Grand Rapids by Miss Anthony, Miss Shaw and Mrs. Chapman Catt, together with the officers of the State association and many other Michigan women.
In 1898 the convention met in Bay City, May 3-5. On the last evening Mrs. May Wright Sewall of Indiana gave a brilliant address on The Duties of Women Considered as Patriots. Its strong peace sentiments aroused deep interest, as this was at the beginning of the Spanish-American War.
The invitation of the Susan B. Anthony Club of Grand Rapids to the National W. S. A., to hold its annual convention in that city in 1899, having been accepted, the date was fixed for April 27 to May 3, inclusive, and it was decided that the State meeting should immediately follow. This national gathering was full of interest, affording as it did an opportunity of attendance to many women of the State who were unable to go to the convention at Washington.[1] Grand Rapids women were generous in their hospitality, all visitors being entertained free of expense. The executive ability of Mrs. Ketcham was evident from first to last. The State association held a business session May 4, and was addressed by Mr. Blackwell and Mrs. Colby. Mrs. Lenore Starker Bliss was elected president.
An immediate result of the national meeting was the organization of the Anna Shaw Junior Equal Suffrage Club of Grand Rapids, with seventeen youthful members.
In December the American Federation of Labor held its annual convention in Detroit. Miss Anthony addressed it by invitation and urged the members to adopt a resolution asking Congress for a Sixteenth Amendment forbidding the disfranchisement of United States citizens on account of sex. Her speech was most enthusiastically received and the resolution she offered was immediately adopted, and, in the form of a petition which represented nearly 1,000,000 members, duly forwarded to Congress,
Prior to the State convention of 1900 Mrs. Chapman Catt, assisted by Miss Shaw, Miss Harriet May Mills of New York and Mrs. Root, held two days' conventions at Hillsdale, Battle Creek, Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor, organizing suffrage clubs at the first
- ↑ See Chap. XVIII.
