History of Woman Suffrage/Volume 4/Chapter 13

 

CHAPTER XIII.

THE NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1893.

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

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

Miss Susan B. Anthony presided over the convention, Jan. 1619, 1893, held in Metzerott's Music Hall and preceded by the usual religious services Sunday afternoon. The sermon was given by the Rev. Annis F. Eastman (N. Y.), an ordained Congregational minister, from the text in Isaiah, "Take away the yoke."

The memorial service, which was of unusual impressiveness, opened with the reading by Miss Anthony of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton's tribute to the distinguished dead of the past year who advocated equality of rights for women—George William Curtis, John Greenleaf Whittier, Ernestine L. Rose, Abby Hutchinson Patton and others.^[1] Of Mr. Curtis she said:

If the success of our cause could be assured by the high character of the men who from the beginning have identified themselves with it, woman would have been emancipated long ago. A reform advocated by Garrison, Phillips, Emerson, Alcott, Theodore Parker, Gerrit Smith, Samuel J. May and George William Curtis must be worthy the consideration of statesmen and bishops. For more than one generation Mr. Curtis maintained a brave attitude on this question. As editor of Harper's Magazine, and as a popular lecturer on the lyceum platform, he was ever true to his convictions. Before the war his lecture on Fair Play for Women aroused much thought among the literary and fashionable classes. In the New York Constitutional Convention in 1867, a most conservative body, Mr. Curtis, though a young man and aware that he had but little sympathy among his compeers, bravely demanded that the word "male" should be stricken from the suffrage article of the proposed constitution. His speech on that occasion, in fact, philosophy, rhetoric and argument never has been surpassed in the English language. From the beginning of his public life to its close Mr. Curtis was steadfast on this question. Harper's Magazine for June, 1892, contains his last plea for woman and for a higher standard for political parties. ....

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

The Hon. A. G. Riddle (D. C.) offered a fine testimonial to Francis Minor and Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, saying: "Mr. Minor was the first to urge the true and sublime construction of that noble amendment born of the war. It declares that all persons—not simply males—born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. Those who are denied or are refused the right to exercise the privileges and franchises of citizenship are less than citizens. Those who still declare that women may not vote, simply write 'falsehood' across that glorious declaration. General Butler, as a leading member of the House Judiciary Committee, in a matchless argument had asserted the right of women to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment,^[2] and used all his influence to secure suffrage for women. Miss Anthony said in part:

The good of this hour is that it brings to the knowledge of the young the work of the pioneers who have passed away. It seems remarkable to those standing, as I do, one of a generation almost ended, that so many of these young people know nothing of the past; they are apt to think they have sprung up like somebody's gourd, and that nothing ever was done until they came. So I am always gratified to hear these reminiscences, that they may know how others have sown what they are reaping to-day. One of the earliest advocates of this cause was Sally Holly, the daughter of Myron Holly, founder of the Liberty Party in the State of New York, and also founder of Unitarianism in the city of Rochester. Frederick Douglass will say a few words in regard to Sally Holly, and of such of the others as he may feel moved to speak; and I want to say that when, at the very first convention called and managed by women, Elizabeth Cady Stanton read her resolution that the elective franchise is the underlying right, there was but one man to stand with her, and that man was Frederick Douglass.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was once sent to Concord by the Massachusetts society to hold a meeting. The churches were closed against suffrage speakers and there was not money enough to pay for a hall. Mrs. Ralph Waldo Emerson heard the meeting was to be given up, and she sent a message to the lady having the work in charge, saying: "Shall it be said that here in Concord, where the Revolutionary war began, there is no place to speak for the freedom of women? Get the best hall in town and I will pay for it." So on that occasion and on another Mrs. Emerson paid for the hall and sent a kind word to the meeting, declaring herself in favor of the suffrage for women, and stating that her husband's views and her own were identical on this question. She had the New England trait of being a good wife, a good mother and a good housekeeper, and Mr. Emerson's home was a restful and blessed place. We sometimes forget the wives of great men in thinking of the greatness of their husbands, but Mrs. Emerson was as great in her way as Mr. Emerson in his, and no more faithful friend to woman and to woman's advancement ever has lived among us.^[3]

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

But Miss Oliver was earnest in her efforts, and so she began to preach in the city of Brooklyn, and with great courage bought a church in which a man had failed as a minister, leaving a debt of $14,000. She was like a great many other women—and here is a warning for all women. God made a woman equal to a man, but He did not make a woman equal to a woman and a man. We usually try to do the work of a man and of a woman too; then we break down, and they say that women ought not to be ministers because they are not strong enough. They do not get churches that can afford to send them to Europe on a three months' vacation once a year. Miss Oliver was not only the minister and the minister's wife, but she started at least a dozen reforms and undertook to carry them all out. She was attacked by that influential Methodist paper, the Christian Advocate, edited by the Rev. Dr. James M. Buckley, who declared that he would destroy her influence in the church, and so with that great organ behind him he attacked her. She had that to fight, the world to fight and the devil to fight, and she broke down in health. She went abroad to recover, but came home only to die.^[4]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mrs. Mary S. Lockwood (D. C.), member-at-large of the World's Fair Board of Lady Managers, read a carefully prepared statement of the methods and aims of that body, which began: "The Board of Lady Managers owe their existence to Susan B. Anthony and her co-workers. It was these women who went before Congress and not only asked but demanded that women should have a place in the management of this Columbian Exposition—and they got it"!^[5] She closed as follows:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, in an address entitled Comparisons Are Odious, showed the contrast between the Government's treatment of the Sioux Indians, exempted from taxation and allowed to vote, and of law-abiding, intelligent women in the same section of the country, compelled to pay taxes and not allowed to vote.^[6] Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates closed the evening with a brilliant address.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Woman is now stepping out of industrial subjection and coming into the industrial system of the present as an entirely new economic factor. If there were no other reasons, this alone would be sufficient to make her wages low and prevent their very rapid increase.

.... The growing importance of woman's labor, her general equipment through technical education, her more positive dedication to the life-work she chooses, the growing sentiment that an educated and skilful woman is a better and truer companion in marriage than an ignorant and unskilful one, her appreciation of the value of organization, the general uplifting of the principle of integrity in business circles, woman's gradual approach to man's powers in mental achievement also, her possible and probable political influence—all these combined, working along general avenues of progress and. evolution, will bring her industrial emancipation, by which she will stand on an equality with man in those callings in life for which she may be fitted. As she approaches this equality her remuneration will be increased and her economic importance acknowledged. ....

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

One of the greatest boons which will result from the industrial emancipation of woman will be the frank admission on the part of the true and chivalric man that she is the sole and rightful owner

of her own being in every respect, and that whatever companionship may exist between her and man shall be as thoroughly honorable to her as to him.

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

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

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

The resolutions presented by the chairman, Mrs. Dietrick, were adopted without dissent,^[7] except the last:

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

Whereas, Congress is now threatening to abridge the liberties of all in response to ecclesiastical dictation from a portion of the people; therefore, Resolved, That this association enters a protest against any national attempt to control the innocent inclinations of the people either on the Jewish Sabbath or the Christian Sunday, and this we do quite irrespective of our individual opinions as to the sanctity of Sunday. Resolved, That we especially protest against this present attempt to force all the people to follow the religious dictates of a part of the people, as establishing a precedent for the entrance of a most dangerous complicity between Church and State, thereby subtly undermining the foundation of liberty, so carefully laid by the wisdom of our fathers.

This precipitated the discussion as to the opening of the World's Fair on Sunday which had been vigorously waged during two preceding conventions without resulting in definite action. It was now continued during three sessions and then, by majority vote, indefinitely postponed. Mrs. Avery, chairman of the Columbian Exposition Committee,^[8] closed her report as follows: "As we are to be represented in so many ways during the World's Fair—i. e., at the World's Congress of Representative Women, in the Suffrage Congresses, in the meetings to be held in the auditorium of the Woman's Building, in the program to be presented by us for the approval of the Committee on General Meetings of the Board of Lady Managers—I would strongly urge against attempting to hold a separate Suffrage Congress, either national or international, during the Exposition." This was agreed to.

The Congressional Committee, through Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, reported that 375 letters had been sent to members of Congress asking for an expression on the question of woman suffrage. Of those who responded fifty-nine were in favor of full suffrage; twenty-five of qualified suffrage; sixty-five wholly opposed. The remainder did not reply, although stamps were enclosed. This committee also arranged for the printing, purchasing and distributing of 23,000 copies of the Senate and House hearings. The report concluded: 'The time has come when women wanting legislation must proceed exactly as men do who want it. No man procures an office for himself or a friend, nor does any man or association get an Act passed, unless the claim is persistently pressed, not only upon the members of the committee in charge of it but upon his friends and acquaintances in Congress. There is no use in supposing the justice or right of a question, without persistent work, is going to bring about a reform."^[9]

Mrs. Colby, chairman of the Committee on Federal Suffrage, appointed to urge the legal right of women to vote for Representatives under the U. S. Constitution, reported that she had sent a copy of Francis Minor's argument to every member of the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, with a personal letter asking for an opinion, and that not one replied. Petitions were sent from twenty States, including suffrage associations, temperance societies, granges, etc. Letters asking an opinion were written to nineteen Senators who were considered friendly to the enfranchisement of women, and only one answered, Joseph N. Dolph of Oregon. Miss Sara Winthrop Smith (Conn.) opened the discussion.^[10]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

1. Bishop Phillips Brooks, who declared himself unequivocally for woman suffrage, died the week following the convention.
2. See History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 482.
3. For other instances see Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, pp. 132, 251.
4. The Rev. Anna Oliver left $1,000 to the National Suffrage Association.
5. For the part of Miss Anthony and others in securing this board, see Chap. XIV.
6. As Mrs. Chapman Catt spoke always without MS., it is impossible to give extracts from her speeches, which were among the ablest made at the national conventions.
7. Resolved, That without expressing any opinion on the proper qualifications for voting, we call attention to the significant facts that in every State there are more women who can read and write than the whole number of illiterate male voters; more white women who can read and write than all negro voters; more American women who can read and write than all foreign voters; so that the enfranchisement of such women would settle the vexed question of rule by illiteracy, whether of home-grown or foreign-born production.   Resolved, That as all experience proves that the rights of the laboring man are best preserved in governments where he has possession of the ballot, we therefore demand on behalf of the laboring woman the same powerful instrument, that she may herself protect her own interests; and we urge all organized bodies of working women, whether in the field of philanthropy, education, trade, manufacture or general industry, to join our association in the endeavor to make woman legally and politically a free agent, as the best means for furthering any and every line of woman's work.   Resolved, That in all States possessing School Suffrage for women, suffragists are advised to organize in each representative district thereof, for the purpose of training and stimulating women voters to exercise regularly this right, using it as a preparatory school for the coming work of full-grown citizenship with an unlimited ballot. We also advise that women everywhere work for the election of an equal number of women and men upon school boards, that the State in taking upon itself the education of children may provide them with as many official mothers as fathers.   Whereas, Many forms of woman suffrage may be granted by State Legislatures without change in existing constitutions; therefore,   Resolved, That the suffragists in every State should petition for Municipal, School and Presidential Suffrage by statute, and take every practicable step toward securing such legislation.   Resolved, That we urge all women to enter protest, at the time of paying taxes, at being compelled to submit to taxation without representation.
8. Rachel Foster Avery, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Stone Biackwell, Ellen Battelle Dietrick, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, the Rev. Florence Kollock, Lida A. Meriwether, the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, May Wright Sewall, Mrs. Leland Stanford, Elizaheth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Jane H. Spofford, Harriet Taylor Upton.
9. During the years when Mrs. Upton's father, the Hon. Ezra B. Taylor of Ohio, was in Congress, she made it her especial business to press this matter upon the members. At least two favorable reports were due to her efforts, and the association greatly missed her congressional work when she left Washington.
10. The arguments for Federal Suffrage are contained in Chapter I.