As Susan studied the Constitution, she saw that the question of suffrage had up to this time been left to the states and that there were no provisions defining suffrage or citizenship or limiting the right of suffrage. Only now was the precedent being broken by the Fourteenth Amendment which conferred citizenship on Negroes and limited suffrage to males. How could this be constitutional, she reasoned, when the first lines of the Constitution read, "We, the people of the United States, in order to ... establish justice ... and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Of course "the people" must include women, if the English language meant what it said.

The Fourteenth Amendment with the limiting word "male" was passed by Congress and referred to the states for ratification in June 1866. As never before, Susan felt the curse of the tradition of the unimportance of women. Once more politicians and reformers had ignored women's inherent rights as human beings. In spite of women's intelligence and their wartime service to their country, no statesman of power or vision felt it at all necessary to include women under the Fourteenth Amendment's broad term of "persons." Yet according to statements made in later years by John A. Bingham and Roscoe Conkling, both sponsors of the amendment and concerned with its drafting, the possibility was considered of protecting corporations and the property of individuals from the interference of state and municipal legislation, through the federal control extended by this amendment. At any rate, they wrought well for the corporations which have received abundant protection under the Fourteenth Amendment, along with all male citizens, while women were left outside the pale.[181]

Tactfully the Republicans explained to women that even Negro suffrage could not be definitely spelled out in the Fourteenth Amendment, if it were to be accepted by the people; and added that Negro suffrage was all the strain that the Republican party could bear at this time; but neither Susan nor Mrs. Stanton were fooled by this sophistry. They knew that Republican politicians saw in the Negro vote in the South the means of keeping their party in power for a long time to come, and could entirely overlook justice to Negro women since they were assured of enough votes without them. The women of the North need not be considered, since they had nothing to offer politically. They would vote, it was thought, just as their husbands voted.

Completely deserted by all their former friends in the Republican party, Susan and Mrs. Stanton now made use of an irregular Republican, Senator Cowan of Pennsylvania, whom the abolitionists had labeled "the watchdog of slavery." When Benjamin Wade's bill "to enfranchise each and every male person" in the District of Columbia "without any distinction on account of color or race," was discussed on the Senate floor in December 1866, Senator Cowan offered an amendment striking out the word "male" and thus leaving the door open for women. He stated the case for woman suffrage well and with eloquence, and although he was accused of being insincere and wishing merely to cloud the issue, he forced the Republicans to show their hands. In the three-day debate which followed, Senator Wilson of Massachusetts declared emphatically that he was opposed to connecting the two issues, woman and Negro suffrage, but would at any time support a separate bill for woman's enfranchisement. Senator Pomeroy of Kansas objected to jeopardizing the chances of Negro suffrage by linking it with woman suffrage, but Senator Wade of Ohio boldly expressed his approval of woman suffrage, even casting a vote for Senator Cowan's amendment, as did B. Gratz Brown of Missouri. In the final vote, nine votes were counted for woman suffrage and thirty-seven against.[182]

Susan recorded even this defeat as progress, for woman suffrage had for the first time been debated in Congress and prominent Senators had treated it with respect. The Republican press, however, was showing definite signs of disapproval, even Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. Almost unbelieving, she read Greeley's editorial, "A Cry from the Females," in which he said, "Talk of a true woman needing the ballot as an accessory of power when she rules the world with the glance of an eye." With the Democratic press as always solidly against woman suffrage and the Antislavery Standard avoiding the subject as if it did not exist, no words favorable to votes for women now reached the public.[183]

It was hard for Susan to forgive the Antislavery Standard for what she regarded as a breach of trust. Financed by the Hovey Fund, it owed allegiance, she believed, to women as well as the Negro. In protest Parker Pillsbury resigned his post as editor, but among the leading men in the antislavery ranks, only he, Samuel J. May, James Mott, and Robert Purvis, the cultured, wealthy Philadelphia Negro, were willing to support Susan and Mrs. Stanton in their campaign for woman suffrage at this time. The rest aligned themselves unquestioningly with the Republicans, although in the past they had always been distrustful of political parties.

Discouraging as this was for Susan, their influence upon the antislavery women was far more alarming. These women one by one temporarily deserted the woman's rights cause, persuaded that this was the Negro's hour and that they must be generous, renounce their own claims, and work only for the Negroes' civil and political rights. Less than a dozen remained steadfast, among them Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Ernestine Rose, and for a time Lucy Stone, who wrote John Greenleaf Whittier in January 1867, "You know Mr. Phillips takes the ground that this is 'the Negro's hour,' and that the women, if not criminal, are at least, not wise to urge their own claim. Now, so sure am I that he is mistaken and that the only name given, by which the country can be saved, is that of WOMAN, that I want to ask you ... to use your influence to induce him to reconsider the position he has taken. He is the only man in the nation to whom has been given the charm which compels all men, willing or unwilling, to listen when he speaks ... Mr. Phillips used to say, 'take your part with the perfect and abstract right, and trust God to see that it shall prove expedient.' Now he needs someone to help him see that point again."[184]

FOOTNOTES:

[159] Daniel R. Anthony married Anna Osborne of Edgartown, Martha's Vineyard, in 1864.

[160] Before buying the house on Madison Street, then numbered 7, Mrs. Anthony and Mary lived for a time at 69 North Street, Rochester. Hannah and Eugene Mosher bought the adjoining house on Madison Street in 1866. Aaron McLean took over his father-in-law's profitable insurance business.

[161] Harper, Anthony, I, p. 241.

[162] Feb. 14, 1865, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of Congress.

[163] Ms., Diary, April 27, 1862.

[164] Feb. 14, 1862, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of Congress.

[165] Ibid.

[166] Ibid., April 19, 1862.

[167] Ms., Diary, April 26, 27, 1865.

[168] Harper, Anthony, I, p. 245.

[169] The Liberator ceased publication, Dec. 29, 1865.

[170] Ms., Diary, June 30, July 3, 1865.

[171] Harper, Anthony, II, pp. 960-967.

[172] Stanton and Blatch, Stanton, II, p. 105.

[173] Ibid.; Harper, Anthony, I, p. 244.

[174] Ms., Diary, Aug. 7, Sept. 5, 20, 1865.

[175] Ibid., Nov. 26-27, 1865.

[176] Harper, Anthony, I, p. 251.

[177] History of Woman Suffrage, II, pp. 96-97.

[178] Harper, Anthony, I, p. 260.

[179] Ibid., pp. 261, 323.

[180] History of Woman Suffrage, II, pp. 322-324. One of Thaddeus Stevens' drafts read: "If any State shall disfranchise any of its citizens on account of color, all that class shall be counted out of the basis of representation." Then the question arose whether or not disfranchising Negro women would carry this penalty and the result was a rewording which struck out "color" and added "male."

[181] Beards, The Rise of American Civilization, II, pp. 111-112; Joseph B. James, The Framing of the Fourteenth Amendment (Urbana, Ill., 1956), pp. 59, 166, 196-200.

[182] History of Woman Suffrage, II, p. 103. Senator Henry B. Anthony of Rhode Island, Susan B. Anthony's cousin, spoke and voted for woman suffrage.

[183] Ibid., p. 101. The New York Post, which had been friendly to woman suffrage under the editorship of William Cullen Bryant, now came out against it.

[184] John Albree, Editor, Whittier Correspondence from Oakknoll (Salem, Mass., 1911), p. 158. Frances D. Gage of Ohio, Caroline H. Dall of Massachusetts, and Clarina Nichols of Kansas also supported woman suffrage at this time.



TIMES THAT TRIED WOMEN'S SOULS

Bitterly disillusioned, Susan as usual found comfort in action. She carried to the New York legislature early in 1867 her objections to the Fourteenth Amendment in a petition from the American Equal Rights Association, signed by Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and herself. People generally were critical of the amendment, many fearing it would too readily reinstate rebels as voters, and she hoped to block ratification by capitalizing on this dissatisfaction. She saw no disloyalty to Negroes in this, for she regarded the amendment as "utterly inadequate."[185]

This protest made, she turned her attention to New York's constitutional convention, which provided an unusual opportunity for writing woman suffrage into the new constitution. First she sought an interview with Horace Greeley, hoping to regain his support which was more important than ever since he had been chosen a delegate to this convention. When she and Mrs. Stanton asked him for space in the Tribune to advocate woman suffrage as well as Negro suffrage, he emphatically replied, "No! You must not get up any agitation for that measure.... Help us get the word 'white' out of the constitution. This is the Negro's hour.... Your turn will come next."[186]

Convinced that this was also woman's hour, Susan disregarded his opinions and his threats and circulated woman suffrage petitions in all parts of the state. She won the support of the handsome, highly respected George William Curtis, now editor of Harper's Magazine and also a convention delegate, and of the popular Henry Ward Beecher and Gerrit Smith. The sponsorship of the cause by these men helped mightily. New York women sent in petitions with hundreds of signatures, but the Republican party was at work, cracking its whip, and Horace Greeley was appointed chairman of the committee on the right of suffrage.

Both Susan and Mrs. Stanton spoke at the constitutional convention's hearing on woman suffrage, Susan with her usual forthrightness answering the many questions asked by the delegates, spreading consternation among them by declaring that women would eventually serve as jurors and be drafted in time of war. Assuming women unable to bear arms for their country, the delegates smugly linked the ballot and the bullet together, and Horace Greeley gleefully asked the two women, "If you vote, are you ready to fight?" Instantly, Susan replied, "Yes, Mr. Greeley, just as you fought in the late war—at the point of a goose quill." Then turning to the other delegates, she reminded them that several hundred women, disguised as men, had fought in the Civil War, and instead of being honored for their services and paid, they had been discharged in disgrace.[187]

Confident that Horace Greeley would sooner or later fall back on his oft-repeated, trite remark, "The best women I know do not want to vote," Susan had asked Mrs. Greeley to roll up a big petition in Westchester County, and believing heartily in woman suffrage she had complied. This gave Susan and Mrs. Stanton a trump card to play, should Horace Greeley present an adverse report as they were informed he would do.[188]

In Albany to hear the report, these two conspirators gloated over their plan as they surveyed the packed galleries and noted the many reporters who would jump at a bit of spicy news to send their papers. Just before Horace Greeley was to give his report, George William Curtis announced with dignity and assurance, "Mr. President, I hold in my hand a petition from Mrs. Horace Greeley and 300 other women, citizens of Westchester, asking that the word 'male' be stricken from the Constitution."[189]

Ripples of amusement ran through the audience, and reporters hastily took notes, as Horace Greeley, the top of his head red as a beet, looked up with anger at the galleries, and then in a thin squeaky voice and with as much authority as he could muster declared, "Your committee does not recommend an extension of the elective franchise to women...." As a result, New York's new constitution enfranchised only male citizens.[190]

Horace Greeley justified his opposition to woman suffrage in a letter to Moncure D. Conway: "The keynote of my political creed is the axiom that 'Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed....' I sought information from different quarters ... and practically all agreed in the conclusion that the women of our state do not choose to vote. Individuals do, at least three fourths of the sex do not. I accepted their choice as decisive; just as I reported in favor of enfranchising the Blacks because they do wish to vote. The few may not; but the many do; and I think they should control the situation.... It seems but fair to add that female suffrage seems to me to involve the balance of the family relation as it has hitherto existed...."[191]

Horace Greeley never forgave Susan and Mrs. Stanton for humiliating him in the constitutional convention or for the headlines in the evening papers which coupled his adverse report with his wife's petition. When they met again in New York a few weeks later at one of Alice Cary's popular evening receptions, he ignored their friendly greeting and brusquely remarked, "You two ladies are the most maneuvering politicians in the State of New York."[192]

* * * * *

While Susan's work in New York State was at its height, appeals for help had reached her from Republicans in Kansas, where in November 1867 two amendments would be voted upon, enfranchising women and Negroes. Unable to go to Kansas herself at that time or to spare Elizabeth Stanton, she rejoiced when Lucy Stone consented to speak throughout Kansas and when she and Lucy, as trustees of the Jackson Fund, outvoting Wendell Phillips, were able to appropriate $1,500 for this campaign.

Lucy was soon sending enthusiastic reports to Susan from Kansas, where she and her husband, Henry Blackwell, were winning many friends for the cause. "I fully expect we shall carry the State," Lucy confidently wrote Susan. "The women here are grand, and it will be a shame past all expression if they don't get the right to vote.... But the Negroes are all against us.... These men ought not to be allowed to vote before we do, because they will be just so much dead weight to lift."[193]

One cloud now appeared on the horizon. Republicans in Kansas began to withdraw their support from the woman suffrage amendment they had sponsored. It troubled Lucy and Susan that the New York Tribune and the Independent, both widely read in Kansas, published not one word favorable to woman suffrage, for these two papers with their influence and prestige could readily, they believed, win the ballot for women not only in Kansas but throughout the nation. Soon the temper of the Republican press changed from indifference to outright animosity, striking at Lucy and Henry Blackwell by calling them "free lovers," because Lucy was traveling with her husband as Lucy Stone and not as Mrs. Henry B. Blackwell. Still Lucy was hopeful, believing the Democrats were ready to take them up, but she reminded Susan, "It will be necessary to have a good force here in the fall, and you will have to come."

Never for a moment did the importance of this election in Kansas escape Susan, and her estimate of it was also that of John Stuart Mill, who wrote from England to the sponsor of the Kansas woman suffrage amendment, Samuel N. Wood, "If your citizens next November give effect to the enlightened views of your Legislature, history will remember one of the youngest states in the civilized world has been the first to adopt a measure of liberation destined to extend all over the earth and to be looked back to ... as one of the most fertile in beneficial consequences of all improvements yet effected in human affairs."[194]

Susan fully expected Kansas to pioneer for woman suffrage just as it had taken its stand against slavery when the rest of the country held back. Her first problem, however, was to raise the money to get herself and Elizabeth Stanton there. The grant from the Jackson Fund had been spent by the Blackwells and Olympia Brown of Michigan, who most providentially volunteered to continue their work when they returned to the East. Olympia Brown, recently graduated from Antioch College and ordained as a minister in the Universalist church, was a new recruit to the cause. Young and indefatigable, she reached every part of Kansas during the summer, driving over the prairies with the Singing Hutchinsons.[195]

Olympia Brown's valiant help made waiting in New York easier for Susan as she tried in every way to raise money. Further grants from the Jackson Fund were cut off by an unfavorable court decision; and the trustees of the Hovey Fund, established to further the rights of both Negroes and women, refused to finance a woman suffrage campaign in Kansas.

"We are left without a dollar," she wrote State Senator Samuel N. Wood. "Every speaker who goes to Kansas must now pay her own expenses out of her own private purse, unless money should come from some unexpected source. I shall run the risk—as I told you—and draw upon almost my last hundred to go. I tell you this that you may not contract debts under the impression that our Association can pay for them—for it cannot."[196]

She did find a way to finance the printing of leaflets so urgently needed for distribution in Kansas. Soliciting advertisements up and down Broadway during the heat of July and August, she collected enough to pay the printer for 60,000 tracts, with the result that along with the dignified, eloquent speeches of Henry Ward Beecher, Theodore Parker, George William Curtis, and John Stuart Mill went advertisements of Howe sewing machines, Mme. Demorest's millinery and patterns, Browning's washing machines, and Decker pianofortes to attract the people of Kansas.

* * * * *

With both New York and Kansas on her mind, Susan had had little time to be with her family, although she had often longed to slip out to Rochester for a visit with her mother and Guelma who had been ill for several months. Finally she spent a few days with them on her way to Kansas.

On the long train journey from Rochester to Kansas with such a congenial companion as Elizabeth Stanton, she enjoyed every new experience, particularly the new Palace cars advertised as the finest, most luxurious in the world, costing $40,000 each. The comfortable daytime seats transformed into beds at night and the meals served by solicitous Negro waiters were of the greatest interest to these two good housekeepers and the last bit of comfort they were to enjoy for many a day.

As soon as they reached Kansas, they set out immediately on a two-week speaking tour of the principal towns, and as usual Susan starred Mrs. Stanton while she herself acted as general manager, advertising the meetings, finding a suitable hall, sweeping it out if necessary, distributing and selling tracts, and perhaps making a short speech herself. The meetings were highly successful, but traveling by stage and wagon was rugged; most of the food served them was green with soda or floating in grease and the hotels were infested with bedbugs. Susan wrote her family of sleepless nights and of picking the "tormentors" out of their bonnets and the ruffles of their dresses.[197]

Occasionally there was an oasis of cleanliness and good food, as when they stopped at the railroad hotel in Salina and found it run by Mother Bickerdyke, who, marching through Georgia with General Sherman, had nursed and fed his soldiers. At such times Kansas would take on a rosy glow and Susan could report, "We are getting along splendidly. Just the frame of a Methodist Church with sidings and roof, and rough cottonwood boards for seats, was our meeting place last night ...; and a perfect jam it was, with men crowded outside at all the windows.... Our tracts do more than half the battle; reading matter is so very scarce that everybody clutches at a book of any kind.... All that great trunk full were sold and given away at our first 14 meetings, and we in return received $110 which a little more than paid our railroad fare—eight cents per mile—and hotel bills. Our collections thus far fully equal those at the East. I have been delightfully disappointed for everybody said I couldn't raise money in Kansas meetings."[198]

The reputation of both women preceded them to Kansas. Susan had to win her way against prejudice built up by newspaper gibes of past years which had caricatured her as a meddlesome reformer and a sour old maid, but gradually her friendliness, hominess, and sincerity broke down these preconceptions. Kansas soon respected this tall slender energetic woman who, as she overrode obstacles, showed a spirit akin to that of the frontiersman.

Mrs. Stanton, on the other hand, was welcomed at once with enthusiasm. The fact that she was the mother of seven children as well as a brilliant orator opened the way for her. She was good to look at, a queenly woman at fifty-two, with a fresh rosy complexion and carefully curled soft white hair. Her motherliness and refreshing sense of humor built up a bond of understanding with her audiences. People were eager to see her, hear her, talk with her, and entertain her.

This preference was obvious to Susan, but it aroused no jealousy. She sent Mrs. Stanton out through the state by mule team to all the small towns and settlements far from the railroad, along with their popular and faithful Republican ally, Charles Robinson, first Free State Governor of Kansas, counting on these two to build up good will. In the meantime, making her headquarters in Lawrence, she reorganized the campaign to meet the increasing opposition of the Republican machine, against which the continued support of a few prominent Kansas Republicans availed little. As the state was predominantly Republican, the prospects were gloomy, for the Democrats had not yet taken them up as Lucy Stone had predicted, but still opposed both the Negro and woman suffrage amendments. A new liquor law, which it was thought women would support, further complicated the situation, aligning the liquor interests and the German and Irish settlers solidly against votes for women.

* * * * *

While Susan was searching desperately for some way of appealing to the Democrats, help came from an unexpected source. The St. Louis Suffrage Association urged George Francis Train to come to the aid of women in Kansas, and always ready to champion a new and unpopular cause, he telegraphed his willingness to win the Democratic vote and pay his own expenses. Knowing little about him except that he was wealthy, eccentric, and interested in developing the Union Pacific Railroad, Susan turned tactfully to her Kansas friends for advice, although she herself welcomed his help. They wired him, "The people want you, the women want you";[199] and he came into the state in a burst of glory, speaking first in Leavenworth and Lawrence to large curious audiences. A tall handsome man with curly brown hair and keen gray eyes, flashily dressed in a blue coat with brass buttons, white vest, black trousers, patent-leather boots, and lavender kid gloves, he was a sight worth driving miles to see, and he gave his audiences the best entertainment they had had in many a day, shouting jingles at them in the midst of his speeches and mercilessly ridiculing the Republicans. Here was none of the boredom of most political speeches, none of the long sonorous sentences with classical allusions which the big-name orators of the day poured out. His bold statements, his clipped rapid-fire sentences held the people's attention whether they agreed with him or not. When he spoke in Leavenworth, the hall was packed with Irishmen who were building the railroad to the West. They hissed when he mentioned woman suffrage, but before long he had won them over and they cheered when he shook his finger at them and shouted, "Every man in Kansas who throws a vote for the Negro and not for women has insulted his mother, his daughter, his sister, and his wife."[200]



At once the Republican press began a campaign of vilification, calling Train a Copperhead and ridiculing his eccentricities and conceits; and eastern Republicans, fearing they had harmed the Negro amendment in Kansas by their opposition to woman suffrage, tried to make last-minute amends by sending an appeal to Kansas voters to support both amendments. Even Horace Greeley lamely supported them in a Tribune editorial which Susan read with disgust: "It is plain that the experiment of Female Suffrage is to be tried; and, while we regard it with distrust, we are quite willing to see it pioneered by Kansas. She is a young State, and has a memorable history, wherein her women have borne an honorable part.... If, then, a majority of them really desire to vote, we, if we lived in Kansas, should vote to give them the opportunity. Upon a full and fair trial, we believe they would conclude that the right of suffrage for women was, on the whole, rather a plague than a profit, and vote to resign it into the hands of their husbands and fathers...."[201]

These halfhearted appeals were too late, for the political machine in Kansas had already done its work; and Susan, turning her back on such fair-weather friends, cultivated the Democrats even more sedulously. When the Democrat who had promised to accompany George Francis Train on a speaking tour failed him, she took his place. When Train demurred at the strenuous task ahead, she announced she would undertake it alone. Always the gallant gentleman, he accompanied her, and continued with her through the long hard weeks of travel in mail and lumber wagons over rough roads, through mud and rain, to the remotest settlements, far from the railroads. Because it was a necessity, traveling alone with a gentleman whom she hardly knew troubled her not at all, unconventional though it was.

She took charge of the meetings, opening them herself with a short sincere plea for both the woman and Negro suffrage amendments, and then she introduced George Francis Train, who, no matter how late they arrived or how tiring the day, had changed his wrinkled gray traveling suit for his resplendent platform costume. The expectant crowd never failed to respond with a gasp of surprise, and immediately the fun began as Train with his wit and his mimicry entertained them, calling for their support of woman suffrage and advocating as well some of his own pet ideas, such as freeing Ireland from British oppression, paying our national debt in greenbacks, establishing an eight-hour day in industry, and even nominating himself for President.

Amused by his dramatics and often amazed at his conceit, Susan found neither as objectionable as the outright falsehood circulated by opponents of woman suffrage. As the days went by with their continued hardships and increasing fatigue, she marveled at his unfailing courteousness, his pluck, and good cheer, while he in turn admired her courage, her endurance, and her zeal for her cause, and between them a bond of respect and loyalty was built up which could not be destroyed by the pressures of later years.

During the long hours on the road, he entertained her with the story of his life and his travels, an adventure story of a poor boy who had made good. Building clipper ships, introducing American goods in Australia, traveling in India, China, and Russia, promoting street railways in England, and now building the Union Pacific, he had a wealth of information to impart.

Their views on the Negro differed sharply. Rating the whole race as inferior and incapable of improvement, he naturally opposed enfranchising Negroes before women. She, on the other hand, had always regarded Negroes as her equals, and in campaigning with Train, she had to make her choice between Negroes and women. She chose women, just as her abolitionist friends in the East had chosen the Negro; and their indifference and opposition to woman suffrage at this crucial time was as unforgivable to her as was his valuation of the Negro to them. They called him a Copperhead, remembering his southern wife and his hatred of abolitionists, his vocal resistance to the draft, and his demands for immediate unconditional peace. They ignored entirely his defense of the Union in England during the Civil War when he publicly debated with Englishmen who supported the Confederacy. They abused him in their newspapers and he, not to be outdone, ridiculed them in his speeches, shouting, "Where is Wendell Phillips, today? Lost caste everywhere. Inconsistent in all things, cowardly in this. Where is Horace Greeley in this Kansas war for liberty? Pitching the woman suffrage idea out of the Convention and bailing out Jeff Davis. Where is William Lloyd Garrison? Being patted on the shoulders by his employers, our enemies abroad, for his faithful work in trying to destroy our nation. Where is Henry Ward Beecher? Writing a story for Bonner's Ledger...."[202]

They never forgave him this estimate of them, nor did they forgive Susan for associating herself with him.

On one of the last days of the Kansas campaign, while she was driving over the prairie with him, he suddenly asked her why the woman suffrage people did not have a paper of their own. "Not lack of brains, but lack of money," she tersely replied.[203]

They talked for a while about the good such a paper would do, about the people who should edit and write for it, what name it should have. Then he said simply, "I will give you the money."

Because a woman suffrage paper had been her cherished dream for so many years, she did not dare regard this as more than a gallant gesture soon to be forgotten; but to her amazement that very evening she heard Train announce to his audience, "When Miss Anthony gets back to New York, she is going to start a woman suffrage paper. Its name is to be The Revolution: its motto, 'Men their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.' This paper is to be a weekly, price $2. per year; its editors, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury; its proprietor, Susan B. Anthony. Let everybody subscribe for it!"

* * * * *

Election day brought both Susan and Mrs. Stanton back to Leavenworth, to Daniel's home, to learn the verdict of the people of Kansas. As the returns came in, their hope of seeing Kansas become the first woman suffrage state quickly faded. Neither their amendment nor the Negroes' polled enough votes for adoption. Their woman suffrage amendment, however, received only 1,773 votes less than the Republican-sponsored Negro amendment, and to have accomplished this in a hard-fought bitter campaign against powerful opponents gave them confidence in themselves and in their judgment of men and events. No longer need they depend upon Wendell Phillips or other abolitionist leaders for guidance. From now on they would chart their own course. This led, they believed, to Washington, where they must gain support among members of Congress for a federal woman suffrage amendment. Few, if any, Republicans would help them, but already one Democrat had come forward. George Francis Train had offered to pay their expenses if they would join him on a lecture tour on their way East. To Susan, who had to raise every penny spent in her work, this seemed like an answer to prayer, as did his proposal to finance a woman suffrage paper for them.

By this time their abolitionist friends in the East were writing them indignant letters blaming the defeat of the Negro amendment on George Francis Train and warning them not to link woman suffrage with an unbalanced charlatan. Even their devoted friends in Kansas, including Governor Robinson, advised them against further association with Train.

They did not make their decision lightly, nor was it easy to go against the judgment of respected friends, but of this they were confident—that with or without Train, they would estrange most of their old friends if they campaigned for woman suffrage now. Without him, their work, limited by lack of funds, would be ineffectual. With his financial backing, they not only had the opportunity of spreading their message in all the principal cities on their way back to New York, but had the promise of a paper, now so desperately needed when other news channels were closed to them. That Train was eccentric they agreed, and they also admitted that possibly some of his financial theories were unsound. They believed he was ahead of his time when he advocated the eight-hour day and the abolition of standing armies; but at least he looked forward, not backward. Susan had found him to be a man of high principles. She had heard him "make speeches on woman's suffrage that could be equalled only by John B. Gough,"[204] the well-known temperance crusader. Train's radical ideas did not disturb her. Her association with antislavery extremists prior to the Civil War had made her impervious to the criticism and accusations of conservatives. She was aware that on this proposed lecture tour Train probably wanted to make use of her executive ability and of Mrs. Stanton's popularity as a speaker; but on the other hand, his generosity to them was beyond anything they had ever experienced.

For Susan there was only one choice—to work for woman suffrage with the financial backing of Train. Mrs. Stanton agreed, and as she expressed it, "I have always found that when we see eye to eye, we are sure to be right, and when we pull together we are strong.... I take my beloved Susan's judgment against the world."[205]

* * * * *

Traveling homeward with George Francis Train, Susan and Mrs. Stanton spoke in Chicago, St. Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Buffalo, Rochester, Boston, Hartford, and other important cities where they drew large crowds, which had never before listened to a discussion of woman suffrage. Most of their old friends among the suffragists and abolitionists shunned them, for they had been warned against this folly by their colleagues in the East. The lively meetings rated plenty of publicity, complimentary in the Democratic papers but sarcastic and hostile in the Republican press. Usually "Woman Suffrage" got the headlines, but sometimes it was "Woman Suffrage and Greenbacks" or "Train for President." Handbills, the printing of which Susan supervised, scattered Train's rhymes and epigrams far and wide and carried a notice that the proceeds of all meetings would be turned over to the woman's rights cause. Susan also arranged for the printing of Train's widely distributed pamphlet, The Great Epigram Campaign of Kansas, with this jingle, so uncomplimentary to the eastern abolitionists, on its cover:

The Garrisons, Phillipses, Greeleys, and Beechers, False prophets, false guides, false teachers and preachers, Left Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony, Brown, and Stone, To fight the Kansas battle alone; While your Rosses, Pomeroys, and your Clarkes Stood on the fence, or basely fled, While woman was saved by a Copperhead.

Even more unforgivable than this to the abolitionist suffragists were the back-page advertisements of a new woman-suffrage paper, The Revolution, and of woman's rights tracts which could be purchased from Susan B. Anthony, Secretary of the American Equal Rights Association. That Susan would presume to line up this organization in any way with George Francis Train aroused the indignation of Lucy Stone, who felt the cause was being trailed in the dust. While Susan and Mrs. Stanton traveled homeward, enjoying the comfort of the best hotels and the applause of enthusiastic audiences, a coalition against them was being formed in the East.

"All the old friends with scarce an exception are sure we are wrong," Susan wrote in her diary, January 1, 1868. "Only time can tell, but I believe we are right and hence bound to succeed."[206]

FOOTNOTES:

[185] Ms., Petition, Jan. 9, 1867, Alma Lutz Collection

[186] Ms., note, 1893, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of Congress.

[187] Harper, Anthony, I, p. 278; History of Woman Suffrage, II, p. 284.

[188] Harper, Anthony, I, p. 279.

[189] History of Woman Suffrage, II, p. 287. Petitions with 20,000 signatures were presented.

[190] Ibid., p. 285.

[191] Aug. 25, 1867, Alma Lutz Collection.

[192] History of Woman Suffrage, II, p. 287.

[193] Ibid., pp. 234-235, 239.

[194] Ibid., p. 252.

[195] A famous family of singers who enlivened woman's rights, antislavery, and temperance meetings with their songs.

[196] July 9, 1867, Anthony Papers, Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kansas.

[197] Harper, Anthony, I, p. 284.

[198] History of Woman Suffrage, II, p. 242.

[199] Harper, Anthony, I, p. 287. George Francis Train on his own initiative spoke for woman suffrage before the New York Constitutional Convention.

[200] George Francis Train, The Great Epigram Campaign of Kansas (Leavenworth, Kansas, 1867), p. 68.

[201] History of Woman Suffrage, II, pp. 248-249.

[202] Train, The Great Epigram Campaign of Kansas, p. 40.

[203] Harper, Anthony, I, p. 290.

[204] Inscription by Susan B. Anthony on copy of Train's The Great Epigram Campaign of Kansas, Library of Congress.

[205] Harper, Anthony, I, p. 293.

[206] Ibid., p. 295.



THE ONE WORD OF THE HOUR

"If we women fail to speak the one word of the hour," Susan wrote Anna E. Dickinson, "who shall do it? No man is able, for no man sees or feels as we do. To whom God gives the word, to him or her he says, 'Go preach it.'"[207]

This is just what Susan aimed to do in her new paper, The Revolution. It's name, she believed, expressed exactly the stirring up of thought necessary to establish justice for all—for women, Negroes, workingmen and-women, and all who were oppressed. Her two editors, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury, reliable friends as well as vivid forceful writers, were completely in sympathy with her own liberal ideas and could be counted on to crusade fearlessly for every righteous cause. What did it matter if George Francis Train wanted space in the paper to publish his views and for a financial column, edited by David M. Melliss of the New York World? Brought up on the antislavery platform where free speech was the watchword and where all, even long-winded cranks, were allowed to express their opinions, Susan willingly opened the pages of The Revolution to Train and to Melliss in return for financial backing.

When on January 8, 1868, the first issue of her paper came off the press, her heart swelled with pride and satisfaction as she turned over its pages, read its good editorials, and under the frank of Democratic Congressman James Brooks of New York, sent out ten thousand copies to all parts of the country.

The Revolution promised to discuss not only subjects which were of particular concern to her and to Elizabeth Stanton, such as "educated suffrage, irrespective of sex or color," equal pay for women for equal work, and practical education for girls as well as boys, but also the eight-hour day, labor problems, and a new financial policy for America. This new financial policy, the dream of George Francis Train, advocated the purchase of American goods only; the encouragement of immigration to rebuild the South and to settle the country from ocean to ocean; the establishment of the French financing systems, the Credit Foncier and Credit Mobilier, to develop our mines and railroads; the issuing of greenbacks; and penny ocean postage "to strengthen the brotherhood of Labor."

All in all it was not a program with wide appeal. Dazzled by the opportunities for making money in this new undeveloped country, people were in no mood to analyze the social order, or to consider the needs of women or labor or the living standards of the masses. Unfamiliar with the New York Stock Exchange, they found little to interest them in the paper's financial department, while speculators and promoters, such as Jay Gould and Jim Fiske, wanted no advice from the lone eagle, George Francis Train, and resented Melliss's columns of Wall Street gossip which often portrayed them in an unfavorable light. Nor did a public-affairs paper edited and published by women carry much weight. None of this, however, mattered much to Susan, who did not aim for a popular paper but "to make public sentiment." It was her hope that just as the Liberator under William Lloyd Garrison had been "the pillar of light and of fire to the slave's emancipation," so The Revolution would become "the guiding star to the enfranchisement of women."[208]

* * * * *

Upon Susan fell the task of building up subscriptions, soliciting advertisements, and getting copy to the printer. As her office in the New York World building, 37 Park Row, was on the fourth floor and the printer was several blocks away on the fifth floor of a building without an elevator, her job proved to be a test of physical endurance. To this was added an ever-increasing financial burden, for Train had sailed for England when the first number was issued, had been arrested because of his Irish sympathies, and had spent months in a Dublin jail, from which he sent them his thoughts on every conceivable subject but no money for the paper. He had left $600 with Susan and had instructed Melliss to make payments as needed, but this soon became impossible, and she had to face the alarming fact that, if the paper were to continue, she must raise the necessary money herself. Because the circulation was small, it was hard to get advertisers, particularly as she was firm in her determination to accept only advertisements of products she could recommend. Patent medicines and any questionable products were ruled out. Subscriptions came in encouragingly but in no sense met the deficit which piled up unrelentingly. Her goal was 100,000 subscribers.

She had gone to Washington at once to solicit subscriptions personally from the President and members of Congress. Ben Wade of Ohio headed the list of Senators who subscribed, and loyal as always to woman suffrage, encouraged her to go ahead and push her cause. "It has got to come," he added, "but Congress is too busy now to take it up." Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts greeted her gruffly, telling her that she and Mrs. Stanton had done more to block reconstruction in the last two years than all others in the land, but he subscribed because he wanted to know what they were up to. Although Senator Pomeroy was "sore about Kansas" and her alliance with the Democrats, he nevertheless subscribed, but Senator Sumner was not to be seen. The first member of the House to put his name on her list was her dependable understanding friend, George Julian of Indiana, and many others followed his lead. For two hours she waited to see President Johnson, in an anteroom "among the huge half-bushel-measure spittoons and terrible filth ... where the smell of tobacco and whiskey was powerful." When she finally reached him, he immediately refused her request, explaining that he had a thousand such solicitations every day. Not easily put off, she countered at once by remarking that he had never before had such a request in his life. "You recognize, Mr. Johnson," she continued, "that Mrs. Stanton and myself for two years have boldly told the Republican party that they must give ballots to women as well as to Negroes, and by means of The Revolution we are bound to drive the party to this logical conclusion or break it into a thousand pieces as was the old Whig party, unless we get our rights." This "brought him to his pocketbook," she triumphantly reported, and in a bold hand he signed his name, Andrew Johnson, as much as to say, "Anything to get rid of this woman and break the radical party."[209]

She was proud of her paper, proud of its typography which was far more readable than the average news sheets of the day with their miserably small print. The larger type and less crowded pages were inviting, the articles stimulating.

Parker Pillsbury, covering Congressional and political developments and the impeachment trial of President Johnson with which he was not in sympathy, was fearless in his denunciations of politicians, their ruthless intrigue and disregard of the public. During the turbulent days when the impeachment trial was front-page news everywhere, The Revolution proclaimed it as a political maneuver of the Republicans to confuse the people and divert their attention from more important issues, such as corruption in government, high prices, taxation, and the fabulous wealth being amassed by the few. This of course roused the intense disapproval of Wendell Phillips, Theodore Tilton, and Horace Greeley, all of whom regarded Johnson as a traitor and shouted for impeachment. It ran counter to the views of Susan's brother Daniel, who telegraphed Senator Ross of Kansas demanding his vote for impeachment. Although no supporter of President Johnson, Susan was now completely awake to the political manipulations of the radical Republicans and what seemed to her their readiness to sacrifice the good of the nation for the success of their party. She repudiated them all—all but the rugged Ben Wade, always true to woman suffrage, and the tall handsome Chief Justice, Salmon P. Chase, who, she believed, stood for justice and equality.

Both of these men Susan regarded as far better qualified for the Presidency than General Grant, who now was the obvious choice of the Republicans for 1868. "Why go pell-mell for Grant," asked The Revolution, "when all admit that he is unfit for the position? It is not too late, if true men and women will do their duty, to make an honest man like Ben Wade, President. Let us save the Nation. As to the Republican party the sooner it is scattered to the four winds of Heaven the better."[210] Later when Chase was out of the running among Republicans and not averse to overtures from the Democrats, The Revolution urged him as the Democratic candidate with universal suffrage as his slogan.

Susan demanded civil rights, suffrage, education, and farms for the Negroes as did the Republicans, but she could not overlook the political corruption which was flourishing under the military control of the South, and she recognized that the Republicans' insistence on Negro suffrage in the South did not stem solely from devotion to a noble principle, but also from an overwhelming desire to insure victory for their party in the coming election. These views were reflected editorially in The Revolution, which, calling attention to the fact that Connecticut, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Pennsylvania had refused to enfranchise their Negroes, asked why Negro suffrage should be forced on the South before it was accepted in the North.

The Fourteenth Amendment was having hard sledding and The Revolution repudiated it, calling instead for an amendment granting universal suffrage, or in other words, suffrage for women and Negroes. The Revolution also discussed in editorials by Mrs. Stanton other subjects of interest to women, such as marriage, divorce, prostitution, and infanticide, all of which Susan agreed needed frank thoughtful consideration, but which other papers handled with kid gloves.

In still another unpopular field, that of labor and capital, The Revolution also pioneered fearlessly, asking for shorter hours and lower wages for workers, as it pointed out labor's valuable contribution to the development of the country. It also called attention to the vicious contrasts in large cities, where many lived in tumbledown tenements in abject poverty while the few, with more wealth than they knew what to do with, spent lavishly and built themselves palaces.

Sentiments such as these increased the indignation of Susan's critics, but she gloried in the output of her two courageous editors just as she had gloried in the evangelistic zeal of the antislavery crusaders. Wisely, however, she added to her list of contributors some of the popular women writers of the day, among them Alice and Phoebe Cary. She ran a series of articles on women as farmers, machinists, inventors, and dentists, secured news from foreign correspondents, mostly from England, and published a Washington letter and woman's rights news from the states. Believing that women should become acquainted with the great women of the past, especially those who fought for their freedom and advancement, she printed an article on Frances Wright and serialized Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women.

* * * * *

Eagerly Susan looked for favorable notices of her new paper in the press. Much to her sorrow, Horace Greeley's New York Tribune completely ignored its existence, as did her old standby, the Antislavery Standard. The New York Times ridiculed as usual anything connected with woman's rights or woman suffrage. The New York Home Journal called it "plucky, keen, and wide awake, although some of its ways are not at all to our taste." Theodore Tilton in the Congregationalist paper, The Independent, commented in his usual facetious style, which pinned him down neither to praise nor unfriendliness, but Susan was grateful to read, "The Revolution from the start will arouse, thrill, edify, amuse, vex, and non-plus its friends. But it will command attention: it will conquer a hearing." Newspapers were generally friendly. "Miss Anthony's woman's rights paper," declared the Troy (New York) Times, "is a realistic, well-edited, instructive journal ... and its beautiful mechanical execution renders its appearance very attractive." The Chicago Workingman's Advocate observed, "We have no doubt it will prove an able ally of the labor reform movement." Nellie Hutchinson of the Cincinnati Commercial, one of the few women journalists, described sympathetically for her readers the neat comfortable Revolution office and Susan with her "rare" but "genial smile," Susan, "the determined—the invincible ... destined to be Vice-President or Secretary of State...," adding, "The world is better for thee, Susan."[211]

While new friends praised, old friends pleaded unsuccessfully with Mrs. Stanton and Parker Pillsbury to free themselves from Susan's harmful influence. William Lloyd Garrison wrote Susan of his regret and astonishment that she and Mrs. Stanton had so taken leave of their senses as to be infatuated with the Democratic party and to be associated with that "crack-brained harlequin and semi-lunatic," George Francis Train. She published his letter in The Revolution with an answer by Mrs. Stanton which not only pointed out how often the Republicans had failed women but reminded Garrison how he had welcomed into his antislavery ranks anyone and everyone who believed in his ideas, "a motley crew it was." She recalled the label of fanatic which had been attached to him, how he had been threatened and pelted with rotten eggs for expressing his unpopular ideas and for burning the Constitution which he declared sanctioned slavery. With such a background, she told him, he should be able to recognize her right and Susan's to judge all parties and all men on what they did for woman suffrage.[212]

None of these arguments made any impression upon Garrison, or upon Lucy Stone, whose bitter criticism and distrust of Susan's motives wounded Susan deeply. Only a few of her old friends seemed able to understand what she was trying to do, among them Martha C. Wright, who, at first critical of her association with Train, now wrote of The Revolution, "Its vigorous pages are what we need. Count on me now and ever as your true and unswerving friend."[213]



Another bright spot was Susan's friendship with Anna E. Dickinson, with whom she carried on a lively correspondence, scratching oft hurried notes to her on the backs of old envelopes or any odd scraps of paper that came to hand. Whenever Anna was in New York, she usually burst into the Revolution office, showered Susan with kisses, and carried on such an animated conversation about her experiences that the whole office force was spellbound, admiring at the same time her stylish costume and jaunty velvet cap with its white feather, very becoming on her short black curls.

Repeatedly Susan urged Anna to stay with her in her "plain quarters" at 44 Bond Street or in her "nice hall bedroom" at 116 East Twenty-third Street. That Anna could have risen out of the hardships of her girlhood to such popularity as a lecturer and to such financial success was to Susan like a fairy tale come true. Scarcely past twenty, Anna not only had moved vast audiences to tears, but was sought after by the Republicans as one of their most popular campaign speakers and had addressed Congress with President Lincoln in attendance. Susan had been sadly disappointed that Anna had not seen her way clear to speak a strong word for women in the Kansas campaign, but she hoped that this vivid talented young woman would prove to be "the evangel" who would lead women "into the kingdom of political and civil rights." It never occurred to her that she herself might even now be that "evangel."[214]

* * * * *

By this time Susan had been called on the carpet by some of the officers of the American Equal Rights Association because she had used the Association's office as a base for business connected with the Train lecture tour and the establishment of The Revolution. She was also accused of spending the funds of the Association for her own projects and to advertise Train. Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, and Stephen Foster were particularly suspicious of her. Her accounts were checked and rechecked by them and found in good order. However, at the annual meeting of the Association in May 1868, Henry Blackwell again brought the matter up. Deeply hurt by his public accusation, she once more carefully explained that because there had been no funds except those which came out of her own pocket or had been raised by her, she had felt free to spend them as she thought best. This obviously satisfied the majority, many of whom expressed appreciation of her year of hard work for the cause. She later wrote Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "Even if not one old friend had seemed to have remembered the past and it had been swallowed up, overshadowed by the Train cloud, I should still have rejoiced that I have done the work—for no human prejudice or power can rob me of the joy, the compensation, I have stored up therefrom. That it is wholly spiritual, I need but tell you that this day, I have not two hundred dollars more than I had the day I entered upon the public work of woman's rights and antislavery."[215]

What troubled her most at these meetings was not the animosity directed against her by Henry Blackwell and Lucy Stone, but the assertion, made by Frederick Douglass and agreed to by all the men present, that Negro suffrage was more urgent than woman suffrage. When Lucy Stone came to the defense of woman suffrage in a speech whose content and eloquence Susan thought surpassed that of "any other mortal woman speaker," she was willing to forgive Lucy anything, and wrote Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "I want you to know that it is impossible for me to lay a straw in the way of anyone who personally wrongs me, if only that one will work nobly in the cause in their own way and time. They may try to hinder my success but I never theirs."

Realizing that it would be futile for her to spend any more time trying to persuade the American Equal Rights Association to help her with her woman suffrage campaign, she now formed a small committee of her own, headed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It included Elizabeth Smith Miller, the liberal wealthy daughter of Gerrit Smith, Abby Hopper Gibbons, the Quaker philanthropist and social worker; and Mary Cheney Greeley, the wife of Horace Greeley, who, in spite of the fact that her husband now opposed woman suffrage, continued to take her stand for it. This committee, with The Revolution as its mouthpiece, was soon acting as a clearing house for woman suffrage organizations throughout the country and called itself the Woman's Suffrage Association of America.

To the national Republican convention in Chicago which nominated General Grant for President, these women sent a carefully worded memorial asking that the rights of women be recognized in the reconstruction. It was ignored. Thereupon Susan turned to the Democrats, attending with Mrs. Stanton a preconvention rally in New York, addressed by Governor Horatio Seymour. Given seats of honor on the platform, they attracted considerable attention and the New York Sun commented editorially that this honor conferred upon them by the Democrats not only committed Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton to Governor Seymour's views but also committed the Democrats to incorporate a woman suffrage plank in their platform.

This was too much for some of the officers of the American Equal Rights Association, whose executive committee now adopted a sarcastic resolution proposing that Susan attend the national Democratic convention and prove her confidence in the Democrats by securing a plank in their platform.

Ignoring the unfriendly implications of this resolution and the ridicule heaped upon her by the New York City papers, Susan made plans to attend the Democratic convention, which for the first time since the war was bringing northern and southern Democrats together for the dedication of their new, imposing headquarters, Tammany Hall, and which was also attracting many liberals who, disgusted by the corruption of the Republicans, were looking for a "new departure" from the Democrats. To the amazement of the delegates, Susan with Mrs. Stanton and several other women walked into the convention when it was well under way and sent a memorial up to Governor Seymour who was presiding. He received it graciously, announcing that he held in his hand a memorial of the women of the United States signed by Susan B. Anthony, and then turned it over to the secretary to be read while the audience shouted and cheered. The sonorous passages demanding the enfranchisement of women rang out through and above the bedlam: "We appeal to you because ... you have been the party heretofore to extend the suffrage. It was the Democratic party that fought most valiantly for the removal of the 'property qualification' from all white men and thereby placed the poorest ditch digger on a political level with the proudest millionaire.... And now you have an opportunity to confer a similar boon on the women of the country and thus ... perpetuate your political power for decades to come...."[216]

To hear these words read in a national political convention was to Susan worth any ridicule she might be forced to endure. She was not allowed to speak to the convention as she had requested, and shouts and jeers continued as her memorial was hurriedly referred to the Resolutions committee where it could be conveniently overlooked.

The Republican press reported the incident with sarcasm and animosity, the Tribune deeply wounding her: "Miss Susan B. Anthony has our sincere pity. She has been an ardent suitor of democracy, and they rejected her overtures yesterday with screams of laughter."[217]

The Democrats' nomination of Horatio Seymour and Frank Blair was as reactionary and unpromising of a "new departure" as was the choice of General Grant and Schuyler Colfax by the Republicans. Thereupon The Revolution called for a new party, a people's party which would be sincerely devoted to the welfare of all the people. So strongly did Susan feel about this that in one of her few signed editorials she declared, "Both the great political parties pretending to save the country are only endeavoring to save themselves.... In their hands humanity has no hope.... The sooner their power is broken as parties the better.... The Revolution calls for construction, not reconstruction.... Who will aid us in our grand enterprise of a nation's salvation?"[218]

To "darling Anna" she wrote more specifically, "Both parties are owned body and soul by the Gold Gamblers of the Nation—and so far as the honest working men and women of the country are concerned, it matters very little which succeeds. Oh that the Gods would inspire men of influence and money to move for a third party—universal suffrage and anti-monopolist of land and gold."[219]

FOOTNOTES:

[207] July 6, 1866, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress.

[208] The Revolution, I, Jan. 8, 1868, pp. 1-12.

[209] Ibid.

[210] Ibid., April 23, June 25, 1868, pp. 49, 392.

[211] Harper, Anthony, I, pp. 296-297, 302-303; The Revolution, I, Jan. 22, 1868, p. 34.

[212] The Revolution, I, Jan. 29, 1868, p. 243.

[213] Harper, Anthony, I, p. 301.

[214] March 18, May 4, 1868, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress. Susan had a room at the Stantons until they prepared to move to their new home in Tenafly, New Jersey.

[215] Aug. 20, 1868, Higginson Papers, Boston Public Library.

[216] The Revolution, II, July 9, 1868, p. 1.

[217] Ibid., July 16, 1868, p. 17.

[218] Ibid., Aug. 6, 1868, p. 72.

[219] July 10, 1868, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress.



WORK, WAGES, AND THE BALLOT

In her zeal to promote the welfare of all the people, Susan now turned her attention to the workingwomen of New York, whose low wages, long hours, and unhealthy working and living conditions had troubled her for a long time. Women were being forced out of the home into the factory by a changing and expanding economy, and at last were being paid for their work. However, the women she met on the streets of New York, hurrying to work at dawn and returning late at night, weary, pale, and shabbily dressed, had none of the confidence of the economically independent. They had merely exchanged one form of slavery for another. She saw the ballot as their most powerful ally, and as she told the factory girls of Cohoes, New York, they could compel their employers to grant them a ten-hour day, equal opportunity for advancement, and equal pay, the moment they held the ballot in their hands.[220]

As yet labor unions were few and short-lived. The women tailors of New York had formed a union as early as 1825, but it had not survived, and later attempts to form women's unions had rarely been successful. A few men's unions had weathered the years, but they had not enrolled women, fearing their competition. Women were welcomed only by the National Labor Union, established in Baltimore in 1866 for the purpose of federating all unions.

When the National Labor Union Congress met in New York in September 1868, Susan saw an opportunity for women to take part, and in preparation she called a group of workingwomen together in The Revolution office to form a Workingwomen's Association which she hoped would eventually represent all of the trades. At this meeting, the majority were from the printing trade, typesetters operating the newly invented typesetting machines, press feeders, bookbinders, and clerks, in whom she had become interested through her venture in publishing. She wanted them to call their organization the Workingwomen's Suffrage Association, but they refused, because they feared the public's disapproval of woman suffrage and were convinced they should not seek political rights until they had improved their working conditions. She could not make them see that they were putting the cart before the horse. They did, however, form Workingwomen's Association No. 1, electing her their delegate to the National Labor Congress.

Next she called a meeting of the women in the sewing trades, and with the help of men from the National Labor Union, persuaded a hundred of them to form Workingwomen's Association No. 2. Most of these women were seamstresses making men's shirts, women's coats, vests, lace collars, hoop skirts, corsets, fur garments, and straw hats, but also represented were women from the umbrella, parasol, and paper collar industry, metal burnishers, and saleswomen. Most of them were young girls who worked from ten to fourteen hours a day, from six in the morning until eight at night, and earned from $4 to $8 a week.

"You must not work for these starving prices any longer ...," Susan told them. "Have a spirit of independence among you, 'a wholesome discontent,' as Ralph Waldo Emerson has said, and you will get better wages for yourselves. Get together and discuss, and meet again and again.... I will come and talk to you...."[221] They elected Mrs. Mary Kellogg Putnam to represent them at the National Labor Congress.

With Mrs. Putnam and Kate Mullaney, the able president of the Collar Laundry Union of Troy, New York, with Mary A. MacDonald of the Women's Protective Labor Union of Mt. Vernon, New York, and Mrs. Stanton, representing the Woman's Suffrage Association of America, Susan knocked at the door of the National Labor Congress. All were welcomed but Mrs. Stanton, who represented a woman suffrage organization and whose acceptance the rank and file feared might indicate to the public that the Labor Congress endorsed votes for women.

The women had a friend in William H. Sylvis of the Iron Molders' Union, who was the driving force behind the National Labor Congress, and he made it clear at once that he welcomed Mrs. Stanton and everyone else who believed in his cause. So strong, however, was the opposition to woman suffrage among union men that eighteen threatened to resign if Mrs. Stanton were admitted as a delegate. The debate continued, giving Susan an opportunity to explain why the ballot was important to workingwomen. "It is the power of the ballot," she declared, "that makes men successful in their strikes."[222] She recommended that both men and women be enrolled in unions, pointing out that had this been done, women typesetters would not have replaced men at lower wages in the recent strike of printers on the New York World. Finally a resolution was adopted, making it clear that Mrs. Stanton's acceptance in no way committed the National Labor Congress to her "peculiar ideas" or to "Female Suffrage."

A committee on female labor was then appointed with Susan as one of its members. At once she tried to show the committee how the vote would help women in their struggle for higher wages. She had at hand a perfect example in the unsuccessful strike of Kate Mullaney's strong, well-organized union of 500 collar laundry workers in Troy, New York. Aware that Kate blamed their defeat on the ruthless newspaper campaign, inspired and paid for by employers, Susan asked her, "If you had been 500 carpenters or 500 masons, do you not think you would have succeeded?"[223]

"Certainly," Kate Mullaney replied, adding that the striking bricklayers had won everything they demanded. Susan then reminded her that because the bricklayers were voters, newspapers respected them and would hesitate to arouse their displeasure, realizing that in the next election they would need the votes of all union men for their candidates. "If you collar women had been voters," she told them, "you too would have held the balance of political power in that little city of Troy."

Susan convinced the committee on female labor, and in their strong report to the convention they urged women "to secure the ballot" as well as "to learn the trades, engage in business, join labor unions or form protective unions of their own, ... and use every other honorable means to persuade or force employers to do justice to women by paying them equal wages for equal work." These women also called upon the National Labor Congress to aid the organization of women's unions, to demand the eight-hour day for women as well as men, and to ask Congress and state legislatures to pass laws providing equal pay for women in government employ. The phrase, "to secure the ballot," was quickly challenged by some of the men and had to be deleted before the report was accepted; but this setback was as nothing to Susan in comparison with the friends she had made for woman suffrage among prominent labor leaders and with the fact that a woman, Kate Mullaney of Troy, had been chosen assistant secretary of the National Labor Union and its national organizer of women.[224]

The National Labor Union Congress won high praise in The Revolution as laying the foundation of the new political party of America which would be triumphant in 1872. "The producers, the working-men, the women, the Negroes," The Revolution declared, "are destined to form a triple power that shall speedily wrest the sceptre of government from the non-producers, the land monopolists, the bondholders, and the politicians."[225]

* * * * *

One of the most encouraging signs at this time was the friendliness of the New York World, whose reporters covered the meetings of the Workingwomen's Association with sympathy, arousing much local interest. Reprinting these reports and supplementing them, The Revolution carried their import farther afield, bringing to the attention of many the wisdom and justice of equal pay for equal work, and the need to organize workingwomen and to provide training and trade schools for them. The Revolution continually spurred women on to improve themselves, to learn new skills, and actually to do equal work if they expected equal pay.

When reports reached Susan that women in the printing trade were afraid of manual labor, of getting their hands and fingers dirty, and of lifting heavy galleys, she quickly let them know that she had no patience with this. "Those who stay at home," she told them, "have to wash kettles and lift wash tubs and black stoves until their hands are blackened and hardened. In this spirit, you must go to work on your cases of type. Are these cases heavier than a wash tub filled with water and clothes, or the old cheese tubs?... The trouble is either that girls are not educated to have physical strength or else they do not like to use it. If a union of women is to succeed, it must be composed of strength, nerve, courage, and persistence, with no fear of dirtying their white fingers, but with a determination that when they go into an office they would go through all that was required of them and demand just as high wages as the men....

"Make up your mind," she continued, "to take the 'lean' with the 'fat,' and be early and late at the case precisely as the men are. I do not demand equal pay for any women save those who do equal work in value. Scorn to be coddled by your employers; make them understand that you are in their service as workers, not as women."[226]

Workingwomen's associations now existed in Boston, St. Louis, Chicago, San Francisco and other cities, encouraged and aroused by the efforts at organization in New York. These associations occasionally exchanged ideas, and news of all of them was published in The Revolution. The groups in Boston and in the outlying textile mills were particularly active, and Susan brought to her next suffrage convention in Washington in 1870 Jennie Collins of Lowell who was ably leading a strike against a cut in wages. The newspapers, too, began to notice workingwomen, publishing articles about their working and living conditions.

Trying to amalgamate the various groups in New York, Susan now formed a Workingwomen's Central Association, of which she was elected president. To its meetings she brought interesting speakers and practical reports on wages, hours, and working conditions. She herself picked up a great deal of useful information in her daily round as she talked with this one and that one. On her walks to and from work, in all kinds of weather, she met poorly clad women carrying sacks and baskets in which they collected rags, scraps of paper, bones, old shoes, and anything worth rescuing from "garbage boxes." With friendliness and good cheer, she greeted these ragpickers, sometimes stopping to talk with them about their work, and through her interest brought several into the Workingwomen's Association. Looking forward to surveys on all women's occupations, she started out by appointing a committee to investigate the ragpickers, many of whom lived in tumbledown slab shanties on the rocky land which is now a part of Central Park.

This investigation revealed that more than half of the 1200 ragpickers were women and that it was the one occupation in which women had equal opportunity with men and received equal compensation for their day's work. Average earnings ranged from forty cents a day to ten dollars a week. The report, highly sentimental in the light of today's scientific approach, was a promising beginning, a survey made by women themselves in their own interest—the forerunner of the reports of the Labor Department's Women's Bureau.

Cooperatives appealed to Susan as they did to many labor leaders as the best means of freeing labor. When the Sewing Machine Operators Union tried to establish a shop where their members could share the profits of their labor, she did her best to help them, hoping to see them gain economic independence in a light airy clean shop where wealthy women, eager to help their sisters, would patronize them. However, the wealthy women to whom she appealed to finance this project did not respond, looking upon a cooperative as a first step toward socialism and a threat to their own profits. She was able, however, to arouse a glimmer of interest among the members of the newly formed literary club, Sorosis, in the problems of working women.

She had the satisfaction of seeing women typesetters form their own union in 1869, and this was, according to the Albany Daily Knickerbocker, "the first move of the kind ever made in the country by any class of labor, to place woman on a par with man as regards standing, intelligence, and manual ability."[227] The Revolution encouraged this union by printing notices of its meetings and urging all women compositors to join. In signed articles, Susan pointed out how wages had improved since the union was organized. "A little more Union, girls," she said, "and soon all employers will come up to 45 cents, the price paid men.... So join the Union, girls, and together say Equal Pay for Equal Work."[228]

Eager to bring more women into the printing trade where wages were higher, she tried in every possible way to establish trade schools for them. She looked forward to a printing business run entirely by women, giving employment to hundreds. So obsessed was she by the idea of a trade school for women compositors that when printers in New York went on a strike, she saw an opportunity for women to take their places and appealed by letter and in person to a group of employers "to contribute liberally for the purpose of enabling us to establish a training school for girls in the art of typesetting." Explaining that hundreds of young women, now stitching at starvation wages, were ready and eager to learn the trade, she added, "Give us the means and we will soon give you competent women compositors."[229] Having learned by experience that men always kept women out of their field of labor unless forced by circumstances to admit them, she also urged young women to take the places of striking typesetters at whatever wage they could get.

It never occurred to her in her eagerness to bring women into a new occupation that she might be breaking the strike. She saw only women's opportunity to prove to employers that they were able to do the work and to show the Typographical Union that they should admit women as members. Labor men, however, soon let her know how much they disapproved of her strategy. She tried to explain her motives to them, that she was trying to fit these women to earn equal wages with men. She reminded these men of how hard it was for women to get into the printing trade and how they had refused to admit women to their union; and she called their attention to her whole-hearted support of the lately formed Women's Typographical Union.

Some of the men were never convinced and never forgot this misstep, bringing it up at the National Labor Union Congress in Philadelphia in 1869, which Susan attended as a delegate of the New York Workingwomen's Association. Here she found herself facing an unfriendly group without the support of William H. Sylvis, who had recently died. For three days they debated her eligibility as a delegate, first expressing fear that her admission would commit the Labor Congress to woman suffrage. When she won 55 votes against 52 in opposition, Typographical Union No. 6 of New York brought accusations against her which aroused suspicion in the minds of many union members. They pointed out that she belonged to no union, and they called her an enemy of labor because she had encouraged women to take men's jobs during the printers' strike. They could not or would not understand that in urging women to take men's jobs, she had been fighting for women just as they fought for their union, and they completely overlooked how continuously and effectively she had supported the Women's Typographical Union. Her Revolution, they claimed, was printed at less than union rates in a "rat office" and her explanation was not satisfactory. That it was printed on contract outside her office was no answer to satisfy union men who could not realize on what a scant margin her paper operated or how gladly she would have set up a union shop had the funds been available.

Not only were these accusations repeated again and again, they were also carried far and wide by the press, with the result that Susan was not only kept out of the Labor Congress but was even sharply criticized by some members of her Workingwomen's Association.

"As to the charges which were made by Typographical Union No. 6," she reported to this Association, "no one believes them; and I don't think they are worth answering. I admit that this Workingwomen's Association is not a trade organization; and while I join heart and hand with the working people in their trades unions, and in everything else by which they can protect themselves against the oppression of capitalists and employers, I say that this organization of ours is more upon the broad platform of philosophizing on the general questions of labor, and to discuss what can be done to ameliorate the condition of working people generally."[230]

She was not without friends in the ranks of labor, however, the New England delegates giving her their support. The New York World, very fair in its coverage of the heated debates, declared, "Of her devotion to the cause of workingwomen, there can be no question."[231]

* * * * *

The activities of the Workingwomen's Association had by this time begun to irk employers, and some of them threatened instant dismissal of any employee who reported her wages or hours to these meddling women. Fear of losing their jobs now hung over many while others were forbidden by their fathers, husbands, and brothers to have anything to do with strong-minded Susan B. Anthony.

To counteract this disintegrating influence and to bring all classes of women together in their fight for equal rights, Susan persuaded the popular lecturer, Anna E. Dickinson, to speak for the Workingwomen's Association at Cooper Union. This, however, only added fuel to the flames, for Anna, in an emotional speech, "A Struggle for Life," told the tragic story of Hester Vaughn, a workingwoman who had been accused of murdering her illegitimate child. Found in a critical condition with her dead baby beside her, Hester Vaughn had been charged with infanticide, tried without proper defense, and convicted by a prejudiced court, although there was no proof that she had deliberately killed her child. At Susan's instigation, the Workingwomen's Association sent a woman physician, Dr. Clemence Lozier, and the well-known author, Eleanor Kirk, to Philadelphia to investigate the case. Both were convinced of Hester Vaughn's innocence.

With the aid of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's courageous editorials in The Revolution, Susan made such an issue of the conviction of Hester Vaughn that many newspapers accused her of obstructing justice and advocating free love, and this provided a moral weapon for her critics to use in their fight against the growing independence of women. Eventually her efforts and those of her colleagues won a pardon for Hester Vaughn. At the same time the publicity given this case served to educate women on a subject heretofore taboo, showing them that poverty and a double standard of morals made victims of young women like Hester Vaughn. Susan also made use of this case to point out the need for women jurors to insure an unprejudiced trial. She even suggested that Columbia University Law School open its doors to women so that a few of them might be able to understand their rights under the law and bring aid to their less fortunate sisters.

* * * * *

Under Susan's guidance, the Workingwomen's Association continued to hold meetings as long as she remained in New York. In its limited way, it carried on much-needed educational work, building up self-respect and confidence among workingwomen, stirring up "a wholesome discontent," and preparing the way for women's unions. The public responded. At Cooper Union, telegraphy courses were opened to women; the New York Business School, at Susan's instigation, offered young women scholarships in bookkeeping; and there were repeated requests for the enrollment of women in the College of New York.

Living in the heart of this rapidly growing, sprawling city, Susan saw much to distress her and pondered over the disturbing social conditions, looking for a way to relieve poverty and wipe out crime and corruption. She saw luxury, extravagance, and success for the few, while half of the population lived in the slums in dilapidated houses and in damp cellars, often four or five to a room. Immigrants, continually pouring in from Europe, overtaxed the already inadequate housing, and unfamiliar with our language and customs, were the easy prey of corrupt politicians. Many were homeless, sleeping in the streets and parks until the rain or cold drove them into police stations for warmth and shelter. Susan longed to bring order and cleanliness, good homes and good government to this overcrowded city, and again and again she came to the conclusion that votes for women, which meant a voice in the government, would be the most potent factor for reform.

Yet she did not close her mind to other avenues of reform. Seeing reflected in the life of the city the excesses, the injustice, and the unsoundness of laissez-faire capitalism, she spoke out fearlessly in The Revolution against its abuses, such as the fortunes made out of the low wages and long hours of labor, or the Wall Street speculation to corner the gold market, or the efforts to take over the public lands of the West through grants to the transcontinental railroads. Her active mind also sought a solution of the complicated currency problem. In fact there was no public question which she hesitated to approach, to think out or attempt to solve. She did not keep her struggle for woman suffrage aloof from the pressing problems of the day. Instead she kept it abreast of the times, keenly alive to social, political, and economic issues, and involved in current public affairs.

FOOTNOTES:

[220] Feb. 18, 1868, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress.

[221] The Revolution, II, Sept. 24, 1868, p. 198. L. A. Hines of Cincinnati, publisher of Hine's Quarterly, assisted Miss Anthony in organizing women in the sewing trades.

[222] Ibid., p. 204.

[223] Harper, Anthony, II, pp. 999-1000.

[224] The Revolution, II, Oct. 1, 1868, p. 204.

[225] Ibid., p. 200.

[226] Ibid., Oct. 8, 1868, p. 214. A Woman's Exchange was also initiated by the Workingwomen's Association.

[227] Ibid., June 24, 1869, p. 394.

[228] Ibid., March 18, 1869, p. 173.

[229] Ibid., Feb. 4, 1869, p. 73.

[230] Ibid., Sept. 9, 1869, p. 154.

[231] Ibid., Aug. 26, 1869, p. 120.



THE INADEQUATE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT

The Fourteenth Amendment had been ratified in July 1868, but Republicans found it inadequate because it did not specifically enfranchise Negroes. More than ever convinced that they needed the Negro vote in order to continue in power, they prepared to supplement it by a Fifteenth Amendment, which Susan hoped would be drafted to enfranchise women as well as Negroes. Immediately through her Woman's Suffrage Association of America, she petitioned Congress to make no distinction between men and women in any amendment extending or regulating suffrage.

She and Elizabeth Stanton also persuaded their good friends, Senator Pomeroy of Kansas and Congressman Julian of Indiana, to introduce in December 1868 resolutions providing that suffrage be based on citizenship, be regulated by Congress, and that all citizens, native or naturalized, enjoy this right without distinction of race, color, or sex. Before the end of the month, Senator Wilson of Massachusetts and Congressman Julian had introduced other resolutions to enfranchise women in the District of Columbia and in the territories. Even the New York Herald could see no reason why "the experiment" of woman suffrage should not be tried in the District of Columbia.[232]