argument was a stand-off. But this economic, professional tendency of the women has done much to destroy the force of the men's plea to preserve the women from contaminating contact with harsh conditions. The security of the average woman worker in the various lines of honest activity which the sex has fearlessly entered has worked a revelation. The close of the century is witnessing a great change in public sentiment in this regard. The demand of the suffragists can not but be strengthened by the demonstrated fact that women can become workers in competition with men without becoming demoralized.
Just where this new tendency will lead in an economic direction is a serious question, to be answered by facts rather than by theories. Some students of the science believe that it is working a revolution and is affecting the whole business fabric. There may be a reaction against it, affecting in turn the now moderate attitude of most men toward the suffrage question; but in any event it is clear that this great agitation, carried on by the association now in session, has been of serious importance and not without palpable fruits.The advocates of woman's enfranchisement never were brighter, happier or more hopeful and courageous. All of the States but four were represented by the 173 delegates in attendance. Some of them were white-haired and wrinkled and had been coming to Washington for the whole thirty-two years. Others were in the prime and vigor of life and had entered the movement after the heaviest blows had been struck and the hardest battles had been won, but now they had enlisted until the end of the war. And now there were a large number of beautiful and highly-educated young women, graduates of the best colleges, filled with the zeal of new converts, bringing to the work well-trained and thoroughly-equipped minds and giving to the old members the comforting assurance that the vital cause would still be carried forward when their own labors were ended.
The Women's Journal in recounting the gains for suffrage concluded: "In this year, 1900, the woman suffragists, after a half-century of unbroken national organization, can go before Congress and claim the support of members from four States who were elected in part by the votes of women. They can enforce their pleas before presidential nominating conventions with the concrete fact that thirteen members of the electoral college have a constituency of women voters."
Miss Anthony presided at three public sessions daily and at
