NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1895.
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doubt that the advocates of woman suffrage in the United States are to be numbered by millions, but it is a lamentable fact that our organization can count its numbers only by thousands. There are illustrious men and women in every State, and there are men and women innumerable, who are not known to the public, who are openly and avowedly woman suffragists, yet we do not possess the benefit of their names on our membership lists or the financial help of their dues. In other words, the size of our membership is not at all commensurate with the sentiment for woman suffrage. The reason for this condition is plain; the chief work of suffragists for the past forty years has been education and agitation, and not organization. The time has come when the educational work has borne its fruit, and there are States in which there is sentiment enough to carry a woman suffrage amendment, but it is individual and not organized sentiment, and is, therefore, ineffective.
The audience was greatly amused when Miss Anthony commented on this: "There never yet was a young woman who did not feel that if she had had the management of the work from the beginning the cause would have been carried long ago. I felt just so when I was young." There was much laughter also over one of Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway's short speeches in which she said:
There are in Oregon three classes of women opposed to suffrage.
I. Women who are so overworked that they have no time to think of it. They are joined to their wash-tubs; let them alone. But the children of these overworked women are coming on. 2. Women who have usurped all the rights in the matrimonial category, their husbands' as well as their own. The husbands of such women are always loudly opposed to suffrage. The "sassiest" man in any community is the hen-pecked husband away from home. 3. Young girls matrimonially inclined, who fear the avowal of a belief in suffrage would injure their chances. I can assure such girls that a woman who wishes to vote gets more offers than one who does not. Their motto should be "Liberty first, and union afterwards." The man whose wife is a clinging vine is apt to be like the oaks in the forest that are found wrapped in vines—dead at the top.
When Miss Anthony said, "One reason why politicians hesitate to grant suffrage to woman is because she is an unknown quantity," Mrs. Henry responded quickly, "There are two great unknown forces to-day, electricity and woman, but men can reckon much better on electricity than they can on woman." A resolution was adopted for a public celebration in New York City
