gave it one minute's attention afterwards.

Frances Willard and Lady Somerset came down from their mountain retreat to attend this convention, and after their return Miss Willard wrote: "... As for you, our leader of leaders, I wish I could transfer to your brain all the loving thoughts and words of our trio toward you. As you stood before that roomful of people, so straight and tall and masterful, with that fine senatorial head and face, on which the strength and heroism of your character are so plainly marked, I thought, 'There is one of the century's foremost figures; there is the woman who has been faithful among the faithless and true among the false!'"

Five minutes allowed such women! Had they represented an enfranchised class, the whole committee would have been at their feet.

Miss Anthony, Mrs. Blake and Mrs. Greenleaf went to the Democratic convention and met with about the same experience. They were permitted to address the resolution committee and bowed out as quickly as possible. There was no especial rudeness or discourtesy, but they had no constituency behind them, no political power, and in the hurry and worry of a State convention the men did not care to waste time with them, even had they been the most eminent women on the face of the earth.

Miss Anthony had a number of urgent invitations to spend the hot months of July, August and September at various charming summer homes in the mountains and at the seaside, but she declined all and resolutely continued at work. The hardest for her to resist had been a triumphant call from the women of Colorado to come and help them celebrate the Fourth of July. It was to be the jubilee of their political emancipation, the first since their enfranchisement. The State president, Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford, wrote: "The women of Colorado feel that their precious holiday will be less precious if the beloved suffrage leader and the suffrage flag are not present." At first she sent an acceptance, but later, affairs in New York became so pressing that she was obliged, most reluctantly, to recall it. After filling an engagement to lecture before the alumnæ of the Girls' Normal School in Philadelphia, October 13, she started on the 16th for the final struggle in Kansas.

FOOTNOTES:

[89] In November of this year Miss Anthony called at the office of the New York Sun and had an interview with Mr. Dana, who always had maintained that when any considerable number of women expressed a desire for the ballot, the men would grant it. She asked him how many names would suffice and he replied: "If you can get a petition of 100,000 women it will be amply sufficient to compel the convention to submit the amendment." Although more than twice this number signed the petition, Mr. Dana's very first editorial after the convention had refused to submit the amendment, declared the reason was that not enough women had asked for it!

[90] A salary was voted to Mary Anthony which she declined to accept; Mrs. Almy received $50 a month; the clerks either donated their services or gave them for a mere trifle.

[91] The president's report pays this tribute:

"The corresponding secretary, Miss Mary S. Anthony, ostensibly had charge of the department of distribution and State correspondence, but all this was only a small fraction of the labor performed by her. Being president of the local club of Rochester, she had charge of the canvass of that city; and it is enough to say that no city or town equalled hers in the work done or results obtained. As our chieftain was leading our hosts through the State, the housekeeping, too, fell to the said secretary's charge and, it being convenient for the speakers and managers to stay at headquarters when in town, her family was seldom a small one; and all this gratuitously, be it understood. I can not hope to tell the story in full, but I trust I have said enough to cause you all, when you say, "God bless Susan B. Anthony," to add "and her sister Mary, also."

[92] During this time Miss Anthony gave ten days to the national convention in Washington; and the day after the last of the mass meetings she started for Kansas; stopped in Cincinnati for the Ohio convention, speaking each of the three days; opened the Kansas campaign May 4, spoke in that State every day for two weeks; and on May 21 presented herself, fresh and cheerful, at the Constitutional Convention in Albany, N. Y.

[93] As has been noted, Miss Anthony spoke at Ann Arbor, Mich., January 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17; at Toledo the 19th, and was ready to open the New York campaign the 22d.

[94] In December Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton had issued an address calling upon the women of New York to unite in this grand effort for political freedom. During the entire campaign Mrs. Stanton contributed to the New York Sun masterly arguments for woman suffrage, which were widely copied by the press of the State.

[95] Mrs. Jane Marsh Parker, a newspaper woman of Rochester, attempted to organize a club there and secure a petition in opposition to the amendment. Her efforts evidently did not meet with marked success for, in a letter to the New York Evening Post, she says, "In offering the 'protest' for signatures, quality rather than quantity has been considered." That prince of editors, Joseph O'Connor, at that time in charge of the Rochester Post-Express, gave the lady a delicious dressing down in an editorial beginning: "What is 'quality'?" and ending: "Probably she means no more by the offensive words 'quality' and 'quantity' than this--that she has secured to the protest only the signatures of a few representative women, no better and no worse than many of their opponents. Such an interpretation saves the statement from being insulting; but unhappily very many women in Rochester give it a different interpretation."

[96] Mr. Choate might claim that he did not know the position of these men on this question, but it was so well understood that Miss Anthony and her associates felt all hope depart when they read the names of the committee. John Bigelow and Gideon J. Tucker had favored a woman suffrage amendment when they were members of the Constitutional Convention in 1867, but, being now over eighty, were not able to make an aggressive fight for it.

[97] The addresses made on this occasion were issued in pamphlet form and presented to the suffrage association by Messrs. Lauterbach and Towns, of the committee.

[98] Although their petitions contained 600,000 names and those of the "Antis" 15,000.

[99] Mrs. Choate was one of the women who signed the first call for the suffrage advocates to meet at Sherry's; just as, in 1867, Mrs. Greeley canvassed her whole county to secure signatures to the woman's petition. Horace Greeley, as chairman of the suffrage committee of that Constitutional Convention, threw the whole weight of his influence against the amendment, lest it might hurt the Republican party; just as Mr. Choate did in this one, lest it might hurt the party and himself. Significant answers to the threadbare assertion that the husband represents the wife!

[100] From official report: Emily Howland generously contributed $1,200. That staunch friend, Sarah L. Willis, of Rochester, gave $720. Abby L. Pettengill, of Chautauqua county, gave $220. General Christiansen, of Brooklyn, began the contributions of $100, of which there were, if I mistake not, seven others from our own State--Semantha V. Lapham, Ebenezer Butterick, of New York, Mrs. H. S. Holden, of Syracuse, Marian Skidmore, of Chautauqua county, Hannah L. Howland, of Sherwood, Mr. and Mrs. James Sargent and Colonel H. S. Greenleaf, of Rochester, completing the number.

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