men have done the voting from the beginning, the force of habit is successfully battling with both reason and justice." He refuted the charge that woman suffrage made dissension in families, saying: "You must bear in mind that the extending of the elective franchise to women not only elevates and broadens them but the men as well."
The address of Mrs. Blatch on Woman and War was among the most notable of the convention. She declared that one of the good effects of war was that "it made women work." The Post said: "Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch, a daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whose present home is in England, laid the blame of all the British reverses in the Transvaal at the door of what she termed 'the evils of an idle aristocracy." In a most dramatic manner she denounced the course of the British Empire. After summing up the war situation she said: "The English armies now on the battle-fields in the Transvaal have at their heads as officers sons of this idle aristocracy, who through their incompetency are not fit to be leaders. They are beneath contempt, but to the English soldier all honor is due. He is all right.'".
The speech of the pioneer Quaker suffragist, Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller (Md.), delighted the audience, and her comparison of Abraham Lincoln and Susan B. Anthony, "both having devoted their lives to freedom," was enthusiastically received. Then occurred one of the pleasant diversions so characteristic of these suffrage conventions. During the interval while the collection was being taken, Mrs. Helen Mosher James, niece of Miss Anthony, stepping to the front of the platform, said: "This is the Rev. Anna Shaw's birthday. Her friends wish to present her with an easy chair to await her when she comes back wearied from going up and down the land, satchel in hand, on her many lecture tours. Here are fifty-three gold dollars, one for each year of her life, and we wish her to buy such a chair as suits her best."
In response the little minister said in part: "I am not like Miss Anthony, so used to having gifts poured in upon me that I know just what to say. I shall buy the chair when I have been told what is the correct thing to buy by another niece of Miss Anthony's, who for twelve years has made a home for me. If you
