Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/251

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NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1908
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the leading magazines which had published articles on woman suffrage by prominent writers during the year. The reason was that things were happening in all parts of the world directly related to this question.

Miss Hauser's report was accepted by a rising vote. She presided at the Press Conference on how to secure the publication of woman suffrage in country and in city papers; character of material; what is the greatest need in press work; should "anti" articles be answered, etc. Interesting addresses were made on Woman's Share in Productive Industry by Mrs. Anna Cadogan Etz (N. Y.); A Square Deal, by Mrs. Grace H. Ballantyne (Ia.); and one by Mrs. Clara B. Arthur, president of the Michigan State Association, reviewing the extensive work that had been done in its recent constitutional convention to secure a woman suffrage clause. Henry B. Blackwell (Mass.) began his report on Presidential Suffrage by saying: "It was the maxim of Napoleon Bonaparte to concentrate his military forces upon the point in his enemy's lines of the greatest importance and least resistance and by so doing he conquered Europe. This point in the woman suffrage battle is, under our form of government, the Presidential Suffrage, the vote for presidential electors."

The great evening of the week was the one devoted to the Commemorative Program in Honor of the 1848 Convention. This convention was called by Mrs. Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Mary Ann McClintock and Martha C. Wright—the last three Friends, or Quakers—to consider a Declaration of Sentiments and set of Resolutions which they had prepared and it adopted both.[1] Those resolutions of sixty years ago were now discussed by women who represented the two succeeding generations, still in the midst of the contest which the women who began it expected to see ended during their lifetime. The session was opened with prayer by the Rev. Olympia Brown, a veteran suffragist, and the presiding officer was Mrs. Eliza Wright Osborne (N. Y.), daughter of Martha C. Wright and niece of Lucretia Mott. Each resolution was presented and commented on in a brief, pungent speech, the speakers including Mr. Blackwell, husband of Lucy Stone, both pioneers, and another pioneer, the Rev. Antoinette Brown

  1. For full account see History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I, page 67.