History of Woman Suffrage/Volume 4/Chapter 17

 

CHAPTER XVII.

THE NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1897.

This year the suffrage association took its convention west of the Mississippi River, the Twenty-ninth annual meeting being held in Des Moines, la., Jan. 26-29, 1897. Circumstances were unfavorable, the thermometer registering twenty-four degrees below zero and a heavy blizzard prevailing throughout the West. Nevertheless sixty-three delegates, representing twenty States, were present. All the visitors were entertained in the hospitable homes of this city, and the entire executive board were the guests of James and Martha C. Callanan at their handsome home in the suburbs. Receptions were given by the Des Moines Woman's Club, by the Young Women's Christian Association and by Mr. and Mrs. F. M. Hubbell at their palatial residence, Terrace Hill. The convention was welcomed in behalf of the State by Gov. Francis M. Drake, who paid the highest possible tribute to the social and intellectual qualities of women, pointed out the liberality of Iowa in respect to manhood suffrage and congratulated the association generally, but was extremely careful not to commit himself on the question of woman suffrage. Mayor John McVicar extended the welcome of the city in eloquent language. He also skirted all around the suffrage question, came much nearer an expression of approval than did the Governor, but cleverly avoided a direct assertion in favor. He was followed by the Rev. H. O. Breeden, pastor of the Christian Church in which the convention was assembled. Not being in politics he dared express an honest opinion and said in the course of his remarks:

It is my privilege to address you in behalf of the churches, and I do so with great pleasure, because I have a robust faith that you are right, and also that the churches are with you in sympathy and heart. I belong to one which welcomes women to its pulpit and to all its offices. I should distrust the Christianity of any that would deny to my mother and wife the rights it accords to

(Miss Anthony's Cabinet In 1900.)

CATHARINE WAUGH McCULLOCH,	ALICE STONE BLACKWELL,
Second Auditor.	Recording Secretary.
RACHEL FOSTER AVERY,
Corresponding Secretary 21 Years.
LAURA CLAY,	HARRIET TAYLOR UPTON,
First Auditor.	Treasurer.

my father and myself. We welcome you to this city of churches and to the churches of the city, and to its homes. Woman shows her capacity for the highest functions in proportion as she is admitted to them. I hold it true, with Dr. Storrs, that as Dante measured his progress in Paradise not by outer objects but by the increased beauty upon the face of Beatrice, so the progress of the race is measured by the increasing beauty of character shown in its women. The fanaticism of yesterday is the reform of to-day, and the victory of to-morrow. 'Truth always goes onward and never back. The day of equal rights for women is surely coming. You are fighting a good warfare, with God, with conscience and with right to inspire you, and the triumph is near at hand.

Mrs. Mattie Locke Macomber extended the greetings of the Women's Clubs of the State; Mrs. Adelaide Ballard, president of the Iowa Suffrage Association, presented its welcome, and greetings were read from various Women's Christian Temperance Unions. Miss Anthony responded briefly, contrasting the welcome by Governor, mayor and different societies with the olden times when perhaps not one person would extend a friendly hand to those who attempted to hold a suffrage meeting. "I hardly know what to say now," she continued. "It is so much easier to speak when brickbats are flying. But I do rejoice with you over the immense revolution and evolution of the past twenty-five years, and I thank you for this cordial greeting."

The meetings were held in the large and well-arranged Christian Church, with an auditorium seating 1,500. The four daily papers gave full and fair reports and, although there was no editorial endorsement, there was no adverse comment. The Leader thus described the opening session, Tuesday afternoon:

It is doubtful if the church ever before held so many people. They poured in at all the doors, and the great audience room, with the balconies and the windows, the choir and the aisles, the platform and every foot of available space, was early occupied. There were many gentlemen in the audience, but probably four of every five were women. The men had come, apparently, to see and hear Miss Anthony; and when she was done many of them left. It was such an audience as is not often seen. The ladies were generally elderly, the great majority beyond middle-age; they had braved the cold and wind to hear the leader whom they had known and loved for many years, but whom most of them had never seen. Their bright faces framed in silvery hair, with brighter eyes upturned to the speakers, must have been an inspiration to those on the platform; in the case of Miss Anthony it was plain that she was indeed inspired by her audience.

There was much rejoicing over the enfranchisement of the women of Idaho by an amendment to the State constitution during the past year; and much sorrow over the defeat of a similar amendment in California. In her president’s address Miss Anthony said in part: ;

The year 1896 witnessed greater successes than any since the first pronunciamento was made at Seneca Falls, N. Y., July 19, 1848. On January 6 President Cleveland proclaimed Utah to be a State, with a constitution which does not discriminate against women. With Utah and Wyoming we have two States coming into the Union with the principle of equal rights to women guaranteed by their constitutions.

On November 3 the men of Idaho declared in favor of woman suffrage, and for the first time in the history of judicial decisions upon the enlargement of women’s rights, civil and political, a Supreme Court gave a broad interpretation of the constitution. The Supreme Court of Idaho—Isaac N. Sullivan, Joseph W. Huston, John T. Morgan—unanimously decided that the amendment was carried constitutionally. This decision is the more remarkable because the Court might as easily have declared that the constitution requires amendments to receive a majority of the total vote cast at the election, instead of a majority of the votes cast on the amendment itself. By the former construction it would have been lost, notwithstanding two to one of all who expressed an opinion were in favor.

If anyone will study the history of our woman suffrage movement since the days of reconstruction and the adoption of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Federal Constitution— taking the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in the cases of Mrs. Myra Bradwell for the protection of her civil rights ; of Mrs. Virginia L. Minor for the protection of her political rights; of the law granting Municipal Suffrage to women in Michigan; on giving women the right:to vote for County School Commissioners in New York, and various other decisions—he will find that in every case the courts have put the narrowest possible construction upon the spirit and the letter of the constitution. The Judges of Idaho did themselves the honor to make a decision in direct opposition to judicial precedent and prejudice. The Idaho victory is a great credit not only to the majority of men who voted for the amendment, but to the three Judges who made this broad and just decision.

After sketching the situation in California, and relating the part taken by the National Association in these two campaigns, she concluded:

In every county which was properly organized, with a committee in every precinct, who visited every voter and distributed leaflets in every family, the amendment received a majority vote. This ought to be sufficient to teach the women of all the States that what we need is house-to-house educational work throughout every voting precinct. We may possibly carry amendments with education short of this, but we are not likely to. I believe if the slums of San Francisco and: Oakland had been thus organized, even the men there could have been made to see that it was for their interest and that of their wives and daughters to vote for the amendment. But, while the suffragists had no committees whatever in those districts, the "liquor men" had an active committee in every saloon, "dive" and gambling house. I am, therefore, more and more convinced that it ts educational work which needs to be done. It is of little use for us to make our appeals to political party conventions, State Legislatures or Congress for resolutions in favor of woman's enfranchisement, while no appeal comes up to them from the rank and file of the voters.

Until we do this kind of house-to-house work we can never expect to carry any of the States in which there are large cities. If Idaho had had San Francisco, with all its liquor interests and foreigners banded together, she would probably have been defeated as was California.

So, friends, I am not in any sense disheartened, and while I rejoice exceedingly over Idaho, I also rejoice exceedingly over the grand work done in California, and over the 110,000 votes given for woman suffrage in that State. It was vastly more than was ever done in any other amendment campaign. Study then the methods of California and Idaho and improve on them as much as you possibly can.

The Des Moines Leader thus finished its report:

It was not difficult for one who saw Miss Anthony for the first time to understand why she is so well beloved by her associates. Seventy-seven years old, she is the most earnest worker of them all; she is not only their leader but their counselloR and friend. While she occupied the platform the utmost solicitude was manifested for her on the part of everybody. Once a glass of water was sent for but did not come as soon as it should, and everyone on the stage was visibly concerned except Miss Anthony herself, who calmly observed, by way of apology for a trifling difficulty with her voice, that she was not accustomed to speak in public, at which a laugh went round..... Her silvery hair was parted in the middle and brushed down over her ears. Her eyes have the deep-set appearance which is characteristic of elderly people who have been hard mental laborers, but on the whole she did not look all her years, though older than most of her hearers had expected to see her. But those beaming, earnest eyes, taking in her whole audience as she talked, told of a nature tenacious of purpose and not to be daunted by any obstacle—the qualities which in her many years' work in the cause Miss Anthony has so many times manifested.

The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw devoted the most of her report as vice-president-at-large to the California campaign, as she had spent the greater part of the past year in that State. She closed by saying: "Our reception by the Californians was such as to make them forever dear to us. I wish you could have seen Miss Anthony for once walking ankle-deep in roses. It showed that the sentiment for suffrage had reached the point where its advocates not only were tolerated but honored. I used to like to see her sitting in a chair.all adorned with flowers and with a laurel crown suspended over her head, and to feel that it was woman suffrage that was crowned. The work was hard, but we all came back from California better in health and stronger in hope."

On Wednesday evening the crowd was so great it became necessary to hold an overflow meeting, which was attended by five hundred persons. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, who was introduced as "one of Iowa's own daughters," was received with great applause. She said in part:

I have a deep and tender love for Iowa. When I cross her boundary, I always feel that I am coming home. In my travels through the West I meet many men and women who give me a warmer hand-shake because they too are from Iowa. But this State no longer occupies the first place in my heart. There are four that I love better, and every woman here feels the same. The first is Wyoming. Many pass through that State and see only a barren plain covered with sage brush, but when I cross her border, I feel a thrill as sacred as ever the crusaders felt in visiting the Holy Land. The second State is Colorado, the third Utah, and the fourth Idaho. All of us Iowa women will love these States better than our own until it shall arouse and place its laws and institutions on an equality for women and men.....

We ask suffrage in order to make womanhood broader and motherhood nobler. Men and women are inextricably bound together. If we are to have a great race, we must have a great motherhood. Do you ask why people can not see this? In all history no class has been enfranchised without some selfish motive underlying. If to-day we could prove to Republicans or Democrats that every woman would vote for their party, we should be enfranchised.

Do you say that whenever all women wish the ballot they will have it? That time will never come. Not all of any class of men ever wanted to vote till the ballot was put into their hands: When the first woman desired to study medicine, not one school would admit her. Since that time, only half a century ago, 25,000 women have been admitted to the practice of medicine. If a popular vote had been necessary, not one of them would yet have her diploma. We have gained these advantages because we did not have to ask society for them. If woman suffrage were granted in Iowa, women would soon wish to vote, and every home would become a forum of education. ....

There never had been so many deaths in the ranks as during the past year. The following were among the names presented by Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby as those whom the association would ever hold in reverent memory:

Hannah Tracy Cutler of Illinois, former president of the American Association and one of the earliest and most self-sacrificing of woman suffrage lecturers; Sarah B. Cooper of California, auditor of this association, whose labors for the enfranchisement of the women of the Pacific coast will be remembered and honored equally with her beneficent work in founding and sustaining free kindergartens, and in whatever promoted justice, truth and mercy, so that on the day of her funeral all the flags in San Francisco were placed at half-mast; Mary Grew, who began her work for freedom as corresponding secretary of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1834, one of the founders of the New Century Club of Philadelphia, and of the Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association, of which she was president for twenty-three years; Elizabeth McClintock Phillips, who in 1848 signed the call for the first convention which demanded the ballot for women; J. Elizabeth Jones of New York, a pioneer in anti-slavery and woman suffrage; Judge E. T. Merrick of New Orleans, whose home was ever open to the woman suffrage lecturers in that section, and who by his eminent position as Chief Justice of Louisiana for many years, Sustained his wife in work which in earlier days but for him would have been impossible; Eliza Murphy of New Jersey, who bequeathed five hundred dollars to this association; Harriet Beecher Stowe of Connecticut, who, although the apostle of freedom in another field, yet held as firmly and expressed as steadfastly her allegiance to the cause of woman suffrage; Dr. Caroline B. Winslow, the earliest woman physician in the District of Columbia, intrepid as a journalist, successful in practice, a leader in many lines of reform; Maria G. Porter of Rochester, N. Y.; Sarah Hussey Southwick of Massachusetts, a worker in the cause of liberty for more than sixty years; Kate Field of Washington, D. C.; Gov. Frederick T. Greenhalge of Massachusetts; Dr. Hiram Corson of Pennsylvania, who stood for the full opportunities of women in medicine, and secured the opening to them of the conservative medical societies of Philadelphia.

The names of over thirty other tried and true friends who had passed away during the months since the last meeting were given. Mrs. Colby closed the memorial service by saying:

The best that comes to this world comes through the love of liberty. These were souls of noble aspiration and undaunted courage. We enter into their labors; we will enshrine them in the history of the suffrage movement and bear them gratefully in our hearts forever. May our lives be as fruitful as theirs, and when we too pass away may we

 

"Join the choir invisible
Of these immortal dead who live again,
In minds made better by their presence."

Among letters received was one from Parker Pillsbury (N: H.), now 88 years old, who had spoken so eloquently in early days for the emancipation of the slaves and the freedom of women. One of the many excellent addresses was on the general topic Equal Rights, by Miss Alice Stone Blackwell (Mass.), illustrated by a number of the piquant and appropriate stories for which she is noted and which perhaps leave a more lasting impression than a labored argument. Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch, a practicing lawyer of Chicago, considered the hackneyed phrase All the Rights We Want, showing up in a humorous way the legal disabilities of women in her own State. The wife's earnings may be seized to pay for her husband's clothes; she can not testify -against her husband; she can not enter into a business partnership without his consent; a married mother has no right to her children; the age of protection for girls is only fourteen, etc.

President George A. Gates of Iowa College said in part: "I never heard or read a single sound argument against the suffrage of women in a democracy. There are a hundred arguments for it. The question now is one of organization, of agitation, of perseverance. In my judgment he who sneers at suffrage not only proclaims himself a boor and casts discredit on at least four women—his mother, his wife, his sister and his daughter—but he reveals a depth of ignorance that is pitiable. Let the appeal be to experience. Not one of the direful consequences predicted has come to pass where suffrage is enjoyed. Homes have not been deserted, bad women have not flocked to the polls, conjugal strife has not been aroused, bad effects have not come but good effects have. Bad men seek office in vain where women have the ballot. New States are coming into line and the triumph of the cause can not much longer be delayed."

Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Stetson spoke with her usual ability on Duty and Honor:

Underlying the objections to woman suffrage is a reason of which, as an American, I am deeply ashamed. I do not think either men or women have the same honest pride in our democracy that they had fifty years ago. We are becoming a little afraid of what Europe has always told us was an experiment, but one reason it has not yet been all we could wish is that it is not a democracy-at all, but a semi-democracy, one-half of the race ruling over the other half.

Another deep-seated feeling is that, while development is the general rule, yet the production of the best men and women requires "the maternal sacrifice," i. e. that the mother shall be sacrificed to her children, and incidentally to her husband. If the sacrifice is necessary, well and good; but how if it is not? .... It has been regarded as dangerous to improve the condition of women for fear they would not be as good mothers. If gain to the mother means robbery to the child, let the mother remain as she is. But the standard is the amount of good done to the children, not the amount of evil done to herself. ....

Grant that it is a woman's business to take care of her children— not merely of her own children. If children anywhere are not under right conditions, women ought to see to it. The trouble is we are too wrapped up in my children to think of our children. We can not keep out disease by shutting our own front door. We have to know and care about the world outside our gates. In order to do our duty to our children we must make this world a better place to live in.

Our children are not born with that degree of brain power that we could wish. They will not be, until our minds are widened by study of the whole duty of a human being. .... What is needed for women is an enlargement of their moral sense so as to include social as well as private virtues. We have been taught that there is only one virtue for us. Our morality is high but narrow. It is not wholesome to limit oneself to one virtue, or to six or to ten. Sons resemble their mothers. While mothers limit their interests to their own narrow domestic affairs, regardless of the world outside, their sons will betray the interests of the country for their own private business interests. .... Women and men are so connected that we can not improve one without improving the other. Under equal rights we shall raise the moral sense of the community by the natural laws of transmission through the mothers. We shall learn to blame a man as much if he betrays a public trust as we do if he deserts his wife.

Have we done our full duty when we have loved and served and taken care of those that every beast on earth loves and serves and takes care of—our own young? That is the beginning of human duty but not the whole of it. The duty of woman is not confined to the reproduction of the species; it extends to the working of the will of God on earth. The family is a leaf on the tree of the State. It can grow in strength and purity while the State is healthy, but when the State is degraded the family becomes degraded with it. We have not done our full duty to the family till we have done our best to serve the State.

Miss Shaw took up this subject, saying:

The millennium will not come as soon as women vote, but it will not come until they do vote. Ifa woman has only a little brain, she has a right to the fullest development of all she has. .... If we are to keep our children healthy, as Mrs. Stetson says is our duty, pure water is essential. I know a city (Philadelphia) where you can fast for forty days, drinking only water, and grow fat— because you have chowder every time. Is there any reason why women should not have a vote in regard to water-works? A woman knows as much about water as a man. Generally, she drinks more of it. See how the street cleaners sweep the dirt into heaps on Monday and leave it to blow about until Saturday, before it is taken up. Any housekeeper would know better. Sewers and man-traps spread disease literally and also metaphorically. You may teach your boy every precept in the Bible from beginning to end, and he will go out into the street and be taught to violate every one of them, under the protection of law, and you can't help yourself or him.

At one of the morning meetings Miss Anthony said in response to a message from the W. C. T. U. accompanied by a great bunch of daisies: "We always are glad to receive greetings from this society, because one of its forty departments is for the franchise. The suffrage association has only one, but that one aims to make every State a true republic." She continued: 'A newspaper of this city has criticized the suffrage banner with its four stars and has accused us of desecrating our country's flag. But no one ever heard anything about desecration of the flag during the political campaign, when the names and portraits of all the candidates were tacked to it. Our critics compare us to Texas and its lone star. We have not gone out of the Union, but four States have come in. Keep your flag flying, and do not let any one persuade you that you are desecrating it by putting on stars for the States where government is based on the consent of the Sas and leaving them off for those which are not."

State Senators Rowen, Kilburn and Byers brought an official © message inviting the convention to visit the Senate and select certain of their members to address that body. Each of these gentlemen spoke briefly but unequivocally in favor of the enfranchisement of women.

The ladies found the Senate Chamber crowded from top to bottom on the occasion of their visit Friday morning, and they were welcomed by Lieutenant-Governor Parrott. In her response Miss Anthony called attention to the fact that the women of Iowa had been pleading their cause in vain before the Legislature for nearly thirty years. Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford, Mrs. Emmeline B. Wells and Mrs. Mell C. Woods spoke for the States of Colorado, Utah and Idaho, which had enfranchised women; Mrs. Colby represented Wyoming. Clever two-minute speeches were made by Mrs. Ballard, Miss Shaw and Mrs. Chapman Catt, which were highly appreciated by the legislators and the rest of the audience.

During the convention an informal speech of Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton (O.), As the World Sees Us, was much enjoyed. In the course of her remarks she said:

The world thinks our husbands are inferior men, and I do not like it. For fifty years they have said all sorts of things about the overbearing suffragists—that they were crazy, tyrannical, etc., but they never have said we were fools. Why should they think that we would pick out fools for our husbands?....

The world also thinks the suffrage advocates are poor housekeepers. I know, for I was in the world a long time and I thought so. When I was brought into the movement and visited the leaders, I was surprised to find the order and executive ability with which their homes were conducted.

The world thinks we are office-seekers. Most of us have not the slightest wish for office, but we do want to see women serving on all boards that deal with matters where woman's help is needed.

The world thinks we are irreligious; but our individual churches do not think so—for most of us are members of churches in good and regular standing, and we are not denied communion. We can not be vestrymen, but if the church wants a steam heater it is voted to have one, without a cent in the treasury, because the women are relied upon to raise the money. We are religious enough to have oyster suppers in aid of the church and to make choir-boys' vestments and to raise the minister's salary and to make up the congregation. Religion is love to God and man. [If it is not religion to -promote a cause that will make men better and women wiser and happier, what is it? The world thinks we are irreligious because in the early days some of our leaders were held to be unorthodox. But most of those who years ago were looked upon as such are regarded as orthodox to-day. The eye-sight of the world is much better than it used to be. ....

The discussion—Resolved, That the propaganda of the woman suffrage idea demands a non-partisan attitude on the part of individual workers—was led by Miss Laura Clay in the affirmative and Henry B. Blackwell in the negative. Miss Clay said in part:

It is a well established rule that the greater should never be subordinated to the less. Therefore, suffrage should never be made a tail to the kite of any political party. There are momentous issues now before the people, but none so momentous as woman suffrage. This principle appeals to the conscience of the people, and will ultimately convince all those who cherish the political principles of our fathers. Already we believe we have convinced a sufficient number to make this a practical question. We have now to deal with the politicians. They may be divided into two classes, men of high ideals and those who cling to party, right or wrong. It is necessary to gain both classes.

Partisan methods are not suited to the discussion of this question. We must show that when enfranchised we shall hold a self-preservative attitude; that we know our rights, and, knowing them, dare maintain. Wisdom is less tangible than force but more powerful in the end. Women are different from men and their political methods will differ from those of men. Women will never win so long as they consent to barter their services for vague promises of what will be done for them in the future, or to subordinate woman suffrage to the interests of any party.

Mr. Blackwell: We are all agreed that Woman Suffrage Associations, local, State and national, are and must be non-partisan. But a clear distinction should be made between the attitude of a society and that of the individual women and men who compose its membership. Suffrage societies, being composed of men and women of all shades of political belief, can not take sides on any other question without violating each member's right and duty to have and express personal political opinions. But, as individuals, it is our duty to be partisans. Woman suffrage is not the only issue. In almost every political contest one party is right and the other wrong. Everybody is bound to do what he or she can to promote the success of the right side. If no moral questions were involved, political contests would be ignoble and insignificant. We value suffrage mainly because questions of right and wrong are settled by votes. ....

Every woman, equally with every man, should be affiliated with some political party. .... Every manifestation by women ofintelligent interest in political questions helps woman suffrage. Political questions necessarily become party questions, for we live under a government of parties.

A non-partisan attitude is a phrase which needs definition. If "partisan" means "our party, right or wrong," then no woman and no man should be a partisan. An attitude of moderation and conciliation befits every candid person. I am for holding equal suffrage paramount to ordinary political questions, but I am not for repudiating party ties altogether. Woman suffrage, though the most important question, is not always the one to be first settled. It is not the only question. Voting, though the most direct form of political power, is not the only political power. Women's interests and those of their children are involved, equally with those of men, in every question of finance, currency, tariff, domestic and foreign relations. They have no right to be neutral or apathetic. So long as they remain silent and inert they command no attention or respect. I maintain, therefore, that affirmative political activity, working by and through party machinery, is the duty of every individual citizen—whether man or woman.

In States where a suffrage amendment is pending, in meetings where suffrage is advocated, party politics should be laid aside for the time being. In religious meetings no distinction should be made between Republicans, Democrats or Populists. In political meetings no distinction should be made between Methodists, Baptists or Presbyterians. In suffrage meetings there should be no distinction of sect or party. But we hold our individual opinions all the same.

Miss Anthony: I want to say that you can not possibly divide yourself up as Mr. Blackwell suggests. You can not be a Republican in one convention to-day and non-partisan in another to-morrow. The men who believe in suffrage are voters, and must have their parties, of course. But any woman who champions either political party makes more votes against than for suffrage. I could give numerous examples. Do not be deluded with this idea that one party is right and the other wrong. Which is it? One party seems right to one-half of the people, and the other party to the other half. As long as women have no votes, any one of them who will make a speech either for gold or silver or for any party issue is lacking in self-respect.

Miss Blackwell: Miss Clay seems to have understood the question presented for discussion in a different sense from what I did. I do not believe in making suffrage a tail to any party kite, of course; but women as well as men are bound to do what they can to promote good government, and hence to promote by all legitimate means the party which they believe to be in the right. They will inevitably do this more and more as they become more interested in public questions. See how many women took part in the late campaign, making speeches for gold or silver, not with any eye to woman suffrage for neither party was committed to it but purely for the sake of the welfare of the country, as they understood it. I can not agree that they were lacking in self-respect

Miss Shaw: I have made only one party speech in my life. That was ten years ago, for the Prohibition Party; and if the Lord will forgive me, I will never do it again till women vote.

In spite of the lively difference of opinion, the meeting adjourned in great good humor and amid considerable laughter.

The last session of the convention was a celebration of the suffrage victory in Idaho, conducted by representatives of what the association liked to call "the free States." Mrs. Colby said in behalf of Wyoming:

.... No matter if we fill the field of blue with stars, one will always shine with peculiar lustre, the star of Wyoming, who opened the door of hope for women.

There is a beautiful custom in Switzerland among the Alpine shepherds. He who, tending his flock among the heights, first sees the rays of the rising sun gild the top of the loftiest peak, lifts his horn and sounds forth the morning greeting, "Praise the Lord." Soon another shepherd catches the radiant gleam, and then another and another takes up the reverent refrain, until mountain, hill and valley are vocal with praise and bathed in the glory of a new day.

So the dawn of the day that shall mean freedom for woman and the ennobling of the race was first seen by Wyoming, on the crest of our continent, and the clarion note was sounded forth, "Equality before the law." For a quarter of a century she was the lone watcher on the heights to sound the tocsin of freedom. At last Colorado, from her splendid snow-covered peaks, answered back in grand accord, "Equality before the law." Then on Utah's brow shone the sun, and she, too, exultantly joined in the trio, "Equality before the law." And now Idaho completes the quartette of mountain States which sing the anthem of woman's freedom. Its echoes rouse the sleepers everywhere, until from the rock-bound coast of the Atlantic to the golden sands of the Pacific resounds one resolute and jubilant demand, "Equality before the law," and lo, the whole world wakes to the sunlight of liberty!

Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford, in speaking for Colorado, said: Civilization means self-realization. The level is being slowly but surely raised and the atmosphere improved. Freedom for the individual, properly guarded, is the ideal to-day. When woman is free, the eternal feminine shows itself to be also the truly human. Witness Wyoming, with its magnificent school system, its equal pay for equal work. Witness Colorado, where women cast 52 per cent, of the total vote though the State contains a large majority of men. What does this show if not that women wish to vote? We women believe that election day administers to each of us the sacrament of citizenship, and we go, most of us, prayerfully and thankfully to partake in this outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual ....

The first time I went to vote I was out of the house just nine minutes. The second time I took my little girl along to school, stopped in to vote, and then went down town and did my marketing; and J was gone twenty minutes. While I was casting my vote the men gave my little one a flower. They always decorate the polling-places with flowers now, for they know women love beauty.

The tone of political conventions has improved since suffrage was granted to women. So has the character of the candidates.: There is no character-builder like responsibility. Every woman's club in the State has been turned into a study club, and the women are examining public questions for themselves. This is one of the best results of equal suffrage.:

When women obtained the ballot they wanted to know about public affairs, and so they asked their husbands at home (every woman wants to believe that her husband knows everything}, and the husbands had to inform themselves in order to answer their wives' questions. Equal suffrage has not only educated women and elevated the primaries, but it has given back to the State the services of her best men, large numbers of whom had got into the habit of neglecting their political duties.....

Mrs. Emmeline B. Wells said in describing the conditions in Utah:

After the ballot was given to women the men soon came to us and asked us to help them. We divided on party lines but not rigidly so. We helped not only the good men and women of our own party, but those of the other. If they put up a Republican or a Democrat who is not fit for the position, the women vote against him. In all the work I do for the Republicans, I never denounce the Democrats. .... This year the men were more willing to have us go to the primaries than we were to go. Even the women who had not wished for suffrage voted. I do not mind going to the primaries. I am not afraid of men—not the least in the world. I have often been on committees with men. I don't think it has hurt me at all, and I have learned a great deal. They have always been very good to me. We must stand up for the men. We could not do without them. Certainly we could not have settled Utah without them. They built the bridges and killed the bears; but I think the women worked just as hard, in their way. ....

When Mrs. Mell C. Woods came forward to speak for Idaho the audience arose and received her with cheers and the waving of handkerchiefs. She brought letters of greeting from most of the women's clubs of that State, and in a long and beautiful address she said:

With her head pillowed in the lap of the North, her feet resting in the orchards of the South, her snowy bosom rising to the clouds, Idaho lies serene in her beauty of glacier, lake and primeval forest, guarding in her verdure-clad mountains vast treasures of precious minerals, with the hem of her robe embroidered in sapphires and opals. .... As representing Idaho, first I wish to express the heartfelt gratitude of every equal suffragist in our proud and happy State to the National Association for the most generous help afforded us in our two years' campaign. Without the aid of the devoted women, Mrs. DeVoe, Mrs. Chapman Catt, Mrs. Bradford and Mrs. Johns, who made the arduous journey to organize our clubs, plead our cause and teach us how to work and win, we should not be celebrating Idaho's victory to-night.....

After describing the great output of the mines and the fruit-producing value of the State, she continued:

I fancy few of you know much of the conditions existing in the mining country, dotted with camps in every gulch; the preponderance of the adult males over the women of maturity; the power of the saloon element, and the cosmopolitan character of the people —men from all parts of the world, ignorant and cultured, depraved and respectable, seeking fame and fortune in the far West—no reading-rooms, no lectures, no lyceums, no spelling-bees or corn-huskings, the relaxation of the farm hand; single men away from home and its influences, forced from the draughty lobby of the hotel or tavern to the warmth and comfort of the well-appointed saloon. The missionary suffrage work in such places was obliged to be quietly done, without any apparent advocacy on the part of men who were in reality ardent supporters of our cause, lest the saloon element should organize and, by concerted action, crush the movement as they did in the State of Washington in 1889; and California, too, owes her defeat of the amendment at least partially to this cause. Yet you may go far to find nobler men than we have in Idaho, and we did not lack able champions. Our amendment was carried by more than a two-thirds majority of the votes cast upon it.

The last address, by the Rev. Ida C. Hultin (Ills.), The Point of View, was a masterly effort. She said in part:

Before any woman is a wife, a sister or a mother she is a human being. We ask nothing as women but everything as human beings. The sphere of woman is any path that she can tread, any work that she can do. Let no one imagine that we wish to be men. In the beginning God created them male and female. The principle of co-equality is recognized in all of God's kingdom. We are beginning to find in the human race, as in the vegetable and the animal, that the male and the female are designed to be the equals of each other. It is because woman loves her home that she wants her country to be pure and holy, so that she may not lose her children when they go out from her protection. We want to be women, womanly women, stamping the womanliness of our nature upon the country, even as the men have stamped the manliness of their nature upon it. The home is the sphere of woman and of man also. The home does not mean simply bread-making and dish-washing, but also the place into which shall enter that which makes pure manhood possible. Give woman a chance to do her whole duty. What is education for, what is religion for, but as a means to the end of the development of humanity? If national life is what it ought to be also, a means to the same end, it needs then everything that humanity has to make it sweet and hopeful. Women have moral sentiments and they want to record them. That is the only difference between voting and not voting. The national life is the reflected life of the people. It is strong with their strength and weak with their weakness.

A letter was read to the convention by Miss Anthony from Miss Kitty Reed, daughter of Speaker Thomas B. Reed, who had been with her father in California during the recent suffrage campaign. In referring to this she said:

There and elsewhere the thinking women who opposed it used this argument: There are too many people voting already; the practical effect of woman suffrage would be an increase in the illiterate vote, without a proportionate increase in the intelligent vote. They were not in favor of it unless there could be an educational qualification. In other words, they were opposed to woman suffrage because they were opposed to universal suffrage. I have always regarded universal suffrage as the foundation principle of our government. If “governments deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” does not mean that, what can it mean? So I tried to persuade these women of the truth of that which I supposed had been settled about one hundred and twenty-one years ago. It is necessary to make women believe that suffrage is a natural right rather than a privilege; that, while abstractly it seems well for an intelligent citizen to govern an ignorant one, human nature is such that the intelligent will govern selfishly and leave the ignorant no opportunity to improve. It seems to me that the worst obstacle we have to encounter now is not the prejudice of men against women’s voting, but a misunderstanding on the part of women of the real meaning of government by the people. This may be ancient history to you, but it impressed me deeply while I was in California and that is why I write it. Of course there are many women who do not think. When they hear woman suffrage spoken of, they go to their husbands and ask them what they think about it, and their husbands tell them that they are too good to vote, and those women are content. It does not occur to them to ask why, if they are too pure and good to vote, they are not excused from obeying the laws and paying taxes.

The report of the first year's work done at national headquarters was very satisfactory. In regard to the Press it contained the following:

The year 1896 has seen the beginning of an effort by our National Association to use systematically the mighty lever of the public press in behalf of our work. We have sent out in regular weekly issues since March hundreds of copies of good equal suffrage articles. These go into the hands of Press Committees in forty-one States, and now between six and seven hundred papers publish them each week. Of forty-one different articles by about thirty different writers, nearly 25,000 copies have been distributed to newspapers. These articles reach, in local papers, not less than one million readers weekly. We have taken charge of the National Suffrage Bulletin which is edited by the chairman of the organization committee, have had it printed in Philadelphia and mailed from the headquarters. In the past twelve months there have been wrapped and sent out separately 17,700 copies of the Bulletin. A portion of the expenses has been defrayed by special contributions of $900 of the $1,000 given to Miss Anthony by Mrs. Southworth, and $400 through the New York State Association, from the bequest of Mrs. Eliza J. Clapp of Rochester to Miss Anthony.

Mr. Blackwell, as usual, reported for the Committee on Presidential Suffrage, suggesting a form of petition as follows:

Whereas, The Constitution of the United States, the supreme law of the land, expressly confers upon the Legislature of every State the sole and exclusive right to appoint or to delegate the appointment of presidential electors, in article II, section 1, paragraph 2, as follows: "Each State shall appoint in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct a number of electors equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress;" and

Whereas, In some of the States said appointment has been repeatedly made by the Legislature; and

Whereas, Women equally with men are citizens of this State and of the United States; therefore,

The undersigned, citizens of the State of——, 21 years of age and upwards, respectfully petition your honorable bodies so to amend the election laws as to enable women to vote in the appointment of presidential electors.

The report of the treasurer, Mrs. Upton, showed that the receipts had risen to $11,825 during the year just passed. It ended thus: "In closing this report the treasurer would like to say that no one person has ever been to the treasury what Miss Anthony has been and is. Every dollar given to her for any purpose whatever, she feels belongs to the work and is most happy when she turns it in. On the other hand the association does very little for her. She pays her own traveling expenses and her own clerk hire. It is to be hoped that this is the last year we may be so neglectful in this direction."

The Congressional Committee, Mrs. Ellen Powell Thompson, acting chairman, reported as a part of the work done: "To still further advance the matter we determined to address a letter to each member of the House and Senate, asking his opinion on the proposed amendment to enfranchise women. At least three-fourths of these letters were promptly answered in most gracious terms, and in many of them hearty sympathy with the purpose of the amendment was expressed. Not a small number declared they were ready to vote for the amendment when opportunity should be given."

Among the State reports those of California, by Mrs. Ellen Clark Sargent, and of Idaho, by Mrs. Eunice Pond Athey, were of special interest, as they contained an epitomized history of the recent campaigns in these States. It was decided that there should be a special effort to make the next annual meeting a noteworthy affair, as it would celebrate the Fiftieth Anniversary of the First Woman's Rights Convention.