History of Woman Suffrage/Volume 4/Chapter 18

 

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1898.

The Thirtieth annual convention of the suffrage association took place in the Columbia Theatre, Washington, D. C, Feb. 13-19, 1898, and celebrated the Fiftieth Anniversary of the First Woman's Rights Convention.^[1] In the center of the stage was an old-fashioned, round mahogany table, draped with the Stars and Stripes and the famous silk suffrage flag with its four golden, stars. In her opening address the president, Miss Susan B. Anthony, said: "On this table the original Declaration of Rights for Women was written at the home of the well-known McClintock family in Waterloo, N. Y., just half a century ago. Around it gathered those immortal four, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright and Mary Ann McClintock, to formulate the grievances of women. They did not dare to sign their names but published the Call for their convention anonymously,^[2] We have had that remarkable document printed for distribution here, and you will notice that those demands which were ridiculed and denounced from one end of the country to the other, all have now been conceded but the suffrage, and that in four States."

This convention was the largest in number of delegates and States represented of any in the history of the association, 154 being in attendance and all but four of the States and Territories represented.

The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw devoted the most of her vice-president's report to an account of the work to secure a suffrage amendment from the Legislature which was being done in Iowa, where she had been spending considerable time. The report on Press Work by the chairman, Miss Jessie J. Cassidy, stated that 30,000 suffrage articles had been sent from headquarters to the various newspapers of the country and the number willing to accept these was constantly increasing. The headquarters had been removed from Philadelphia to New York City during the year and united with the organization office. The Committee on Course of Study, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, chairman, reported that during the past three years they had published 25,000 books and pamphlets, purchased from publishers 3,100 and had 9,000 contributed. The treasurer, Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, announced the receipts of the past year to be $14,055. Bequests had been received of $500 by the will of Mrs. Eliza Murphy of New Jersey, and $500 from Mrs. A. Viola Neblett of South Carolina. :

The report of the Organization Committee, Mrs. Chapman Catt, chairman, showed a large amount of work done in Iowa, Iilinois, South Dakota and the Southern States, the writing of 10,000 letters, the holding of 1,000 public meetings under the auspices of this committee. It closed by saying:

The chief obstacle to organization is not found in societies opposed to the extension of suffrage to woman, nor in ignorance, nor in conservatism; it is to be found in that large body of suffragists who believe that the franchise will come, but that it will come in some unaccountable way without effort or concern on their part: It is to be found in the hopeless, faithless, lifeless members of our own organization. They are at times the officers of local clubs, and the clubs die on their hands; in State executive committees, and there, appalled by the magnitude of the undertaking, they decide that organization is impossible because there is no money, and they make no effort to secure funds. They are in our national body, ready to find fault with plans and results and to criticise the conscientious efforts of those who are struggling to accomplish good— yet they are never ready to propose more helpful methods. In short, we find them everywhere, doing practically nothing themselves, but "throwing cold water" upon every effort inaugurated by others. "It can not be done" is their motto, and by it they constantly discourage the hopeful and extract all enthusiasm from new workers. Judging from the intimate knowledge of the condition of our association gained in the last three years, I am free to say that these are our most effective opponents to-day, and, without question, the best result of the three years' work is the gradual strengthening of belief in the possibility of organization.

Mrs: Sallie Clay Bennett, chairman, presented the report on Federal Suffrage;^[3] Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake, chairman, on Legislation; and Miss Laura Clay on the Suffrage Convocation at the Tennessee Exposition the preceding year. The Plan of Work, offered by the chairman, Mrs. Mariana W. Chapman, and adopted, represented the best result of many years' experience and exemplified the aims and methods of the association. The old board of officers was almost unanimously re-elected.

The afternoon Work Conferences, to exchange ideas as to methods for organizing, raising funds, etc., which met in a small hall, aroused so much interest and attracted so many people that it was necessary to transfer them to the large auditorium. The Resolutions Committee presented by its chairman, Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, a brief summary of the results already accomplished and the rights yet to be secured, in part as follows:

The National-American Woman Suffrage Association, at this its thirtieth annual meeting, celebrates the semi-centennial anniversary of the first Woman's Rights Convention, held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, N. Y., and reaffirms every principle then and there enunciated. We count the gains of fifty years: Woman's position revolutionized in the home, in society, in the church and in the State; public sentiment changed, customs modified, industries opened, co-education established, laws amended, economic independence partially secured, and equal suffrage a recognized subject of legislation. Fifty years ago women voted nowhere in the world; to-day Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho have established equal suffrage for women, and have already in the Congress of the United States eight Senators and seven Representatives with women constituents. Kansas . has granted women Municipal Suffrage, and twenty-three other States have made women voters in school elections. This movement is not confined to the United States; in Great Britain and her colonies women now have Municipal and County Suffrage, while New Zealand and South Australia have abolished all political distinctions of sex. Therefore,

Resolved, That we hereby express our profound appreciation of the prophetic vision, advanced thought and moral courage of the pioneers in this movement for equality of rights, and our sincere gratitude for their half century of toil and endurance to secure for women the privileges they now enjoy, and to make the way easier for those who are to complete the work. We, their successors, a thousandfold multiplied, stand pledged to unceasing effort until women have all the rights and privileges which belong equally to every citizen of a republic.

That in every State we demand for women citizens equality with male citizens in the exercise of the elective franchise, upon such terms and conditions as the men impose upon themselves.

That we appeal to Congress to submit a Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, thereby enabling the citizens of each State to carry this question of woman suffrage before its Legislature for settlement.

That we will aid, so far as practicable, every State campaign for woman suffrage; but we urgently recommend our auxiliary State societies to effect thorough county organizations before petitioning their Legislatures for a State constitutional amendment.

Whereas, The good results of woman suffrage in Wyoming since 1869 have caused its adoption successively by the three adjoining States; therefore,

Resolved, That we earnestly request the citizens of these four free States to make a special effort to secure the franchise for women in the States contiguous to their own.

That we demand for mothers equal custody and control of their minor children, and for wives and widows an equal use and inheritance of property.

That we ask for an equal representation of women on all boards of education and health, of public schools and colleges, and in the management of all public institutions; and for their employment as physicians for women and children in all hospitals and asylums, and as police matrons and guards in all prisons and reformatories.

That this Association limits its efforts exclusively to securing equal rights for women, and it appeals for co-operation to the whole American people.

Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, Mrs. Ida Porter Boyer and Mrs. Harper were appointed fraternal delegates to the Woman's Press Association, in session at this time in Washington.

A beautiful feature of this occasion was the luncheon given by Mrs. John R. McLean to Miss Anthony on her seventy-eighth birthday, February 15, attended by thirty-six of the most distinguished ladies in the national capital, and followed by a reception to the members of the convention. Mrs. McLean was assisted in receiving by Miss Anthony and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant. Seventy-eight wax tapers burned upon the birthday cake, which was three feet in diameter and decorated with flowers. It was presented to Miss Anthony, who carried it in triumph to the convention in Columbia Theatre, where it was cut into slices that were sold as souvenirs and realized about $120, which she donated to the cause.

Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, at the age of eighty-two, sent two papers for this fiftieth anniversary, one for the congressional hearing, on The Significance of the Ballot; the other, Our Defeats and our Triumphs, was read to the convention by Mrs. Colby. Both displayed all the old-time vigor of thought and beauty of expression. The latter, filled with interesting reminiscence, closed with these words:

Another generation has now enlisted for a long or short campaign. What, say they, shall we do to hasten the work? I answer, the pioneers have brought you through the wilderness in sight of the promised land; now, with active, aggressive warfare, take possession. Instead of rehearsing the old arguments which have done duty fifty years, make a brave attack on every obstacle which stands in your way. .... Lord Brougham said: "The laws for women [in England and America] are a disgrace to the civilization of the nineteenth century." The women in every State should watch their law-makers, and any bill invidious to their interests should be promptly denounced, and with such vehemence and indignation as to agitate the whole community. ....

There is no merit in simply occupying the ground which others have conquered. There are new fields for conquest and more enemies to meet. Whatever affects woman's freedom, growth and development affords legitimate subject for discussion here.

.... Some of our opponents think woman would be a dangerous element in politics and destroy the secular nature of our Government. I would have a resolution on that point discussed freely, and show liberal thinkers that we have a large number in our association as desirous to preserve the secular nature of our Government as they themselves can possibly be. .... When educated women, teachers in all our schools, professors in our colleges, are governed by rulers, foreign and native, who can neither read nor write, I would have this association discuss and pass a resolution in favor of "educated suffrage." ....

The object of our organization is to secure equality and freedom for woman: First, in the State, which is denied when she is not permitted to exercise the right of suffrage; second, in the Church, which is denied when she has no voice in its councils, creeds and discipline, or in the choice of its ministers, elders and deacons; third, in the Home, where the State makes the husband's authority absolute, the wife a subject, where the mother is robbed of the guardianship of her own child, and where the joint earnings belong solely to the husband.

.... Let this generation pay its debt to the past by continuing this great work until the last vestige of woman's subjection shall be erased from our creeds and codes and constitutions. Then the united thought of man and woman will inaugurate a pure religion, a just government, a happy home and a civilization in which ignorance, poverty and crime will exist no more. They who watch behold already the dawn of a new day.

The Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell (N. Y.), the first woman to graduate in theology and be ordained, delineated The Changing Phases of Opposition, pointing out that when the first Woman's Rights Convention was held the general tone of the press was shown in that newspaper which said: "This bolt is the most shocking and unnatural incident ever recorded in the history of humanity; if these demands were effected, it would set the world by the ears, make confusion worse confounded, demoralize and degrade from their high sphere and noble destiny women of all respectable and useful classes, and prove a monstrous injury to all mankind." Yet this present convention was celebrating the granting of all those demands except the suffrage and not one of the predicted evils had come to pass. The direful prophecies of the early days were taken up, one by one, and their utter absurdity pointed out in the light of experience: Now all of those ancient, stereotyped objections were concentrated against granting the suffrage.

Mrs. Virginia D. Young (S. C.) delighted the audience with one of her characteristic addresses. Prof. Frances Stewart Mosher, of Hillsdale College (Mich.), gave an exhaustive review of the great increase and value of Woman's Work in Church Philanthropies. Mrs. May Wright Sewall (Ind.) demonstrated the wonderful Progress of Women in Education. The New Education possessed the charm of novelty in being presented by Miss Grace Espy Patton, State Superintendent of Public Instruction in Colorado, a lady so delicate and dainty that, when Miss Anthony led her forward and said, "It has always been charged that voting and office-holding will make women coarse and unwomanly; now look at her!" the audience responded with an ovation.

Miss Belle Kearney (Miss.) discussed Social Changes in the South, depicting in a rapid, magnetic manner, interspersed with flashes of wit, the evolution of the Southern woman and the revolution in customs and privileges which must inevitably lead up to political rights. Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell (N. Y.) gave an eloquent review of the splendid services of Women in Philanthropy.

At the memorial services Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby (D. C.) offered the following resolutions:

It is fitting in theis commemorative celebration to pause a moment to place a laurel in memory's chaplet for those to whom it was given to be the earliest to voice the demand that woman should be allowed to enter into the sacred heritage of liberty, as one made equally with man in the image of the Creator and divinely appointed to co-sovereignty over the earth. To name them here is to recognize their presence with us in spirit and to invoke their benediction upon this generation which, entering into the results of their labors, must carry them forward to full fruition.

Lucretia Mott always will be revered as one of those who conceived the idea of a convention to make an organized demand for justice to women. She became a Quaker preacher in 1818 at the age of twenty-five, and the last suffrage convention she attended was in her eighty-sixth year. Her motto, "Truth for authority and not authority for truth," is still the tocsin of reform. Sarah Pugh, the lovely Quaker, was ever her close friend and helper.

Frances Wright, a noble Scotchwoman, a friend of General Lafayette, early imbibed a love for freedom and a knowledge of the principles on which it is based. In this the land of her adoption she was the first woman to lecture on political subjects, in 1826.

Ernestine L. Rose, the beautiful Polish patriot, sent the first petition to the New York Legislature to give a married woman the right to hold real estate in her own name. This was in 1836, and she continued the work of securing signatures until 1848, when the bill was passed. She was a matchless orator and lectured on woman suffrage for nearly fifty years.

Lucy Stone's voice pleaded the wide continent over for justice for her sex. Her life-long devotion to the woman suffrage cause was idealized by the companionship and assistance of her husband, Henry B. Blackwell, the one man in this nation who under any and all circumstances has made woman's cause his chief consideration. Her first lecture on woman's rights was given in 1847, the year of her graduation at Oberlin College, and her life work was epitomized in her dying words, "Make the world better."

Martha C. Wright, Jane Hunt and Mary Ann McClintock were three of those noble women who issued the call for the Seneca Falls Convention, and were ever ready for service.

Paulina Wright Davis, who called the first National Convention in 1850 and presided over its twentieth celebration in 1870, was one of the moving spirits of the work for more than twenty-five years. Assisted by Caroline H. Dall, she edited the Una, founded in 1853, the first distinctively woman suffrage paper.

Frances Dana Gage, better known by her pen-name, "Aunt Fanny," was farmer, editor, lecturer and worker in the Sanitary Commission. Of her eight children six were stalwart sons, and she used to boast that she was the mother of thirty-six feet of boys. She was a pillar of strength to the movement in early days.

Clarina Howard Nichols is associated with the seed-sowing in Vermont, in Wisconsin and especially in Kansas, where her labors with the first constitutional convention, in 1859, engrafted in organic law many rights for women which were obtained elsewhere, if at all, only by slow and difficult legislative changes. Susan E. Wattles led the Kansas campaign of 1859 with Mrs. Nichols.

Emily Robinson of Salem, Ohio, was one of the chief movers in the second Woman's Rights Convention, and this was held in her own town in 1850. From that time until the present year she has been unfaltering in her devotion.

Dr. Susan A. Edson, who was graduated in medicine in 1854, was a fellow-pioneer in the District of Columbia with Dr. Caroline B. Winslow, whose death preceded hers by about one year. She was one of the most distinguished army nurses and the friend and faithful attendant of President Garfield. For many years she was the president of the District Woman Suffrage Association. Among the earlier woman physicians who espoused the cause were Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, Dr. Mary B. Jackson, Dr. Ann Preston, one of the founders and physicians of the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia, and Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, a founder and physician of the New York Medical College for Women.

Sarah Helen Whitman was the first literary woman of reputation who gave her name to the movement, which later counted among its warmest friends Lydia Maria Child, Alice and Phoebe Cary and Mary Clemmer.

Amalia B. Post of Cheyenne, to whom the enfranchisement of the women of Wyoming was largely due, was ready, as she often said, at the first tap of the drum at Seneca Falls. She occupied the place of honor by the side of the Governor on that proud day when the admission of Wyoming as a State was celebrated.

Josephine S. Griffing, organizer of the Freedman's Bureau; Amelia Bloomer, editor of the Lily, the first temperance and woman's rights paper; Mary Grew, for twenty-three years president of the Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association; Myra Bradwell, the first woman to enter the ranks of legal journalism; Virginia L. Minor, the dove with the eagle's heart, who took to the U. S. Supreme Court her suit against the Missouri officials for refusing her vote—all these, and many more who might be added, form the noble galaxy who brought to the cause of woman's liberty rare personal beauty, social gifts, intellectual culture, and the all-compelling eloquence of earnestness and sincerity.

Albert O. Willcox of New York, whose eighty-seven years were filled with valuable work for reforms, was drawn to the conviction that women should have a share in the Government by a sermon preached by Lucretia Mott in 1831, and from that time declared himself publicly for the movement and was its life-long supporter.

James G. Clark, the sweet-souled troubadour of reform, sang for woman's freedom in suffrage conventions all over the land.

Joseph N. Dolph was always to be counted on to further the political emancipation of women, both in his own State of Oregon and in the U. S. Senate, of which he was long an honored member.

To name the men who have been counselors and friends of the woman suffrage movement is to name the greatest poets, preachers and statesmen of the last half century. Wherever there has been a woman strong enough to demand her rights there has been a man generous and just enough to second her.. Surely we may say that "the spirits of just men made perfect" are our strength and our inspiration.

No less entitled to remembrance and gratitude are the unnamed multitude who have helped the onward march of freedom by standing for the truth that was revealed to them. Whether they pass away in the beauty of youth, the strength of maturity or the glory of old age, they who have given to the world one impulse on the upward path to freedom and to light are not dead. They live here in the life of all good things, and, because of strength gained in earthly activity, have strength to perfect in other spheres what here they but dreamed of.

The Woman's Tribune thus described one scene of the convention:

The opening address of Wednesday evening was by Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker (Conn.) on United States Citizenship. She was not heard distinctly and the audience was very fidgety. Miss Anthony came forward and told them they ought to be perfectly satisfied just to sit still and look at Mrs. Hooker. She is always a commanding presence on the stage, and on this evening, impressed with the deep significance of the event, and clad in silver gray, which harmonized beautifully with her whitening curls, she was a picture which would delight an artist. But notwithstanding Miss Anthony's admonition, the audience really wanted to hear as well as to see. Mrs. Hooker realizing this at last said impatiently, "I never could give a written speech, but Susan insisted that I must this time," and, discarding her manuscript, she spoke clearly and forcibly with her old-time power. A portion of her address was a graphic recital of Miss Anthony's trial for illegal voting in 1872. When Mrs. Hooker's time had expired Miss Anthony rose and put her arm around her, and thus these striking figures, representing the Opposite poles of the woman suffrage force, made a tableau which will never pass from the mental vision of those who witnessed it. At the close of her remarks Mrs. Hooker threw her arms around Miss Anthony and kissed her. The latter, more moved than was her wont, gave vent to that strong feeling of the injustice of woman's disfranchisement which is ever present with her, and exclaimed: "To think that such a woman, belonging by birth and marriage to the most distinguished families in our country's history, should be held as a subject and have set over her all classes of men, with the prospect of there being added to her rulers the Cubans and the Sandwich Island Kanakas. Shame on a government that permits such an outrage!"

Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller (Md.), one of the first suffrage advocates south of Mason and Dixon's line, gave A Glimpse of the Past and Present. Dr. Clara Marshall, Dean of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, presented the history of Fifty Years in Medicine. She related in a graphic manner the struggle of women to gain admission to the colleges, the embarrassments they suffered, the obstacles they were obliged to overcome, reading from published reports the hostile demonstrations of the male students. In closing she bore testimony to the encouragement and assistance rendered by those men who were broadminded and generous enough to recognize the rights of women in this profession and help secure them. The Ministry of Religion as a Calling for Women was the subject of an able and interesting address by the Rev. Florence Buck of Unity Church, Cleveland, Ohio. Mrs. Ella Knowles Haskell, assistant attorney-general of Montana, spoke on Women in the Legal Profession, giving many incidents of the practice of law in the far West.

Samuel J. Barrows, member of Congress from Massachusetts, was called from the audience by Miss Anthony, and closed his brief remarks by saying: "I believe in woman suffrage; it has in it the elements of justice which entitle it to every man's support, and we all ought to help secure it." A leading feature of the program was the speech of August W. Machen, head of the free delivery division of the national post office, on Women in the Departmental Service of the United States. He gave the history of their employment by the government, declared they had raised the standard of work and testified to their efficiency and faithfulness.

The Civil Rights of Women were ably discussed by the Rev. Frederick A. Hinckley of the Second Unitarian Church, Philadelphia, who reviewed the existing laws and pointed out the changes in favor of women. In regard to the prevalence of divorce he said: "There is a large class of our fellow-citizens who greatly misinterpret, in my opinion, the significance of the increase in the number of divorces. No one would counsel more earnestly than I, patience and consideration and every reasonable effort on the part of people once married to live together. But I can not dispute the proposition, nor do I believe any one can dispute it, that in the great process of evolution divorce is an indication of growing independence and self-respect in women, a proclamation that marriage must be the union of self-respecting and mutually respected equals, and that in the ideal home of the future that hideous thing, the subjugation of woman, is to be unknown."

Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch (Ills.) discussed The Economic Status of Women. Madame Clara Neymann (N. Y.) read a philosophical paper on Marriage in the Light of Woman's Freedom. The Progress of Colored Women was pictured in an impassioned address by Mrs. Mary Church Terrell, president of the National Association of Colored Women. She received numerous floral tributes at its close. Mrs. Emmy C. Evald of Chicago, with an attractive foreign enthusiasm, told of the work of Swedish women in their own country and in the United States. Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.) with clever satire and amidst laughter and applause, considered Women in Municipalities.

The Pioneers' Evening was one of great interest, when Miss Anthony marshalled her hosts and made "the roll-call of the years." As each decade was called, beginning with 1848, those who began the suffrage work at that time rose on the stage and in all parts of the house and remained standing. Not one was there who was present at the original Seneca Falls Convention, but it had held an adjourned meeting at Rochester, three weeks later, and Miss Anthony's sister, Mary S., responded as having attended then and signed the Declaration of Rights. The daughters of Mrs. Martha C. Wright, who called this convention—Mrs. Eliza Wright Osborne and Mrs. Wm. Lloyd Garrison—and also Mrs. Millie Burtis Logan, whose mother, Miss Anthony's cousin, served as its secretary, were introduced to the audience. The children of Frederick Douglass, who had spoken at both meetings, were present and should have come forward with this group. The Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell stated that she had spoken in favor of woman's rights in 1846. Among the earliest of the pioneers present were John W. Hutchinson, the last of that famous family of singers; Henry B. Blackwell, Mrs. Helen Philleo Jenkins (Mich.), Miss Sarah Wall (Mass.) and Mrs. Hooker. Many of those who arose made brief remarks and the occasion was one which will not be forgotten by those who witnessed it.

Among the letters received from the many pioneers still living was one from Mrs. Abigail Bush, now eighty-eight years old and residing in California, who presided over the Rochester meeting, Aug. 2, 1848. It is especially interesting as showing that even so advanced women as Lucretia Mott and Mrs. Stanton, although they dared call such a meeting, were yet so conservative as to object to a woman's presiding over it:

To Susan B. Anthony, Greeting: You will bear me witness that the state of society is very different from what it was fifty years ago, when I presided at the first Woman's Rights Convention. [ had not been able to meet in council at all with the friends until I met them in the hall as the congregation was gathering, and then fell into the hands of those who urged me to take part with the opposers of a woman serving, as the party had with them a fine-looking man to preside at all of their meetings, James Mott, who had presided at Seneca Falls. Afterward I fell in with the old friends, Amy Post, Rhoda de Garmo and Sarah Fish, who at once commenced labors with me to prove that the hour had come when a woman should preside, and led me into the church. Amy proposed my name as president; I was accepted at once, and from that hour I seemed endowed as from on high to serve. It was a two days' meeting with three sessions per day. On my taking the chair, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton left the platform and took their seats in the audience, but it did not move me from performing all my duties, and at the close of the meeting Lucretia Mott came forward, folded me tenderly in her arms and thanked me for presiding. That settled the question of men's presiding at a woman's convention. From that day to this, in all the walks of life, I have been faithful in asserting that there should be "no taxation without representation." It has seemed long in coming, but I think the time draws near when woman will be acknowledged as equal with man. Heaven grant the day to dawn soon!

Mrs. Catharine A. F. Stebbins (Mich.), who had attended the Seneca Falls Convention and signed the Declaration of Rights, sent an interesting descriptive letter. Mrs. Lucinda H. Stone (Mich.), the mother of women's clubs and a pioneer on educational lines, wrote:

You wanted I should write you any anecdotes of early interest in woman suffrage. The remembrance of Dr. Stone's waking up to that subject has come to me, and I have thought I would tell you about it. It was some time in the forties that he was requested to deliver a Fourth of July oration in Kalamazoo. I can not tell the exact year, but it was before I had ever heard of the Rochester Convention, or of you or Mrs. Stanton, and he was looking up all that he could find in the early history of our Declaration of Independence, and the principles of Jefferson and the early revolutionists. I remember his coming in one day (it must have been before 1848), seeming very much absorbed in something that he was thinking about. He threw down the book he had been reading, and said to me: "The time will come when women will vote. Mark my words! We may not live to see it, we probably shall not, but it will come. It is not a woman's right or a man's right; it is a human right, and their voting is but a natural process of evolution."....

Mrs. Esther Wattles, who helped secure School Suffrage and equal property laws for women in the State constitution of Kansas in 1859, sent this message: "My attention was first called to the injustice done to women by a lecture given near Wilmington, Ohio, by John O. Wattles in 1841. He devoted most of his time to lecturing on Woman's Rights, The Sin of Slavery, The Temperance Reform and Peace. I heard him on all these subjects, off and on, till 1844, when we were married. .... Seventy-nine summers with their clouds and sunshine, make it fitting I should greet you by letter rather than personal presence. May the cause never falter till the victory is won."

Most of the letters were sent to Miss Anthony personally. Among these were the following:

We, the members of the National Association of Woman Stenographers, take great pleasure in extending congratulations to you on the occasion of your seventy-eighth birthday, and hope that the days of your years may still be many and happy. We also desire to express our appreciation of and gratitude for the work you have done in securing freedom and justice for women. As business women we are better able to comprehend what you have accomplished, especially for those who are bread-winners, and we trust the time may soon come when we shall not be limited to understanding what freedom is, but be able to act in accordance with its principles.

The Nevada Equal Suffrage Association: Although we are young in the ranks and few in number compared with the older States, yet we are none the less loyal to the principles advocated and established by the National Association. We are brave because we draw inspiration from the thoughts and acts of that Spartan band of suffragists of fifty years ago, who devoted the sunshine of their lives and the energies of their philosophic minds to the effort to obtain for womankind their inherent right to have a voice in the Government which derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.

Alfred H. Love, president of the Universal Peace Union: From our rooms in the east wing of Independence Hall, I send greetings to you and your cause. Your cause is ours, and has been one of our essential principles since our organization. Your success is a triumph for peace.

Mary Lowe Dickinson, secretary of the International Order of the King's Daughters and Sons: I hope you will live to see the full day for the cause whose dawn owed so much to your labors, and I can ask nothing better for you than that you have "the desire of your heart," which I am sure will be the ballot for us all.

Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman physician: Although I can not respond in person to your very friendly invitation to be a representative of "the pioneers," yet I gladly send my hearty greeting to you and to the other brave workers for the progress of the race—a progress slow but inevitable. Amongst all its steps I consider the admission of women to the medical profession as the most important. Whilst thankfully recognizing the wonderful accumulations of knowledge which generations of our brethren have gathered together, our future women physicians will rejoice to help in the construction of that noble temple of medicine, whose foundation stone must be sympathetic justice. Pray allow me to send my warm greeting to the Congress through you.

There were messages and grateful recognition from so many societies and individuals in the United States that it would be impossible even to call them by name; also from the Dominion of Canada Suffrage Club, through Dr. Augusta Stowe Gullen; the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in Great Britain, with individual letters from Lady Aberdeen, Mrs.Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Mrs. Priscilla Bright McLaren and others; on behalf of the Swedish Frederika Bremer Forbundet, by Carl Lindhagen; on behalf of Finnish women by Baroness Alexandra Gripenberg; on behalf of German women by Frau Hanna Bieber-Bohm, president of the National Council of Women; on behalf of the Woman Suffrage Society of Holland by its secretary, Margarethe Gallé; from the Norwegian Woman Suffrage Club; from the Verein Jugendschutz of Berlin, and from the Union to Promote Woman's Rights in Finland.

The remarkable scenes of the closing evening made a deep impression upon the large audience. After fifty years of effort to overcome the most stubborn and deeply-rooted prejudices of the ages, the results were beginning to appear. Among the speakers were a woman State senator from Utah, Mrs. Martha Hughes Cannon; a woman member of the Colorado Legislature, Mrs. Martha A. B. Conine; a woman State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Miss Estelle Reel of Wyoming; U. S. Senators Henry M. Teller of Colorado, and Frank J. Cannon of Utah, States where women have full suffrage; Representative John F. Shafroth of Colorado—and in the center of this distinguished group, Susan B. Anthony, receiving the fruits of her half century of toil and hardship.

Miss Reel: I want to tell you a little about our work in Wyoming, where women have been voting and holding office for nearly thirty years, and where our people are convinced that it has been of great benefit. Our home life there is as sacred and sweet as anywhere else on the globe. Equal suffrage has been tried and not found wanting. You may ask, What reforms has Wyoming to show? We were the first State to adopt the Australian ballot, and to accept a majority verdict of juries in civil cases. We are noted for our humane treatment of criminals, our care of the deserving poor and the education of our young. Child labor is prohibited. The Supreme Court has just decided that every voter must be able to read the Constitution in English. We have night schools all over the State for those who can not attend school by day. Equal suffrage was given to help protect the home element, and the home vote is a great conservative force. Woman suffrage means stable government, anchored in the steadfast rock of American homes.

Mrs. Conine was commissioned as a delegate to the convention by Gov. Alva Adams of Colorado. She read the statement recently put forth, testifying to the good results of equal suffrage and signed by the Governor, three ex-Governors, all the State Senators and the Representatives in Congress, the Chief Justice and the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court, the Judges of the Court of Appeals, the Judges of the District Court, the Secretary of State, the State treasurer, auditor, attorney-general, the mayor of Denver, the presidents of the State University and of Colorado College, the president of the General Federation of Women's Clubs and the presidents of thirteen women's clubs, and said:

During the session of the Legislature last winter, there were three women in the House. We met the other members upon terms of absolute equality. No thought of incongruity or unfitness seems to have arisen, and at the same time those little courtesies which gentlemen instinctively pay to ladies were never omitted. Each of the ladies was given a chairmanship, one of them that of the Printing Committee, and the printing bill was lower by thousands of dollars than for any previous session. The women were as frequently called to the chair in Committee of the Whole as were the men. One of them was placed upon the Judiciary Committee at the request of its chairman. Every honorary committee appointed during the session included one or more of the ladies.

Our State Federation of Women's Clubs now numbers about 100, representing a united membership of 4,000. They are largely occupied in studying social and economic questions, earnestly seeking for the best methods of educating their children, reforming criminals, alleviating poverty and purifying the ballot; in short, striving to make their city and their State a cleaner, better home for their families. Their work receives added encouragement from the knowledge that by their ballots they may determine who shall make and administer the laws under which their children must be reared. The home has always been conceded to be the woman's kingdom. In the free States she has but expanded the walls of that home, that she may afford to the inmates, and also to those who unfortunately have no other home, the same protection and loving care which was formerly limited to the few short years of childhood passed beneath the parental roof.

Senator Teller: I want to indorse what has been said by the two members from Colorado and Wyoming. The former is rather young as a suffrage State, but we are living side by side with the latter, where they have had equal suffrage for nearly thirty years. The results of woman suffrage have proved entirely satisfactory —not to every individual, but to the great mass of the people: I hear it said in this city every day that if women are allowed to vote the best women will not take part. I want to say to you that this is a mistake. To my certain knowledge, the best women do take part. When I went back to Colorado, after the granting of equal suffrage, a prominent society woman, whom I had known for years, telephoned me to come up and speak to the ladies at her house. I found her big parlors full of representative women—the wives of bankers, lawyers, preachers—society women. If you put any duty upon women they are not going to shirk it. Those who feared the responsibility are now as enthusiastic as those who had been "clamoring" for it. In the past, women have had no object in studying political questions; now they have, and they are taking them up in their clubs. We find that women are less partisan than men. Why? Because they generally have more conscience than men. They will not vote for a dissolute and oes man who may happen to force himself on a party ticket. ....

We are an intelligent community; we have long had a challenge to our fellow-citizens to show any other city that has as large a proportion of college graduates as Denver. Colorado people are proud of equal suffrage. The area where it prevails spread last year and took in Utah and Idaho. It will take in more neighboring States. I predict that in ten years, instead of four suffrage States, we shall have twice as many—perhaps three or four times that number.

Representative Shafroth: I want to say this, as coming from Colorado: The experience we have had ought to demonstrate to every one that woman suffrage is not only right but practical. It tends to elevate. There is not a caucus now but is better attended and by better people, and held in a better place. I have seen the time when a political convention without a disturbance and the drawing of weapons was rare. That time is past in Colorado, and it is due to the presence of women. Every man now shows that civility which makes him take off his hat and not swear, and deport himself decently when ladies are present. Instead of women's going to the polls corrupting them it has purified the polls. Husband and wife go there together. No one insults them. There are no drunken men there, nothing but what is pleasant and decorous.

Woman is an independent element in politics. She has no allegiance to any party. When a ticket is presented to her, she asks, "Are these good men?" A man is apt to say, "Well, this is a bad ticket, but I must stand by my party." He wants to keep his party record straight. She votes for the best man on the ticket. That element is bound to result in good in any State.

People say they don't know how it will work; they are afraid of it. Can it be that we distrust our mothers and sisters? We shall never have the best possible government till women participate in it.

Senator Cannon: No nation can exist half slave and half free. Ten years before I was old enough to vote, my mother was a voter. I learned at her knee to vote according to my conscience, and not according to the dictation of the bosses. The strongest argument for the suffrage of any class exists in behalf of womankind, because women will not be bound by mere partisanship. If the world is to be redeemed, it must be by the conscience of the individual voter. The woman goes to the truth by instinct. Men have to confer together and go down street and look through glasses darkly. The woman stays at home and rocks the cradle, and God tells her what to do. The suffrage never was abused by women in Utah. During the seventeen years that they voted in the Territory there was not a defalcation in any public office.

I believe in the republic. I believe that its destiny is to shed light not only here, but all over the world. If we can trust woman in the house to keep all pure and holy there, so that the little ones may grow up right, surely we can trust her at the ballot-box. When children learn political wisdom and truth from their mother's lips, they will remember it and live up to it; for those lessons are the longest remembered. When Senator Teller withdrew from a political convention for conscience's sake, a man said, commenting on his action: "It is generally safe to stay with your party." His wife said: "And it is always safe to stay with your principles."

In the midst of the convention came the sad news on February 17 of the death of Miss Frances E. Willard, president of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Affectionate tributes were offered by Miss Anthony, Miss Shaw and other members; a telegram of sympathy was sent to her secretary and close companion, Miss Anna Gordon, by a rising vote, and the audience remained standing for a few moments in silent prayer. A. large wreath of violets and Southern ivy, adorned with miniatures of Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony and other pioneer suffrage workers was sent by the delegates to be laid on her coffin.

The congressional hearings on the morning of February 15, Miss Anthony's birthday, attracted crowds of people to the Capitol. The hearing before the Senate Committee was conducted by the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, and considered The Philosophy of the Movement for Woman Suffrage. Only two members of the committee were present—James H. Berry of Arkansas, and George P. Wetmore of Rhode Island—but a number of other senators were interested listeners, and the large Marble Room was crowded with delegates and spectators. The first paper, by Wm. Lloyd Garrison (Mass.) considered The Nature of a Republican Form of Government:

The advocates of complete enfranchisement of women base their demand upon the principles underlying all suffrage, rather than upon the question of sex. If manhood suffrage is a mistake; if voting is a privilege and not a right; if government does not derive its just powers from the consent of the governed; if Lincoln's aphorism that ours is a "government of the people, for the people and by the people" is only a rhetorical generality, then women have no case. If not, they see no reason why, as they are governed, they should not have a voice in choosing their rulers; why, as people, they are not covered by Lincoln's definition. They feel naturally that their exclusion is unjust.

Woman suffragists are not unconscious of the glaring contrast between declared principles and actual practice, and they venture to believe that a professed self-government which deliberately ignores its own axioms is tending to decadence. They are not unmindful of the slow evolution of human government from earliest history, beginning in force and greed, reaching through struggles of blood, in the course of time, to the legislative stage where differences are adjudicated by reason, and the sword reserved as the last resort. This vantage ground has been gained only by a recognition of the primal right of the people to be consulted in regard to public affairs; and in proportion as this right has been respected and the franchise extended has government grown more stable and society more safe. It has come through a succession of steps, invariably opposed by the dominant classes, and only permitted after long contest and a changed public opinion.

In England, where the progress of constitutional government can be most accurately traced, there was a time when the land Owning aristocracy controlled the franchise and elected the members of Parliament. The dawn of a sense of injustice in the minds of the mercantile classes brought with it a demand for the extension of the suffrage, which was of course vigorously combated. It was an illogical resistance, which ended in the admission of the tradesmen. Later the workingmen awakened to their political disability and asserted their rights, only to be promptly antagonized by both classes in power. Eventually logic and justice won in this issue. In the light of history none of the objections urged against the extension of the right of voting have been sustained by subsequent facts. On the contrary, the broadening of the suffrage base has been found to add stability to the superstructure of British government and to have been in the interest of true conservatism.

In the course of time the woman’s hour has struck. Her cause is now going: through the same ordeal suffered by the classes referred to. Her triumph is as sure as theirs. The social and industrial changes of constitutional government in all countries have revolutionized her condition. Fifty years ago the avenues of employment open to women were few and restricted. To-day, in every branch of manufacture and trade, and in the professions formerly monopolized by men, they are actively and successfully engaged. Every law put upon the statute books affects their interests directly and indirectly—undreamed of in a social order where household drudgery and motherhood limited a woman’s horizon.

It is inevitable, therefore, that, feeling the pressure of legislation under which they suffer, a new intelligence should stir the minds of women such as stirred the once disfranchised classes of men in Great Britain. It leads to an examination of the principles of self-government and to their application on lines of equality and not of sex. In them is found no justification for the present enforced political disability. Therefore all legislative bodies vested with the power to change the laws are petitioned to consider the justice and expediency of allowing women to register their opinions, on the same terms with men, at the ballot-box.

The principles at stake are rarely alluded to by the opponents of woman suffrage. The battle rages chiefly upon the ground of expediency. Every argument formerly used by the English Tories is to-day heard in the mouths of men who profess a belief in a democratic form of government. ....

In the discussion of the rights of labor, the inadequacy of wages, the abuses of the factory system, the management of schools, of reformatory and penal institutions, the sanitary arrangements of a city, the betterment of public highways, the encroachment of privileged corporations, the supervision of the poor, the improvement of hospitals, and the many branches of collective housekeeping 1ncluded in a municipality—women are by nature and education adapted to participate. In many States, certainly in Massachusetts, it is a common practice to appoint women to responsible positions demanding large organizing and directing power. If thus fitted to rule, are women unfitted to have a voice in choosing rulers?

The true advancement of common interest waits for the active and responsible. participation of women in political matters. Indirect and irresponsible influence they have now, but indirection and irresponsibility are dangerous elements in governments which assume to be representative, and are a constant menace. If this whole question of equal political rights of women is considered in the light of common sense and common justice, the sooner will the present intolerable wrong be wiped out and self-government be put upon a broader and safer basis.

Mrs. May Wright Sewall (Ind.) discussed the Fitness of Women to Become Citizens from the Standpoint of Education and Mental Development.

From the close of the Revolution, we find all the distinguished American patriots expressing the conviction that a self-governing people must be an educated people. Hancock, Jay, Franklin, Morris, Paine, Quincy Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Washington, all urge the same argument in support of education. It is no longer to produce an educated ministry, but to insure educated citizens, that schools are maintained and colleges multiplied. ....

In this year of 1897-98 not less than 20,000,000 pupils and students of all ages, from the toddlers in the kindergartens to the full-grown candidates for post-graduate honors, are registered in the schools, academies, colleges and universities of the United States. The average length of time which girls spend in school exceeds by nearly three years the average length of time which boys stay there; while the number of girls graduating from highschool courses, those which include United States history and civil government, is almost double the number of boys. Thus, at the present time, largely more than one-half of the moneys spent by the governments, local and national, in support of free schools, is used in the education of girls. By what authority does the Government tax its citizens to support schools for the education of millions of women to whom, after they have received the education declared necessary to citizenship, this is denied?

Is it urged that the Government gets its return upon its investment in the education of women through the increased intelligence with which women rear their children, manage their homes and conduct the larger social affairs outside the boundary of their home life? I have no disposition to diminish the Government's recognition of such return, but I wish to remind you that no one has ever justified the maintenance of public schools, and an enforced attendance upon them, on the theory that the Government has a right to compel men to be agreeable husbands and wise fathers, or that it is responsible for teaching men how to conduct their own business with discretion and judgment. Quite in another tone is it urged that the schools are the fountains of the nation's liberties and that a government whose policy is decided by a majority of the votes cast by its men is not safe in the hands of uneducated voters.

.... It is the political life of our nation which stands in the sorest need; yet this is the only department of our national life which rejects the aid of women.

If intelligence is vital to good citizenship in a republic, it would seem that, to justify the exclusion of the present generation of American women, whose. intelligence is bought at so high a price and at the expense of the whole people, there must be some proof that they have qualities which so vitiate it as to render it unserviceable. Such proof has never yet been presented.

At the present moment the education and the intellectual culture of American women has reached a plane where its further development is a menace, unless it is to be accompanied by the direct responsibility of its possessors—a responsibility which in a republic can be felt only by those who participate directly in the election of public officers and in the shaping of public policies.

The Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer (R. I.) considered the Fitness of Women to Become Citizens from the Standpoint of Moral Development.

Government is not now merely the coarse and clumsy instrument by which military and police forces are directed; it is the flexible, changing and delicately adjusted instrument of many and varied educative, charitable and supervisory functions, and the tendency to increase the functions of government is a growing one. Prof. Lester F. Ward says: "Government is becoming more and more the organ of the social consciousness and more and more the servant of the social will." The truth of this is shown in the modern public school system; in the humane and educative care of dependent, defective and wayward children; in the increasingly discriminating and wise treatment of the insane, the pauper, the tramp and the poverty-bound; in the provisions for public parks, baths and amusement places; in the bureaus of investigation and control and the appointment of officers of inspection to secure better sanitary and moral conditions; in the board of arbitration for the settlement of political and labor difficulties; and in the almost innumerable committees and bills, national, State and local, to secure higher social welfare for all classes, especially for the weaker and more ignorant. Government can never again shrink and harden into a mere mechanism of military and penal control.

It is, moreover, increasingly apparent that for these wider and more delicate functions a higher order of electorate, ethically as well as intellectually advanced, is necessary. Democracy can succeed only by securing for its public service, through the rule of the majority, the best leadership and administration the State affords. Only a wise electorate will know how to select such leadership, and only a highly moral one will authoritatively choose such. ....

When the State took the place of family bonds and tribal relationships, and the social consciousness was born and began its long travel toward the doctrine of "equality of human rights" in government and the principle of human brotherhood in social organization, man, as the family and tribal organizer and ruler, of course took command of the march. It was inevitable, natural and beneficent so long as the State concerned itself with only the most external and mechanical of social interests. The instant, however, the State took upon itself any form of educative, charitable or personally helpful work, it entered the area of distinctive feminine training and power, and therefore became in need of the service of woman. Wherever the State touches the personal life of the infant, the child, the youth, or the aged, helpless, defective in mind, body or moral nature, there the State enters "woman's peculiar sphere," her sphere of motherly succor and training, her sphere of sympathetic and self-sacrificing ministration to individual lives. If the service of women is not won to such governmental action (not only through "influence or the shaping of public opinion," but through definite and authoritative exercise), the mother-office of the State, now so widely adopted, will be too often planned and administered as though it were an external, mechanical and abstract function, instead of the personal, organic and practical service which all right helping of individuals must be.

In so far as motherhood has given to women a distinctive ethical development, it is that of sympathetic personal insight respecting the needs of the weak and helpless, and of quick-witted, flexible adjustment of means to ends in the physical, mental and moral training of the undeveloped. And thus far has motherhood fitted women to give a service to the modern State which men can not altogether duplicate. ....

Whatever problems might have been involved in the question of woman's place in the State when government was purely military, legal and punitive have long since been antedated. Whatever problems might have inhered in that question when women were personally subject to their families or their husbands are well-nigh outgrown in all civilized countries, and entirely so ir the most advanced. Woman's nonentity in the political department of the State is now an anachronism and inconsistent with the prevailing tendencies of social growth. ....

The earth is ready, the time is ripe, for the authoritative expression of the feminine as well as the masculine interpretation of that common social consciousness which is slowly writing justice in the State and fraternity in the social order.

Miss Laura Clay (Ky.) illustrated the Fitness of Women to Become Citizens from the Standpoint of Physical Development.

Among the objections brought against the extension of suffrage to women, that of their physical unfitness to perform military duties is the most plausible, because in the popular mind there is an idea that the right of casting a ballot is in its final analysis dependent upon the ability to defend it with a bullet. ....

It is by no means self-evident that women are naturally unfitted for fighting or are unwarlike in disposition. The traditions of Amazons and the conduct of savage women give room to believe that the instinct for war was primitively very much the same in both sexes. Though the earliest division of labor among savages known to us is that of assigning war and the chase to men, yet we have no reason to believe that this was done by way of privilege to women; but in the struggle for tribal supremacy that tribe must have ultimately survived and succeeded best which exposed its women the least. Polygamy, universal among primitive races, could in a degree sustain population against the ravages among men of continual warfare, but any large destruction of women must extinguish a tribe that suffered it. So those tribes which earliest engrafted among their customs the exclusion of women from war were the ones that finally survived. ....

Military genius among women has appeared in all ages and people, as in Deborah, Zenobia, Joan of Arc and our own Anna Ella Carroll. The prowess of women has often been conspicuous in besieged cities. Our early history of Indian warfare recounts many of their valiant deeds. It is well known that in the late war many women on both sides eluded the vigilance of recruiting officers, enlisted and fought bravely. Who knows how many of such women there might have been if their enlistment had been desired and stimulated by beat of drum and blare of trumpet and "all the pomp and circumstance of glorious war?" But no State can afford to accept military service from its women, for while a nation may live for ages without soldiers, it could exist but for a span without mothers. Since woman's exemption from war is not an unbought privilege, it is evident that in justice men have no superior rights as citizens on that account. It is an equally fallacious idea that sound expediency demands that every ballot shall be defended by a bullet. The theory of representative government does not admit of any connection between military service and the right and duty of suffrage, even among men. It is trite to point out that the age required for military service begins at eighteen years, when a man is too young to vote, and ends at forty-five years, when he is usually in the prime of his usefulness as a citizen. Some very slight physical defects will incapacitate a man under the usual recruiting rules. Many lawyers, judges, physicians, ministers, merchants, editors, authors, legislators and Congressmen are exempt on the ground of physical incapacity. A citizen's ability to help govern by voting is in no manner proportioned to ability to bear arms In the finest conception of government not only is there room for women to take part, but it can not be realized without help from them. Men alone possess only a half of human wisdom; women possess the other half of it, and a half that must always be somewhat different from men's, because women must always see from a somewhat different point of view. The wisdom of men must be supplemented by that of women to discover the whole of governmental truth. Women's help is equally indispensable in persuading society to love and obey law. This help is very largely given now, or civilization as we know it would be impossible. But the best interests of society demand that women's present indirect and half-conscious influence shall be strengthened by the right of suffrage, so that their sense of duty to government may be stimulated by a clear perception of the connection which exists between power and responsibility.

Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch (Eng.) treated of Woman as an Economic Factor.

It is often urged that women stand greatly in need of training in citizenship before being finally received into the body politic. ....

As a matter of fact women are the first class who have asked the right of citizenship after their ability for political life has been proved. I have seen in my time two enormous extensions of the suffrage to men—one in America and one in England. But neither the negroes in the South nor the agricultural laborers in Great Britain had shown before they got the ballot any capacity for government; for they had never had the opportunity to take the first steps in political action. Very different has been the history of the march of women toward a recognized position in the State. We have had to prove our ability at each stage of progress, and have gained nothing without having satisfied a test of capacity. ....

The public demand for "proved worth" suggests what appears to me the chief and most convincing argument upon which our future claims must rest—the growing recognition of the economic value of the work of women. .... There has been a marked change in the estimate of our position as wealth producers. We have never been "supported" by men; for if all men labored hard every hour of the twenty-four, they could not do all the work of the world. A few worthless women there are, but even they are not so much supported by the men of their family as by the overwork of the "sweated" women at the other end of the social ladder. From creation's dawn our sex has done its full share of the world's work; sometimes we have been paid for it, but oftener not.

Unpaid work never commands respect; it is the paid worker who has brought to the public mind conviction of woman's worth. The spinning and weaving done by our great-grandmothers in their own homes was not reckoned as national wealth until the work was carried to the factory and organized there; and the women who followed their work were paid according to its commercial value. It is the women of the industrial class, the wage-earners, reckoned by the hundreds of thousands, and not by units, the women whose work has been submitted to a money test, who have been the means of bringing about the altered attitude of public opinion toward woman's work in every sphere of life.

If we would recognize the democratic side of our cause, and make an organized appeal to industrial women on the ground of their need of citizenship, and to the nation on the ground of its need that all wealth producers should form part of its body politic, the close of the century might witness the building up of a true republic in the United States.

Mrs. Florence Kelley, State Factory Inspector of Illinois, showed the Working Woman's Need of the Ballot.

No one needs all the powers of the fullest citizenship more urgently than the wage-earning woman, and from two different points of view—that of actual money wages and that of her wider needs as a human being and a member of the. community.

The wages paid any body of working people are determined by many influences, chief among which is the position of the particular body of workers in question. Thus the printers, by their intelligence, their powerful organization, their solidarity and united action, keep up their wages in spite of the invasion of their domain by new and improved machinery. On the other hand, the garment-workers, the sweaters' victims, poor, unorganized, unintelligent, despised, remain forever on the verge of pauperism, irrespective of their endless toil. If, now, by some untoward fate the printers should suddenly find themselves disfranchised, placed in a position in which their members were politically inferior to the members of other trades, no effort of their own short of complete enfranchisement could restore to them that prestige, that good standing in the esteem of their fellow-craftsmen and the public at large which they now enjoy, and which contributes materially in support of their demand for high wages.

In the garment trades, on the other hand, the presence of a body of the disfranchised, of the weak and young, undoubtedly contributes to the economic weakness of these trades. Custom, habit, tradition, the regard of the public, both employing and employed, for the people who do certain kinds of labor, contribute to determine the price of that labor, and no disfranchised class of workers can permanently hold its own in competition with enfranchised rivals. But this works both ways. It is fatal for any body of workers to have forever hanging from the fringes of its skirts other bodies on a level just below its own; for that means continual pressure downward, additional difficulty to be overcome in the struggle to maintain reasonable rates of wages. Hence, within the space of two generations there has been a complete revolution in the attitude of the trades-unions toward the women working in their trades. Whereas forty years ago women might have knocked in vain at the doors of the most enlightened trade-union, to-day the Federation of Labor keeps in the field paid organizers whose duty it is to enlist in the unions as many women as possible. The workingmen have perceived that women are in the field of industry to stay; and they see, too, that there can not be two standards of work and wages for any trade without constant menace to the higher standard. Hence their effort to place the women upon the same industrial level with themselves in order that all may pull together in the effort to maintain reasonable conditions of life.

But this same menace holds with regard to the vote. The lack of the ballot places the wage-earning woman upon a level of irresponsibility compared with her enfranchised fellow workingman. By impairing her standing in the community the general rating of her value as a human being, and consequently as a worker, is lowered. In order to be rated as good as a good man in the field of her earnings, she must show herself better than he. She must be more steady, or more trustworthy, or more skilled, or more cheap in order to have the same chance of employment. Thus, while women are accused of lowering wages, might they not justly reply that it is only by conceding something from the pay which they would gladly claim, that they can hold their own in the market, so long as they labor under the disadvantage of disfranchisement? ....

Finally, the very fact that women now form about one-fifth of the employes in manufacture and commerce in this country has opened a vast field of industrial legislation directly affecting women as wage-earners. The courts in some of the States, notably in Illinois, are taking the position that women can not be treated as a class apart and legislated for by themselves, as has been done in the factory laws of England and on the continent of Europe, but must abide by that universal freedom of contract which characterizes labor in the United States. This renders the situation of the working woman absolutely anomalous. On the one hand, she is cut off from the protection awarded to her sisters abroad; on the other, she has no such power to defend her interests at the polls, as is the heritage of her brothers at home. This position is untenable, and there can be no pause in the agitation for full political power and responsibility until these are granted to all the women of the nation.

Mrs. Mariana W. Chapman (N. Y.) spoke from the standpoint of Women as Capitalists and Taxpayers.

The first impulse toward the organization of women to protect their own rights came from the injustice of laws toward married women, and in 1848 it manifested itself in the first Woman's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls. Slowly the leaven spread. There was agitation in one State after the other about the property rights of women. .... Now in many States married as well as single women are proprietors of business enterprises upon the same basis as men, and are interested as capitalists and tax-payers in every law which affects the country industrially or financially.

In 1894 a careful copy was made of the women taxpayers of Brooklyn. Names with initials were not placed on the list, so that the total was probably under rather than over estimated. This showed 22.03, or nearly one-fourth of all the assessable realty in the names of women, amounting to $110,000,000, besides many large estates in which they were interested. In 1896 the assessed value of real estate in the State of New York was $4,506,985,694, which, if estimated in the same ratio, would give taxable property owned by women to the extent of $1,124,221,423.

They are agriculturally interested, inasmuch as they are frequently owners of large tracts of land in the West as well as of smaller farms in our Eastern States. What shall we say to a Government that gives land in severalty to the Indian, supplies him with tools and rations, puts a ballot in his hand, and then says to the American woman who purchases the same right to land, "You shall not have the political privileges of American citizenship?" Under the laws of our country every stock company is obliged to give men and women shareholders a vote upon the same basis, and one fails to see why a government, which professedly exists to maintain the rights of the people, should practice in its own dealing such flaunting injustice. ....

Women help to support every public institution in the State and should have representation upon every board, and in the laws which control them. They help to pay the army pensions and should be allowed to help in deciding how much shall be paid. They help to pay for standing armies and for navies and they have the larger part in the nurture and training of every man who is in army or navy, and this is not the smaller part of the tax, since it is at times the matter of a life for a life. Women pay their part of the taxes to support our public schools and have intense interests in their well-doing. Twenty-six States have recognized this fact and have given to women some kind of School Suffrage, one has granted Municipal Suffrage and four Full Political Equality; but this is only a fraction of the justice which belongs to a government founded by statesmen whose watchword was, "No taxation without representation."

Miss Elizabeth Burrill Curtis (N. Y.) answered the question, Are Women Represented in our Government?

"Taxation without representation is tyranny" was one of the slogans of liberty in this country one hundred and twenty years ago. Have we outlived this principle? If not, why is it supposed to have no application to women?

That a century ago the latter were not thought of as having any rights under this motto is not surprising. So few women then held property in their own name that the injustice done them was not sO apparent. But the situation is changed now, and the right of women to be considered as individuals is everywhere acknowledged save in this one particular. Even those who feel that the granting of universal male suffrage was a mistake, and that the right to self-government should be proved by some test, educational or otherwise—even those do not assert that it would be anything but gross injustice to tax men without allowing them a voice in the disposal of their money. ....

But there is still another side to the question. It is not only that the disfranchised women are unfairly treated, but the public good inevitably suffers from the political nonexistence of half the citizens of the republic. Either women are interested in politics or they are not. If the former, the country is distinctly injured, for nothing is more fatal to good government than the intermeddling of a large body of people who have never studied the questions at issue and whose only interest is a personal one. If, on the other hand, women are not interested in politics, what is the condition of that country, half of whose citizens do not care whether it be well or ill governed? That women influence men is never denied, even by the most strenuous opponents of woman suffrage. It is, on the contrary, most violently asserted by those very people; but of what value is that interest if woman is utterly ignorant of one of the most important duties of a man's life? ....

On one hand the public good demands that no class of citizens be arbitrarily prevented from serving the commonweal; and on the other hand thinking and patriotic women are crying against the injustice which forbids them to prove their fitness for self-government. What shall be the result of this double demand?

Woman Suffrage and the Home was the topic of Henry B. Blackwell (Mass.).

One of the objections to extending suffrage to women is a fear that its exercise will divert their attention from domestic pursuits, and diminish their devotion to husband, children and home. We believe, on the contrary, that it will increase domestic happiness by giving women greater self-respect and greater respect and consideration from men.

People who make this objection seem to regard the conjugal and maternal instincts as artificial, as the result of education and circumstances, losing sight of the fact that these qualities are innate in the feminine soul. Mental cultivation and larger views of life do not tend to make women less womanly any more than they tend to make men less manly. No one imagines that business or politics diminishes or destroys the conjugal and paternal instinct in men. We do not look for dull or idle or indolent men as husbands for our daughters. Ignorant, narrow-minded men do not make the best husbands and fathers. Ignorant, narrow-minded women do not make the best wives and mothers. Mental discipline and intelligent responsibility add strength to the conjugal and parental sentiment alike in men and women. ....

But fortunately this is no longer a question of theory. We appeal to the experience of the four States which have extended equal suffrage to women. Wyoming has had complete woman suffrage since 1869. For twenty-nine years, as a Territory and a State, women have voted there in larger ratio than men. Supreme Judge J. W. Kingman many years ago testified that the actual proportion of men voting had increased to 80 per cent., but that 90 per cent, of the women went to the polls. And now, after a generation of continuous voting, the percentage of divorces in Wyoming is smaller than in the surrounding States where women do not vote, and while the percentage in the latter is rapidly increasing, in Wyoming it is steadily diminishing. Where women have once voted the right has never been taken away by the people. In Utah women voted for seventeen years while it was a Territory, until Congress abolished it for political reasons. But when Utah was about to be admitted to statehood the men in framing their constitution restored the suffrage to women. Would they have done so if it had proved injurious to their homes? Impossible! You have eight Senators and seven Representatives in Congress from the four States where women have the full franchise. Ask them if it has demoralized their homes or the homes of their fellow-citizens, and your fears, if you have any, will be forever set at rest. ....

Believe me, gentlemen, it is not patriotism, it is not a passion for justice, it is not loyalty to sister women, it is not a desire to better her country, which will make a woman neglect her husband. Society women, superficial, selfish, silly women, the butterflies of the ballroom, the seekers for every new sensation, the worldly-minded aspirants for social position, these are the women who neglect. their homes; and not the brave, earnest, serious-minded, generous, unselfish women who ask for the ballot in order by its use to make the world better. In the twentieth century, already dawning, we shall have a republican family in a republican nation, a true democracy, a government of the people, by the people and for the people, men and women co-operating harmoniously on terms of absolute equality in the home and in the State.

The Senate Hearing closed with the paper of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton on the Significance and History of the Ballot, which was in part as follows:

The recent bills on Immigration, by Senators Lodge of Massachusetts and Kyle of South Dakota, indirectly affect the interests of woman, Their proposition to demand a reading and writing qualification on landing strikes me as arbitrary and equally detrimental to our mutual interests. The danger is not in their landing and living in this country, but in their speedy appearance at the ballot-box and there becoming an impoverished and ignorant balance of power in the hands of wily politicians. While we should not allow our country to be a dumping ground for the refuse population of the Old World, still we should welcome all hardy, common-sense laborers here, as we have plenty of room and work for them. Here they can improve their own condition and our surroundings, developing our immense resources and the commerce of the country. The one demand I would make in regard to this class is that they should not become a part of our ruling power until they can read and write the English language intelligently and understand the principles of republican government. This is the only restrictive legislation we need to protect ourselves against foreign domination. To this end the Congress should enact a law for "educated suffrage" for our native-born as well as foreign rulers.

With free schools and compulsory education, no one has an excuse for not understanding the language of the country. As women are governed by a "male aristocracy," they are doubly interested in having their rulers able at least to read and write. See with what care in the Old World the prospective heirs to the throne are educated. There was a time when the members of the British Parliament could neither read nor write, but these accomplishments are now required of the Lords and Commons, and even of the King and Queen, while we have rulers, native and foreign, who do not understand the letters of the alphabet; and this in a republic supposed to be based on intelligence of the people!

Much as we need this measure for the stability of our Government, we need it still more for the best interests of women. This ignorant vote is solid against woman's emancipation. In States where amendments to their constitutions are proposed for the enfranchisement of women, this vote has been in every case against them. We should ask for national protection against this hostile force playing football with the most sacred rights of one-half of the people. .... In all national conflicts it is ever deemed the most grievous accident of war for the conquered people to find themselves under a foreign yoke, yet this is the position of the women of this republic to-day. Foreigners are our judges and jurors, our legislators and municipal officials, and decide all questions of interest to us, even to the discipline in our schools, charitable institutions and prisons. Woman has no voice as to the education of her children or the environments of the unhappy wards of the State. The love and sympathy of the mother-soul have but an evanescent influence in all departments of human interest until coined into law by the hand that holds the ballot. Then only do they become a direct and effective power in the Government. ....

The popular objection to woman suffrage i is that it would "double the ignorant vote." The patent answer to this is, "Abolish the ignorant vote." Our legislators have this power in their own hands. There have been serious restrictions in the past for men. We are willing to abide by the same for women, provided the insurmountable qualification of sex be forever removed. Some of the opponents talk as if educated suffrage would be invidious to the best interests of the laboring masses, whereas it would be most beneficial in its ultimate influence. .... Surely when we compel all classes to learn to read and write and thus open to themselves the door to knowledge, not-by force, but by the promise of a privilege which all intelligent citizens enjoy, we are benefactors and not tyrants. To stimulate them to climb the first rounds of the ladder that they may reach the divine heights where they shall be as gods, knowing good and evil, by withholding the citizen's right to vote for a few years is a blessing to them as well as to the State.

We must inspire our people with a new sense of their sacred duties as citizens of a republic, and place new guards around our ballot-box. Walking in Paris one day I was greatly impressed with an emblematic statue in the square Chateau d'Eau, placed there in 1883 in honor of the republic. On one side is a magnificent bronze lion with his fore paw on the electoral urn, which answers to our ballot-box, as if to guard it from all unholy uses. .... As I turned away I thought of the American republic and our ballot-box with no guardian or sacred reverence for its contents. Ignorance, poverty and vice have full access; thousands from every incoming steamer go practically from the steerage to the polls, while educated women, representing the virtue and intelligence of the nation, are driven away. I would like to see a monument to "educated suffrage" in front of our national Capitol, guarded by the goddess Minerva, her right hand resting on the ballot-box, her left hand on the spelling book, the Declaration of Rights and the Federal Constitution. It would be well for us to ponder the Frenchman's idea, but instead of the royal lion, representing force to guard the sacred urn, let us substitute wisdom and virtue in the form of Woman.

The Washington Star said of the hearing before the House Judiciary Committee:

The members paid a tribute to the devotion of the woman suffragists, and at the same time showed appreciation of it by nearly all being in attendance at the hearing this morning. It is seldom that more than a quorum of any committee can be induced to attend a hearing of any sort. To-day fifteen out of seventeen members were present and manifested a deep interest in the remarks submitted by the women. The character of the assemblage was one to inspire respect, and the force and intelligence of what was said warranted the attention and interest shown. The people who not many years ago thought that every woman suffragist was a masculine creature who "wanted to wear the pants" would have been greatly embarrassed in their theories had they been present at the hearing to-day. There was not a mannish-appearing woman among the number. It was such an assemblage as may be seen at a popular church on Sunday, or at a fashionable afternoon reception. In fact there was not anywhere such an affectation of masculinity as is common among the society women of the period. Each year there have appeared more young women at these hearings, and the average of youth seemed greater to-day than ever before. Fashionably attired and in good taste, representative of the highest grade of American womanhood, the fifty or sixty women present inspired respect for their opinions without destroying the 'sentiment of gallantry which men generally feel that they must extend towards women.

The speakers before this committee^[4] presented The Practical Working of Woman Suffrage. Miss Anthony introduced them. Limited Suffrage in the United States was discussed by Prof. Ellen H. E. Price of Swarthmore College, Penn., whose address was rendered especially valuable by a carefully compiled table of statistics showing the amount of suffrage possessed by women in every State and Territory. Municipal Suffrage in Kansas was described by J. W. Gleed; Woman Suffrage in Wyoming by exU. S. Senator Joseph M. Carey; Woman Suffrage in Colorado by the Hon. Martha A. B. Conine, member of its State Legislature; Woman Suffrage in Idaho by Vm. Balderston, editor of the Boise Statesman; Woman Suffrage in Foreign Countries by Miss Helen Blackburn, editor The Englishwomen's Review.^[5] Woman Suffrage in Utah was depicted by State Senator Martha Hughes Cannon:

.... The history of the struggle in Utah for equal rights is full of interest and could be recounted with advantage. But, after all, the results which have been attained speak with such unerring logic, and vindicate so thoroughly the argument that woman should take part in the affairs of government which so vitally affect her, that I point to the actual conditions now existing as a complete vindication of the efforts of equal suffragists, and as the most cogent of all reasons why woman should have the right to aid in nominating and electing our public officers.

I can say, in all sincerity, that there is a strong and cumulative evidence that even those who opposed equal suffrage with the greatest ability and vehemence would not now vote for the repeal of the measure. The practical working of the law demonstrates its wisdom and verifies the claims which were advanced by its ardent advocates. It has proved to the world that woman is not only a helpmeet by the fireside, but when allowed to do so she can become a most powerful factor in the affairs of the Government.

None of the unpleasant results which were predicted have occurred. The contentions in families, the tarnishment of woman's charm, the destruction of ideals, have all been proved to be but the ghosts of unfounded prejudices. "The divinity which doth hedge woman about like subtle perfume" has not been displaced. Women have quietly assumed the added power which always was theirs by right, and with the grace and ready adaptation to circumstances peculiar to the women of America, they have so conducted themselves that they have gained admiration and respect while losing none of their old-time prestige.

Before suffrage was granted to women they had ideas upon public questions. Suffrage has given them opportunity for practical expression of these views. They pay more attention to political affairs. They studied political economy more earnestly. They familiarize themselves with public questions, and their mistakes, if they have made any, have not thus far been brought to light.

Women have acted as delegates to county and State conventions, and represented Utah in the national convention of one of the great political parties, held in Chicago in 1896. They have acted upon political committees and have taken part in political management, and, instead of being dragged down, as was most feared, their enfranchisement has tended to elevate them. Under our system of the Australian ballot, they have found that the contaminating influence of which they had been told was but a bugbear, born of fright, produced by shadows. They learned that to deposit their vote did not subject them to anything like the annoyance which they often experienced from crowds on "bargain days," while their presence drove from the polls the ward workers who had been so obnoxious in the past.

Through the courtesy of the Governor and the approval of the Senate they have been given places upon various State boards, and in the last Legislature, in both the Senate and the House, they represented the two most populous and wealthy counties of Utah. The bills introduced by women received due consideration, and a majority were enacted into laws. Whatever they have been required to do they have done to the full satisfaction of their constituents, and they have proved most careful and painstaking public officers.

No one in Utah will dispute the statements I have made. To the people of that young commonwealth, destined by its manifold resources and the intelligence of its men and women to become the Empire State of the Rocky Mountains, I refer you, in the fullest confidence that, with scarcely a dissenting voice, they will say that woman suffrage is no longer an experiment, but is a practical reality, tending to the well-being of the State.

Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, national recording secretary, took for a subject The Indifference of Women:

It is often said that the chief obstacle to equal suffrage is the indifference and opposition of women, and that whenever the ma— jority ask for the ballot they will get it. But it is a simple historical fact that every improvement thus far made in their condition has been secured, not by a general demand from the majority, but by the arguments, entreaties and "continual coming" of a persistent few. In each case the advocates of progress have had to contend not merely with the conservatism of men, but with the indifference of women, and often with active opposition from some of them.

When a man in Saco, Me., first employed a saleswoman the men boycotted his store, and the women remonstrated with him on the sin of which he was guilty in placing a young woman in a position of such publicity. When Lucy Stone tried to secure for married women the right to their own property, they asked with scorn, "Do you think I would give myself where I would not give my property?" When Elizabeth Blackwell began to study medicine, the women at her boarding house refused to speak to her, and those passing her on the streets would hold their skirts aside so as not to touch her. It is a matter of history with what ridicule and opposition Mary Lyon's first efforts for the education of women were received, not only by the mass of men, but by the mass of women as well. In England when the Oxford examinations were thrown open to women, the Dean of Chichester preached a sermon against it, in which he said: "By the sex at large, certainly, the new curriculum is not asked for. I have ascertained, by extended inquiry among gentlewomen, that, with true feminine instinct, they either entirely distrust or else look with downright disfavor on so wild an innovation and interference with the best traditions of their sex." Pundita Ramabai tells us that the idea of education for girls is so unpopular with the majority of Hindoo women that when a progressive Hindoo proposes to educate his little daughter it is not uncommon for the women of his family to threaten to drown themselves.

All this merely shows that human nature is conservative, and that it is fully as conservative in women as in men. The persons who take a strong interest in any reform are always comparatively few, whether among men or women, and they are habitually regarded with disfavor, even by those whom the proposed reform is to benefit. Thomas Hughes says, in School Days at Rugby: "So it is, and must be always, my dear boys. If the Angel Gabriel were, to come down from heaven and head a successful rise against the most abominable and unrighteous vested interest which this poor old world groans under, he would most certainly lose his character for many years, probably for centuries, not only with the upholders of the said vested interest, but with the respectable mass of the people whom he had delivered."

Many changes for the better have been made during the last half century in the laws, written and unwritten, relating to women. Everybody approves of these changes now, because they have become accomplished facts. But not one of them would have been made to this day if it had been necessary to wait until the majority of women asked for it. The change now under discussion is to be judged on its merits. In the light of history the indifference of most women and the opposition of a few must be taken as a matter of course. It has no more rational significance than it has had in regard to each previous step of woman's progress.

Miss Anthony closed with an impassioned argument which profoundly moved both the committee and the audience. The chairman said that in all the years there had never been so dignified, logical and perfectly managed a hearing before the Judiciary, and several of its members corroborated this statement and assured the ladies present of a full belief in the justice of their cause. Yet neither the Senate nor the House Committee made any report or paid the slightest heed to these earnest and eloquent appeals.

 

1. The Sunday afternoon preceding the convention religious services were held in the theatre, which was crowded. The sermon was given by the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, from the text, "One shall chase a thousand and two put ten thousand to flight"
2. A most interesting account of that historic occasion may be found in the History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. I, p. 67.
3. Federal Suffrage is considered in Chapter I.
4. David B. Henderson, Ia.; George W. Ray, N. Y.; Case Broderick, Kan.; Thomas Updegraff, Ia.; James A. Connolly, Ill.; Samuel W. McCall, Mass.; John J. Jenkins, Wis.; Richard Wayne Parker, N. J.; Jesse R. Overstreet, Ind.; DeAlva S. Alexander, N. Y.; Warren Miller, W. Va.; William L. Terry, Ark.; David A. DeArmond, Mo.; Samuel W. T. Lanham, Tex.; William Elliott, S. C.; Oscar W. Underwood, Ala.; David H. Smith, Ky.
5. The main facts brought out in all these addresses are fully included in the various State chapters in this volume.