Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/261

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NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1908
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that which has come in Finland and Australia, which is coming in Great Britain, will come in America, and there is a majesty in the sight of a great world-tide which has been gathering force through generations, which is rising steadily and irresistibly, that should paralyze any American Xerxes who thinks to stop it with humanly created restraints.

Dr. M. Carey Thomas, president of Bryn Mawr College, received an ovation. "The formation of this National College League," she said, "indicates that college women will be ready to bear their part in the stupendous social change of which the demand for woman suffrage is only the outward symbol," and she continued:

Sixty years ago all university studies and all the charmed world of scholarship were a man's world, in which women had no share. Now. although only one woman in one thousand goes to college even in the United States, where there are more college women than in any other country, the position of every individual woman in every part of the civilized world has been changed because this one thousandth per cent. have proved beyond the possibility of question that in intellect there is no sex, that the accumulated learning of our great past and of our still greater future is the inheritance of women also. Men have admitted women into intellectual comradeship and the opinions of educated women can no longer be ignored by educated men.... Women are one-half of the world, but until a century ago the world of music and painting and sculpture and literature and scholarship and science was a man's world. The world of trades and professions and work of all kinds was a man's world. Women lived a twilight life, a half-life apart, and looked out and saw men as shadows walking. Now women have won the right to higher education and to economic independence. The right to become citizens of the State is the next and inevitable consequence of education and work outside the home. We have gone so far; we must go farther. Why are we afraid? It is the next step forward on the path toward the sunrise—and the sun is rising Over a new heaven and a new earth.

The National College Women's Equal Suffrage League was formally organized as auxiliary to the National American Association, with Dr. Thomas president, Miss Lexow secretary; Dr. Margaret Long, of Smith College, treasurer; Mrs. Park chairman of the organization committee; Dr. Breckinridge, Mrs. C. S. Woodward, adviser to women in the University of Wisconsin, and Miss Frances W. Mclean of the University of California were among the vice-presidents. Three thousand dollars were