Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/832

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HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

8l6 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE Netherlands ; Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Lady Steel, Dora Monte- fiore, Mrs. Broadley Reid, Great Britain ; Miss Lucy E. Anthony, United States; Mrs. Henry Dobson, Australia. One afternoon session was devoted to memorial services for Miss Anthony, with the principal address by Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, her biographer, and beautiful tributes by delegates of seven European countries and Canada expressing the debt of gratitude which all women owed to the great pioneer. Mrs. Harper briefly sketched the subordinate position of women when Miss Anthony began her great work for their emancipation in 1851; told of her efforts for temperance and the abolition of slavery; her part in forming the International Council of Women; her publication of the History of Woman Suffrage and the many other activities of her long life. She described the ad- vanced position of women at present and closed by saying: No one who makes a careful study of the great movement for the emancipation of woman can fail to recognize in Miss Anthony its supreme leader. After her death last March more than a thou- sand editorials appeared in the principal newspapers of the country and practically every one of them accorded her this distinction. She was the only one who gave to this cause her whole life, conse- crating to its service every hour of her time and every power of her being. Other women did what they could ; came into the work for awhile and dropped out; had the divided interests of family and social relations; turned their attention to reforms which prom- ised speedier rewards; surrendered to the forces of persecution. With Miss Anthony the cause of woman took the place of husband, children, society; it was her work and her relaxation, her politics and her religion. "I know only woman and her disfranchised," was her creed. . . . May we, her daughters, receive as a blessed inheritance something of her indomitable will, splendid courage, limitless patience, perseverance, optimism, faith! Dr. Shaw closed the meeting with an eloquent unwritten perora- tion which told of her last hours with Miss Anthony as the great soul was about to take its flight and ended : "The object of her life was to awaken in women the consciousness of the need of freedom and the courage to demand it, not as an end but as a means of creating higher ideals for humanity." A resolution was adopted rejoicing in the granting of full suffrage and eligibility to sit in the Parliament to the women