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HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
We had the satisfaction of knowing that the delegates assembled were kept upon a strong equal suffrage diet for days and nights together. At the public hearings, graciously granted us, we saw the great jury listen not only with patience but with evident pleasure and enthusiasm, while women representing twenty-six districts gave reasons for wanting to be enfranchised; and we also saw the creative body itself turned into a woman suffrage meeting for three evenings. At the close of the last we learned that there were in this convention ninety-eight men who dared to say that the freemen of the State should not be allowed to decide whether their wives, mothers and daughters should be enfranchised or not. We learned also, that there were fifty-eight men, constituting a noble minority, who loved justice better than party power, and were willing to risk the latter to sustain the former.[1]
The report of the Press Committee Chairman, Mrs. Ellen Battelle Dietrick (Mass.), called especial attention to the flood of matter relating to the woman question which was now appearing in the newspapers and magazines of the country, to the activity of the enemy and to the necessity for suffragists to "publish an antidote wherever the poison appears." The Legislative Committee, Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Henry and Mrs. Diggs, closed their report as follows:
In a State where there is hope of support from the political parties, where there has been long agitation and everything points to a favorable result, it is wise to urge a constitutional amendment striking out the word "male" as a qualification for voters. This must pass both Houses in the form of concurrent resolution; in some States it must pass two successive Legislatures; and it must be ratified at the polls by a majority of the voters.
When the conditions are not yet ripe for a constitutional amendment, there are many measures which are valuable in arousing public interest and preparing the way for final triumph, as well as important in ameliorating the condition of women. Among these are laws to secure school suffrage for women; women on boards of education and as school trustees; equality of property rights for husbands and wives; equal guardianship of children for mother and father; women factory inspectors; women physicians in hospitals and insane asylums; women trustees in all State institutions; police matrons; seats for saleswomen; the raising of "the age of consent."
The report of the Plan of Work Committee, Mrs. Chapman Catt, chairman, began by saying:
The great need of the hour is organization. There can be no
- ↑ The facts and figures presented in the report from Kansas by the president, Mrs. Laura M. Johns, will be found in the chapter on that State.
