I stand here tonight to say that we have never known defeat; we have never been vanquished. We have not always reached the goal toward which we have striven, but in the hour of our greatest disappointment we could always point to our battlefield and say: "There we fought our good fight, there we defended the principles for which our ancestors and yours laid down their lives; there is our battlefield for justice, equality and freedom. Where is yours?"

While the eminent speakers attracted the largest audiences that ever had attended the conventions of the association, according to the opinions of the older suffragists, the delegates themselves were equally interested in the morning meetings devoted to the reports and other business. The corresponding secretary, Miss Kate M. Gordon, a keen student of politics and organization, in speaking of factors in success, said: "There is great necessity for a personal acquaintance between the leaders in our suffrage work in the States and the prominent politicians in the States; the personal acquaintance also of the editors and managers of our great public-opinion-forming newspapers; a pleasant working relation in women's clubs and all movements for better social conditions in our respective communities; a more intimate acquaintance with the educational influences, the teachers in our public schools and the college life of our communities."

Miss Gordon made a special plea for cooperation in the efforts for Child Labor legislation and she ended by saying: "But means and methods for the future of our work pale into insignificance in the need of the hour, which is Oregon. Funds for this campaign must be a matter of conscience with every believer. In proportion to the gratitude you feel for the comfortable position which women occupy today, measure your contribution; no sacrifice can be too great at this crucial moment in our onward history." Throughout the convention the work in Oregon, where an amendment to the State constitution would be voted on in November, was the uppermost thought. The treasurer made a special appeal for funds; the chairman of the Press Committee told of it; it was discussed and planned for in the business meetings and different speakers referred in hopeful words to its probable success.

An amendment to the constitution abolishing proxies empowered to cast the full vote to which the State was entitled and providing that delegates present should cast only their own vote caused a spirited discussion, with Mrs. Catt and eastern delegates in favor and Dr. Shaw and western delegates opposed and was lost by a vote of 68 to 11. No change of officers was made at this convention. Reports of Committees on Libraries, Literature, Enrollment, Presidential Suffrage, etc., were presented by their chairmen. A lively discussion on the use of the union label on literature, stationery, etc., resulted in an almost unanimous decision to retain it. Very interesting reports of work in the States were made by their respective presidents. Invitations for the next convention were received from the Chamber of Commerce of Wheeling, W. Va., the Chamber of Commerce, Bar Association and Suffrage Club of Oklahoma City and the Commission for celebrating the founding of Jamestown, Va.

Miss Antoinette Knowles (Cal.), chairman of the Committee on Church Work, said that by standing for temperance many churches could be obtained for meetings that would not be opened for those purely on suffrage. She gave a list of orthodox churches which had been thus secured; told of successful addresses she had made on the relation between woman suffrage and temperance and urged the appointment of a church committee in every State. The report of Miss Elizabeth J. Hauser, headquarter's secretary, told of the usual large amount of work, which included the distribution of 62,000 copies of the quarterly publication, Progress; 106,753 pieces of literature and many thousands of suffrage stamps, picture postals and souvenirs. Speakers and fraternal delegates had been sent to a large number of national conventions throughout the country and cordially received. Many of these had adopted resolutions for woman suffrage including the American Federation of Labor, National Association of Letter Carriers, National Grange, National Council of Jewish Women, Supreme Commandery Knights of Temperance, National Associations of Universalists and of Spiritualists. The State conventions of various kinds that had endorsed it were almost without number and excellent work had been done at county fairs, granges, farmers' institutes, summer assemblies and educational and religious societies. It was voted to make Progress the official organ of the association and issue it monthly. The national headquarters in Warren, O., had been removed to a spacious room on the ground floor of the county court house, formerly used for a public library.

The chairman of the Press Committee, Mrs. Elnora M. Babcock, made her last report, as the press work was henceforth to be done at the national headquarters with its excellent staff and facilities. For twelve years Mrs. Babcock had carried on this work, which in her capable hands had reached an immense volume and become a leading feature of the National Association. She reported that over 5,000 papers were now using the material sent out from the press bureau and that it was very difficult to respond to all the calls for it. In answer to the second broadside of former President Cleveland in the Ladies' Home Journal, which refused to publish anything from anybody on the other side, 2,000 copies of articles by different persons and 1,000 of the excellent refutation by Representative John F. Shafroth of Colorado had been distributed. The report stated that Mrs. Ida Porter Boyer, the efficient chairman of Pennsylvania, had been sent by the National Association to supervise the press work of the Oregon campaign. It urged that grateful recognition should be shown to papers that favor woman suffrage saying: "Editors are called upon for help and are not thanked for the kindness and good they do nearly as much as they should be." The convention gave Mrs. Babcock a rising vote of thanks for her long and faithful work.

The Executive Committee recommended in its Plan of Work that the States work for a uniform resolution in favor of a Sixteenth Amendment; that they endeavor to secure Initiative and Referendum laws; that in each Legislature measures be introduced for full suffrage or for some form of suffrage; that efforts be continued to obtain equalization of property and intestate laws, also co-guardianship of children; that the working forces of the association be concentrated where there are State campaigns for suffrage; that each club organize one new one and each individual member secure one more; that all present lines of work be continued and extended; that there be a more systematic and liberal distribution of literature; that hearings be obtained before all kinds of organizations. It was voted that "the Board of Officers consider the propriety of recommending all the States to make a concerted effort to secure Presidential suffrage for women in the election of 1908." But one work conference was held, that on Press, Miss Hauser presiding. One of the most important conferences of the week was that of State presidents, at which each told of the most effective work within the year, and the discussion which followed gave much practical and helpful information.

At the second afternoon session Dr. Shaw read a number of letters from Governors of the equal suffrage and other States answering favorably an appeal from the California Suffrage Association that they would appoint one or more women to the national commission soon to meet to consider uniform marriage and divorce laws. She had emphasized this necessity in her president's address. The report of Mrs. Florence Kelley, chairman of the Committee on Industrial Problems Affecting Women and Children, was heard with deep interest and feeling. As executive secretary of the National Consumers' League for many years and a close student of labor conditions, she spoke with accurate knowledge when she told of the employment of children. A Baltimore woman in her welcome to the convention had said that Maryland women were satisfied with what they could secure by petition without the ballot, and Mrs. Kelley, referring with fine sarcasm to the "sadly modest results of their petitions," said:

Last night while we slept after our evening meeting there were in Maryland many hundred boys, only nominally fourteen years old, working all night in the glass-works; and here in Baltimore the smallest messenger boys I have ever seen in any city were perfectly free to work all night. No law was broken in either case, for the women of Maryland have not yet by their right of petition brought to the children of the State protection from working all night. Here in this city children must go to school until they are nominally twelve years old but outside of Baltimore and three other counties there is no limit whatever to the work of any child. Moreover, here in Baltimore where the law nominally applies children are free to work at any age if they have a dependent relative or if they are liable to become dependent themselves!

It is five years since the first delegation of women went to Atlanta to ask for legislation on behalf of the working children of Georgia, carrying petitions with them, and they have gone in vain every year since. Each year the number of women joining in the protest has been greater and, alas, the number of little girls under ten years old, who work in Georgia cotton mills all night, has also been greater. The number of working children grows faster than the number of petitioning women.... In New York, where women can vote on school questions in the country only, not in the city, children five, six, seven and eight years old, who ought to be in the kindergarten and public schools, are working in cellars and garrets, under the sweating system, sewing on buttons and making artificial flowers. So many such children are not in the schools that no city administration in the last ten years has dared to make a school census; and we are striving in vain, (all the philanthropic bodies), to induce the present Tammany administration just to count the children of school age but they dare not reveal the extent to which they are failing to provide for them....

We Americans do not rank among the enlightened nations when we are graded according to our care of our children. We have, according to the last census, 580,000 who cannot read or write, between the ages of ten and fourteen years, not immigrant but native-born children, and 570,000 of them are in States where the women do not even use their right of petition. We do not rank with England, Germany, France, Switzerland, Holland or the Scandinavian countries when we are measured by our care of our children, we rank with Russia. The same thing is true of our children at work. We have two millions of them earning their living under the age of sixteen years. Legislation of the States south of Maryland for the children is like the legislation of England in 1844.... Surely it behooves us to do something at once or what sort of citizens shall we have?

Miss Gertrude Barnum, secretary of the Women's National Trade Union League, followed with an earnest address on Women as Wage Earners. She began by saying that although this would be called a representative audience, wage-earning women were not present. "A speaker should have been chosen from their ranks," she said. "We have been preaching to them, teaching them,'rescuing' them, doing almost everything for them except knowing them and working with them for the good of our common country. These women of the trade unions, who have already learned to think and vote in them, would be a great addition, a great strength to this movement. The working women have much more need of the ballot than we of the so-called leisure class. We suffer from the insult of its refusal; we are denied the privilege of performing our obligations and we have as results things which we smart under. The working women have not only these insults and privations but they have also the knowledge that they are being destroyed, literally destroyed, body and soul, by conditions which they cannot touch by law...." Miss Barnum discussed "strikes," the "closed shop," conditions under which factory women work, the domestic problem, the trade unions, and said: "I hope that this body, which represents women from all over the country, will take this matter back to their respective States and cities and try to make the acquaintance of this great half of our population, the working people. You must bring them to your conferences and conventions and let them speak on your platform. They will speak much better for themselves than you can get any one to speak for them...."

An animated discussion took place, many of the delegates asking sympathetic questions. Mrs. Ella S. Stewart (Ill.) followed with a delightfully caustic address on Some Fallacies; Our Privileges. The reporters were so carried away by her "sweetness and beauty" that they almost forgot to make notes of her speech, of which one of them said: "She picked up Grover Cleveland, Lyman Abbott and other anti-suffragists from the time of Samuel Johnson and figuratively spun them around her finger, to the joy of the audience." In paying her tribute to chivalry she said: "Of what benefit was the chivalry of the knights toward their ladies of high degree to the thousands of peasant women and wives of serfs hitched up with animals and working in the fields? Of no more value now is the protection given to the wives and daughters of the rich by men who are grinding down and taking advantage of those of the poor. In Chicago women have no vote except once in four years for a trustee of the State university, yet every day if we try to take a street car we are overrun and trampled down by men who get on the cars before they stop, and when we finally limp in we see them comfortably seated reading the papers while we dangle from the straps. We are crowded in stores and smoked in restaurants; in fact the only place of late where I was not crowded was at the polls when I went to cast my vote!"

Mrs. Mary E. Craigie (N. Y.) closed the session with a serious, impressive address on Our Real Opposition; Ignorance and Vice, the Silent Foe. She pointed out the "indirect alliance between the anti-suffragists and the vicious elements, opponents of all reform, fearful that if women vote good will prevail over evil." "The chief foes of woman suffrage," she said, "are the saloon keepers, scum of society, barred from fraternal organizations, social clubs and even from some of the insurance societies."

The Biography of Miss Anthony contains this paragraph.[45]

When Miss Anthony had visited President M. Carey Thomas, of Bryn Mawr College, and Miss Mary E. Garrett the last November she had talked of the approaching convention, expressed some anxiety as to its reception in so conservative a city and urged them to do what they could to make it creditable to the National Association and to Baltimore. They showed much interest, asked in what way they could be of most assistance and talked over various plans. Both belonged to old and prominent families in that city, Miss Garrett had the prestige of great wealth also, and Dr. Thomas of her position as president of one of the most eminent of Women's Colleges. Miss Anthony was desirous of having the program in some way illustrate distinctly the new type of womanhood—the College Woman—and eventually Dr. Thomas took entire charge of one evening devoted to this purpose, which will ever be memorable in the history of these conventions. A day or two after Miss Anthony's visit she received a letter from Miss Garrett saying: "I have decided—really I did so while we were talking about the convention at luncheon yesterday—that I must open my house in Baltimore for that week in order to have the great pleasure of entertaining you and Miss Shaw under my own roof and to do whatever I can to help you make the meeting a success."

At a good-bye reception given for Miss Anthony in Rochester the evening before she left home for Baltimore she took cold and immediately after reaching Miss Garrett's she became very ill and was under the care of physicians and trained nurses. On the second night, however, the College Evening for which elaborate preparations had been made, she summoned the will power for which she had always been noted, rose from her bed, put on a beautiful gown and went to the convention hall. Quoting again from the Biography: "When she appeared on the stage and the great audience realized that she actually was with them their enthusiasm was unbounded. She was so white and frail as to seem almost spiritual but on her sweet face was an expression of ineffable happiness; and it was indeed one of the happiest moments of her life for it typified the intellectual triumph of her cause."

The Baltimore American thus began its account: "With the great pioneer suffrage worker, Susan B. Anthony, on the platform, surrounded by women noted in the college world for their brilliant attainments, as well as those famed for social work and in other professions, and with a large audience, the session of the woman suffrage convention opened last evening in the Lyric Theater. If the veteran suffragist thought of more than the pleasure of the event it must have been the contrast of this occasion with the times past, when, unhonored and unsung, she fought what must have often seemed a losing fight for principles for which the presence of these women proclaimed victory.... It had been announced as 'Colloge evening' but it might just as well have been called 'Susan B. Anthony evening,' for, while the addresses dealt with various phases of the woman question, all evolved into one strong tribute to Miss Anthony."

The following remarkable program was carried out:

COLLEGE EVENING

February 8, 1906

Presiding Officer Ira Remsen, Ph.D., LL.D., President of Johns Hopkins University.

Ushers Students of the Woman's College of Baltimore in Academic Dress.

Addresses Mary E. Woolley, A.M., Litt.D., L.H.D., President of Mount Holyoke College. Lucy M. Salmon, A.M., Professor of History, Vassar College. Mary A. Jordan, A.M., Professor of English, Smith College. Mary W. Calkins, A.M., Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, Wellesley College. Eva Perry Moore, A.B., Trustee Vassar College; President of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae (over three thousand college women). Maud Wood Park, A.B. (Radcliffe College), President of the Boston Branch of the Equal Suffrage League in Women's Colleges and Founder of the League. M. Carey Thomas, Ph.D., LL.D., President of Bryn Mawr College.

A tribute of gratitude from representatives of Women's Colleges.

What has been accomplished for the higher education of women by Susan B. Anthony and other woman suffragists.

The statement is sometimes questioned that all of the advantages which women enjoy today had their inception in the efforts of the pioneers suffragists. The addresses made on this occasion by some of the most distinguished women educators of the country certainly should sustain this claim so far as the higher education is concerned. It seems a sacrilege to use only brief quotations from these important contributions to the literature of the movement for woman suffrage.

PRESIDENT WOOLLEY: It will not be possible in the limited time given to the representatives of colleges for women to do more than suggest what has been accomplished for the higher education of women by Miss Anthony and other suffragists, but it is a pleasure to have this opportunity to add our tribute of appreciation....

At a meeting called in 1851 at Seneca Falls, N. Y., to consider founding a People's College, Miss Anthony, Lucy Stone and Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton were determined that the constitution and by-laws should be framed so as to admit women on the same terms as men and finally carried their point. The college, however, before it was fairly started was merged in Cornell University. Five years later Miss Anthony's lecture on "Co-education" brought that subject most forcibly to the attention of the public.... It was no part of Miss Anthony's plan to have work given to women for which they were not fitted but rather that they should be prepared to do well whatever they attempted. There were not to be two standards of efficiency, one for the man and another for the woman. "Think your best thoughts, speak your best words, do your best work, looking to your own conscience for approval," was her charge to women forty years ago.... The higher education of women should be added to the list of causes for which she and other women struggled. She has lived to see the work of her hands established in the gaining of educational and social rights for women which might well be called revolutionary, so momentous have been the changes....

It seems almost inexplicable that changes surely as radical as giving to women the opportunity to vote should be accepted today as perfectly natural while the political right is still viewed somewhat askance.... The time will come when some of us will look back upon the arguments against the granting of the suffrage to women with as much incredulity as that with which we now read those against their education. Then shall it be said of the woman, who with gentleness and strength, courage and patience, has been unswerving in her allegiance to the aim which she had set before her, "Give her of the fruit of her hands and let her own works praise her in the gates."

PROFESSOR SALMON: The personal experience will perhaps be pardoned if it is considered representative of the possibly changing attitude of other college women toward the subject. The natural stages in the development seem to have been, opposition, due to ignorance; rejection, due to conscientious disapproval; indifference, due to preoccupation in other lines of work; acceptance, due to appreciation of what the work for equal suffrage has accomplished. It has been a work positive rather than negative, active rather than destructive, and thus it is coming to appeal to the judgment and reason of college women. They are coming to realize that they have been taught by these pioneers, both by precept and example, to look at the essential things of life and to ignore the unessential and for this they are grateful....

The college woman is beginning to wonder whether it is worth while to reckon the mint, anise and cummin while the weightier matters of the law are forgotten. For a larger outlook on life we are all indebted to Miss Anthony, to Mrs. Howe and to their colleagues. We are indebted to them in large measure for the educational opportunities of today. We are indebted to them for the theory, and in some places for the reality, of equal pay for men and women when the work performed is the same. We are indebted to them for making it possible for us to spend our lives in fruitful work rather than in idle tears. We are indebted to these pioneer women for the substitution of a positive creed for inertia and indifference. From them we also inherit the weighty responsibility of passing on to others, in degree if not in kind, all that we have received from them.

Professor Jordan, after considering the woman's college, said: "The suffragists lent us Maria Mitchell and they felt severely the loss they sustained in her increasing absorption in the class room and in the requirements of modern scientific work. When we had taken Maria Mitchell they turned to us in friendship, Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Miss Anthony, Miss Elizabeth Peabody, Mrs. Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Mrs. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Lois Anna Green, Mary Dame—and never failed to stir our minds with their urgent appeals for our thoughtful consideration of the causes they presented and the interest they took for granted. The last was their strong point. They simply implicated us in whatever was good and true. Their enthusiasm was infectious and we 'caught' it—to our own lasting spiritual benefit.... I do not believe that I was over-fanciful when I used to feel that Lucy Stone and you, Miss Anthony, looked at us as if you would say, 'Make the best of your freedom for we have bought it with a great price.'"

PROFESSOR CALKINS: I wish to indicate this evening the definite form in which I think the gratitude of all college women might be expressed to Miss Anthony and to the other leaders of the equal suffrage movement for their service to the cause of women's education. In other words, I wish to ask what have these veteran equal suffrage leaders a right to expect from university and college students, and in particular from the students and graduates of our women's colleges?... Equal suffragists, if I may serve as interpreter, demand just this, that women trained to scientific method shall make equal suffrage an object of scientific analysis and logic and ask of college women that they cease being ignorant or indifferent on the question; that they adopt, if not an attitude of active leadership or of loyal support, at least a position of reasoned opposition or of intelligent hesitation between opposing arguments. To ask less than this really is an insult to a thinking person, man or woman.... The student trained to reach decisions in the light of logic and of history will be disposed to recognize that, in a democratic country governed as this is by the suffrage of its citizens and given over as this is to the principle and practice of educating women, a distinction based on difference of sex is artificial and illogical, and thus suspicious.... For myself, I believe that the probabilities favor woman suffrage.

MRS. MOORE: The women of today may well feel that it is Miss Anthony who has made life possible to them; she has trodden the rough paths and by unwearied devotion has opened to them the professions and higher applied industries. Through her life's work they enjoy a hundred privileges denied them fifty years ago; from her devotion has grown a new order; her hand has helped to open every line of business to women. She has spoken at times to thousands of girls on the public duties of women.... Her life story must epitomize the victorious struggle of women for larger intellectual freedom in the last century.... The world does move. Those who are aware of the great and beneficent changes made in the laws relating to the rights of property, in the civil and industrial laws pertaining to women and children, may estimate the good accomplished by these pioneers.

MRS. PARK: I suppose it is true that all through history individual women have been able, sometimes by cajolery, sometimes by personal charm, sometimes by force of character, to get for themselves privileges far greater than any that the most radical advocates of woman's rights have yet demanded. But in the case of Miss Anthony and the other early suffragists all that force of character was turned not to individual ends, not to getting large things for themselves, but to getting little gains, step by step, for the great mass of other women; not for the service of themselves but for the service of the sex and so of the whole human race.... The object of the College Women's League is to bring the question of equal suffrage to college women, to help them realize their debt to the women who have worked so hard for them and to make them understand that one of the ways to pay that debt is to fight the battle in the quarter of the field in which it is still unwon; in short, to make them feel the obligation of opportunity.

PRESIDENT THOMAS: In the year 1903 there were in the United States 6,474 women studying in women's colleges and 24,863 women studying in co-educational colleges. If the annual rate of increase has continued the same, as it undoubtedly has, during the past three years, there are in college at the present time 38,268 women students. Although there are in the United States nearly 1,800,000 less women than men, women already constitute considerably over one-third of the entire student body and are steadily gaining on men. This means that in another generation or two one-half of all the people who have been to college in the United States will be women; and, just as surely as the seasons of the year succeed one another or the law of gravitation works, just so surely will this great body of educated women wish to use their trained intelligence in making the towns, cities and States of their country better places for themselves and their children to live in; just so surely will the men with whom they have worked side by side in college classes claim and receive their aid in political as well as home life. The logic of events does not lie. It is unthinkable that women who have learned to act for themselves in college and have become awakened there to civic duties should not care for the ballot to enforce their wishes.



The same is true of every woman's club and every individual woman who tries to obtain laws to save little children from working cruel hours in cotton mills or to open summer gardens for homeless little waifs on the streets of a great city. These women, too, are being irresistibly driven to desire equal suffrage for the sake of the wrongs they try to right.... It seems to me in the highest degree ungenerous for women like these in this audience, who are cared for and protected in every way, not to desire equal suffrage for the sake of other less fortunate women, and it is not only ungenerous but short-sighted of such women not to desire it for their own sakes. There is nothing dearer to women than the respect and reverence of their children and of the men they love. Yet every son who has grown up reverencing his mother's opinion must realize, when he reaches the age of twenty-one, with a shock from which he can never wholly recover, that in the most important civic and national affairs her opinion is not considered equal to his own....

I confidently believe that equal suffrage is coming far more swiftly than most of us suspect. Educated, public-spirited women will soon refuse to be subjected to such humiliating conditions. Educated men will recoil in their turn from the sheer unreason of the position that the opinions and wishes of their wives and mothers are to be consulted upon every other question except the laws and government under which they and their husbands and children must live and die. Equal suffrage thus seems to me to be an inevitable and logical consequence of the higher education of women. And the higher education of women is, if possible, a still more inevitable result of the agitation of the early woman suffragists....

We who are guiding this educational movement today owe the profoundest debt of gratitude to those early pioneers—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe and, above and beyond all, to Susan B. Anthony. Other women reformers, like other men reformers, have given part of their time and energy. She has given to the cause of women every year, every month, every day, every hour and every moment of her whole life and every dollar she could beg or earn, and she has earned thousands and begged thousands more.

Turning to the honored guest of the evening Dr. Thomas said:

To most women it is given to have returned to them in double measure the love of the children they have nurtured. To you, Miss Anthony, belongs by right, as to no other woman in the world's history, the love and gratitude of all women in every country of the globe. We, your daughters in the spirit, rise up today and call you blessed.

In those far-off days when our mothers' mothers sat contented in the darkness, you, our champion, sprang forth to battle for us, equipped and shining, inspired by a prophetic vision of the future like that of the apostles and martyrs, and the heat of your battle has lasted more than fifty years. Two generations of men lie between the time when, in the early fifties, you and Mrs. Stanton sat together in New York State, writing over the cradles of her babies those trumpet calls to freedom that began and carried forward the emancipation of women—and the day eighteen months ago when that great audience in Berlin rose to do you honor, thousands of women from every country in the civilized world, silent, with full eyes and lumps in their throats, because of what they owed to you. Of such as you were the lines of the poet Yeats written:

"They shall be remembered forever, They shall be alive forever, They shall be speaking forever, The people shall hear them forever."

Miss Anthony was profoundly moved. This wonderful scene—the magnificent audience in one of the oldest and most conservative of cities; this group of the most distinguished women educators; the president of one of the leading universities of the world in the chair; the large number of college women in the audience, free, independent, equipped for life's highest work—represented the culmination of what she had striven for during half a century. Her Biography gives this account: "After the applause had ended there was a moment of intense silence and then, as Miss Anthony came forward, the entire audience rose and greeted her with waving handkerchiefs, while tears rolled down the cheeks of many who felt that she would never be present at another convention. 'If any proof were needed of the progress of the cause for which I have worked,' she said, in clear, even tones, distinctly heard by all, 'it is here tonight. The presence on the stage of these college women, and in the audience of all those college girls who will some day be the nation's greatest strength, will tell their own story to the world. They give the highest joy and encouragement to me. I am not going to make a long speech but only to say thank you and good night.' It was all she had the strength to say but she never would publicly confess it."

Interesting State reports, conferences and addresses filled the mornings, afternoons and evenings of this unparalleled week. The Initiative and Referendum was presented by an acknowledged authority, George H. Shibley of Washington, director of the department of representative government in the bureau of economic research. He congratulated the association on having endorsed the new experiment that would rapidly further the woman suffrage cause, in which he had long believed. The system of questioning candidates and publishing their replies, developed by the Anti-Saloon League, was now being used with great success, he said, by many organizations. He described the carefully worked-out system in detail and declared that this, with the Initiative and Referendum, would terminate "machine" rule in politics, and whatever did this would promote the advance of woman suffrage. The address called forth an animated discussion in which it was shown that when women questioned a candidate they had no constituency back of them to influence his answers.

A valuable conference was opened with a comprehensive paper by Mrs. Mary Kenney O'Sullivan (Mass.), prominently identified with the women's trade unions, on the best methods of securing from Congress the submission of the Federal Suffrage Amendment. The question, if each State should secure an endorsement from its Legislature of a uniform resolution calling for this submission would it not influence Congress and also compel favorable recommendation in the national platforms of the dominant political parties, was unanimously answered in the affirmative.

Miss Hauser, the new chairman, presided over the press conference, which was opened with a paper by Miss Jane Campbell, a veteran suffragist, president of the Philadelphia County Suffrage Club of 600 members, on The Unbiased Editor, which bristled with the humorous sarcasm in which she was unsurpassed. She said in the course of it: "As the result of close observation I may state that the calm, judicial mind of the unbiased editor is never more in evidence than when he bends his energies to a consideration of the woman question—that is, the woman question in reference to politics. Then he is on sure ground and he always is actuated by a desire to serve the best interests of women. Does it come under his ken that a woman has the temerity to suggest even in faint tones the advisability and feasibility, the common sense and justice of being allowed to cast a ballot, then the opportunity of the unbiased editor has come and the rash claimant is admonished in fatherly, protecting tones to 'Remember that only in the Home'—he always spells home with a capital in this connection—'should a woman be in evidence.' He almost weeps when he pictures the dire consequences that would inevitably result should women enter the uncleanly pool of politics. Chivalry would become extinct—chivalry being the guiding principle, according to the unbiased editor, on which men act—and then would tired men no longer give up their seats in trolley cars to masculine women and no longer would they accord equal pay for equal work, as they chivalrously do now!"

Turning her shafts on Mr. Bok, editor of the Ladies' Home Journal, and ex-President Cleveland's articles in it, Miss Campbell evoked so much laughter and applause that Miss Hauser became anxious as to the effect on the representatives of the press who were there and called on Mrs. Upton to calm the tempestuous waters, who offered some "golden precepts" for dealing with editors, among them the following: "Keep the paper fully informed of all suffrage news. If there is something unpleasant in it and the reporter tells you that the editor and not himself is responsible for it, smile and believe him. Take the reporter into your confidence and let him absorb the impression that you trust him implicitly. The result will be that you and your cause will get the best of it. In a word, treat the newspaper reporter as you would any other gentleman and in the long run you will profit by it. If you are the press representative of your local organization try to have from time to time items of news pertaining to matters other than that of woman suffrage. Use the telephone lavishly and let your home be a sort of stopping place for the reporter in his routine work. When you present such an attitude toward the press the editors cannot find it in their hearts to refuse if you want a little space for yourself and your cause." The Baltimore Evening Herald commented: "From the foregoing it will be observed that in the dark and devious avocation of working the unsophisticated editor, Mrs. Upton is truly a past mistress, entitled to wear the regalia and jewels of the superlative degree."

Mrs. May Arkwright Hutton of Idaho told of the excellent results of woman suffrage on the politics of that State. Mrs. Lucia Ames Mead, chairman of the Committee on Peace and Arbitration, gave her usual able report describing her extensive work during the past year, which neither in this or any other year was exceeded by that of any one individual. After her return from the International Peace Congress in London she succeeded in having the presidents of the suffrage associations in fifteen States appoint supervisors of peace work and others were about to do so. The educational authorities in every State had been requested to arrange celebrations for May 18, the anniversary of the first Hague Conference, and she should notify the suffrage clubs to do this. Equal suffragists will aid the cause of justice for themselves in the nation by working also for justice between the nations. The abolition of war will do more than anything else to make women respected and influential. It will substitute moral force for brute force, reason for passion and will forever remove one of the most popular arguments against giving political power to those who are incapable of military service."

Mrs. Isabel C. Barrows (Mass.), the well known writer on social and economic subjects, took part in the symposium that followed. Miss Alice Stone Blackwell presided over the conference on What the Home Needs for its Protection—Women on Health Boards, School Boards and in the Police Department, and these subjects were considered by Mrs. Susan S. Fessenden (Mass.), Mrs. Upton and Mrs. Barrows. It closed with a paper by the Rev. Marie Jenney Howe on Woman's Municipal Vote.

One of the most important evening sessions was devoted to the question of Municipal Government, with Dr. William H. Welch, Professor of Pathology in Johns Hopkins University, presiding. A leading feature was the address of the Hon. Frederick C. Howe of Cleveland, O., The City for the People. He reviewed the mismanagement and political corruption of the large cities, "controlled by great financial interests and yet filled with eager, energetic people, struggling to organize a good democratic movement of humanity focused on a democratic ideal." In voicing the hope for the future he said:

There is an upward movement in all our cities. We are endeavoring to work out democracy and are doing amazingly well. When it is possible to organize the ideals of this new democratic movement it will be a city not for men alone but for men and women. It is business which has made our cities take the illogical position that women should not participate in municipal affairs as the chief corrective of the evils which underlie most of our municipal problems. I believe in woman suffrage not for women alone, not for men alone, but for the advantage of both men and women. Any community, any society, any State that excludes half of its members from participating in it is only half a State, only half a city, only half a community. So, you see, woman suffrage does not interest me so much because woman is a taxpayer or because of justice as because of democracy; because I believe in the fullest, freest, most responsible democracy that it is possible to create. The city of the people will be a man and woman city. It will elect its officials for other than party reasons and will keep men and women in office who give good service.

The Hon. Rudolph Blankenburg, Philadelphia's noted reformer, who was to speak on Municipal Regeneration, was detained at home and his wife, Mrs. Lucretia L. Blankenburg, president of the Pennsylvania Suffrage Association, told of the big campaign of the preceding autumn for better government in that city and the important part women had in it and said: "The men claimed that the women helped them a great deal but when the day came for the jubilation after the election, not a woman was invited to sit on the platform or to take part in the jubilee, except in the audience. In one of our suburbs the successful people gave a banquet and they did condescend to invite the women who had helped them win the election to sit in the gallery after the banquet and hear the speeches.... We are to have an election very soon and when I left home to come to this convention our city party was holding meetings in churches and halls and parlors and the chairman of the committee chided me for deserting my 'home work.' I told her that it was a greater work to try to get the right to vote and increase my influence."

The Hon. William Dudley Foulke, president of the National Civil Service Commission, spoke informally on An Object Lesson in Municipal Politics, describing the revolution of the citizens against the corrupt government of his home city, Richmond, Ind., and the valuable assistance rendered by the women, and, as always, demanding the suffrage for them.

It was at this meeting that Miss Jane Addams of Hull House, Chicago, made the address on The Modern City and the Municipal Franchise for Women, which was thenceforth a part of the standard suffrage literature. Quotations are wholly inadequate.

It has been well said that the modern city is a stronghold of industrialism quite as the feudal city was a stronghold of militarism, but the modern cities fear no enemies and rivals from without and their problems of government are solely internal. Affairs for the most part are going badly in these great new centres, in which the quickly-congregated population has not yet learned to arrange its affairs satisfactorily. Unsanitary housing, poisonous sewage, contaminated water, infant mortality, the spread of contagion, adulterated food, impure milk, smoke-laden air, ill-ventilated factories, dangerous occupations, juvenile crime, unwholesome crowding, prostitution and drunkenness are the enemies which the modern cities must face and overcome, would they survive. Logically their electorate should be made up of those who can bear a valiant part in this arduous contest, those who in the past have at least attempted to care for children, to clean houses, to prepare foods, to isolate the family from moral dangers; those who have traditionally taken care of that side of life which inevitably becomes the subject of municipal consideration and control as soon as the population is congested. To test the elector's fitness to deal with this situation by his ability to bear arms is absurd. These problems must be solved, if they are solved at all, not from the military point of view, not even from the industrial point of view, but from a third, which is rapidly developing in all the great cities of the world—the human-welfare point of view....

City housekeeping has failed partly because women, the traditional housekeepers, have not been consulted as to its multiform activities. The men have been carelessly indifferent to much of this civic housekeeping, as they have always been indifferent to the details of the household.... The very multifariousness and complexity of a city government demand the help of minds accustomed to detail and variety of work, to a sense of obligation for the health and welfare of young children and to a responsibility for the cleanliness and comfort of other people. Because all these things have traditionally been in the hands of women, if they take no part in them now they are not only missing the education which the natural participation in civic life would bring to them but they are losing what they have always had.

The Sunday afternoon service was held in the Lyric Theater, whose capacity was taxed with an audience "representing every class of society, every creed and no creed," according to the Baltimore papers. It was preceded by a half-hour musical program by Edwin M. Shonert, pianist, and Earl J. Pfonts, violinist. The Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell made the opening prayer; the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw read the Scripture lesson and gave the day's text: "Be strong and very courageous; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest." The Battle Hymn of the Republic was beautifully read by the Rev. Olympia Brown and sung by Miss Etta Maddox, the audience joining in the chorus. Mrs. Maud Ballington Booth gave the principal address on the work of the Volunteers of America for the men and women in prisons and after they are discharged. At its beginning she said: "I have never before stood on the platform with these leaders in the struggle for woman suffrage but I sympathize with any movement whose motive is, like theirs, the uplifting of humanity." Her beauty, her sweet voice and her rare eloquence made a deep impression on the audience, who responded with a generous collection for her Hope Halls. The meeting closed with the congregational singing of America and the benediction by the Rev. Marie Jenney Howe. All of the women ministers occupied the pulpits of various churches in the morning or evening, and, according to the reporter for the News, "astonished the large congregations which assembled to do them honor with their facility of expression and the soundness of their logic!"[46]

The resolutions offered by Henry B. Blackwell, chairman of the committee, covered a wide and rather unusual range of subjects, showing the broad scope of the work of the association and expressing its pleasure at the world-wide indications of progress. Deep regret was expressed for the death of the friends of the cause during the year, among them George W. Catt of New York, husband of Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt; Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell of New York; Mrs. Jane H. Spofford of Maine; Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller of Maryland; Mrs. Sarah M. Perkins of Ohio; John K. Wildman of Pennsylvania, and Speaker Frederick S. Nixon of the New York Legislature.

Fraternal greetings were brought from the Ladies of the Maccabees by Mrs. Melva J. Caswell, State Commander of the District of Columbia, Maryland and Delaware; from the National W. C. T. U., by Miss Marie C. Brehm, president for Illinois, and from the American Purity Alliance by its president, Dr. O. Edward Janney of Baltimore. A letter was read by Mrs. Mary Bentley Thomas (Md.), from Governor Warfield expressing his thanks for the opportunity of meeting so many distinguished women and his enjoyment of the convention. Letters and telegrams were read. A letter of greeting was sent to Mrs. Ellen Clark Sargent, a veteran suffragist of San Francisco, and letters to Miss Laura Clay and Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, regretting their absence. A special vote of appreciation was given to Dr. and Mrs. William Funck and a letter of thanks was sent to Dr. Thomas and Miss Garrett for their part in the unsurpassed success of the convention.

A comprehensive report of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, organized in Berlin in 1904, was given by its president, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, showing that "the agitation throughout Europe for a broader democracy has naturally opened the way for the discussion of woman suffrage and the subject is being considered as never before in Europe." [See Chapter on the Alliance.] The Evening with Women in History was opened by Mrs. Catt, who said: "One idea is the mainspring of the opposition to woman suffrage—that women are by nature of the inferior sex. Even Darwin, so scientific that he tried to see all things fairly, entertained this unjust view. When women have had the same inspiration and opportunity as men their work has been equal in merit."

The program assuredly showed no inferiority of mental power. Mrs. Belle de Rivera (N. Y.) depicted Women of Genius, quoting Sappho, Margaret of Navarre, Vittoria Colonna, Angelica Kauffman and others eminent in the annals of history. A newspaper report said of Mrs. Oreola Williams Haskell (N. Y.): "The thoroughness of her address gave the lie to any intimation of frivolity made by her youth and beauty, the pink crepe de chine dress and the giddy pink bow in her fluffy brown hair." In discussing Women in Politics she said that, "even though debarred from Parliaments and Congresses women will take part in politics because political situations and public events vitally affect their lives" and concluded:

The student, remembering the laws that strove to make women nonentities, the tremendous force of adverse public opinion, the lack of training and preparation, must repudiate forever the usual query of the scoffer. "Why have there not been more eminent women?" and in amazement ask himself, "How does it happen that there have been any?" To those women who would do great things, who sigh for the old days, when the political queen ruled from the salon or the throne, we may say that today woman stands on the threshold of a broader and more real political life than she has ever known. In the future there may be no Sarah Jennings or Mme. de Maintenons, but when to the million-and-a-quarter of the women of our time, who in the United States, in Australia and in New Zealand are exercising the mighty power of the ballot as fully and freely as their brothers, we shall be able to add other enfranchised women of the world, we will have a mighty political sisterhood, free to realize their patriotic dreams and powerful to bring about better conditions for humanity.

Miss Campbell described in an able and interesting manner Women Scholars of the Middle Ages. Miss Brehm pictured Heroes and Heroines. Mrs. Maud Nathan, who had as a subject Women Warriors, according to the reporter, "remarked as she took off her long white kids that she could not handle it with gloves." Declaring that she did not approve of war, she said that nevertheless whenever there was a fight for municipal reform in New York she was in the thick of it. After showing how women had led wars and fallen in battles she concluded:

In the middle ages, when the electors were called upon to defend their cities at the point of the bayonet, we can understand why men considered that women should be debarred from the privilege of citizenship; but today our cities are not walled, our foes are not without the gates trying to scale the walls. The enemies are within, often found sitting in high places. Today citizens are called upon to fight, not warriors, but vice and corruption and low standards. Are not our mothers quite as capable as our fathers to wage warfare against these, the enemies in our midst?

When I was in The Hague last summer I visited the only kind of battleground which any intelligent, progressive, self-respecting nation ought to show with pride.... There in the peaceful little House in the Wood national disputes are settled, not by sacrificing the lives of thousands of innocent, helpless young men, not by creating thousands of widows and orphans, but by threshing out all matters relating to the dispute in a rational, calm, judicial and honorable way.... It seemed to me that this 20th century battleground, this quiet, peaceful House in the Wood, augured well for a new era, one in which our swords will indeed be turned into ploughshares and our spears into pruning hooks, and the angels of peace and righteousness will hover over us.

The social features of the convention were of an unusually interesting character. The Garrett family mansion had been closed for the winter but Miss Garrett opened it completely, invited as home guests Miss Anthony, Mrs. Howe, Miss Addams, Dr. Thomas and other distinguished visitors and gave a series of entertainments that conferred on the convention a prestige which added much to its influence in that conservative city. In order that its representative men and women might meet the officers and delegates Miss Garrett had a luncheon and dinner every day, the formal invitations reading: "To meet Miss Susan B. Anthony and Governor and Mrs. Warfield"; "To meet Miss Anthony and the speakers of the College Evening," etc.,—on each invitation Miss Anthony's name preceding those of the other guests of honor. All of the speakers on the College Women's evening were her house guests and after the meeting she gave a large reception. To quote again from the Biography: "No one present will ever forget the picture of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Howe sitting side by side on a divan in the large bay window, with a background of ferns and flowers. At their right stood Miss Garrett and Dr. Thomas, at their left Dr. Shaw and the line of eminent college women, with a beautiful perspective of conservatory and art gallery.... There was nothing in the closing years of Miss Anthony's life that offered such encouragement and hope as to see women possessing the power of high intellectual ability, wealth and social position taking up the cause which she had carried with patient toil through poverty and obscurity to this plane of recognition."

While Miss Anthony was a guest in the home of Miss Garrett she and Dr. Thomas asked her what was the greatest service they could render to advance the movement for woman suffrage. She answered that the strongest desire of her later years had been to raise a large fund for the work, which was constantly impeded for the lack of money, but her impaired health had prevented it. This need was frequently discussed during the week, and before the convention closed they promised her that they would try to find a number of women who, like themselves, were unable to take an active part in working for woman suffrage but sincerely believed in it, who would be willing to join together in contributing $12,000 a year for the next five years to help support the work and to show in this practical way their gratitude to Miss Anthony and her associates and their faith in the cause.[47]

The officers, speakers and delegates accepted invitations of President Remsen to visit Johns Hopkins University and received every possible attention; to a special exhibit at the Maryland Historical Art Gallery; to a handsome afternoon tea at the Arundel Club, welcomed by its president, Mrs. William M. Ellicott; to a large reception by the Baltimore Woman Suffrage Club and to other pleasant functions.

The report of Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton called attention to the receipts of $2,000 for 1893 and $12,150 during the past year, a period of thirteen years during which she had been treasurer. "The fact that nowadays the association always has funds," she said, "gives us a standing with the bankers and business men which works largely to our credit." She spoke of the bequests, which had been put at interest, and told of persons who refused to contribute a dollar while they remained unspent. It was the hope of the officers, she said, that they could be used for campaigns and other emergencies and that contributions should pay the running expenses, which was now nearly accomplished. The disbursements during the year, including money advanced for the Oregon campaign, had been $16,565, the amount above receipts being taken from the bequests.

The College Women's meeting took place on Thursday and Miss Anthony was unable to attend the convention the next day. "At the Saturday morning session," the Biography relates, "Dr. Shaw expressed the great regret of all at her enforced absence and their gratitude for the excellent care she was receiving at the home of Miss Garrett; but when the afternoon session opened, in she walked! She had learned that the money was to be raised at this time and she knew she could help, so she conquered her pain and came. When contributions were called for she was first to respond and holding out a little purse she said: 'I want to begin by giving you my purse. Just before I left Rochester my friends gave me a birthday party and made me a present of eighty-six dollars. I suppose they wanted me to do as I liked with the money and I wish to send it to Oregon.'" Under this inspiration the pledges soon reached $4,000. Afterwards Miss Anthony's seventeen five dollar gold pieces were sold for $10 each, and later some of them for $25.

Miss Anthony was not able to leave the house for the next two days, to her great sorrow. The leading feature of the Monday evening session was to be an address by Mrs. Howe but she also was too ill to appear, and realizing the intense disappointment this would be to the audience Miss Anthony made another heroic effort and took her place on the platform. The Rev. Herbert S. Bigelow came from Cincinnati to give an address on The Power of an Idea, in which he said: "If the world were never again to get another new idea, progress would be at an end.... The birth and growth and struggle and triumph of one great idea after another—this is the story of human progress. For more than half a century the men and women who championed the idea of woman suffrage were made the butt of ridicule, yet in the light of history how ridiculous are the enemies of this idea. Fifty years ago no American college but Oberlin was open to women. Now a third of the college students in the United States are women." Mrs. Fessenden of Boston spoke eloquently on The Mount of Aspiration, and Mrs. Lydia A. Coonley Ward of Chicago represented the strong, practical side in her address on The Nearest Duty. Miss Alice Henry of Melbourne gave an interesting account of woman suffrage in Australia, where women now possessed the complete franchise, which had been followed by very advanced laws.

It was not supposed that Miss Anthony would be able to speak, but, stimulated by the occasion and longing no doubt to say what she felt might be her last words, she came forward near the close of the meeting. A report of the occasion in the New York Evening Post said:

The entire house arose and the applause and cheers seemed to last for ten minutes. Miss Anthony looked at the splendid audience of men and women, many of them distinguished in their generation, with calm and dignified sadness. "This is a magnificent sight before me," she said slowly, "and these have been wonderful addresses and speeches I have listened to during the past week. Yet I have looked on many such audiences and in my lifetime I have listened to many such speakers, all testifying to the righteousness, the justice and the worthiness of the cause of woman suffrage. I never saw that great woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, but I have read her eloquent and unanswerable arguments in behalf of the liberty of womankind. I have met and known most of the progressive women who came after her—Lucretia Mott, the Grimke sisters, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone—a long galaxy of great women. I have heard them speak, saying in only slightly different phrases exactly what I heard these newer advocates of the cause say at these meetings. Those older women have gone on and most of those who worked with me in the early years have gone. I am here for a little time only and then my place will be filled as theirs was filled. The fight must not cease; you must see that it does not stop."

There were indeed Miss Anthony's last words to a woman suffrage convention and they expressed the dominant thought which had directed her own life—the fight must not stop!

The address of Mrs. Howe was read at a later session by her daughter, Mrs. Florence Howe Hall, who expressed her mother's extreme disappointment at not being able to be present in person and said: "She regarded this convention as probably the last she should attend and she hoped to clasp hands with many whom she has known in former years and with many whom she has not known. She has heard with joy of its success and sends you her affectionate greeting and glad congratulations." In the course of this scholarly address Mrs. Howe said:

I can well recall the years in which I felt myself averse to the participation of women in political life. The feminine type appeared to me so precious, so indispensable to humanity, that I dreaded any enlargement of its functions lest something of its charm and real power should therein be lost. I have often felt as if some sudden and unlooked for revelation had been vouchsafed to me, for at my first real contact with the suffragists of, say, forty years ago, I was made to feel that womanhood is not only static but also much more dynamic, a power to move as well as a power to stay. True womanliness must grow and not diminish, in its larger and freer exercise. Whom did I see at that first suffrage meeting, first in my experience? Lucy Stone, sweet faced and silver voiced, the very embodiment of Goethe's "eternal feminine"; William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, noble advocates of human freedom; Lucretia Mott, eloquent and beautiful in her holy old age. What did I hear? Doctrine which harmonized with my dearest aspirations, extending as it did the hope which I had supposed was for an elect and superior few to all the motherhood of the human race. The new teaching seemed to me to throw the door open for all women to come up higher, to live upon a higher plane of thought and to exercise in larger and more varied fields the talents, wonderful indeed, to which such limited scope had hitherto been allowed. I felt, too, that the new freedom brought with it an identity of interest which formed a bond of sisterhood and that the great force of cooperation would wonderfully aid the promotion of objects dear to all true women alike....

I have sat in the little chapel in Bethlehem in which tradition places the birth of the Saviour. It seems fitting that it should be adorned with offerings of beautiful things but while I mused there a voice seemed to say to me, "Look abroad! This divine child is no more, he has grown to be a man and a deliverer. Go out into the world. Find his footsteps and follow them. Work, as he did, for the redemption of mankind. Suffer as he did, if need be, derision and obloquy. Make your protest against tyranny, meanness and injustice!"

The weapon of Christian warfare is the ballot, which represents the peaceable assertion of conviction and will. Society everywhere is becoming converted to its use. Adopt it, oh, you women, with clean hands and a pure heart! Verify the best word written by the apostle; "In Christ Jesus there is neither bond nor free, neither male nor female, but a new creature," the harbinger of a new creation!

On the last evening Senorita Carolina Holman Huidobro told of The Women of Chili and Argentina in the Peace Movement. Mrs. Mead spoke on The World's Crisis, and, with an unsurpassed knowledge of her subject, pointed out the vast responsibility of the United States in the cause of Peace and Arbitration, saying in part: "Protected by two oceans, with not a nation on the hemisphere that dares to attack her; with not a nation in the world that is her enemy, rich and with endless resources, this most fortunate nation is the one of all others to lead the world out of the increasing intolerable bondage of armaments. If the United States will take a strong position on gradual, proportional disarmament the first step may be made toward it at the second Hague conference soon to be held.... Of all women the suffragists should be alert and well informed upon these momentous questions. Our battle cry today must be 'Organize the world!' War will cease when concerted action has removed the causes of war and not before."

Mrs. Pauline Steinem, an elected member of the Toledo (O.) school board, showed convincingly the need for Women's Work on Boards of Education. Miss Harriet May Mills (N. Y.) made a clear, logical address on The Right of Way, and Mr. Blackwell (Mass.) discussed from his knowledge of politics The Wooing of Electors.

In closing the convention Dr. Shaw expressed the hope that if it had brought no other truth to the people of Baltimore it had shown that women want the ballot as a means for accomplishing the things that good men and women wish to accomplish. She made an earnest appeal for a deeper interest in the highest things of life and more consecrated work for all that contributes to the progress of humanity.

* * * * *

In order to have the usual hearings before committees of Congress on the submission of a woman suffrage amendment to the Federal Constitution a large delegation went to Washington on February 14, the next day after the convention closed, and the hearing was held the morning of the 15th, Miss Anthony's birthday. She was not able to attend, greatly to her own disappointment and that of the older speakers, whose inspiration she had been for so long on these occasions. She had arranged the first one ever held in 1869 and had missed but two in thirty-seven years.

The hearing before the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage took place in the Marble Room, as usual, Senator Augustus O. Bacon of Georgia in the chair and Dr. Shaw presiding. The speakers were Senorita Huidobro of Chili; Mrs. Elizabeth D. Bacon, president of the Connecticut Suffrage Association; Mrs. Mary Bentley Thomas (Md.); the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell (N. J.); Miss Anne Fitzhugh Miller (N. Y.); Mrs. Upton, Mrs. Steinem and Mrs. Fessenden.

The hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, the Hon. John J. Jenkins (Wis.), chairman, was in charge of Mrs. Florence Kelley, first vice-president of the association. Mrs. Blankenburg told of the herculean efforts of over 2,000 women at the last November election of Philadelphia. Mrs. Harriet A. Eager spoke of the work of a woman's Committee of Moral Education in Boston where there was no law prohibiting the circulation of any kind of literature. They went to the Legislature for such a law with a petition from 32,000 of the representative women of Massachusetts and stayed there six weeks working for it only to have it refused. She told how the women of the State petitioned fifty-five years for a law giving mothers equal guardianship of their children and pointed out the helpless position of women without political power.

Miss Kate M. Gordon of New Orleans, corresponding secretary of the association, began: "My message this morning was particularly for the southern members of the committee but I shall have to ask others present to carry it to them, as I do not believe any of them are here although seven are members." She protested against the attitude of southern members of Congress toward woman suffrage and expressed the deep resentment of southern women at their classification with the disfranchised, saying that their men more than all others should feel the responsibility of lifting them from their present humiliating position. Mrs. Ella S. Stewart, president of the Illinois Suffrage Association, based her argument on simple justice, and said in conclusion: "Your power is absolute and your responsibility correspondingly great. Humiliating as it is for me to beg for what is mine from strangers, I would a thousand times rather be a defrauded mendicant than to hold in my hand the rights, the destiny and the happiness of millions of human beings and have the heart to deny their just claims."

Mrs. Mary Kenney O'Sullivan (Mass.) spoke "as one representing 3,000,000 women who have been forced out of the home through necessity," and said in the course of her strong speech: "I know that the working women of this country are not receiving the highest wages because they have not a vote. Right here in Washington, in your big bindery of the Government, a trade to which I gave the larger part of my life, the women who do equal work with the men do not receive equal pay. The Government more than any other employer has taken advantage of women of my class because they have not a vote.... The workmen, more than any other men, even more than those who are supposed to be statesmen, have seen the necessity for women to have a vote. Ever since 1890 the convention of the American Federation of Labor has unanimously adopted a resolution favoring woman suffrage. I do not believe that any one will deny that the workingmen are the thinking men of the country. I am asking you, in the name of the women I represent at least, to do for us what our working brothers are trying to do—give us our rights."

Mrs. Lucia Ames Mead said in the course of a long address: "The man who talks about home today as if it still gave ample opportunity for woman's productive activity as it once did, is talking about a condition which is as obsolete as the conditions before we had railroads and telegraphs. Woman's educational opportunities and productive capacity are so altered as to require her political status to be altered.... There is a class of women who do not need to earn their living and have a large leisure. They are not idle, they are as active as fireflies, but they are not obliged to be productive as every human being should be.... They have more time than men to study and to apply the principles of justice and mercy and to do that preventive, educational work which is a better defense of country than a squadron of battleships. The suffrage has done much to develop man; the woman of leisure needs it to develop her; the working woman needs it to obtain salutary conditions under which to earn her living; the woman working for reforms needs it so as to accomplish in a year what otherwise she may wait for twenty-five years of pleading and 'influence' to obtain."

Miss Alice Stone Blackwell began her address: "We are not here to ask you to extend suffrage to women but to give to the State Legislatures an opportunity to vote on it, and probably some practical considerations should be offered to show that public sentiment has arrived at a point where it seems to be timely and worth while that this question should be submitted to them. We would like to convince you that this is only right. If three-fourths of them are not prepared to give us suffrage, we shall not get it. If three-fourths of them are prepared, then public sentiment has arrived at a point where we ought to have it." She reviewed the advance of the movement and said: "We could keep this committee here until next week reading to them testimony from representative men and women as to the good results of woman suffrage where it is in operation." The unimpeachable testimony which she then presented from the equal suffrage States filled several pages of the printed record.

Introducing Mrs. Kelley, Chairman Jenkins had spoken of her father, William D. Kelley, known as the Father of the House, and she said:

It is quite true that my father, Judge Kelley of Pennsylvania, came to Congress in the year in which President Lincoln was first elected and for twenty-five years he patiently introduced at every session a resolution preliminary to a hearing for the woman suffragists. Through all that period of ridicule, when the hearings were not conducted so respectfully or in so friendly a manner as this one has been, he continued to introduce that resolution. In 1890 death removed him from the House of Representatives and I come here as the second generation. I assure you that I and the rest of the women throughout the country will come from generation to generation, just so long as it is necessary. Next year my oldest son will vote and that generation will take up the task on behalf of the enfranchisement of the women of this country.... Every time we come there is some gain to record, but, between the times, at least 1,000,000 new immigrants have come into this country who will have to be brought to the American way of thinking about women before they will vote to give the ballot to those who are born here and whose forefathers have asked that we be enfranchised.

It is an ignominious way to treat us, to send us to the Chinaman in San Francisco, to the enfranchised Indians of other western States, to the negroes, Italians, Hungarians, Poles, Bohemians and innumerable Slavic immigrants in Pennsylvania and other mining States to obtain our right of suffrage. There yet remain forty-three States in which women are not enfranchised and it looks as if it might take us a hundred years, at the present rate of progress, before we can relieve you and your successors from these annual hearings. What we are asking today is that you shall take a short cut and not oblige our great-grandchildren to come here and ask for a Federal Amendment.

Although the women received courteous treatment and a respectful hearing from both committees no report was made by either, and the only advantage gained was that as usual thousands of franked copies of the hearings were sent to the national suffrage headquarters to be distributed throughout the States.

* * * * *

For some time arrangements had been under way to celebrate the birthday of Miss Anthony in the city where this had been so often done and which she loved above all others. By carefully conserving her strength she was able to attend the evening ceremonies in the Church of Our Father (Universalist) where many suffrage conventions had been held and where six years before, at the age of 80, she had resigned the presidency and laid down the gavel for the last time. Letters of congratulation were read from President Roosevelt, Vice-President Fairbanks, members of Congress and other prominent men; from Mrs. Russell Sage, Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick and other eminent women, and from organizations in this and other countries. Well known men and women brought their greetings in person. To quote again from her Biography:

"On account of her extreme weakness it was not expected that Miss Anthony would speak but at the close of the evening she seemed to feel that she must say one last word, and rising, with a tender, spiritual expression on her dear face, she stood beside Miss Shaw and explained in a few touching words how the great work of the National Association had been placed in her charge; turning to the other national officers on the stage she reached out her hand to them and expressed her appreciation of their loyal support, and then, realizing that her strength was almost gone, she said: 'There have been others also just as true and devoted to the cause—I wish I could name every one—but with such women consecrating their lives'—here she paused for an instant and seemed to be gazing into the future, then dropping her arms to her side she finished her sentence—'failure is impossible!' These were the last words Miss Anthony ever spoke in public and from that moment they became the watchword of those who accepted as their trust the work she laid down." One month later to the day she was laid to rest with her loved ones.

FOOTNOTES:

[44] Part of Call: Never have we had so much cause to issue a thanksgiving proclamation. Never has it been so easy to love our enemies, for they have combined to fight for us in their courses.

The inevitable logic of events is with us. All over the world intelligent women are interested in securing better protection for their homes and their children.... They are called upon to take part in civic affairs, and social and economic conditions force them into the world's broad field of battle where there is no place for non-combatants. The time has gone by for subterfuge and indirection.... The American Republic settles its questions in the light of day at the ballot box. No one, man or woman, has ever lost influence by the possession of power. We do not ask the ballot simply as a right, though if it be a right it cannot be rightfully denied us; we do not ask it as a privilege, though if it be a privilege it must be ours unless we admit the existence of a privileged class. We demand it because it is a duty and one which no good citizen has a right to shirk.

If you are indifferent come and be convinced. What we ask is not revolutionary but is the reasonable and just demand of every being living under a democratic form of government. If you are opposed, come and let us reason together, consider our points of agreement and waive for a moment those of difference.... Let us have the truth for authority and we shall not need authority for truth....

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, Honorary President. ANNA HOWARD SHAW, President. FLORENCE KELLEY, Vice-President-at-Large. KATE M. GORDON, Corresponding Secretary. ALICE STONE BLACKWELL, Recording Secretary. HARRIET TAYLOR UPTON, Treasurer. LAURA CLAY, } Auditors. ANNICE JEFFREYS MYERS, }

[45] Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, by Ida Husted Harper, Volume III, page 1383.

[46] The clergymen of the city gave cordial assistance to the convention and among those who opened different sessions with prayer were the Reverends Dr. Van Meter of the Woman's College; George Scholl, D.D., Lutheran Church; Lloyd Coblentz, St. Paul's Reformed Church; John Y. Dobbins, Grace M. E. Church; E. L. Watson, Harlem Park M. E. Church; Alfred R. Hussey, First Independent Church; Peter Ainslee, Christian Temple; Oliver Huckel, Associate Congregational Church; Rabbi Adolf Guttmacher, Madison Avenue Temple; Marshall V. McDuffie, North Avenue Baptist Church; Ezra K. Bell, First English Lutheran Church; Edward W. Wroth, All Saints' Episcopal Church.

[47] Although Miss Anthony lived only one month longer every day was made happy by the thought that those who would carry on the work would have the great assistance of this fund. A committee was formed the following summer with Miss Garrett as chairman and Dr. Thomas as treasurer and the work of securing subscriptions was begun on Miss Anthony's birthday the next year, 1907. By May 1 the $60,000 had been subscribed and put at the disposal of the national board of officers. The sum was completed by a subscription of $20,000 from "a friend" and not until after the death of Mrs. Russell Sage, who had headed the list with $5,000, was it known that she was the donor. Mrs. Sage had made generous subscriptions at other times. The full list of donors will be found in Miss Anthony's Biography, page 1401.



CHAPTER VII.

NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1907.

The six preceding chapters have described at length and in detail the annual conventions of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in order to show that those who took part in them were the representative women and men of the day. Their addresses, reports of committees, resolutions adopted and other proceedings demonstrate the wide scope of the activities of this organization, which from 1869 was the foundation and the bulwark of the vast movement to obtain equality of rights for women. The Thirty-ninth convention met in Music Hall, Fine Arts Building, Chicago, Feb. 14-19, 1907, and received a cordial welcome to the State of Lincoln, who in 1836 was almost the first public man in the United States to declare in favor of suffrage for women.[48] Lorado Taft's bust of Susan B. Anthony, its pedestal draped in the Stars and Stripes, adorned the platform and a portrait of Lucy Stone looked down on the speakers in serene benediction. The national president, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, was in the chair and addresses of welcome were made for Illinois by Mrs. Ella S. Stewart, president of the State Equal Suffrage Association; for the churches by the Right Rev. Samuel E. Fallows, Presiding Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church; for the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union by Mrs. Susanna M. D. Fry, its corresponding secretary. Mrs. Fannie J. Fernald, president of the Maine Suffrage Association, and Mrs. Mary S. Sperry, president of that of California, responded and in introducing them Dr. Shaw said: "These responses from the Atlantic and the Pacific Coasts represent greetings from all the women between them." The presidents of the Chicago North Side, the South Side and the Evanston Political Equality Clubs were presented and received with applause. Bishop Fallows expressed the wish that what he should say could be voiced by the ministers of all the churches in the land and said: "I am proud that from the period of the Civil War and a little before, when the cause of the emancipation of the slave was the foremost question of the time and was only settled by the horrors of a long struggle—from that time I espoused the cause of woman suffrage. I hope there will be no need to fight for it as we fought during those long years but at least there should be a war of words until women have the power to deposit a ballot, until they have complete enfranchisement. Your case is just; yours is a righteous cause. I cannot help believing that the exercise of the suffrage by women is necessary to the welfare and growth of the nation. Your cause stands for the home; it stands for political purity, for civic righteousness, for everything that is for the betterment of the State, and I should be guilty of high treason to my deepest convictions if I did not bid a hearty God-speed to your efforts until every State shall recognize the equality of woman before the great law of civic redemption, as God has recognized her right before the great law of human redemption."

The appointment of the usual committees was followed by a symposium on Municipal Suffrage, at this time a vital issue in Chicago, as a spirited campaign was in progress to secure a clause giving it to women in the new city charter which a convention was preparing.[49] Mrs. Ellen M. Henrotin was to preside but she yielded to Mrs. Florence Kelley, who had to leave the city, and later took Mrs. Kelley's place in presiding over the symposium on Industrial Conditions. Professor Sophonisba Breckinridge (Ky.), of Chicago University, gave an able address on Municipal Housekeeping, saying in the course of it:

In all the things that make the city a good place in which to work, the woman is as much concerned as any one. When it comes to the questions which affect women, she has of course a peculiar ability to speak, a peculiar responsibility and an obligation to assume every right necessary to carry out that responsibility. It is incumbent upon her to secure the power to move in the most direct way upon the obstacles which lie in her path in the controlling of conditions.... It is to the housekeeper that I want to call your attention, rather than to the working woman. She has to decide how she will use her time, energy and money to promote the life, health, comfort and welfare of her family. The little group must live in a house. If she resides in a city, it is a matter of concern what shall be the structure of it, whether made of material endangering the household or not; if in an apartment house, she is concerned in the regulations under which such houses are built and controlled, in the fire escapes, the sort of gas, the dimensions of the apartments, the order of the rooms, the plumbing, etc.

It is obvious that today no woman can be a competent housekeeper unless she has an intelligent knowledge of these subjects. She must exercise a control over the ordinances and have something to say about the men who make these ordinances and who enforce them. She has not the power she needs as a housekeeper unless she feels that the officials of the city are as much responsible to her, although they are not chosen by her alone, as are the domestic servants whom she does select. Her collective responsibility is just as great as her individual responsibility.... Women cannot stop either at the bottom or the top by asking for Municipal suffrage. If woman is going to be a complete housekeeper she must be a member of a political group and that leads to the demand for Municipal, State and Federal suffrage.

Miss Kate M. Gordon (La.) told of the remarkable work the women of New Orleans had been able to do with their taxpayers' right to vote on matters of special taxation. "If the women of one part of the country more than another need the suffrage," she declared, "it is those of the South." The Chicago Tribune commented: "As Miss Gordon sat down all the women clapped, many waved handkerchiefs and the applause continued several minutes." Mrs. Lilla Day Monroe described the excellent effects of the Municipal suffrage enjoyed by all women in Kansas, the only State where it existed in full. She called attention to the fact that the next day, February 15, would be the 20th anniversary of its granting by the Legislature. Miss Anna E. Nicholes of Chicago spoke on The Ballot for Working Women, saying in part:

The women who work in our city have a special claim to Municipal enfranchisement, inasmuch as they not only help create Chicago's wealth but are subject to the industrial conditions regulated by the city voters....

Legislation is becoming more and more industrial in its aspect. Abating sweating and its evils, inspection of toilets, hygienic conditions in shops are now matters frequently controlled by our city fathers. Women are more and more coming into the industrial field. The 5,000,000 now gainfully employed in the United States represent one-fifth of the total number of wage-earners and this number are non-voters. This is a serious handicap to labor in its efforts to secure humane industrial legislation.... To these working women this matter of suffrage is an economic question—a bread-and-butter necessity. It is a fact, acknowledged by many large employers of labor and stated also by Carroll D. Wright in Government bulletins, that one of the leading reasons for the preference of women wage-earners to men is that they can be secured more cheaply. Employers are frank in acknowledging that the women work for less, that they are more reliable, more temperate, less inclined to strike and more faithful.

It was quite as much for the industrial opportunity as for maintaining personal liberty that Lincoln insisted on the necessity of enfranchising the negroes. Such prominent economists as the Webbs of England, Carroll D. Wright and Richard T. Ely of our own country state that woman's lack of the ballot is one of the determining causes in placing her in the ranks of the cheap laborer with all its attending evils. So placed she becomes a menace in industry and drags down the wages of the men. At the last convention of the American Federation of Labor this necessity of the ballot for the working woman was recognized when the resolution was adopted stating that woman would never come into the full wage scale until she came into her full rights of citizenship.... To the large body of women in our city who have to shift for themselves as completely as men do Municipal suffrage would mean a higher rating industrially, a fairer compensation for their labor and more possible living conditions.

Mrs. Kelley, who, as executive secretary of the National Consumers' League for years and before that as State Factory Inspector of Illinois, had an unsurpassed knowledge of the conditions that affect women and children, gave a scathing review of the failure of Congress to enact protective laws and of the reactionary decisions of Supreme Courts. "Do we ask what this has to do with Municipal suffrage?" she inquired and answered:

If we are not to be given power to help determine our own laws by electing men to Congress in the larger field of the republic; and if, one by one, the States are to repeal or annul the legislation that once gave some slender protection to women and youth, there remains at least the city. It should be our immediate demand that in all matters of the life of a city we shall have a word. The greatest numbers of working people are in the cities. If our boards of health, our school boards, our street-cleaning departments, our water boards—if all these local bodies which have most to do with the health of working people, as with the health of other people, in the great centers of population—can be given the additional stimulus which comes from the lively interest of women, (both those who support themselves and those who have more leisure), then a very large proportion of the working women can have more adequate care for life and health and the children will have education beyond that which we have as yet achieved.

Does any one here believe that if the women had power to make themselves felt in the administration of school affairs we should have 80,000 children on half-time in New York City? Truly, if the mothers of these school children, as well as their fathers, spoke in the elections, the interest in the schools would be quite a different one. Does any one believe that if the women of this community could make themselves felt more effectively than by "persuasion," if they could make their will felt, we should have such a smoky sky as characterizes Chicago? Does any one believe that we should have to boil all the water before we dared to drink it? It would make a vast difference if women in American cities could enforce their will and conscience by the ballot instead of by the indefinitely slow work of persuasion.

The first evening was devoted to a more extended welcome and to the president's address. On behalf of the city Dr. Howard S. Taylor represented Mayor Edward F. Dunne and in an eloquent speech he reviewed the various epochs in the country's history. "Take, for instance," he said, "the first chapter, when the old Liberty Bell clanged out to the world the doctrine that 'all men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and to secure these rights governments are established among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.' There is no casuistry, however dextrous, that can take woman out of that charter." He referred to pioneer days and the heavy part borne by women and said: "But when the foundations had been established and the pioneer fathers got down to writing the constitutions they left the pioneer mothers out." He spoke of the time in the '50's when "the Government invited the people from all over the world to come and help us settle our political, social and commercial questions but did not invite American mothers, sisters, wives and daughters." "Then came the Civil War," he said, "and the large part taken in it by women and when the war was over the Government made the great army of emancipated slaves citizens and gave the men the ballot but forgot the patriotic white women of the country." "I know," he said in conclusion, "that if the women of Chicago and Illinois were enfranchised the corruption of the city council and the Legislature would be much less than it is. We should have a higher state of morals among public men and better laws on the statute books."

When the speaker finished Dr. Shaw observed: "We ought to thank Mayor Dunne for substituting a man like Dr. Taylor for himself." This brought Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch to her feet to say: "Mayor Dunne would have made just as good a suffrage speech as Dr. Taylor." "I did not intend any reflection on the Mayor," answered Dr. Shaw with a quiet smile, "but I think he showed excellent judgment."

The Chicago Woman's Club of over a thousand members, a recognized force in the great city, sent its greetings through its president, Mrs. Gertrude E. Blackwelder. Mrs. Minnie E. Watkins, as president of the State Federation of Women's Clubs, gave a welcome in the name of its membership of 294 clubs and told of the increasing growth of suffrage sentiment among them. "Through the work of our Industrial, Civil Service and Legislative Committees," she said, "we have learned our need of the ballot." The Rev. Charles R. Henderson, Professor of Sociology, an earnest suffragist, welcomed the convention, saying in part:

As I am to represent the University of Chicago, it will not do for me to make a speech on either side. No one person can represent the sentiments of four hundred men, who all the time are in an attitude of friendly hostility to anything that comes up. I think, however, there is one point of sympathy with us who are engaged in the work of investigation, trying to get beyond the frontier of present knowledge of all the sciences. It is this: As soon as anything comes to be in the possession of the majority, it loses interest for us; as long as there is something to do, we are interested in it. When the effort for woman suffrage is a thing of the past, then the people will take care of it. Our duty is to make the public sentiment and let some one else put it into legal form....

They say that women cannot manage the great questions of government. That has yet to be submitted to the final scientific test of experiment. As a matter of fact, today the one highest, finest, noblest task of society, if not of government, is the task of education and the inculcation of religion and of ideals; and in this land, which in most respects leads all lands, woman has the first word in this matter, as hers is the strongest and the wisest word, and her influence, her thought and her character lead upward and on. I need not, in this presence, argue the question.

I do not speak merely for the University of Chicago. I am proud to belong to a university of letters, a republic that has its branches in all parts of the civilized world. And I am glad that, from the time I started to learn to read, in my own education in this Middle West, from my childhood with my mother, through the church, the Sunday school, the elementary and secondary schools, the college and now the university, I have seen women side by side with men, sharing the same teaching and having the same teachers. That is what we stand for in the Middle West.... The foundation of our institutions throughout the West is this fundamental law, not to be changed, that if there is any advantage to be had, women shall have it now and forever.

Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, national recording secretary, and Miss Jane Campbell, secretary of the Pennsylvania Association, responded. The Hon. Oliver W. Stewart spoke on The Logic of Popular Government. He pointed out that there has been a steady movement of mankind toward government by the people for the people and said in part: