In our own country we can see this growth clearly. Take the election of the President. There was at first no thought that the people should elect him but do you not see how quickly they assimilated the machinery which was provided? We have not changed the machinery but we have changed the spirit, so that instead of the electoral college deliberating and choosing a President, it is scarcely more than a stenographer to take the dictation of the public. The people have absorbed the power themselves, and you can write it as true that they do not surrender any power which they have acquired as the result of their own struggles. If any change should come it would be to give the people a more direct voice rather than a more indirect voice. Take the change in the convention system toward direct primaries. Do you not see how, in spite of politicians, the people have been writing direct primary laws? It is a part of the general movement toward popular government....

There is a steady drift in this direction the world over and it would be an anomalous condition if that movement could exist and there could be at the same time a retrograde movement as to the rights of women.... I have grown philosophical with reference to the temporary defeats that we suffer. The thing to do is to commiserate those who bring about the defeats. I look at the black disgrace with which they will live in history who said they would die for their own rights and yet were tyrants enough to deny the rights of others.... The hour is quickly coming when the genius of our government, where it is true to itself, will have to give the ballot to womankind. May that day come speedily!

This was Dr. Shaw's 60th birthday and many pleasant references had been made to it by the delegates. She began her president's address by saying: "We have never before been more enthusiastic than today. Victory has not come in the United States but we are not working for ourselves alone. Wherever freedom comes to any woman that is our victory and when the new constitution of Finland granted absolute equality to its woman citizens, that was our victory." Municipal suffrage had been given to the women of Natal, South Africa, she said: "and now at the foot of Mt. Ararat, where the ark rested, the Catholicos, or High Priest of that conservative people and religion, the Armenians, has issued an edict that the women of the church shall not only have a voice in the election of its officers but also shall be eligible to official position." She referred to the recent defeat of the suffrage amendment in Oregon and said: "All honor to those 37,000 men who voted for it; their descendants will not be ashamed of their fathers' act. There are today organizations of Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution and there will some day be one of 'Sons and Daughters of the Evolution of Women's Freedom,' but there will never be one of the Tories who fought against that Revolution or this Evolution," and she continued:

This year I took for my motto those splendid words: "Truth loses many battles but always wins its war." We did not win save as those who fight for the truth are always the people who win. There never was, there never will be greater defeat in any human life than the victory which comes to the man or woman who is fighting against the truth, and there never can be a greater victory to any human soul than the fact that it is fighting for the truth, whether it wins or not.... This has been a year of victory in that more women have been enfranchised than in any preceding year. We have the largest membership that we have ever had. We come together in hope and in the firm determination that we will fight it out on this line if it takes all summer and all the summers of our life, and then the battle will not be finished unless the victory is absolutely won for all women.... While we have cause to rejoice we have also cause for sorrow. As an organization it has been the saddest year we have known or ever can know, for there has gone out from among us the visible presence of her who was our leader for over fifty years, and I have just come with others directly from the home in Rochester where we attended the funeral services of the dear sister Mary, who was the first of the two to enter the movement and was always the faithful co-worker and home-maker. Both have folded their hands in rest since our last convention. Each gave her whole life to the cause of woman and each in passing away left all she had to this cause. The sorrow is ours, the peace and the triumphal reward of loving service are theirs. I hope we shall spend no time in mourning and turning to the past but with our faces toward the future, strengthened by the inspiration we have received from our great leader, go on fighting her battle and God's battle until the complete victory is won.

With two exceptions this was the only national convention during the thirty-nine years that had not been animated by the presence of Miss Anthony and the second day—February 15, her 87th birthday—was largely devoted to her.[50] There were three reports on Memorials. One was presented by Mrs. May Wright Sewall (Ind.) for the Executive Committee of the National Council of Women and contemplated a bust to be executed in marble by the sculptor, Adelaide Johnson, who had made the one in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. A second was presented by Mrs. Mary T. Lewis Gannett of Rochester, N. Y., for an Anthony Memorial Building for the women students of the university of that city, who had been admitted largely through the effort of Miss Anthony. [Life and Work, page 1221.] A third was for a $100,000 Memorial Fund for the work of the National American Association. The report of the committee for this third fund, which was presented by Mrs. Avery, stated that the nearness of success for woman suffrage now depended on securing the money to do the necessary work of propaganda, organization, publicity, etc., and that the most fitting memorial to Miss Anthony would be a fund of not less than $100,000 to be used exclusively for "the furtherance of the woman suffrage cause in the United States in such amounts and for such purposes as the general officers of the association shall from time to time deem best." It also provided that the officers should be permitted to select eleven women to act as trustees of this fund, six of whom should be from the official board. This report was unanimously adopted. Mrs. Upton, the national treasurer, at once appealed for pledges and the delegates responded with about $24,000. The business committee of the association elected as its six members Dr. Shaw, Mrs. Avery, Mrs. Upton, Miss Blackwell, Miss Gordon and Miss Clay. Mrs. Henry Villard of New York; Mrs. Pauline Agassiz Shaw of Boston and Miss Jane Addams of Chicago were the only others selected.[51]

According to the custom for a number of years Miss Lucy E. Anthony was requested to present in the name of the association framed portraits of Miss Anthony to various institutions—in this instance to Hull House and the Chicago Political Equality League. Telegrams were received from the Mayor of Des Moines, Ia.; from the Utah Council of Suffrage Women; from the Interurban Woman Suffrage Council of Greater New York, saying they had observed the day by opening headquarters, and from a number of other sources telling that the birthday was being celebrated in ways that would have been pleasing to Miss Anthony.

The evening memorial services were beautiful and impressive. Mason Slade at the organ rendered the great chorus—Guilmant; Cantilene—Wheeldon; Marche Militaire—Schubert. The Rev. Mecca Marie Varney of Chicago offered prayer. During the evening Miss Marie Ludwig gave an exquisite harp solo and Mrs. Jennie F. W. Johnson sang with deep feeling Tennyson's Crossing the Bar, a favorite poem of Miss Anthony's. A telegram of greeting from the International Woman Suffrage Alliance was sent through its president, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt. A tribute of an intimate and loving nature was paid by Miss Emily Howland of Sherwood, a friend of half a century, in which she said: "The first time I ever met Miss Anthony was at an anti-slavery meeting in my own shire town of Auburn, N. Y., which was broken up by a mob and we took refuge with Mrs. Martha Wright, a sister of Lucretia Mott." She spoke of Miss Anthony's "genius for friendship" and quoted the lines: "The bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the daring." Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery gave a number of instances during their travel in Europe which showed Miss Anthony's strong humanitarianism.

Mrs. Fannie Barrier Williams of Chicago paid touching tribute in behalf of the colored people, in which she said: "My presence on this platform shows that the gracious spirit of Miss Anthony still survives in her followers.... When Miss Anthony took up the cause of women she did not know them by their color, nationality, creed or birth, she stood only for the emancipation of women from the thraldom of sex. She became an invincible champion of anti-slavery. In the half century of her unremitting struggle for liberty, more liberty, and complete liberty for negro men and women in chains and for white women in their helpless subjection to man's laws, she never wavered, never doubted, never compromised. She held it to be mockery to ask man or woman to be happy or contented if not free. She saw no substitute for liberty. When slavery was overthrown and the work of reconstruction began she was still unwearied and watchful. She had an intimate acquaintance with the leading statesmen of the times. Her judgment and advice were respected and heard in much of the legislation that gave a status of citizenship to the millions of slaves set free."

The principal address was made by the Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones of Chicago, a devoted friend, with whose courageous and independent spirit Miss Anthony had been in deep sympathy.[52] Tributes were paid to other devoted adherents to the cause who had died during the year and Henry B. Blackwell in closing his own said: "The workers pass on but the work remains." Dr. Shaw took up the words, making them the text of a beautiful memorial address, calling the long list one by one, beginning with the Anthony sisters and Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker and naming among the other veteran workers: Rosa L. Segur, Ohio; Emily B. Ketcham, Michigan; the Hon. H. S. Greenleaf, Professor Henry A. Ward, Eliza Thayer, Emogene Dewey and Mrs. James Sargent, New York; Virginia Durant Young, South Carolina; Ellen Powell Thompson, District of Columbia; Laura Moore, Vermont; Mrs. Henry W. Blair and Mrs. Oliver Branch, New Hampshire; Susan W. Lippincott, New Jersey, and many others.

The all-pervading spirit of the convention was that of carrying forward Miss Anthony's work. The board of officers was re-elected almost unanimously except that Dr. Jeffreys Myers, who wished to retire as second auditor, was replaced by Mrs. Mary S. Sperry of San Francisco. Mrs. Avery, for twenty-one years corresponding secretary, had returned from a long sojourn in Europe and the desire was so strong to have her on the board again that the office of second vice-president was created. At Mrs. Florence Kelley's insistence she was allowed to yield the first vice-presidency to Mrs. Avery and take the second place as having less responsibility.

The report of the headquarters secretary, Miss Elizabeth J. Hauser, told of the sending out of 19,000 letters and 182,264 pieces of literature within the year. It gave the names of many eminent men and women who were contributors to this literature, much of which first appeared in prominent magazines and newspapers, and spoke of the excellent propaganda work of The Public, edited by Louis F. Post. It emphasized the important accession of the North American Review and the Harper publications, which had come under the management of Colonel George Harvey. The report told of the bequest of Miss Anthony to the National American Association of all the remaining bound volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage, which had been sent to the headquarters and weighed ten tons.[53] Fifty sets had been sold during the year. Files of the Reports of the national conventions from 1900 to 1906 inclusive had been placed in one hundred of the largest libraries in the United States. The association arranged with Mrs. Harper for the exclusive sale of the Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony. The convention voted that Progress, edited by Mrs. Upton, should be changed to a weekly and enlarged, and every suffrage club was urged to subscribe for Jus Suffragii, the official paper of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. Thousands of copies of new and valuable literature had been sold. After the press work was turned over to the headquarters 1,200 copies of articles of national interest were supplied each week to the fifty-eight State chairmen of the press committee from July to January and 28,875 copies of 118 news items and 50 special articles were sent to prominent newspapers.

The important work with organizations and their conventions was not neglected and during the past year they were asked specifically for a resolution calling on Congress to submit a Federal Woman Suffrage Amendment, with the following result:

The American Federation of Labor at its annual meeting in Minneapolis covered this request in a series of carefully worded resolutions. Other important organizations which gave official endorsement within the year are the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union, National Purity Conference, National Free Baptist Woman's Missionary Society, Spiritualists of the United States and Canada, Ladies of the Modern Maccabees, International Brotherhood of Bookbinders, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Patrons of Husbandry, National Grange, and the United Mine Workers of America. To these we may add the fourteen other national organizations reported in previous years which have received fraternal delegates from our association or given formal endorsement, making a total of twenty-five large associations which responded favorably to our "convention resolutions" requests.

For the first time the General Federation of Women's Clubs invited our president to take part in the program at the Biennial. Resolutions have been reported to headquarters from the State W. C. T. U.'s of seven States; the Letter Carriers' Associations of Illinois, Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania; the State Granges of thirteen States; the State Federations of Labor of fifteen States. The Prohibitionists of eight States have had woman suffrage in their party platforms; the Socialists always declare for it and in California the Democrats, the Independence League and the Union Labor parties incorporated planks in their State platforms. The State Teachers' Associations of California and Illinois, the Sons of Temperance of Connecticut and Illinois, the Good Templars of Maine, the Congress of Mothers and the Federations of Women's Clubs of Illinois and New Hampshire are among other organizations which have acted favorably on some phase of the woman suffrage question.[54]

Saturday afternoon was devoted entirely to social affairs. They began with a luncheon given at Hull House by Miss Jane Addams to officers, delegates and alternates, after which the activities of this remarkable institution were explained. Systematic sight-seeing was carried out, groups of the guests being personally conducted to the Field Columbian Museum, the Art Museum, the big department stores and other points of interest. One group went to Chicago University, where Dr. Shaw addressed the students of the Women's Union and the College Girls' Suffrage Club. Afterwards they were entertained by the Dean of Women, Miss Marian Talbot. In the evening the Chicago Woman's Club gave a large reception, its president, Mrs. Blackwelder, and the chairman of the Social Committee, Miss Clara Dixon, being assisted in receiving by the officers of the association. Its handsome club rooms in the Fine Arts Building were placed at the service of the delegates throughout the convention.

Ministers of Chicago who opened the sessions with prayers were Dr. J. A. Rondthaler of the Normal Park Presbyterian Church; Dr. Austin K. de Blois of the First Baptist Church, and the Rev. Jean F. Loba of the First Congregational Church, Evanston. A number of pulpits in the city were filled by officers and delegates Sunday morning. The Studebaker Theater was taken for the regular service of the convention in the afternoon in order to accommodate the large audience. The Rev. Kate Hughes of Chicago offered prayer. Dr. Shaw presided and read a message from Miss Mary S. Anthony dictated a few days before her death, when Miss Shaw asked her what word she would like to send to the convention. It said in part:

Until we, a so-called Christian nation, put into practice those principles of justice which we claim are the foundation of our national greatness, we cannot hope to inspire confidence in the people of the world in our lofty pretensions of freedom and fair play for all. The wrong which today outranks all others is the disfranchisement of the mothers of the race. So long as this injustice toward women continues, just so long will men fail to recognize justice in its application to each other. This one question puts all else into the background and until we can establish equality between men and women we shall never realize the full development of which manhood and womanhood are capable. Because I believe this so thoroughly I have given the best of myself and the best work of my life to help obtain political freedom for women, knowing that upon this rests the hope not only of the freedom of men but of the onward civilization of the world. I therefore urge upon the delegates and members of the National Association not to lose courage, no matter what befalls, but to work on in hope and faith, knowing well that the time of the coming of woman's political liberty depends largely upon the zeal and unwearying service of those who believe in its justice.

The Rev. Herbert S. Bigelow of Cincinnati in a strong address showed the Value of the Ballot. Miss Addams told with much feeling of the recent campaign for the Municipal franchise, the objections they had to meet, the character of the opposition and how hard it was for women to be patient.

Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch gave an able address under the title "Why Not?" a study in Prejudice and Superstition, reviewing the objections to woman suffrage and finding their origin in Orientalism, in the military ideal, in political expediency. He ended his refutation of all of them by saying: "All our American institutions will be protected and benefited when we open the doors and give women, who never should have been denied it, the right to govern themselves, to govern the country in conjunction with men and to decide the issues that affect their own interests. Men have had this right for themselves alone too long. The day will come, my sisters, when the conscience of the world will be aroused to such a degree that no one will dare question the justice of your movement."

Many greetings were received through letters, telegrams and fraternal delegates. Prof. John A. Scott, representing president A. M. Harris of Northwestern University, Evanston, brought an invitation for speakers to address the students and Miss Gordon and Miss Caroline Lexow responded. In his greeting Professor Scott said: "I believe in woman suffrage because I believe in the home.... I don't care a whit for the argument that women with property should have a vote. Property will always be represented and it does not so much matter whether the property-holding women have a vote or not but it is of immense importance to those women who work for their living. That they have no representation is a great menace to those who are nominally free but who must compete with slaves. Women are economic entities and they should be represented. Labor without representation is as wrong as taxation without representation."

E. M. Nockels, fraternal delegate from the American Federation of Labor, addressed the convention and read a letter from its president, Samuel Gompers, expressing the hope of universal suffrage for women. Mrs. Emma S. Olds brought greetings from the Ladies of the Maccabees of the World, and Mrs. Martin Barbe, the first vice-president, from the National Council of Jewish Women. A letter from Mrs. Mary Wood Swift (Calif.), president of the National Council of Women, gave its fraternal greetings. A cordial letter was read from Mrs. Mary B. Clay of Kentucky and telegrams from Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford, Dr. Frances Woods, Mrs. Ida Porter Boyer and the Canadian Woman Suffrage Association. Telegrams of appreciation were sent to Julia Ward Howe, Clara Barton, Caroline E. Merrick, Emily P. Collins, Col. T. W. Higginson, Margaret W. Campbell, Judith W. Smith, Caroline M. Severance, Emma J. Bartol, Armenia S. White, Elizabeth Smith Miller, Ellen S. Sargent, Sarah L. Willis and Charlotte L. Pierce, all old and beloved suffrage workers.

The symposium on Industrial Conditions of Women and Children, with Mrs. Henrotin presiding, occupied one afternoon. She pointed out the revolution in the work of women by its being taken from the home into the open market where they had to follow; described their handicaps, the immense importance of their labor, the business ability that many had developed, the property they had accumulated, the taxes they pay; she said if they had a voice in deciding how these taxes should be spent it would not only be a splendid thing for the city financially but morally, and urged that they should have the power of the suffrage. Graham Romeyn Taylor of Chicago paid high tribute to the work of women's organizations in all movements for civic improvement and described that of the Women's Clubs in Chicago; spoke of the Consumer's League also and declared the Women's Trade Union League most effective of all in bettering the condition of working women. He predicted close cooperation between this League and the National Suffrage Association. Miss Alice Henry of Australia spoke very effectively from her knowledge of the conditions of labor in her own country and the investigation she was making in the United States. Miss Casey, president of the Chicago Working Women's Suffrage Association, gave facts from personal knowledge showing their need of the vote. James C. Kelliher, former president of the National Letter Carriers' Association, spoke briefly and to the point. Miss Mary McDowell of Chicago made the principal address entitled The Working Women as a National Asset, in which she showed how little conception Congress and the Courts had of the legislation needed in their behalf and the sins of omission and commission that had resulted. In closing she said:

We need a body of facts so strong that the Judiciary will see the light. We need a body of facts that will teach housekeepers not to scorn these women because they can not get a cook. We need a body of facts to teach working men that this work of women is something which has come to stay. There are going to be more women earning their living in the future than in the past. These girls are pioneers in a movement that we do not yet quite understand. I do not believe that our Heavenly Father permits so large a movement as these five million women in one country earning their own living without there being in it something that is for the best.... As a means to our work we want the suffrage. We all get very tired of the woman question. I will discuss the human question with any one but I will not discuss the woman question, because I think that is past. If women are going into industry, if they are going to have their places of responsibility, then they must more and more meet the responsibility that their brothers have with whom they work. It is not fair to the working brother to let the girls come in and cut down the wages and have no sense of responsibility, no feeling of permanency. It is a very great danger. Therefore, working women should have the ballot to make them feel that they, too, are responsible citizens....

All reverence to the work that the suffragists have done! We have always honored dear Miss Anthony and we all owe gratitude to you women who have been so long in this cause making a way for the rest of us. The working women are joining your ranks because they know that they must do so.

The report of the Congressional Committee, Mrs. Catt chairman, was read by Mrs. Kelley. It said that after the excellent hearings before the committees of Congress the preceding winter had no effect it was decided to ask the cooperation of the General Federation of Women's Clubs. This was done and its Industrial Advisory Board agreed to send out a circular letter. The association's Congressional Committee prepared one which the federation's board sent to 4,000 individual clubs asking them to question the members of Congress from their districts as to their opinion of a Federal Woman Suffrage Amendment and the request was largely complied with. A resolution was adopted that the association urge concerted action among the State auxiliaries to secure the submission by Congress of a Sixteenth Amendment forbidding disfranchisement on account of sex and that they be recommended to make it a feature of their work to obtain from their Legislatures a resolution in favor of such an amendment. A telegram of greeting was sent to Mrs. Catt and she was appointed fraternal delegate to the Peace Conference in New York in April.

Hard and conscientious work was shown in the reports of the chairmen of all the committees: Legislation for Civil Rights, Mrs. Lucretia L. Blankenburg; Peace and Arbitration, Mrs. Lucia Ames Mead; Presidential Suffrage, Henry B. Blackwell; Libraries, Mrs. Ida Porter Boyer; Literature, Miss Alice Stone Blackwell; Enrollment, Mrs. Oreola Williams Haskell; Membership, Miss Laura Clay, and others. Miss Clay urged that the organization of the political parties be taken as a model by the suffrage societies. As usual the State reports were among the most interesting features of the convention, for they gave in detail the nation-wide work that was being done for woman suffrage. At this time that of Oklahoma, Mrs. Kate L. Biggars, president, had a prominent place, as the association had been helping its women during the past year in an effort to have the convention which was framing a constitution for statehood put in a clause for woman suffrage. A corps of able national workers was there for months while the most strenuous work was done but the only result was the franchise on school matters.

The report on Oregon was read by the corresponding secretary, Miss Gordon. The campaign there for a woman suffrage amendment to the State constitution was possibly the most strenuous that had ever been made for this purpose and the National Association had given more assistance, financial and otherwise, than to any other, a number of its officers going there in person. Among them were Miss Clay and Miss Gordon, who made full reports.[55]

The report of Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, national treasurer, showed that the receipts of the association for 1906 had been $18,203 and it had expended on the Oregon campaign $18,075, a sum equal to its year's income. A portion of the money, however, was taken from the reserve fund and $8,000 had been subscribed directly for this campaign by individuals and States. The total disbursements for the year had been $25,933. The power of the association to rise above defeat and its courage and determination, so many times shown, were strikingly illustrated on this occasion when the convention voted to raise a fund of $100,000 and pledged $24,000 of this amount before it adjourned.

The Resolutions presented by Mr. Blackwell, chairman of the committee, covered a wide range of subjects, among them the following:

In view of the fact that in only 14 of our States have married mothers any legal right to the custody, control and earnings of their minor children, we urge the women of the other States to work for laws giving to mothers equal rights with fathers.

The traffic in women and girls which is carried on in the United States and in other countries is a heinous blot upon civilization and we demand of Congress and our State Legislatures that every possible step be taken to suppress the infamous traffic in this country.

We urge upon Congress and State Legislatures the enactment of laws prohibiting the employment of children under 16 years of age in mines, stores or factories.

We favor the adoption of State amendments establishing direct legislation by the voters through the initiative and referendum.

Inasmuch as in the second Hague Peace Conference there will be offered the greatest opportunity in human history to lessen the burden of militarism, therefore we request the President of the United States to approve the recommendations for the action of that conference which were presented by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, to-wit: (1) An advisory world congress; (2) a general arbitration treaty; (3) the limitation of armaments; (4) protection of private property at sea in time of war; (5) investigation by an impartial commission of difficulties between nations before declaration of hostilities.

The convention at one evening session listened to interesting addresses by Mrs. Mary E. Coggeshall, president of the Iowa Suffrage Association, Then and Now; Professor Emma M. Perkins of Western Reserve University (Ohio), Educational Ideals; Louis F. Post, editor of The Public, The Denatured Woman. Mrs. Avery gave a much enjoyed report of the Congress of the International Suffrage Alliance in Copenhagen the preceding August. On the last evening addresses were made by John Z. White of Chicago; Mrs. Upton on What Next? Miss Lexow on The Place of Equal Suffrage in Higher Education. Dr. Shaw closed the convention with a few eloquent words of encouragement, hope and prophecy for the success of the cause to which they gladly gave to the utmost their time, their labor and the best of everything they possessed.

FOOTNOTES:

[48] Part of Call: The friends of equal rights will come together on this occasion with an outlook even more than usually bright. During the last year full suffrage has been granted to the women of Finland, the greatest victory since full national suffrage was given to the women of Federated Australia in 1902. Within the past year the Municipal franchise has been given to women in Natal, South Africa; national associations have been organized in Hungary, Italy and Russia and the reports at the recent meeting of the International Alliance at Copenhagen showed a remarkable increase in the agitation for woman suffrage all over Europe. In England, out of the 670 members of the present House of Commons, 420 are pledged to its support.

In the United States widely circulated newspapers and magazines representing the most opposite political views have lately declared for woman suffrage; the National Grange and the American Federation of Labor have unanimously endorsed it. In Chicago 87 organizations with an aggregate membership of 10,000 women have petitioned for a Municipal suffrage clause in the new charter and the men and women most prominent in the city's good works are supporting the plea.

Men and women are natural complements of one another. American political life today is marked by executive force and business ability, qualities in which men are strong, but it is often lacking in conscience and humanity. These a larger infusion of the mother element would supply. We believe that men and women in co-operation can accomplish better work than either sex alone....

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, } ANNICE JEFFREYS MYERS, } Auditors.

[49] The proposition was defeated during the suffrage convention by a tie, with the chairman, Milton J. Foreman, giving the deciding vote against it. [See Illinois, Volume VI.]

[50] Miss Anthony helped arrange for the first National Woman Suffrage Convention and it was held in Washington in January, 1869. From that time to 1906 she missed but two of these annual meetings, when she was speaking in the far West under the auspices of a lecture bureau, and each time she sent the proceeds of a week's lectures as her contribution.

[51] Through lack of initiative and effort the money for the bust was never raised. For Mrs. Gannett's report and other matter about the Memorial Building see the Appendix to this chapter. See also page 442, Volume VI. Reports on the Memorial Fund were made to the convention year after year. The intention at first was to create a fund and use only the interest but immediate demands were so urgent that the money subscribed was appropriated as needed and an audited account given by the national treasurer at each annual convention.

[52] In the Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony Chapter LXXIV begins: "The death of no woman ever called forth so wide an editorial comment as that of Miss Anthony, except possibly that of Queen Victoria, whose years in public life numbered about the same. On the desk where this is written are almost one thousand editorials, representing all the papers of consequence in the United States and many in other countries, and they form what may be accepted without reserve as the consensus of thought in the early years of the twentieth century in regard to Miss Anthony and the work she accomplished."

Over eighty pages of extracts from these editorials are given and several memorial poems. A large number of magazines in this and other countries contained sketches and articles from which quotations are made. Tributes of her biographer were published in the April numbers of the Review of Reviews and the North American Review, and on the week following her death in Collier's and the New York Independent.

In Chapter LXXI and following in the Biography are full accounts of Miss Anthony's death and funeral services.

[53] By vote of the convention these volumes were to be presented to the club or individual member under whose auspices a new club of not less than twenty paid up members had been formed and remained in active existence for not less than a year and was properly certified. The following year the Executive Committee voted to place 300 sets in public libraries.

[54] This work was continued year after year until the list became far too large to publish. Not one organization, save a few connected with the liquor business, ever adopted a resolution against woman suffrage except the anti-suffrage societies themselves.

[55] One of the striking features of the recent national suffrage convention in Chicago was the large number of very close votes on woman suffrage bills that were announced from different States, all taking place at about the same time. While the convention was in session, the Chicago charter convention defeated woman suffrage by a tie vote. The Nebraska delegates got word that it had been lost in their Lower House by a vote of 47 to 46, with a tie in the Senate. In the Oklahoma constitutional convention, where the gambling and liquor forces as usual lined up against woman suffrage, it came so near passing that a change of seven votes would have carried it. In the West Virginia Legislature, where the last time it was smothered in committee, the House vote this time stood 38 yeas to 24 nays. In South Dakota the measure passed the Senate and came so near passing the House that a change of seven votes would have carried it. In the Minnesota House the vote showed a small majority for suffrage but not the constitutional one required. All these close legislative votes followed hard upon the remarkable vote in Vermont, where the suffrage bill passed the House 130 to 25 and came so near passing the Senate that a change of three votes would have carried it.—Woman's Journal.



CHAPTER VIII.

NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1908.

The Fortieth annual convention, Oct. 15-21, 1908, celebrated a notable event, as it was the 60th anniversary of the first Woman's Rights Convention, that famous gathering of July 19-20, 1848, in Seneca Falls, N. Y., the home of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The celebration was appropriately held in Buffalo, the largest city in the western part of the State, and was one of the most interesting and successful of the organization's many conventions.[56] The evening before it opened the president and directors of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy gave a large reception to the officers, delegates, members and friends of the association.

The convention met in the Young Men's Christian Association building but this proved to be entirely too small for the evening sessions, which were held in the large Central Presbyterian Church. The excellent program was the work of Miss Kate Gordon, national corresponding secretary, and the admirable arrangements were due to Mrs. Richard Williams, president for the past eight years of the Political Equality Club, with a corps of local helpers, but an accident on the first day prevented her from welcoming the convention or taking part in its proceedings. With the national president, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, in the chair, it was opened with prayer by the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell.[57] Mrs. Helen Z. M. Rodgers, a lawyer of Buffalo, extended a welcome from women in the professions, who, she said, "had only penetrated the ante-rooms and the annexes—the teachers never able to reach the salaries paid to men; the doctors shut out from the advantage of hospital positions; the lawyers allowed to help interpret the laws but not to help make them." "To get much further," she said, "we must be invested with full citizenship."

Mrs. John Miller Horton gave a cordial welcome for the City Federation of Women's Clubs, of which she was president, and for the Buffalo Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Niagara Frontier Chapter of the Daughters of 1812 and the Nellie Custis Branch of the Children of the Revolution, as regent of each of them. She presented to Dr. Shaw a large cluster of American Beauty roses tied with the blue and gold of the federation and the blue and white of the D. A. R., which was accepted in the name of Susan B. Anthony and reverently laid over her portrait that stood on an easel. Dr. Ida C. Bender, president of the Women Teachers' Association, spoke earnestly in behalf of "the army of teachers who are training the future citizens of the republic," and Dr. Shaw commented: "Political nonentities can hardly be expected to inspire a political entity with enthusiasm."

The Western Federation of Women's Clubs gave its welcome through its president, Mrs. Nettie Rogers Shuler, of whom the Woman's Journal said: "She spoke with an accent of unaffected sincerity and self-forgetfulness that recalled the spirit of the pioneers." She referred with pride to the fact that this organization, with nearly 100 clubs and about 32,000 members, was the first Federation of Women's Clubs to admit suffrage societies. Mrs. Lucretia L. Blankenburg, president of the Pennsylvania Suffrage Association and officer of the General Federation, brought its greeting, the first it had ever sent to a national suffrage convention. Mrs. Frances W. Graham, president of the New York State Woman's Christian Temperance Union, gave its greeting and spoke of the close cooperation which had always existed between the workers for temperance and suffrage. Dr. Shaw asked that she would convey the cordial greetings and best wishes of the association to the National W. C. T. U., to whose convention in Denver she was en route. Mrs. Ella Hawley Crossett, for the sixth term president of the New York State Suffrage Association, united with Dr. Shaw in responding to the welcoming addresses and spoke with deep feeling of the courage and persistence of the pioneers and of the pride with which the State where the movement for woman suffrage had its birth welcomed the convention to celebrate the event.

Miss Emily Howland of Sherwood, N. Y., reformer, educator and philanthropist, a co-worker and friend of the early suffragists, gave a delightful address on The Spirit of 1848, "herself a living embodiment of that spirit," in which she said:

"Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends!" These are the words that come to me as I essay to speak of the Spirit of '48! Was it not something of this love which inspired that immortal Declaration made at the Woman's Rights Convention on July 19-20, 1848? "This," says Mrs. Stanton in her autobiography, "was the initial step in the most momentous reform that has yet been launched upon the world—the first organized protest against the injustice which had brooded for ages over the character and destiny of one-half of the race. No words could express our astonishment on finding a few days afterward that what seemed to us so timely, so rational and so sacred should be a subject for sarcasm and ridicule in the entire press of the nation. The anti-slavery papers alone stood by us manfully."

The Declaration had been signed by many, the audiences being large, but when pulpit and press ridiculed and reproved do we marvel that one by one the women withdrew their names and "joined the persecutors?" Much I fear that our own organization would shrivel to pitiful proportions if today submitted to the ordeal from which they recoiled. Indeed even Mrs. Stanton confessed that if she had had the slightest premonition of all that would follow this convention, she feared her courage would not have been equal to it. Fortunate ignorance, if she did not underrate her bravery, for she and a goodly number of the other signers were steadfast. They chose to side with truth and take the consequences.

Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery (Penn.), corresponding secretary of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, presented a long and valuable report of its recent congress in Amsterdam. [See chapter on Alliance.] The convention then adjourned for the reception given by Mrs. Horton, whose handsome home on Delaware Avenue was decorated with American Beauty roses, the dining room with yellow chrysanthemums. She was assisted in receiving by Dr. Shaw, Mrs. Crossett and Mrs. Allison S. Capwell, president of the Erie County Suffrage Association.

At the evening session Mrs. Elizabeth Smith Miller (N. Y.), presided, daughter of Gerrit Smith, who was a staunch advocate of woman suffrage from the time the movement for it began. Hundreds were turned away for lack of room. The convention was officially welcomed to the city by Mayor J. N. Adams and the welcome on the part of the State was expressed by Senator Henry W. Hill, a consistent supporter of the legislative work for suffrage. The principal feature of the evening was the president's address of Dr. Shaw, of whom the report in the Buffalo Express said: "The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw has set a new standard for womanhood. She is one of the most wonderful women of her time, alert, watchful, magnetic, earnest, with a mind as quick for a joke as for the truth. She points her arguments with epigrams and tips the arrows of her persuasion with a jest.... Even the unbelievers are carried away with her brilliancy, eloquence and mental grasp." There was no adequate report of her address but she began by saying:

We are scarcely able today to understand what those brave pioneers endured to secure the things which we accept as a matter of course. They started the greatest revolution the world has ever witnessed. During these last sixty years more changes have been wrought for the benefit of women, more opportunities for education have been secured and more all-round enlightenment than in the 6,000 years preceding. There are women who accept these advantages and the positions that have been obtained because of this early movement who have no conception of what it has meant to open the highways of progress for them. Some of those who oppose the suffrage say: "These things would have come; men would have given woman these opportunities as civilization advanced." Why did they not come sooner if men were so willing? Why should they have grown more in the last sixty years than in all the years before?... But the women in all this long time of struggle have not stood entirely alone. There have always been some men to stand by their side and they owed it to do so, for ever since the world began women have stood by men in their efforts to achieve the right. Never was there a great leader who had not some woman by his side. Woman was first at the cradle, last at the cross and first at the tomb. Women have stood shoulder to shoulder with men always in their efforts.... Some tell us that we have not made great progress. It is impossible to change the attitude of all the conflicting elements of humanity in three-score years. If Christianity in 1900 years, with the teaching of such a Leader, has not yet made Peace Congresses unnecessary, what can be expected of other reforms?

The secretary's report of Miss Gordon contributed this bit of history:

At this junction of the work a question arising upon the advisability of securing a petition of a million signatures to present to President Roosevelt in order to influence a recommendation of suffrage for women in his annual message, a request was made that he receive at Oyster Bay a committee from our association. The President reasonably declined to have his vacation interrupted with committees but offered to receive our request in writing. Your secretary accordingly wrote him to the effect that we wished to know—before going to the labor and expense involved in securing such a petition—whether its influence would have any weight in leading him to recommend woman suffrage in his message. Courteously but emphatically came the reply that it would not, but at the same time extending an invitation for the National Association to appoint a committee to see him on his return to Washington. The committee appointed was composed of your national treasurer, Mrs. Upton, Mrs. Henry Dickson Bruns of New Orleans, Mrs. Katharine Reed Balentine of Maine and your corresponding secretary, and at the appointed time it was received by the President, who again reiterated his opinion on the absolute valuelessness of such a petition. In so doing he ignored what for the women of this republic is their only right—the right of petition. The interview was fruitful of no suggestion beyond the time-honored recommendation to "get another State." Women who worship as a fetish the power of this right to petition may well catalogue this fallacy with those other American fallacies that "taxation without representation is tyranny"; that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," and that the Government guarantees "equal rights for all and special privileges for none."

Miss Gordon told how the last convention had changed the plan for forty years of holding the national convention in Washington during the first session of a new Congress and therefore the corresponding secretary had been obliged to arrange for representative women to go there and have a hearing before the committees of Senate and House. Mrs. Balentine, who was staying in Washington, and Miss Emma Gillett, a lawyer of that city, took charge and hearings were granted March 3. They lacked the inspiration of the presence of delegates from all parts of the country and the convention lost the pleasure and benefit.

The Work Conferences were continued under the name of Round Table Conferences. The subjects considered were: Increase of membership; press work; 16th Amendment as a line of policy; finance; State legislative methods. An organizers' symposium discussed "A comparison of conditions today with those of ten years ago; the building of a State association; the personal touch; preliminary arrangements for meetings."

The usual comprehensive report was made by the headquarters secretary, Miss Elizabeth J. Hauser, who told of the vast amount of work done, which included the sending out of 13,000 letters and 207,410 pieces of literature, exclusive of matter for the press. Progress had been issued monthly, the Political Equality Leaflets and twenty other kinds had been published and a card catalogue of 5,696 names completed; the convention reports edited and distributed, the sales of the Life of Miss Anthony and the History of Woman Suffrage looked after and an endless amount of other work done. Miss Hauser told also of the extensive effort with organizations. Ten great national associations during 1907, twenty-four State associations and ninety-three labor unions had passed resolutions for woman suffrage, and thus far in 1908 nine national and thirty-six important State associations had done so. She gave an equally encouraging report of the work with the press, which was done through committee chairmen in thirty-two States, who had furnished thousands of articles to hundreds of newspapers. Part of this material was local but the national headquarters had supplied 69,244 pages. Suitable matter had been sent to religious, educational and other specialized papers and over a thousand letters to editors. A long list was given of the leading magazines which had published articles on woman suffrage by prominent writers during the year. The reason was that things were happening in all parts of the world directly related to this question.

Miss Hauser's report was accepted by a rising vote. She presided at the Press Conference on how to secure the publication of woman suffrage in country and in city papers; character of material; what is the greatest need in press work; should "anti" articles be answered, etc. Interesting addresses were made on Woman's Share in Productive Industry by Mrs. Anna Cadogan Etz (N. Y.); A Square Deal, by Mrs. Grace H. Ballantyne (Ia.); and one by Mrs. Clara B. Arthur, president of the Michigan State Association, reviewing the extensive work that had been done in its recent constitutional convention to secure a woman suffrage clause. Henry B. Blackwell (Mass.) began his report on Presidential Suffrage by saying: "It was the maxim of Napoleon Bonaparte to concentrate his military forces upon the point in his enemy's lines of the greatest importance and least resistance and by so doing he conquered Europe. This point in the woman suffrage battle is, under our form of government, the Presidential Suffrage, the vote for presidential electors."

The great evening of the week was the one devoted to the Commemorative Program in Honor of the 1848 Convention. This convention was called by Mrs. Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Mary Ann McClintock and Martha C. Wright—the last three Friends, or Quakers—to consider a Declaration of Sentiments and set of Resolutions which they had prepared and it adopted both.[58] Those resolutions of sixty years ago were now discussed by women who represented the two succeeding generations, still in the midst of the contest which the women who began it expected to see ended during their lifetime. The session was opened with prayer by the Rev. Olympia Brown, a veteran suffragist, and the presiding officer was Mrs. Eliza Wright Osborne (N. Y.), daughter of Martha C. Wright and niece of Lucretia Mott. Each resolution was presented and commented on in a brief, pungent speech, the speakers including Mr. Blackwell, husband of Lucy Stone, both pioneers, and another pioneer, the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, the first ordained woman minister; Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of Mrs. Stanton; Mrs. Fanny Garrison Villard, daughter of William Lloyd Garrison, a pioneer; the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer, an early leader in Rhode Island, and Miss Laura Clay, at the head of the movement in Kentucky almost from its beginning. Among the later generation were the Rev. Caroline Bartlett Crane (Mich.), Miss Julie R. Jenney (N. Y.), Mrs. Ella S. Stewart (Ill.), Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (N. Y.) and Mrs. Judith Hyams Douglas (La.).

Of most of these addresses there is no printed record. Mrs. Gilman commented on the resolution that "the laws which place woman in a position inferior to that of man are contrary to the great precept of nature," saying in part: "Woman has the same right to happiness and justice as an individual that man has and as the mother of the race she has more.... Women have a right to citizenship and to all that citizenship implies, not only for their own sake but especially because the world needs them. We have the masculine and the feminine but above them both is the human, which has nothing to do with sex. The argument for equal freedom and equal opportunities for women rests not on the law of the worthy Mr. Blackstone but on the law of nature, which is the law of God...."

Mrs. Blackwell said in response to the resolution that "as man accords to woman moral superiority it is his pre-eminent duty to encourage her to speak and teach in religious assemblies": "You cannot realize how serious a thing it was to be a minister in early days when St. Paul was taken literally. I know from personal experience that nearly all the religious world in those days believed it to be a sin for a woman to try to preach. My own mother urged me to become a foreign missionary instead; she was willing to send her daughter away to other lands rather than have her become a minister at home. At 18 I was considered as well-fitted for college as the half dozen young men among my schoolmates who were going to take a college course. At that time Oberlin, O., was the only college that admitted women. When I arrived there Lucy Stone had pretty well stirred up the whole institution. I was warned against her in advance but we soon became warm friends. One beautiful evening we walked out together and as we stood in that glorious sunset I told her that I meant to be a minister. She said: 'You can't do it; they will never let a woman be a public teacher in the church.' ... One other woman and I graduated from the theological school. For three years the authorities of the school put our names into the catalogue with a star and then they dropped us out and it took forty years to get us reinstated."

Mrs. Spencer said of the resolution that "the same transgressions should be visited with equal severity on man and woman." "Of all the notable pronunciamentos at Seneca Falls no resolutions shows a finer spiritual audacity than this. A delicious flavor of transcendentalism from beginning to end marks the phraseology. Like the Brook Farm experiment the Seneca Falls Convention was the outcome of a great wave of idealism sweeping over the world. It was seen in England and in Europe. Germany was stirring things up and Italy was seething with revolution. This new world was eager to put its idealism into immediate practical living.... Women were looking after their woman's share of it. They felt that it must be founded on spiritual ideas and this was a spiritual Declaration of Independence. We honor these pioneers because women who had been trained to follow and not to lead, and taught that wives and mothers should buy their security at the cost of a discarded fragment of their sex, dared to summon men to an equal bar and to declare that in purity, as in justice, there is no sex."

Mrs. Stewart treated with delicious wit and sarcasm the resolution of protest against "the objection of indelicacy and impropriety which is so often brought against women who address a public audience by those who encourage their appearance in the theatre and the circus." Miss Clay discussed with dignity and seriousness the resolution that "equality of human rights necessarily follows identity in capabilities and responsibilities." Mrs. Villard spoke of the great privilege of being the daughter of a reformer and said: "The cause of woman is so intimately connected with that of man that I think the men will be the gainers by its triumph even more than women." Mrs. Douglas, a brilliant young speaker from New Orleans, new to the suffrage platform, took up the resolution, "Woman has too long rested satisfied in the circumscribed limits which corrupt customs and a perverted application of the Scriptures have marked out for her, and it is time she should move in the enlarged sphere which her great Creator has assigned to her," and said in part:

Only one thing can make me see the justness of woman being classed with the idiot, the insane and the criminal and that is, if she is willing, if she is satisfied to be so classed, if she is contented to remain in the circumscribed limits which corrupt customs and perverted application of the Scriptures have marked out for her. It is idiotic not to want one's liberty; it is insane not to value one's inalienable rights and it is criminal to neglect one's God-given responsibilities. God placed woman originally in the same sphere with man, with the same inspirations and aspirations, the same emotions and intellect and accountability.... The Chinamen for centuries have taken peculiar means for restricting women's activities by binding the feet of girl babies and yet there remains the significant fact that, after centuries of constraint, God continues to send the female child into the world with feet well formed, with a foundation as substantial to stand upon as that of the male child. As in this instance, so in all cases of restriction put upon women—they do not come from God but from man, beginning at birth.... For thousands of centuries woman has heard what sphere God wanted her to move in from men, God's self-ordained proxies. The thing for woman to do is to blaze the way of her sex so thoroughly that sixteen-year-old boys in the next generation will not dare ask a scholarly woman incredulously if she really thinks women have sense enough to vote. Woman can enter into the larger sphere her great Creator has assigned her only when she has an equal voice with man in forming public opinion, which crystalizes customs; only when her voice is heard in the pulpit, applying Scripture to man and woman equally, and when it is heard in the Legislature. Only then can be realized the full import of God's words when He said, "It is not well for man to be alone."

Mrs. Douglas analyzed without mercy the pronouncements of Paul regarding women and said: "The pulpits may insist that Paul was infallible but I prefer to believe that he was human and liable to err." When she had finished Dr. Shaw remarked dryly: "I have often thought that Paul was never equalled in his advice to wife, mother and maiden aunt except by the present occupant of the Presidential chair" [Roosevelt].

To Mrs. Blatch was given the privilege of speaking to the resolution so strenuously insisted upon by her mother: "It is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise." In the course of an animated speech she said:

Mrs. Stanton was quick to see and, what is greater, quick to seize the psychological moment, and in that July of 1848 she had not only the inspiration but the determination to grasp the opportunity to set forth a resolution asking "votes for women." How clear was her vision, how perfect her sense of balance! Property rights might be gained, rights of person protected, guardianship of children achieved, but without the ballot she saw all would be insecure. What was given today might be taken away tomorrow unless women themselves possessed the power to make or remake laws. Women are getting the sense of solidarity by being crowded together in the workshop; they are learning the lesson of fellowship. Brought side by side in the college and in the business world, they are beginning to learn that they have a common interest. They know now that they form a class. The anti-suffragist is the isolated woman, she is the belated product of the 18th century. She is not intentionally, viciously selfish, she has merely not developed into 20th century fellowship. She is unrelated to our democratic society of today.... How shallow, in the face of that idea of duty in fulfilling our obligations of citizenship, sound the words of Governor Hughes that "when women want the vote they will get it!" Want it? That is no measure of social need. It was death to the nation to have slavery within its bounds but no one advised waiting until the enslaved negroes wanted to be free before this dire disease should be cured. The State needs the attention of women, their thought, their service, and so it becomes the duty of all who have the best interests of the State at heart to seek to bind women to it in closest bonds of citizenship.

In response to Resolution Eleven that, being held morally responsible, woman had therefore a right to express herself in public on all questions of morals and religion, the Rev. Mrs. Crane began with fine sarcasm: "To women has always unquestionably been allowed the being good. They are called too good to enter the slimy pool of politics. They are complimented often in the spirit of the man who said to his wife: 'Angelina, you get up and make the fire; it will seem so much warmer if laid by your fair hands!' To women is also conceded the right to be religious and unfortunately it often happens that all the religion a man has is in his wife's name. Ruskin said: 'If you don't want the kingdom of heaven to come, don't pray for it but if you do want it to come you must do more than pray for it.' Women must vote as well as pray. Whoever is able to make peace in this distracted world is the one who should be allowed to do it."

A full report of the work among the churches was made at a morning meeting by Mrs. Lucy Hobart Day (Me.), chairman of the committee, which showed that eighteen States had appointed branch committees. These had organized suffrage circles in different churches, encouraged debates among the young people, arranged meetings, distributed literature, obtained hearings before many kinds of religious bodies, secured resolutions and tried to have official recognition of women in the churches. Ministers had been requested to preach sermons in favor and many had done so, twenty-five in San Francisco alone. Mrs. Pauline Steinem (Ohio), chairman of the Committee on Education, reported on its efforts in organizing Mothers' and Parents' Clubs and working through these for suffrage; putting pictures of the pioneers in schools and securing the cooperation of the teachers for brief talks about them; supplying books containing selections from suffrage speeches, poems, etc., to be used in the schools. It was also proposed to see that text books on history and civics are written with a proper appreciation of the work of women.

Part of an afternoon was devoted to a discussion led by Dr. Rosalie Slaughter Morton (N. Y.), delegated representative of Prince Morrow and the American Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis. In an eloquent address she described the terrible devastation, especially among women and children, from diseases which until lately had been concealed and never mentioned. She attributed these conditions partly to the fact that boys and girls were left in ignorance and this was often because the mothers were ignorant. The chief cause of the wide prevalence of these diseases was the double standard of morals, the belief that a chaste life for a man is incompatible with health and that the consequences of immorality end with themselves and will not be transmitted. She urged women to unite in the demand for a higher standard of morals among men. Mrs. Gilman spoke strongly on the necessity for more vigorous measures for a quarantine of the infected and health certificates for every marriage and she laid a large share of the cause of immorality at the door of the economic dependence of women. Mrs. Florence Kelley, executive secretary of the National Consumers' League, whose life was being spent in improving the economic position of women, said: "How are we dealing with this monstrous evil? Are we going to wait patiently and rear a whole generation of children and grandchildren and trust to their gradual increase in strength of character?" She told of the mothers who bring up children in the best and wisest manner but the environment outside the home, which they have no power to shape, nullifies all their teaching. "That is a very slow way of dealing with a cancer," she said. "Women have tried for forty years to get the power to have the laws enforced and that is our greatest need today." A principal feature of this important discussion was the strong, analytical address of the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer, in the course of which she said:

The formation of the New York Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis marked an important era. For the first time the physicians as a whole assumed a social duty to promote purity. They had done it as individuals, but this was the first instance of their banding themselves together on a moral as well as a sanitary plane to enlighten the public as to the causes of social disease.... Dr. Prince Morrow should be everlastingly honored by every woman.... I consider no woman guiltless, whether she lives in a suffrage State or not, if she does not hold herself responsible for guarding less fortunate women. Corrupt custom has rent the sacred, seamless robe of womanhood and cast out part of the women, abandoning them to degradation. We must learn to recognize the responsibility of pure women for the fallen women, of the woman whose circumstances have enabled her to stand, for the woman whom adverse conditions have borne down. We should oppose the sacrifice of womanhood, whether of an innocent girl sacrificed with pomp and ceremony in church, or of a poor waif in the street; and the great protection is the ability of young girls to earn their living by congenial labor. All the social purity societies do not equal the trade schools as a preventive....

We must not look at this matter from only one point of view or say that we can do nothing about it until we are armed with the ballot. I am a suffragist but not "high church," I am a suffragist and something else. We ought to have the ballot, we are at a disadvantage in our work while we are deprived of it, but even without it we have great power. We must stamp out the traffic in womanhood, it is a survival of barbarism. Womanhood is a unit; no one woman can be an outcast without dire evil to family life. What caused the doctors to come together in a Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis? It was because the evil done in dark places came back in injury to the family life.... We must make ourselves more terrible than an army with banners to despoilers of womanhood.... Men are no longer to be excused for writing in scarlet on their foreheads their incapacity for self-control. None of us is longer to be excused for cowardice and acquiescence in the sacrifice of womanhood. Not even that woman—vilest of all creatures on the face of the earth I do believe—the procuress, shall be beyond the pale of sympathy, for she is merely the product of the feeling on the part of men that they owe nothing to women or to themselves in the way of purity, and the feeling on the part of women that they have no right to demand of men what men demand of them. If women are going to amount to anything in government, they would better begin to practice here and now and band themselves together with noble men to bring about this reform.

Of equal interest with Pioneers' Evening and in striking contrast with it was the College Evening. One commemorated the first efforts to obtain a college education for women, the other the full fruition of these efforts in the announcement of a National College Women's Equal Suffrage League with branches in fifteen States. Dr. Shaw, possessing three college degrees, opened the session, and the founder of the League, Mrs. Maud Wood Park, a graduate of Radcliffe College, presided. "With the exception of Oberlin and Antioch," she said, "not one college was open to women before the organized movement for woman suffrage began." She gave statistics of the large number now open to them and said: "Such facts as these help us to understand the service which the leaders of the suffrage movement performed for college women and it is fitting that these should make public recognition of their debt. It was with this idea of responsibility for benefits received that the first branch of this League was formed in Massachusetts in 1900. The League realizes that the best way to pay our debt to the noble women who toiled and suffered, who bore ridicule, insult and privation, is for us in our turn to sow the seed of future opportunities for women."

In introducing Dr. Sophonisba P. Breckinridge, dean of the Junior Women's College of the University of Chicago, Mrs. Park said that she had half the letters of the alphabet attached to her name representing degrees. Dr. Breckinridge also paid a tribute of gratitude to the National Suffrage Association and began her address: "My faith has three articles. I believe it is the right and the duty of the wage-earning woman to claim the ballot and to have her claim recognized to participate in the political life of her community. Her status as a worker depends in part upon it and only thus can she protect the interests of her group. I believe it is the right and duty of the wife and mother to claim the ballot, for as a housekeeper and carer of her children she cannot do her work economically and satisfactorily without it. It is easy to see why the wage-earning women and the housekeepers need the ballot; but why should we, who do not belong to either of those groups, want it? Every woman should want it because tasks lie before the public so difficult that they can not be fulfilled without the cooperation of all the trained minds in the community, and these problems can be met only by collective action. We want to get hold of the little device that moves the machinery."

Miss Caroline Lexow, president of the New York branch of the league, a graduate of Barnard College, a part of Columbia University, "charmed the audience with her girlish simplicity and with the tribute she paid to the women who more than half a century ago sowed the seeds which have yielded so rich a harvest for the women of today," to quote from an enthusiastic reporter. Of another young speaker the Buffalo Express said: "To the front of the platform stepped a sweet-faced, bright-eyed, rosy English girl, Miss Ray Costello, a graduate of Newnham College, Cambridge University, who spoke on Equal Suffrage among English University Women. She had captured her audience before she started to describe the energetic work of the college women." "In England as in the United States," Miss Costello said, "the pioneers in the demand for higher education were also pioneers in the demand for votes. When the action of the 'militant' suffragettes brought the question into such prominence that the opponents began to state their objections, the college women were aroused and became more and more active, but as a whole they were in favor of peaceful rather than militant tactics." She told also of the growth of favorable sentiment in the men's colleges.

This was the first appearance at a national suffrage convention of Mrs. Frances Squire Potter, professor of English in the University of Minnesota, and her address on Women and the Vote was one of the ablest ever given before this body which was accustomed to superior addresses. Limited space forbids extended quotation:

Louis XIV said an infamous thing when he declared: "I am the State," but he announced his position frankly. He was an autocrat and he said so. It was a more honest and therefore less harmful position than that of a majority of voters in our country today. Can it help but confuse and deteriorate one sex, trained to believe and call itself living in a democracy, to say silently year by year at the polls, "I am the State"? Can it help but confuse and deteriorate the other sex, similarly trained to acquiescence year after year in a national misrepresentation and a personal no-representation? This fundamental insincerity of our so-called democracy is as insidious an influence upon the minds and morals of our franchised men, our unfranchised women and our young Americans of both sexes, as hypocrisy is to a church member or spurious currency to a bank. It is to be remembered that the evils which are pointed out in our commonwealth today are not the evils of a democracy but of an amorphous something which is afraid to be a democracy. Whether the opposition to women's voting be honestly professed or whether it is concealed under chivalrous idolatry, distrust and skepticism are behind it.... When pushed to the wall, objectors to woman suffrage now-a-days take refuge behind one of two platitudes: The first is used too often by women whose public activities ought logically to make them suffragists—the assertion that equal suffrage is bound to come in time but that at present there are more pressing needs. "Let us get the poor better housed and fed," these women say. "Let us get our schools improved and our cities cleaned up and then we shall have time to take up the cause of equal suffrage." Is not this a survival of that old vice of womankind, indirection?... The suffrage issue should not be put off but should be placed first, as making the other issues easier and more permanent....

This brings me to the other platitude. How often we are told, "Women themselves do not want it; when they do it will be given to them." That is to say, when an overwhelming majority of women want what they ought to have, then they can have it. Extension of suffrage never has been granted on these terms. No great reform has gone through on these terms. In an enlightened State wanting is not considered a necessary condition to the granting of education or the extension of any privilege. Such a State confers it in order to create the desire; unenlightened States, like Turkey and Russia, hold off until revolution compels a reluctant, niggardly abdication of tyranny.... We have the conviction that that which has come in Finland and Australia, which is coming in Great Britain, will come in America, and there is a majesty in the sight of a great world-tide which has been gathering force through generations, which is rising steadily and irresistibly, that should paralyze any American Xerxes who thinks to stop it with humanly created restraints.

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

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

The National College Women's Equal Suffrage League was formally organized as auxiliary to the National American Association, with Dr. Thomas president, Miss Lexow secretary; Dr. Margaret Long, of Smith College, treasurer; Mrs. Park chairman of the organization committee; Dr. Breckinridge, Mrs. C. S. Woodward, adviser to women in the University of Wisconsin, and Miss Frances W. McLean of the University of California were among the vice-presidents. Three thousand dollars were appropriated for its work the first year from the Anthony Memorial Fund. The following day Mrs. George Howard Lewis gave a beautiful luncheon at the Twentieth Century Club in honor of Dr. Shaw, Dr. Thomas and the college women and it included the officials of the national and State suffrage associations. The tables were decorated with orchids and yellow chrysanthemums and there were corsage bouquets of violets for the guests of honor.

The women ministers in attendance and some of the delegates spoke in various churches Sunday morning. A departure was made from the usual custom of holding religious services in the afternoon and they were replaced by an industrial meeting. One of the city papers thus introduced its account: "Any theatre after a packed house had better advertise a woman's meeting with the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw presiding. At the Star Theatre, where an industrial mass meeting was held under the auspices of the National Suffrage Association yesterday afternoon, when Dr. Shaw stepped to the front of the stage to call it to order, men, as well as women, filled all the seats on the ground floor and packed the galleries and boxes, while many stood during the entire program and many more were turned away. It was the largest meeting in the cause of equal suffrage that Buffalo has ever known. After prayer by the Rev. Robert Freeman and a musical selection by the choir of the First Unitarian Church, Dr. Shaw announced that the audience would rise while Julia Ward Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic was sung. She stood with bowed head as she listened. "Some one asked me this morning if I am very happy," said Dr. Shaw, "and I said yes, for I have everything in the world that is necessary to happiness, good faith, good friends and all the work I can possibly do. I think God's greatest blessing to the human race was when He sent man forth into the world to earn his bread by the sweat of his face. I believe in toil, in the dignity of labor, but I also believe in adequate compensation for that toil."

The report of the committee on Industrial Problems Affecting Women and Children was given by its chairman, Mrs. Kelley, executive secretary of the National Consumers' League, in which she said: "In New York woman can not be deprived of the sacred right to work all night in factories on pain of dismissal. Such is the recent decision of the Court of Appeals. On the other hand the same Court has within a week held that the law is constitutional which restricts to eight hours the work of men employed by the State, the county or the city. I wish the women who think that 'persuasion' is all-sufficient might have our experience in New York City; we worked for twelve years to get inspectors who should look after the women and children in stores and mercantile establishments. At last an act was passed by which inspectors were to be appointed and for about a year and a half they really inspected and looked after the children and young girls in the stores. Then a great philanthropist, Nathan Straus, who was connected with an establishment employing many young people, got himself appointed, as he frankly said, in order to get the salaries of the inspectors stricken out of the budget and to get sterilized milk put into it. He got the salaries out and the sterilized milk in and then he resigned. The next year his successor got the sterilized milk out and there we were, back just where we had been at the beginning. We had to set to work again and labor for years longer, petitioning all the changing and kaleidoscopic officials who have to do with the finances of New York; and one mayor said frankly to us—to the Consumers' League: "Ladies, why do you keep on coming? You know you will never get anything—there isn't a voter among you!..." Mrs. Kelley said the Consumers' League had been investigating the condition of girls working in stores, away from home, and she gave a heartbreaking account of their destitution and semi-starvation. "Only nineteen States protect grown women at all," she said. "I am very tired of 'persuasion' and from this time on I mean to try other methods."

Intense interest was manifested in the address entitled Noblesse Oblige by Miss Jean Gordon, factory inspector for New Orleans, in which she said in part:

One of the strongest and truest criticisms brought against our American leisure class is that they are absolutely devoid of a proper appreciation of what is conveyed in the expression, "Noblesse Oblige." In no country in the world are there so many young women of education, wealth and leisure, free as the winds of heaven to do as they wish. In no country are there more interesting problems to be solved and one would think such work would appeal to this very class, especially as most of them are the daughters of men who by their large constructive minds have created conditions and opportunities and developed them into the great industries for which America is justly famous; and it would seem by the law of cross inheritance that these daughters would inherit some of the great creative ability of their fathers and fairly burn to apply their leisure and education to working out the social problems which are besetting more and more this great country. But unfortunately, with a few exceptions, they rest contented with playing the Lady Bountiful and their only appreciation of the spirit of Noblesse Oblige has been the old, aristocratic idea of charity....

Think what it would mean to bring their trained minds and great wealth and leisure to the study of the economic conditions which are represented in the underpaid services and long hours of their less fortunate sisters in the mills and factories throughout this broad land! Think what it would mean if from the protection with which their wealth and position surround them they took their stand on the great question of the dual code of morality! Think what it would mean to the little children being stunted mentally and physically in our mills and factories, if these thousands of young women, many of them enjoying the wealth made out of these little human souls, refused to wear or buy anything made under any but decent living conditions! Think what it would mean if they decided that every child should have a seat in school, that every neighborhood should have a play-ground and a public bath!

Too long the men and women of leisure and education in America have left the administration of our public affairs to fall into the hands of a class whose conception of the duties involved in public service is of the lowest order.... Instead of being regarded as only fitted for women of ordinary position and intellect, all offices such as superintendents of reformatories, matrons and women factory inspectors, should be filled by women of standing, education, refinement and independent means. Such women would be above the temptation of graft or the fear of losing their positions. They are on a social footing with the manufacturers and no mill or factory owner likes to meet the factory inspector at a reception or dining in the home of a mutual friend if he is trying to evade the law. American women of leisure must awaken to an appreciation of the democratic idea of Noblesse Oblige.

Mrs. Blatch was introduced as "president of the Self-Supporting Women's Suffrage League and the only one in it who was not self-supporting in the accepted sense of the term." "When I hear that there are 5,000,000 working women in this country," said Dr. Shaw, "I always take occasion to say that there are 18,000,000 but only 5,000,000 receive their wages." Mrs. Blatch traced the changes of the years which have made it necessary for women to go out of the home to earn their bread in factory, shop and mercantile establishments. "Cooperation is the only way out of the present condition of the working women," she asserted. "President Thomas said last night that the gates of knowledge had swung wide open for women. They have not done so for the working girls." She pointed out the many opportunities for the boys to learn the trades which are denied to the girls. "There is only one way to redress their wrongs and that is by the ballot," she declared, and in closing she said: "Of all the people who block the progress of woman suffrage the worst are the women of wealth and leisure who never knew a day's work and never felt a day's want, but who selfishly stand in the way of those women who know what it means to earn the bread they eat by the sternest toil and who, with a voice in the Government, could better themselves in every way."

The last address was made by Dr. Shaw and even the cold, prosaic official report of the convention said: "It was one of the greatest speeches of the entire week." She began by telling of the immense demonstration in London during the past summer when 10,000 women marched through the streets to prove to the Government that women did want to vote, and then she proceeded to tell why American women wanted it and how they were determined to compel some action by the Government. In the evening the officers held a reception for the delegates, speakers and friends in the Lenox Hotel, convention headquarters.

In the Monday afternoon symposium the stock objections to woman suffrage were considered by Miss Lexow, Miss Laura Gregg (Kans.), Mrs. William C. Gannett (N. Y.), Mrs. Kelley and Miss Maude E. Miner, a probation officer in New York. Miss Miner said in answering the objection to "the immoral vote": "Is the fact that immoral women would have the vote a real objection? I do not believe that it is. In the first place such women are a very small proportion of the whole. Fifty to one hundred a night are brought into the night court but we see the same faces over and over again. There are perhaps 5,000 such women in New York City in a population of four million but there is less reason against enfranchising the woman than for disfranchising some of the men, as there are at least 4,000 men who are living wholly or in part on these women's earnings.... I do not believe that all women who have fallen would use their votes for evil. I have dealt with 250 of them and I am often surprised to see how much sense of honor some of them have and how intelligent they are. At present they are the slaves of the saloon-keepers, and the Raines law hotels and the saloons are at the root of the evil. We ought to do more to protect them from such a life.... It seems to be women's work to deal with such problems and to secure legislation along these lines and we can only do this by having the ballot. With it we can do much more in the way of breaking up the power of the saloon in politics, which is at the bottom of all."

Dr. Shaw was quickly on her feet to say that Miss Miner had touched upon the vital spot in the whole suffrage movement; that the liquor interests were at the bottom of the opposition to it and that in the States where it had been defeated they were responsible. Mrs. Kelley spoke for The Woman at the Bottom of the Heap, who had even greater need of the ballot than her more fortunate sisters. Mrs. Gannett, wife of the Unitarian minister, William C. Gannett of Rochester, N. Y., both loving friends of Miss Anthony, considered the assertion that "women do not want to vote," saying in part:

They tell us that women can bring better things to pass by indirect influence. Try to persuade any man that he will have more weight, more influence, if he gives up his vote, allies himself with no party and relies on influence to achieve his ends! By all means let us use to its utmost whatever influence we have, but in all justice do not ask us to be content with this. Facts show that a large body of earnest, responsible women do want the ballot, a body large enough to deserve very respectful hearing from our law-makers, but there certainly are many women who do not yet want to vote. We think they ought to want it; that women have no more right than men to accept and enjoy the protection and privileges of civilized government and shirk its duties and responsibilities. They say they do not thus shirk, that woman's sphere lies in a different place, and we answer: "This is true but only part of the truth." ... Municipal government belongs far more to woman's sphere than to man's, if we must choose between the two; it is home-making and housekeeping writ large, but just as the best home is that where father and mother together rule, so shall we have the better city, the better State, when men and women together counsel, together rule. No mother fulfills her whole mother duty in the sight of God who is not willing to do her service, to take her share of direct responsibility for the good of the whole. She can not fully care for her own without some care for all the children of the community. Her own, however guarded, are menaced so long as the least of these is exposed to pestilence or is robbed of his birthright of fresh air and sunshine.