Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/532

498 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE become social questions, questions with regard to the relations of human beings to one another, not merely their legal relations but their moral and spiritual relations to one another. This has been most characteristic of American life in the last few decades, and as these questions have assumed greater and greater prominence the movement which this association represents has gathered cumulative force, so that when anybody asks himself, What does this gathering force mean? if he knows anything about the history of the country he knows that it means something which has not only come to stay but has come with conquering power. I get a little impatient sometimes about the discussion of the channels and methods by which it is to prevail. It is going to prevail and that is a very superficial and ignorant view of it which attributes it to mere social unrest. It is not merely because women are discon- tented, it is because they have seen visions of duty, and that is something that we not only can not resist but if we be true Ameri- cans we do not wish to resist. Because America took its origin in visions of the human spirit, in aspirations for the deepest sort of lilnTty of the mind and heart, and, as visions of that sort come to the sight of those who are spiritually minded America comes more and more into its birthright and into the perfection of its develop- ment; so that what we have to realize is that in dealing with forces of this sort we are dealing with the substance of life itself. I have felt as I sat here tonight the wholesome contagion of the occasion. Almost every other time that I ever visited Atlantic City 1 came to fight somebody. I hardly know how to conduct myself vlic-n / have not come to fight anybody but with somebody. 1 have come to suggest among other things that when the forces of nature are working steadily and the tide is rising to meet the moon, you need not be afraid that it will not come to its flood. We feel the tide; we rejoice in the strength of it, and we shall not quarrel in the long run as to the method of it, because, when you are working with masses of men and organized bodies of opinion, you have got to carry the organized body along. The whole art and practice of government consist not in moving individuals but in moving masses. It is all very well to run ahead and beckon, but, after all, you have got to wait for them to follow. I have not come to ask you to be patient, because you have been, but I have come to congratulate you that there has been a force behind you that will beyond any peradventure be triumphant and for which you can afford a little while to wait. When President Wilson had finished amid enthusiastic ap- plause Mrs. Catt asked Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, honorary presi- dent, to respond. She was much moved by the occasion and taking the last sentence of the address for a text she eloquently told how women had already worked and waited for more than three score years. "We have waited long enough for the vote, we want