The Oracle of Baltimore tells us that the education and culture of women are good up to a certain point, no further, but he sagely fails to define the point, simply declaring that "too much education of the head is apt to cool the heart; the cultivation of the soul is too much neglected in the higher education; the head and the heart and the body should all be educated together; then they develop equally." There certainly can be no disagreement among us as to the latter statement but why is it more applicable to women than to men? The Oracle does not leave us in doubt as to his view, for in response to the question, "What do you think of the societies and club organizations which attract women so largely just now?" he replies: "A society like the Daughters of the American Revolution I heartily approve of, for it tends to foster patriotism and keep it alive, but other clubs of all kinds for women I strictly disapprove of."The Oracle of Princeton, ex-President Cleveland, who has gained the most notoriety for his heavy diatribes against women's clubs, also admits that there are a few societies which it might be well for women to encourage and keep alive—religious organizations and those which administer to the needs of the heathen in a foreign land. The Oracle of Brooklyn, Dr. Lyman Abbott, adds a few more to the list and includes philanthropic, reform and social clubs. Would it be unwomanly to ask why there should have been such wide divergence in the Divine Illumination which each Oracle received?
The Oracle of Baltimore tells us that the education and culture of women are good up to a certain point, no further, but he sagely fails to define the point, simply declaring that "too much education of the head is apt to cool the heart; the cultivation of the soul is too much neglected in the higher education; the head and the heart and the body should all be educated together; then they develop equally." There certainly can be no disagreement among us as to the latter statement but why is it more applicable to women than to men? The Oracle does not leave us in doubt as to his view, for in response to the question, "What do you think of the societies and club organizations which attract women so largely just now?" he replies: "A society like the Daughters of the American Revolution I heartily approve of, for it tends to foster patriotism and keep it alive, but other clubs of all kinds for women I strictly disapprove of."
The Oracle of Princeton, ex-President Cleveland, who has gained the most notoriety for his heavy diatribes against women's clubs, also admits that there are a few societies which it might be well for women to encourage and keep alive—religious organizations and those which administer to the needs of the heathen in a foreign land. The Oracle of Brooklyn, Dr. Lyman Abbott, adds a few more to the list and includes philanthropic, reform and social clubs. Would it be unwomanly to ask why there should have been such wide divergence in the Divine Illumination which each Oracle received?
Dr. Shaw quoted from Mr. Roosevelt: "The President of the United States does not absent himself from the country during the term of his presidency, it is his domain. So should it be with woman; she is queen of her empire and that empire is the home," and after reminding him that the President's term lasts but four or eight years she asked: "What do men mean by saying that women should remain contentedly in their homes? They do not intend us to understand that we are never to leave them, for they are frequently calling us forth when conditions become so intolerable that even men can no longer endure them. Then they call upon women to come out from the seclusion and protection of their homes and aid them to 'save the city and the State.'" She pointed out the difference between the time when the home was "a protective and industrial center" and now when "the results of electricity and steam have scattered the households," but in picturing the advance that women had made in their own domain she said: "There never was a time whenthere was as large a number of good housekeepers and homemakers; when there was as much intelligence shown in the scientific preparation of food; such knowledge of household sanitation; such reverence for individual life; such painstaking study of the needs and rights of childhood; when there was so much thought given to the development of the finer and more permanent qualities of character; when such good comradeship existed between children and their parents; when marriage had so deep a spiritual and human meaning as at the present time. The home ideal of today is the best the world has yet known and it will continue to develop as larger freedom and broader culture come to all who share in its life...."
The manner in which politics enters the modern home was pointed out and the contempt which was shown for the political opinions of women and then in a rousing appeal to women the speaker said: "A few days since I was asked by a compiler of other people's thoughts to express for him my opinion of the greatest need of American women and I replied, 'self-respect.' ... The assumption that woman have neither discernment nor judgment and that any man is superior in all the qualities that make for strength, stability and sanity to any woman, simply because he is a man and she is a woman, is still altogether too common. The time has come when women must question themselves to learn how far they are personally responsible for this almost universal disrespect and then set about changing it."
Dr. Shaw told of the organization of the College Women's Equal Suffrage League and asked: "Who can compute the loss sustained by our country every year by the addition of unrestricted, ignorant and often criminal male voters and the exclusion of the vast number of college and high-school graduates through the disfranchisement of women? If the stability of a government depends upon the morality and intelligence of its voting citizens, how long can the foundations of ours remain secure if we continue to enfranchise ignorance and vice and disfranchise intelligence and virtue?" The action of Legislatures in past years was depicted as "playing shuttlecock and battledore with the amendment, passing it in one House to defeat it in another, in a hypocritical desire to appear favorable and inspireus with hope in order to retain the small amount of influence they think we possess, and yet compelling us to begin the work all over again." After reviewing the long struggle of American women for political freedom she ended with an impassioned peroration of which only a portion can be quoted:
No class of men in any nation have ever been compelled to wage such an arduous and difficult struggle for their political freedom. Through the influence of the Democratic party, without an effort on their own behalf, white working men were enfranchised; and by an Act of Congress under Republican leadership the newly emancipated men slaves were protected in their right of suffrage. The same Act placed in the Constitution of the United States for the first time the word "male," which robbed women of the protection guaranteed to every other class of citizens in the most sacred right of citizenship—the right to a voice in the Government.Such is the boasted chivalry of the Land of Freedom, which has left its women to strive against tradition, prejudice, conservatism, self-interest, political power and in addition all the forces of corruption combined, to secure the privilege which was conferred upon vast numbers of men who never even demanded it and many of whom knew nothing of its significance after it was granted. I claim, and fear no contradiction, that the women of this land are better qualified to exercise the suffrage with intelligence, honesty and patriotism than were any other class of citizens in the world at the time when it was conferred upon them.Must women, unaided, continue the struggle for forty years longer until they have rounded out a century, assailing the bulwarks of prohibitive constitutions in the forty-one States yet to be won? Or will not some brave, consistent and freedom-loving President, recognizing the duty the Government owes to the disfranchised millions of patriotic women, recommend to Congress to submit an amendment to the Federal Constitution forbidding disfranchisement on account of sex? And will not the time speedily come when Congress, recognizing the great injustice which was inflicted upon the women of the land when by enfranchising a race of slave men they riveted the fetters of disfranchisement upon educated and patriotic women, redeem the nation from this stigma? It was the most ungrateful and unjust act ever perpetrated by a republic upon a class of citizens who had worked and sacrificed and suffered as did the women of this nation in the struggle of the Civil War only to be rewarded at its close by such unspeakable degradation as to be reduced to the plane of subjects to enfranchised slaves....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 whichour ancestors and yours laid down their lives; there is our battlefield for justice, equality and freedom. Where is yours?"
No class of men in any nation have ever been compelled to wage such an arduous and difficult struggle for their political freedom. Through the influence of the Democratic party, without an effort on their own behalf, white working men were enfranchised; and by an Act of Congress under Republican leadership the newly emancipated men slaves were protected in their right of suffrage. The same Act placed in the Constitution of the United States for the first time the word "male," which robbed women of the protection guaranteed to every other class of citizens in the most sacred right of citizenship—the right to a voice in the Government.
Such is the boasted chivalry of the Land of Freedom, which has left its women to strive against tradition, prejudice, conservatism, self-interest, political power and in addition all the forces of corruption combined, to secure the privilege which was conferred upon vast numbers of men who never even demanded it and many of whom knew nothing of its significance after it was granted. I claim, and fear no contradiction, that the women of this land are better qualified to exercise the suffrage with intelligence, honesty and patriotism than were any other class of citizens in the world at the time when it was conferred upon them.
Must women, unaided, continue the struggle for forty years longer until they have rounded out a century, assailing the bulwarks of prohibitive constitutions in the forty-one States yet to be won? Or will not some brave, consistent and freedom-loving President, recognizing the duty the Government owes to the disfranchised millions of patriotic women, recommend to Congress to submit an amendment to the Federal Constitution forbidding disfranchisement on account of sex? And will not the time speedily come when Congress, recognizing the great injustice which was inflicted upon the women of the land when by enfranchising a race of slave men they riveted the fetters of disfranchisement upon educated and patriotic women, redeem the nation from this stigma? It was the most ungrateful and unjust act ever perpetrated by a republic upon a class of citizens who had worked and sacrificed and suffered as did the women of this nation in the struggle of the Civil War only to be rewarded at its close by such unspeakable degradation as to be reduced to the plane of subjects to enfranchised slaves....
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 whichour 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 atthis 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 makeProgressthe 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 theLadies' 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 whicheach 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 kindergartenand 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?
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 kindergartenand 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, thetrade 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."
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 BaltimoreAmericanthus 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 andin 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 EveningFebruary 8, 1906Presiding OfficerIra Remsen, Ph.D., LL.D.,President of Johns Hopkins University.UshersStudents of the Woman's College of Baltimore in Academic Dress.AddressesMary 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 Alumnæ(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.
College EveningFebruary 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 Alumnæ(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 occasionby 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 appreciationof 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.
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 appreciationof 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, andin 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 increasehas 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.PIONEERS OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.Born, 1815.LUCY STONE.Born, 1818.SUSAN B. ANTHONY.Born, 1820.LUCRETIA MOTT.Born, 1793.MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT.Born, 1846.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 givento 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.
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, andin 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 increasehas 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.
PIONEERS OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.Born, 1815.LUCY STONE.Born, 1818.SUSAN B. ANTHONY.Born, 1820.LUCRETIA MOTT.Born, 1793.MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT.Born, 1846.
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 givento 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."
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."
"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 byall, '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 theLadies' 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 letyour 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 BaltimoreEvening Heraldcommented: "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: