welcome accorded the women by the Portland pastors was sharply in contrast with the hostility shown by the clergy when equal suffrage conventions began in the middle of the last century.[1]
The Monday evening session was opened by Willis Duniway, who gave a glowing appreciation of the work of the National American Suffrage Association and said in the course of a strong speech that he wanted to see woman suffrage because it was right and because he wanted the brave pioneer women who had worked for it so long to get it before they passed away. "I want my mother to vote," he declared amid applause.[2] "The basis of safe and sane government is justice, which has its roots in constitutional liberty and means equal rights and opportunities.... I claim no right or privilege for myself that I would not give to my mother, wife and sister and to every law-abiding citizen." When he had finished his mother rose and said dryly: "That, dear women from the north, east, south and west, is one of Mrs. Duniway's poor, neglected children!"
Miss Mary N. Chase, president of the New Hampshire Association, spoke convincingly on The Vital Question, taking as the keynote: "A republic based on equal rights for all is not the dream of a fanatic but the only sane form of government." I. N. Fleischner, who had just been elected to the school board largely by the votes of women, assured the convention of his approval and support of the measures it advocated and said he hoped to see the women enjoying the full right of suffrage in Oregon in the very near future.
Mrs. Florence Kelley, executive secretary of the National Consumers' League, spoke with deeper understanding than would be possible for any other woman of The Young Bread-winner's Need. "We have in this country," she said, "2,000,000 children under the age of sixteen who are earning their bread. They vary in age from six and seven in the cotton mills of Georgia, eight, nine and ten in the coal-breakers of Pennsylvania and
- ↑ Different sessions were opened with prayer by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Father Black and the Reverends Elwin L. House, H. M. Barden, E. S. Muckley, J. Burgette Short, J. Whitcomb Brougher, E. Nelson Allen, Edgar P. Hill, W. S. Gilbert, A. A. Morrison, T. L. Eliot, Asa Sleeth, J. F. Ghormley, George Creswell Cressey, representing various denominations. Nearly all of them pledged their support to the suffrage movement. The fine musical programs throughout the convention were in charge of Mrs. M. A. Dalton.
- ↑ Oregon gave suffrage to women in 1912 and Mrs, Duniway received full recognition. See Oregon chapter.
