History of Woman Suffrage/Volume 5/Chapter 8

 

CHAPTER VIII.

NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1908.

The Fortieth annual convention, Oct. 15-21, 1908, celebrated a notable event, as it was the both anniversary of the first Woman's Rights Convention, that famous gathering of July 19-20, 1848, in Seneca Falls, N. Y., the home of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The celebration was appropriately held in Buffalo, the largest city in the western part of the State, and was one of the most interesting and successful of the organization's many conventions.^[1] The evening before it opened the president and directors of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy gave a large reception to the officers, delegates, members and friends of the association.

The convention met in the Young Men's Christian Association building but this proved to be entirely too small for the evening sessions, which were held in the large Central Presbyterian Church. The excellent program was the work of Miss Kate Gordon, national corresponding secretary, and the admirable arrangements were due to Mrs. Richard Williams, president for the past eight years of the Political Equality Club, with a corps of local helpers, but an accident on the first day prevented her from welcoming Church. The excellent program was the work of Miss Kate Gordon, national corresponding secretary, and the admirable arrangements were due to Mrs. Richard Williams, president for the past eight years of the Political Equality Club, with a corps of local helpers, but an accident on the first day prevented her from welcoming the convention or taking part in its proceedings. With the national president, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, in the chair, it was opened with prayer by the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell.^[2]. Mrs. Helen Z. M. Rodgers, a lawyer of Buffalo, extended a welcome from women in the professions, who, she said, "had only penetrated the ante-rooms and the annexes—the teachers never able to reach the salaries paid to men; the doctors shut out from the advantage of hospital positions; the lawyers allowed to help interpret the laws but not to help make them." "To get much further," she said, "we must be invested with full citizenship."

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

The Western Federation of Women's Clubs gave its welcome through its president, Mrs. Nettie Rogers Shuler, of whom the Woman's Journal said: "She spoke with an accent of unaffected sincerity and self-forgetfulness that recalled the spirit of the

1 Other ministers who officiated at different times were the Reverends Anna Howard Shaw, Anna Garlin Spencer and Olympia Brown of the convention, and the Reverends Richard W. Boynton, Robert Freeman, L. O. Williams, E. H. Dickinson and F. Hyatt Smith of Buffalo. the convention or taking part in its proceedings. With the national president, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, in the chair, it was opened with prayer by the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell.t. Mrs. Helen Z. M. Rodgers, a lawyer of Buffalo, extended a welcome from women in the professions, who, she said, "had only penetrated the ante-rooms and the annexes—the teachers never able to reach the salaries paid to men; the doctors shut out from the advantage of hospital positions; the lawyers allowed to help interpret the laws but not to help make them." "To get much further," she said, "we must be invested with full citizenship."

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

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

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

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

The Declaration had been signed by many, the audiences being large, but when pulpit and press ridiculed and reproved do we marvel that one by one the women withdrew their names and "joined the persecutors?" Much I fear that our own organization would

shrivel to pitiful proportions if today submitted to the ordeal from which they recoiled. Indeed even Mrs. Stanton confessed that if she had had the slightest premonition of all that would follow this convention, she feared her courage would not have been equal to it. Fortunate ignorance, if she did not underrate her bravery, for she and a goodly number of the other signers were steadfast. They chose to side with truth and take the consequences.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The great evening of the week was the one devoted to the Commemorative Program in Honor of the 1848 Convention. This convention was called by Mrs. Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Mary Ann McClintock and Martha C. Wright—the last three Friends, or Quakers—to consider a Declaration of Sentiments and set of Resolutions which they had prepared and it adopted both.^[3] Those resolutions of sixty years ago were now discussed by women who represented the two succeeding generations, still in the midst of the contest which the women who began it expected to see ended during their lifetime. The session was opened with prayer by the Rev. Olympia Brown, a veteran suffragist, and the presiding officer was Mrs. Eliza Wright Osborne (N. Y.), daughter of Martha C. Wright and niece of Lucretia Mott. Each resolution was presented and commented on in a brief, pungent speech, the speakers including Mr. Blackwell, husband of Lucy Stone, both pioneers, and another pioneer, the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, the first ordained woman minister; Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of Mrs. Stanton; Mrs. Fanny Garrison Villard, daughter of William Lloyd Garrison, a pioneer; the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer, an early leader in Rhode Island, and Miss Laura Clay, at the head of the movement in Kentucky almost from its beginning. Among the later generation were the Rev. Caroline Bartlett Crane (Mich.), Miss Julie R. Jenney (N. Y.), Mrs. Ella S. Stewart (Ill.), Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (N. Y.) and Mrs. Judith Hyams Douglas (La.).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The formation of the New York Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis marked an important era. For the first time the physicians as a whole assumed a social duty to promote purity. They had done it as individuals, but this was the first instance of their banding themselves together on a moral as well as a sanitary plane to enlighten the public as to the causes of social disease.... Dr. Prince Morrow should be everlastingly honored by every woman..... I consider no woman guiltless, whether she lives in a suffrage State or not, if she does not hold herself responsible for guarding less fortunate women. Corrupt custom has rent the sacred, seamless robe of womanhood and cast out part of the women, abandoning them to degradation. We must learn to recognize the responsibility of pure women for the fallen women, of the woman whose circumstances have enabled her to stand, for the woman whom adverse conditions have borne down. We should oppose the sacrifice of womanhood, whether of an innocent girl sacrificed with pomp and ceremony in church, or of a poor waif in the street; and the great protection is the ability of young girls to earn their living by congenial labor. All the social purity societies do not equal the trade schools as a preventive.... We must not look at this matter from only one point of view or say that we can do nothing about it until we are armed with the ballot. I am a suffragist but not "high church," I am a suffragist and something else. We ought to have the ballot, we are at a disadvantage in our work while we are deprived of it, but even without it we have great power. We must stamp out the traffic in womanhood, it is a survival of barbarism. Womanhood is a unit; no one woman can be an outcast without dire evil to family life. What caused the doctors to come together in a Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis? It was because the evil done in dark places came back in injury to the family life... . We must make ourselves more terrible than an army with banners to despoilers of womanhood. . . . Men are no longer to be excused for writing in scarlet on their foreheads their incapacity for self-control. None of us is longer to be excused for cowardice and acquiescence in the sacrifice of womanhood. Not even that woman—vilest of all creatures on the face of the earth I do believe—the procuress, shall be beyond the pale of sympathy, for she is merely the product of the feeling on the part of men that they owe nothing to women or to themselves in the way of purity, and the feeling on the part of women that they have no right to demand of men what men demand of them. If women are going to amount to anything in government, they would better begin to practice here and now and band themselves together with noble men to bring about this reform.

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

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

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

Louis XIV said an infamous thing when he declared: "I am the State," but he announced his position frankly. He was an autocrat and he said so. It was a more honest and therefore less harmful position than that of a majority of voters in our country today. Can it help but confuse and deteriorate one sex, trained to believe and call itself living in a democracy, to say silently year by year at the polls, "I am the State"? Can it help but confuse and deteriorate the other sex, similarly trained to acquiescence year after year in a national misrepresentation and a personal no-representation? This fundamental insincerity of our so-called democracy is as insidious an influence upon the minds and morals of our franchised men, our unfranchised women and our young Americans of both sexes, as hypocrisy is to a church member or spurious currency to a bank. It is to be remembered that the evils which are pointed out in our commonwealth today are not the evils of a democracy but of an amorphous something which is afraid to be a democracy. Whether the opposition to women's voting be honestly professed or whether it is concealed under chivalrous idolatry, distrust and skepticism are behind it.... When pushed to the wall, objectors to woman suffrage now-a-days take refuge behind one of two platitudes: The first is used too often by women whose public activities ought logically to make them suffragists—the assertion that equal suffrage is bound to come in time but that at present there are more pressing needs. "Let us get the poor better housed and fed," these women say. "Let us get our schools improved and our cities cleaned up and then we shall have time to take up the cause of equal suffrage." Is not this a survival of that old vice of womankind, indirection?.... The suffrage issue should not be put off but should be placed first, as making the other issues easier and more permanent.... This brings me to the other platitude. How often we are told, "Women themselves do not want it; when they do it will be given to them." That is to say, when an overwhelming majority of women want what they ought to have, then they can have it. Extension of suffrage never has been granted on these terms. No great reform has gone through on these terms. In an enlightened State wanting is not considered a necessary condition to the granting of education or the extension of any privilege. Such a State confers it in order to create the desire; unenlightened States, like Turkey and Russia, hold off until revolution compels a reluctant, niggardly abdication of tyranny.... We have the conviction that that which has come in Finland and Australia, which is coming in Great Britain, will come in America, and there is a majesty in the sight of a great world-tide which has been gathering force through generations, which is rising steadily and irresistibly, that should paralyze any American Xerxes who thinks to stop it with humanly created restraints.

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

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

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

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

The report of the committee on Industrial Problems Affecting Women and Children was given by its chairman, Mrs. Kelley, executive secretary of the National Consumers' League, in which she said: "In New York woman can not be deprived of the

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They tell us that women can bring better things to pass by indirect influence. Try to persuade any man that he will have more weight, more influence, if he gives up his vote, allies himself with no party and relies on influence to achieve his ends! By all means let us use to its utmost whatever influence we have, but in all justice do not ask us to be content with this. Facts show that a large body of earnest, responsible women do want the ballot, a body large enough to deserve very respectful hearing from our law-makers, but there certainly are many women who do not yet want to vote. We think they ought to want it; that women have no more right than men to accept and enjoy the protection and privileges of civilized government and shirk its duties and responsibilities. They say they do not thus shirk, that woman's sphere lies in a different place, and we answer: "This is true but only part of the truth.".... Municipal government belongs far more to woman's sphere than to man's, if we must choose between the two; it is home-making and housekeeping writ large, but just as the best home is that where father and mother together rule, so shall we have the better city, the better State, when men and women together counsel, together rule. No mother fulfills her whole mother duty in the sight of God who is not willing to do her service, to take her share of direct responsibility for the good of the whole. She can not fully care for her own without some care for all the children of the community. Her own, however guarded, are menaced so long as the least of these is exposed to pestilence or is robbed of his birthright of fresh air and sunshine. The hard struggle and toil of our honored pioneers was for Woman's Rights. We of the coming day must take up the cry of Woman's Duty. We live in the new age; new obligations are laid upon us. We must labor until no woman in the land shall he content to say, "I am not willing to pay the price I owe for the comfort and safety of my life"; until every woman shall be ashamed not to demand equal duties and equal responsibilities for the common weal; until none can be found of whom it can with truth be said, "They do not want to vote."

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

Mrs. Upton, the treasurer, called attention to the mistaken idea conveyed through the newspapers that the association had unlimited funds. The report that it intended to raise $100,000 had been made to read that it had raised it, and the Garrett-Thomas fund of $12,000 a year had caused many to cease their subscriptions.^[4] The new opportunities for effective work caused larger demands for money than ever before and the year 1907 had been the most anxious the board had known. The expenditures had been larger than the receipts and most of the balance that was in the treasury had been used. Even this strong statement, backed by an appeal from Dr. Shaw, brought pledges only to the amount of $3,600, a less amount than for years, the delegates, many of small means, still feeling that their former subscriptions were not necessary. Dr. Shaw then read to the convention a letter to herself from Mrs. George Howard Lewis of Buffalo, who expressed the pleasure of the New York State suffrage clubs that the 60th anniversary of the first Woman's Rights Convention had been held in this city, at Miss Anthony's expressed wish, and ended: "In memory of Susan B. Anthony will you accept the enclosed check for $10,000 to be used as the national officers deem best in the work, so dear to her and to all true lovers of justice, for the enfranchisement of women?" As she showed the enclosure Dr. Shaw said: "This is the largest check I ever held in my hand." The convention rose in appreciation of Mrs. Lewis's generous gift.

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

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

In England the last final argument, that women do not themselves want the franchise, has in the light of recent events become ridiculous. On June 13, 15,000 suffragists paraded through the streets of London and it is said that the woman suffrage meeting of June 21 was the largest public meeting ever held for any cause. Fifty thousand women have just stormed Parliament.... No one now doubts that the women of England want and intend to have votes. It is said that history repeats itself but this particular phenomenon—the world-wide claim of women to political equality with men—has never appeared before; it has no historic precedent.... Does disfranchised influence, unsteadied by the responsibility of the ballot and the broadening experience of public service, make for the greatest good to the greatest number, which is the aim of true democracy? Can women, and do the average, every-day women in their present condition as subjects take a very lively interest in the real welfare of the State? Hardly, and are not men and children affected by this indifference? It could scarcely be otherwise. It may be said that average men, notwithstanding their possession of the ballot, are indifferent to the public weal, but are they not rendered doubly so by continually associating with a class that feels no allegiance to the State?.... In the political subjection and consequent political ignorance and indifference of women, men are unconsciously forging their own fetters. They can not retain their rights unless they share them with women. This is the true significance of the woman suffrage movement throughout the world. It is a vast attempt at the establishing of real government by the people of republics which, being real, shall endure; and as such it is as much a movement for men's rights as for women's.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The resolutions presented by Mr. Blackwell, chairman of the committee, reviewed the wonderful progress made by women since the first convention whose 6oth anniversary they were celebrating. They told of the progress of suffrage, as outlined in the Call for the convention, and said: "When that first convention met, one college in the United States admitted women; now hundreds do so. Then there was not a single woman physician or ordained minister or lawyer; now there are 7,000 women physicians and surgeons, 3,000 ordained ministers and 1,000 lawyers. Then only a few poorly-paid employments were open to women; now they are in more than three hundred occupations and comprise 80 per cent. of our school teachers. Then there were scarcely any organizations of women; now such organizations are numbered by thousands. Then the few women who dared to speak in public, even on philanthropic questions, were overwhelmingly condemned by public opinion; now the women most opposed to woman suffrage travel about the country making speeches to prove that a woman's only place is at home. Then a married woman in most of our States could not control her own person, property or earnings; now in most of them these laws have been largely amended or repealed and it is only in regard to the ballot that the fiction of woman's perpetual minority is still kept up."

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

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

 

1. Part of Call: Since we met last in convention women in Norway have won full suffrage; tax-paying women in Iceland have been granted a vote and made eligible as municipal councillors; Municipal suffrage has been given to women in Denmark and they now vote for all officers except members of Parliament; women in Sweden, who already had the Municipal vote, have been made eligible to municipal offices; a proxy in the election of the Douma has been conferred on women of property in Russia. In Great Britain, where they have long possessed Municipal suffrage, women have been made eligible as mayors, county, borough and town councillors and their heroic struggle for Parliamentary suffrage is attracting the attention of the world.   In our own country during the past year, 175,000 women of Michigan appealed for full suffrage to its constitutional convention and a partial franchise was given; in Oregon women obtained the submission of a constitutional amendment for suffrage to a referendum vote.   Though no large victories were won the advocates of equal suffrage have never felt more hopeful, as public sentiment is in closer sympathy with them than ever before. Five hundred associations of men, organized for other purposes and numbering millions of voters, have officially declared for woman suffrage; only one, the organized liquor traffic, has made a record of unremitting hostility to it and the domination of the saloon in politics has wrested many victories from our grasp. . . .   We cordially invite all men and women who have faith in the principles of the American government and love liberty and justice to meet with us in convention in Buffalo.
    

   Anna Howard Shaw,	President.
   Rachel Foster Avery,	First Vice-President.
   Florence Kelley,	Second Vice-President
   Kate M. Gordon,	Corresponding Secretary.
   Alice Stone Blackwell,	Recording Secretary.
   Harriet Taylor Upton,	Treasurer,
   Laura Clay,	$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$ Auditors
   Mary Simpson Sperry

2. Other ministers who officiated at different times were the Reverends Anna Howard Shaw, Anna Garlin Spencer and Olympia Brown of the convention, and the Reverends Richard W. Boynton, Robert Freeman, L. O. Williams, E. H. Dickinson and F. Hyatt Smith of Buffalo.
3. For full account see History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I, page 67.
4. This fund had been raised primarily to pay salaries to officers who now had to devote their whole time to the increased work of the association and who had hitherto for the most part given their service gratuitously. Dr. Shaw received $3,500; the secretary $1,000, the treasurer $1,000. This left $6,500 for other purposes each year.