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NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1896.
261

Allen of Utah were on the platform. In her address of welcome Miss Shaw said:

Every star added to that blue field makes for the advantage of every human being. We are just beginning to learn that we are all children of one Father and members of one family; and when one member suffers or is benefited, all the members suffer or rejoice. So when Utah comes into the Union with every one free, it is not only that State which is benefited, but we and all the world. As the stars at night come out one by one, so will they come out one by one on our flag, till the whole blue field is a blaze of glory. We expected it of the men of Utah. No man there could have stood by the side of his mother and heard her tell of all that the pioneers endured, and then have refused to grant her the same right of liberty he wanted for himself, without being unworthy of such a mother. They are the crown of our Union, those three States on the crest of the Rockies, above all the others. In the name of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, we extend our welcome, our thanks and our congratulations to Utah, as one of the three so dear to the heart of every woman who loves liberty in these United States.

Senator Cannon said in response: ".... Only one serious question came before our constitutional convention, and that was whether the adoption of woman suffrage would hinder the admission of our Territory as a State. .... But our women had furnished courage, patience and heroism to our men, and so we said: 'Utah shall take another forty-nine years of wandering in the wilderness as a Territory before coming in as a State without her women.' My mother wandered there for twelve years. Women trailed bleeding feet and lived on roots that those of to-day might reap bounteous harvests. Utah gave women the suffrage while still a Territory. Congress, in its not quite infinite wisdom, took it away after they had exercised it intelligently for seventeen years; but the first chance that the men of Utah had they gave it back."

Representative Allen was called on by Miss Anthony to "tell us how nice it seems to feel that your wife is as good as you are," and said in part: 'Perhaps you have read what the real estate agents say about Utah—how they praise her sun and soil, her mountains and streams, and her precious metals. They tell you that she is filled with the basis of all material prosperity, with gold, silver, lead and iron: but greatness can not come from material resources alone—it must come from the people who till