There is an upward movement in all our cities. We are endeavoring to work out democracy and are doing amazingly well. When it is possible to organize the ideals of this new democratic movement it will be a city not for men alone but for men and women. It is business which has made our cities take the illogical position that women should not participate in municipal affairs as the chief corrective of the evils which underlie most of our municipal problems. I believe in woman suffrage not for women alone, not for men alone, but for the advantage of both men and women. Any community, any society, any State that excludes half of its members from participating in it is only half a State, only half a city, only half a community. So, you see, woman suffrage does not interest me so much because woman is a taxpayer or because of justice as because of democracy; because I believe in the fullest, freest, most responsible democracy that it is possible to create. The city of the people will be a man and woman city. It will elect its officials for other than party reasons and will keep men and women in office who give good service.
There is an upward movement in all our cities. We are endeavoring to work out democracy and are doing amazingly well. When it is possible to organize the ideals of this new democratic movement it will be a city not for men alone but for men and women. It is business which has made our cities take the illogical position that women should not participate in municipal affairs as the chief corrective of the evils which underlie most of our municipal problems. I believe in woman suffrage not for women alone, not for men alone, but for the advantage of both men and women. Any community, any society, any State that excludes half of its members from participating in it is only half a State, only half a city, only half a community. So, you see, woman suffrage does not interest me so much because woman is a taxpayer or because of justice as because of democracy; because I believe in the fullest, freest, most responsible democracy that it is possible to create. The city of the people will be a man and woman city. It will elect its officials for other than party reasons and will keep men and women in office who give good service.
The Hon. Rudolph Blankenburg, Philadelphia's noted reformer, who was to speak on Municipal Regeneration, was detained at home and his wife, Mrs. Lucretia L. Blankenburg, president of the Pennsylvania Suffrage Association, told of the big campaign of the preceding autumn for better government in that city and the important part women had in it and said: "The men claimed that the women helped them a great deal but when the day came for the jubilation after the election, not a woman was invited to sit on the platform or to take part in the jubilee, except in the audience. In one of our suburbs the successful people gave a banquet and they did condescend to invite the women who had helped them win the election to sit in the gallery after the banquet and hear the speeches.... We are to have an election very soon and when I left home to come to this convention our city party was holding meetings in churches and halls and parlors and the chairman of the committee chided me for deserting my 'homework.' I told her that it was a greater work to try to get the right to vote and increase my influence."
The Hon. William Dudley Foulke, president of the National Civil Service Commission, spoke informally on An Object Lesson in Municipal Politics, describing the revolution of the citizens against the corrupt government of his home city, Richmond, Ind., and the valuable assistance rendered by the women, and, as always, demanding the suffrage for them.
It was at this meeting that Miss Jane Addams of Hull House, Chicago, made the address on The Modern City and the Municipal Franchise for Women, which was thenceforth a part of the standard suffrage literature. Quotations are wholly inadequate.
It has been well said that the modern city is a stronghold of industrialism quite as the feudal city was a stronghold of militarism, but the modern cities fear no enemies and rivals from without and their problems of government are solely internal. Affairs for the most part are going badly in these great new centres, in which the quickly-congregated population has not yet learned to arrange its affairs satisfactorily. Unsanitary housing, poisonous sewage, contaminated water, infant mortality, the spread of contagion, adulterated food, impure milk, smoke-laden air, ill-ventilated factories, dangerous occupations, juvenile crime, unwholesome crowding, prostitution and drunkenness are the enemies which the modern cities must face and overcome, would they survive. Logically their electorate should be made up of those who can bear a valiant part in this arduous contest, those who in the past have at least attempted to care for children, to clean houses, to prepare foods, to isolate the family from moral dangers; those who have traditionally taken care of that side of life which inevitably becomes the subject of municipal consideration and control as soon as the population is congested. To test the elector's fitness to deal with this situation by his ability to bear arms is absurd. These problems must be solved, if they are solved at all, not from the military point of view, not even from the industrial point of view, but from a third, which is rapidly developing in all the great cities of the world—the human-welfare point of view....City housekeeping has failed partly because women, the traditional housekeepers, have not been consulted as to its multiform activities. The men have been carelessly indifferent to much of this civic housekeeping, as they have always been indifferent to the details of the household.... The very multifariousness and complexity of a city government demand the help of minds accustomed to detail and variety of work, to a sense of obligation for the health and welfare of young children and to a responsibility for the cleanliness and comfort of other people. Because all thesethings have traditionally been in the hands of women, if they take no part in them now they are not only missing the education which the natural participation in civic life would bring to them but they are losing what they have always had.
It has been well said that the modern city is a stronghold of industrialism quite as the feudal city was a stronghold of militarism, but the modern cities fear no enemies and rivals from without and their problems of government are solely internal. Affairs for the most part are going badly in these great new centres, in which the quickly-congregated population has not yet learned to arrange its affairs satisfactorily. Unsanitary housing, poisonous sewage, contaminated water, infant mortality, the spread of contagion, adulterated food, impure milk, smoke-laden air, ill-ventilated factories, dangerous occupations, juvenile crime, unwholesome crowding, prostitution and drunkenness are the enemies which the modern cities must face and overcome, would they survive. Logically their electorate should be made up of those who can bear a valiant part in this arduous contest, those who in the past have at least attempted to care for children, to clean houses, to prepare foods, to isolate the family from moral dangers; those who have traditionally taken care of that side of life which inevitably becomes the subject of municipal consideration and control as soon as the population is congested. To test the elector's fitness to deal with this situation by his ability to bear arms is absurd. These problems must be solved, if they are solved at all, not from the military point of view, not even from the industrial point of view, but from a third, which is rapidly developing in all the great cities of the world—the human-welfare point of view....
City housekeeping has failed partly because women, the traditional housekeepers, have not been consulted as to its multiform activities. The men have been carelessly indifferent to much of this civic housekeeping, as they have always been indifferent to the details of the household.... The very multifariousness and complexity of a city government demand the help of minds accustomed to detail and variety of work, to a sense of obligation for the health and welfare of young children and to a responsibility for the cleanliness and comfort of other people. Because all thesethings have traditionally been in the hands of women, if they take no part in them now they are not only missing the education which the natural participation in civic life would bring to them but they are losing what they have always had.
The Sunday afternoon service was held in the Lyric Theater, whose capacity was taxed with an audience "representing every class of society, every creed and no creed," according to the Baltimore papers. It was preceded by a half-hour musical program by Edwin M. Shonert, pianist, and Earl J. Pfonts, violinist. The Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell made the opening prayer; the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw read the Scripture lesson and gave the day's text: "Be strong and very courageous; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest." The Battle Hymn of the Republic was beautifully read by the Rev. Olympia Brown and sung by Miss Etta Maddox, the audience joining in the chorus. Mrs. Maud Ballington Booth gave the principal address on the work of the Volunteers of America for the men and women in prisons and after they are discharged. At its beginning she said: "I have never before stood on the platform with these leaders in the struggle for woman suffrage but I sympathize with any movement whose motive is, like theirs, the uplifting of humanity." Her beauty, her sweet voice and her rare eloquence made a deep impression on the audience, who responded with a generous collection for her Hope Halls. The meeting closed with the congregational singing of America and the benediction by the Rev. Marie Jenney Howe. All of the women ministers occupied the pulpits of various churches in the morning or evening, and, according to the reporter for theNews, "astonished the large congregations which assembled to do them honor with their facility of expression and the soundness of their logic!"[46]
The resolutions offered by Henry B. Blackwell, chairman of the committee, covered a wide and rather unusual range of subjects,showing the broad scope of the work of the association and expressing its pleasure at the world-wide indications of progress. Deep regret was expressed for the death of the friends of the cause during the year, among them George W. Catt of New York, husband of Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt; Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell of New York; Mrs. Jane H. Spofford of Maine; Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller of Maryland; Mrs. Sarah M. Perkins of Ohio; John K. Wildman of Pennsylvania, and Speaker Frederick S. Nixon of the New York Legislature.
Fraternal greetings were brought from the Ladies of the Maccabees by Mrs. Melva J. Caswell, State Commander of the District of Columbia, Maryland and Delaware; from the National W. C. T. U., by Miss Marie C. Brehm, president for Illinois, and from the American Purity Alliance by its president, Dr. O. Edward Janney of Baltimore. A letter was read by Mrs. Mary Bentley Thomas (Md.), from Governor Warfield expressing his thanks for the opportunity of meeting so many distinguished women and his enjoyment of the convention. Letters and telegrams were read. A letter of greeting was sent to Mrs. Ellen Clark Sargent, a veteran suffragist of San Francisco, and letters to Miss Laura Clay and Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, regretting their absence. A special vote of appreciation was given to Dr. and Mrs. William Funck and a letter of thanks was sent to Dr. Thomas and Miss Garrett for their part in the unsurpassed success of the convention.
A comprehensive report of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, organized in Berlin in 1904, was given by its president, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, showing that "the agitation throughout Europe for a broader democracy has naturally opened the way for the discussion of woman suffrage and the subject is being considered as never before in Europe." [See Chapter on the Alliance.] The Evening with Women in History was opened by Mrs. Catt, who said: "One idea is the mainspring of the opposition to woman suffrage—that women are by nature of the inferior sex. Even Darwin, so scientific that he tried to see all things fairly, entertained this unjust view. When women have had the same inspiration and opportunity as men their work has been equal in merit."
The program assuredly showed no inferiority of mental power. Mrs. Belle de Rivera (N. Y.) depicted Women of Genius, quoting Sappho, Margaret of Navarre, Vittoria Colonna, Angelica Kauffman and others eminent in the annals of history. A newspaper report said of Mrs. Oreola Williams Haskell (N. Y.): "The thoroughness of her address gave the lie to any intimation of frivolity made by her youth and beauty, the pink crêpe de chine dress and the giddy pink bow in her fluffy brown hair." In discussing Women in Politics she said that, "even though debarred from Parliaments and Congresses women will take part in politics because political situations and public events vitally affect their lives" and concluded:
The student, remembering the laws that strove to make women nonentities, the tremendous force of adverse public opinion, the lack of training and preparation, must repudiate forever the usual query of the scoffer. "Why have there not been more eminent women?" and in amazement ask himself, "How does it happen that there have been any?" To those women who would do great things, who sigh for the old days, when the political queen ruled from the salon or the throne, we may say that today woman stands on the threshold of a broader and more real political life than she has ever known. In the future there may be no Sarah Jennings or Mme. de Maintenons, but when to the million-and-a-quarter of the women of our time, who in the United States, in Australia and in New Zealand are exercising the mighty power of the ballot as fully and freely as their brothers, we shall be able to add other enfranchised women of the world, we will have a mighty political sisterhood, free to realize their patriotic dreams and powerful to bring about better conditions for humanity.
The student, remembering the laws that strove to make women nonentities, the tremendous force of adverse public opinion, the lack of training and preparation, must repudiate forever the usual query of the scoffer. "Why have there not been more eminent women?" and in amazement ask himself, "How does it happen that there have been any?" To those women who would do great things, who sigh for the old days, when the political queen ruled from the salon or the throne, we may say that today woman stands on the threshold of a broader and more real political life than she has ever known. In the future there may be no Sarah Jennings or Mme. de Maintenons, but when to the million-and-a-quarter of the women of our time, who in the United States, in Australia and in New Zealand are exercising the mighty power of the ballot as fully and freely as their brothers, we shall be able to add other enfranchised women of the world, we will have a mighty political sisterhood, free to realize their patriotic dreams and powerful to bring about better conditions for humanity.
Miss Campbell described in an able and interesting manner Women Scholars of the Middle Ages. Miss Brehm pictured Heroes and Heroines. Mrs. Maud Nathan, who had as a subject Women Warriors, according to the reporter, "remarked as she took off her long white kids that she could not handle it with gloves." Declaring that she did not approve of war, she said that nevertheless whenever there was a fight for municipal reform in New York she was in the thick of it. After showing how women had led wars and fallen in battles she concluded:
In the middle ages, when the electors were called upon to defend their cities at the point of the bayonet, we can understand why men considered that women should be debarred from the privilege ofcitizenship; but today our cities are not walled, our foes are not without the gates trying to scale the walls. The enemies are within, often found sitting in high places. Today citizens are called upon to fight, not warriors, but vice and corruption and low standards. Are not our mothers quite as capable as our fathers to wage warfare against these, the enemies in our midst?When I was in The Hague last summer I visited the only kind of battleground which any intelligent, progressive, self-respecting nation ought to show with pride.... There in the peaceful little House in the Wood national disputes are settled, not by sacrificing the lives of thousands of innocent, helpless young men, not by creating thousands of widows and orphans, but by threshing out all matters relating to the dispute in a rational, calm, judicial and honorable way.... It seemed to me that this 20th century battleground, this quiet, peaceful House in the Wood, augured well for a new era, one in which our swords will indeed be turned into ploughshares and our spears into pruning hooks, and the angels of peace and righteousness will hover over us.
In the middle ages, when the electors were called upon to defend their cities at the point of the bayonet, we can understand why men considered that women should be debarred from the privilege ofcitizenship; but today our cities are not walled, our foes are not without the gates trying to scale the walls. The enemies are within, often found sitting in high places. Today citizens are called upon to fight, not warriors, but vice and corruption and low standards. Are not our mothers quite as capable as our fathers to wage warfare against these, the enemies in our midst?
When I was in The Hague last summer I visited the only kind of battleground which any intelligent, progressive, self-respecting nation ought to show with pride.... There in the peaceful little House in the Wood national disputes are settled, not by sacrificing the lives of thousands of innocent, helpless young men, not by creating thousands of widows and orphans, but by threshing out all matters relating to the dispute in a rational, calm, judicial and honorable way.... It seemed to me that this 20th century battleground, this quiet, peaceful House in the Wood, augured well for a new era, one in which our swords will indeed be turned into ploughshares and our spears into pruning hooks, and the angels of peace and righteousness will hover over us.
The social features of the convention were of an unusually interesting character. The Garrett family mansion had been closed for the winter but Miss Garrett opened it completely, invited as home guests Miss Anthony, Mrs. Howe, Miss Addams, Dr. Thomas and other distinguished visitors and gave a series of entertainments that conferred on the convention a prestige which added much to its influence in that conservative city. In order that its representative men and women might meet the officers and delegates Miss Garrett had a luncheon and dinner every day, the formal invitations reading: "To meet Miss Susan B. Anthony and Governor and Mrs. Warfield"; "To meet Miss Anthony and the speakers of the College Evening," etc.,—on each invitation Miss Anthony's name preceding those of the other guests of honor. All of the speakers on the College Women's evening were her house guests and after the meeting she gave a large reception. To quote again from the Biography: "No one present will ever forget the picture of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Howe sitting side by side on a divan in the large bay window, with a background of ferns and flowers. At their right stood Miss Garrett and Dr. Thomas, at their left Dr. Shaw and the line of eminent college women, with a beautiful perspective of conservatory and art gallery.... There was nothing in the closing years of Miss Anthony's life that offered such encouragementand hope as to see women possessing the power of high intellectual ability, wealth and social position taking up the cause which she had carried with patient toil through poverty and obscurity to this plane of recognition."
While Miss Anthony was a guest in the home of Miss Garrett she and Dr. Thomas asked her what was the greatest service they could render to advance the movement for woman suffrage. She answered that the strongest desire of her later years had been to raise a large fund for the work, which was constantly impeded for the lack of money, but her impaired health had prevented it. This need was frequently discussed during the week, and before the convention closed they promised her that they would try to find a number of women who, like themselves, were unable to take an active part in working for woman suffrage but sincerely believed in it, who would be willing to join together in contributing $12,000 a year for the next five years to help support the work and to show in this practical way their gratitude to Miss Anthony and her associates and their faith in the cause.[47]
The officers, speakers and delegates accepted invitations of President Remsen to visit Johns Hopkins University and received every possible attention; to a special exhibit at the Maryland Historical Art Gallery; to a handsome afternoon tea at the Arundel Club, welcomed by its president, Mrs. William M. Ellicott; to a large reception by the Baltimore Woman Suffrage Club and to other pleasant functions.
The report of Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton called attention to the receipts of $2,000 for 1893 and $12,150 during the past year, a period of thirteen years during which she had been treasurer. "The fact that nowadays the association always has funds," she said, "gives us a standing with the bankers and business men which works largely to our credit." She spoke of the bequests,which had been put at interest, and told of persons who refused to contribute a dollar while they remained unspent. It was the hope of the officers, she said, that they could be used for campaigns and other emergencies and that contributions should pay the running expenses, which was now nearly accomplished. The disbursements during the year, including money advanced for the Oregon campaign, had been $16,565, the amount above receipts being taken from the bequests.
The College Women's meeting took place on Thursday and Miss Anthony was unable to attend the convention the next day. "At the Saturday morning session," the Biography relates, "Dr. Shaw expressed the great regret of all at her enforced absence and their gratitude for the excellent care she was receiving at the home of Miss Garrett; but when the afternoon session opened, in she walked! She had learned that the money was to be raised at this time and she knew she could help, so she conquered her pain and came. When contributions were called for she was first to respond and holding out a little purse she said: 'I want to begin by giving you my purse. Just before I left Rochester my friends gave me a birthday party and made me a present of eighty-six dollars. I suppose they wanted me to do as I liked with the money and I wish to send it to Oregon.'" Under this inspiration the pledges soon reached $4,000. Afterwards Miss Anthony's seventeen five dollar gold pieces were sold for $10 each, and later some of them for $25.
Miss Anthony was not able to leave the house for the next two days, to her great sorrow. The leading feature of the Monday evening session was to be an address by Mrs. Howe but she also was too ill to appear, and realizing the intense disappointment this would be to the audience Miss Anthony made another heroic effort and took her place on the platform. The Rev. Herbert S. Bigelow came from Cincinnati to give an address on The Power of an Idea, in which he said: "If the world were never again to get another new idea, progress would be at an end.... The birth and growth and struggle and triumph of one great idea after another—this is the story of human progress. For more than half a century the men and women who championed the idea of woman suffrage were made the butt of ridicule, yet in the lightof history how ridiculous are the enemies of this idea. Fifty years ago no American college but Oberlin was open to women. Now a third of the college students in the United States are women." Mrs. Fessenden of Boston spoke eloquently on The Mount of Aspiration, and Mrs. Lydia A. Coonley Ward of Chicago represented the strong, practical side in her address on The Nearest Duty. Miss Alice Henry of Melbourne gave an interesting account of woman suffrage in Australia, where women now possessed the complete franchise, which had been followed by very advanced laws.
It was not supposed that Miss Anthony would be able to speak, but, stimulated by the occasion and longing no doubt to say what she felt might be her last words, she came forward near the close of the meeting. A report of the occasion in the New YorkEvening Postsaid:
The entire house arose and the applause and cheers seemed to last for ten minutes. Miss Anthony looked at the splendid audience of men and women, many of them distinguished in their generation, with calm and dignified sadness. "This is a magnificent sight before me," she said slowly, "and these have been wonderful addresses and speeches I have listened to during the past week. Yet I have looked on many such audiences and in my lifetime I have listened to many such speakers, all testifying to the righteousness, the justice and the worthiness of the cause of woman suffrage. I never saw that great woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, but I have read her eloquent and unanswerable arguments in behalf of the liberty of womankind. I have met and known most of the progressive women who came after her—Lucretia Mott, the Grimké sisters, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone—a long galaxy of great women. I have heard them speak, saying in only slightly different phrases exactly what I heard these newer advocates of the cause say at these meetings. Those older women have gone on and most of those who worked with me in the early years have gone. I am here for a little time only and then my place will be filled as theirs was filled. The fight must not cease; you must see that it does not stop."
The entire house arose and the applause and cheers seemed to last for ten minutes. Miss Anthony looked at the splendid audience of men and women, many of them distinguished in their generation, with calm and dignified sadness. "This is a magnificent sight before me," she said slowly, "and these have been wonderful addresses and speeches I have listened to during the past week. Yet I have looked on many such audiences and in my lifetime I have listened to many such speakers, all testifying to the righteousness, the justice and the worthiness of the cause of woman suffrage. I never saw that great woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, but I have read her eloquent and unanswerable arguments in behalf of the liberty of womankind. I have met and known most of the progressive women who came after her—Lucretia Mott, the Grimké sisters, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone—a long galaxy of great women. I have heard them speak, saying in only slightly different phrases exactly what I heard these newer advocates of the cause say at these meetings. Those older women have gone on and most of those who worked with me in the early years have gone. I am here for a little time only and then my place will be filled as theirs was filled. The fight must not cease; you must see that it does not stop."
There were indeed Miss Anthony's last words to a woman suffrage convention and they expressed the dominant thought which had directed her own life—the fight must not stop!
The address of Mrs. Howe was read at a later session by her daughter, Mrs. Florence Howe Hall, who expressed her mother's extreme disappointment at not being able to be present in personand said: "She regarded this convention as probably the last she should attend and she hoped to clasp hands with many whom she has known in former years and with many whom she has not known. She has heard with joy of its success and sends you her affectionate greeting and glad congratulations." In the course of this scholarly address Mrs. Howe said:
I can well recall the years in which I felt myself averse to the participation of women in political life. The feminine type appeared to me so precious, so indispensable to humanity, that I dreaded any enlargement of its functions lest something of its charm and real power should therein be lost. I have often felt as if some sudden and unlooked for revelation had been vouchsafed to me, for at my first real contact with the suffragists of, say, forty years ago, I was made to feel that womanhood is not only static but also much more dynamic, a power to move as well as a power to stay. True womanliness must grow and not diminish, in its larger and freer exercise. Whom did I see at that first suffrage meeting, first in my experience? Lucy Stone, sweet faced and silver voiced, the very embodiment of Goethe's "eternal feminine"; William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, noble advocates of human freedom; Lucretia Mott, eloquent and beautiful in her holy old age. What did I hear? Doctrine which harmonized with my dearest aspirations, extending as it did the hope which I had supposed was for an elect and superior few to all the motherhood of the human race. The new teaching seemed to me to throw the door open for all women to come up higher, to live upon a higher plane of thought and to exercise in larger and more varied fields the talents, wonderful indeed, to which such limited scope had hitherto been allowed. I felt, too, that the new freedom brought with it an identity of interest which formed a bond of sisterhood and that the great force of cooperation would wonderfully aid the promotion of objects dear to all true women alike....I have sat in the little chapel in Bethlehem in which tradition places the birth of the Saviour. It seems fitting that it should be adorned with offerings of beautiful things but while I mused there a voice seemed to say to me, "Look abroad! This divine child is no more, he has grown to be a man and a deliverer. Go out into the world. Find his footsteps and follow them. Work, as he did, for the redemption of mankind. Suffer as he did, if need be, derision and obloquy. Make your protest against tyranny, meanness and injustice!"The weapon of Christian warfare is the ballot, which represents the peaceable assertion of conviction and will. Society everywhere is becoming converted to its use. Adopt it, oh, you women, with clean hands and a pure heart! Verify the best word written by the apostle; "In Christ Jesus there is neither bond nor free,neither male nor female, but a new creature," the harbinger of a new creation!
I can well recall the years in which I felt myself averse to the participation of women in political life. The feminine type appeared to me so precious, so indispensable to humanity, that I dreaded any enlargement of its functions lest something of its charm and real power should therein be lost. I have often felt as if some sudden and unlooked for revelation had been vouchsafed to me, for at my first real contact with the suffragists of, say, forty years ago, I was made to feel that womanhood is not only static but also much more dynamic, a power to move as well as a power to stay. True womanliness must grow and not diminish, in its larger and freer exercise. Whom did I see at that first suffrage meeting, first in my experience? Lucy Stone, sweet faced and silver voiced, the very embodiment of Goethe's "eternal feminine"; William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, noble advocates of human freedom; Lucretia Mott, eloquent and beautiful in her holy old age. What did I hear? Doctrine which harmonized with my dearest aspirations, extending as it did the hope which I had supposed was for an elect and superior few to all the motherhood of the human race. The new teaching seemed to me to throw the door open for all women to come up higher, to live upon a higher plane of thought and to exercise in larger and more varied fields the talents, wonderful indeed, to which such limited scope had hitherto been allowed. I felt, too, that the new freedom brought with it an identity of interest which formed a bond of sisterhood and that the great force of cooperation would wonderfully aid the promotion of objects dear to all true women alike....
I have sat in the little chapel in Bethlehem in which tradition places the birth of the Saviour. It seems fitting that it should be adorned with offerings of beautiful things but while I mused there a voice seemed to say to me, "Look abroad! This divine child is no more, he has grown to be a man and a deliverer. Go out into the world. Find his footsteps and follow them. Work, as he did, for the redemption of mankind. Suffer as he did, if need be, derision and obloquy. Make your protest against tyranny, meanness and injustice!"
The weapon of Christian warfare is the ballot, which represents the peaceable assertion of conviction and will. Society everywhere is becoming converted to its use. Adopt it, oh, you women, with clean hands and a pure heart! Verify the best word written by the apostle; "In Christ Jesus there is neither bond nor free,neither male nor female, but a new creature," the harbinger of a new creation!
On the last evening Señorita Carolina Holman Huidobro told of The Women of Chili and Argentina in the Peace Movement. Mrs. Mead spoke on The World's Crisis, and, with an unsurpassed knowledge of her subject, pointed out the vast responsibility of the United States in the cause of Peace and Arbitration, saying in part: "Protected by two oceans, with not a nation on the hemisphere that dares to attack her; with not a nation in the world that is her enemy, rich and with endless resources, this most fortunate nation is the one of all others to lead the world out of the increasing intolerable bondage of armaments. If the United States will take a strong position on gradual, proportional disarmament the first step may be made toward it at the second Hague conference soon to be held.... Of all women the suffragists should be alert and well informed upon these momentous questions. Our battle cry today must be 'Organize the world!' War will cease when concerted action has removed the causes of war and not before."
Mrs. Pauline Steinem, an elected member of the Toledo (O.) school board, showed convincingly the need for Women's Work on Boards of Education. Miss Harriet May Mills (N. Y.) made a clear, logical address on The Right of Way, and Mr. Blackwell (Mass.) discussed from his knowledge of politics The Wooing of Electors.
In closing the convention Dr. Shaw expressed the hope that if it had brought no other truth to the people of Baltimore it had shown that women want the ballot as a means for accomplishing the things that good men and women wish to accomplish. She made an earnest appeal for a deeper interest in the highest things of life and more consecrated work for all that contributes to the progress of humanity.
In order to have the usual hearings before committees of Congress on the submission of a woman suffrage amendment to the Federal Constitution a large delegation went to Washington on February 14, the next day after the convention closed, and thehearing was held the morning of the 15th, Miss Anthony's birthday. She was not able to attend, greatly to her own disappointment and that of the older speakers, whose inspiration she had been for so long on these occasions. She had arranged the first one ever held in 1869 and had missed but two in thirty-seven years.
The hearing before the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage took place in the Marble Room, as usual, Senator Augustus O. Bacon of Georgia in the chair and Dr. Shaw presiding. The speakers were Señorita Huidobro of Chili; Mrs. Elizabeth D. Bacon, president of the Connecticut Suffrage Association; Mrs. Mary Bentley Thomas (Md.); the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell (N. J.); Miss Anne Fitzhugh Miller (N. Y.); Mrs. Upton, Mrs. Steinem and Mrs. Fessenden.
The hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, the Hon. John J. Jenkins (Wis.), chairman, was in charge of Mrs. Florence Kelley, first vice-president of the association. Mrs. Blankenburg told of the herculean efforts of over 2,000 women at the last November election of Philadelphia. Mrs. Harriet A. Eager spoke of the work of a woman's Committee of Moral Education in Boston where there was no law prohibiting the circulation of any kind of literature. They went to the Legislature for such a law with a petition from 32,000 of the representative women of Massachusetts and stayed there six weeks working for it only to have it refused. She told how the women of the State petitioned fifty-five years for a law giving mothers equal guardianship of their children and pointed out the helpless position of women without political power.
Miss Kate M. Gordon of New Orleans, corresponding secretary of the association, began: "My message this morning was particularly for the southern members of the committee but I shall have to ask others present to carry it to them, as I do not believe any of them are here although seven are members." She protested against the attitude of southern members of Congress toward woman suffrage and expressed the deep resentment of southern women at their classification with the disfranchised, saying that their men more than all others should feel the responsibility of lifting them from their present humiliating position.Mrs. Ella S. Stewart, president of the Illinois Suffrage Association, based her argument on simple justice, and said in conclusion: "Your power is absolute and your responsibility correspondingly great. Humiliating as it is for me to beg for what is mine from strangers, I would a thousand times rather be a defrauded mendicant than to hold in my hand the rights, the destiny and the happiness of millions of human beings and have the heart to deny their just claims."
Mrs. Mary Kenney O'Sullivan (Mass.) spoke "as one representing 3,000,000 women who have been forced out of the home through necessity," and said in the course of her strong speech: "I know that the working women of this country are not receiving the highest wages because they have not a vote. Right here in Washington, in your big bindery of the Government, a trade to which I gave the larger part of my life, the women who do equal work with the men do not receive equal pay. The Government more than any other employer has taken advantage of women of my class because they have not a vote.... The workmen, more than any other men, even more than those who are supposed to be statesmen, have seen the necessity for women to have a vote. Ever since 1890 the convention of the American Federation of Labor has unanimously adopted a resolution favoring woman suffrage. I do not believe that any one will deny that the workingmen are the thinking men of the country. I am asking you, in the name of the women I represent at least, to do for us what our working brothers are trying to do—give us our rights."
Mrs. Lucia Ames Mead said in the course of a long address: "The man who talks about home today as if it still gave ample opportunity for woman's productive activity as it once did, is talking about a condition which is as obsolete as the conditions before we had railroads and telegraphs. Woman's educational opportunities and productive capacity are so altered as to require her political status to be altered.... There is a class of women who do not need to earn their living and have a large leisure. They are not idle, they are as active as fireflies, but they are not obliged to be productive as every human being should be.... They have more time than men to study and to apply theprinciples of justice and mercy and to do that preventive, educational work which is a better defense of country than a squadron of battleships. The suffrage has done much to develop man; the woman of leisure needs it to develop her; the working woman needs it to obtain salutary conditions under which to earn her living; the woman working for reforms needs it so as to accomplish in a year what otherwise she may wait for twenty-five years of pleading and 'influence' to obtain."
Miss Alice Stone Blackwell began her address: "We are not here to ask you to extend suffrage to women but to give to the State Legislatures an opportunity to vote on it, and probably some practical considerations should be offered to show that public sentiment has arrived at a point where it seems to be timely and worth while that this question should be submitted to them. We would like to convince you that this is only right. If three-fourths of them are not prepared to give us suffrage, we shall not get it. If three-fourths of them are prepared, then public sentiment has arrived at a point where we ought to have it." She reviewed the advance of the movement and said: "We could keep this committee here until next week reading to them testimony from representative men and women as to the good results of woman suffrage where it is in operation." The unimpeachable testimony which she then presented from the equal suffrage States filled several pages of the printed record.
Introducing Mrs. Kelley, Chairman Jenkins had spoken of her father, William D. Kelley, known as the Father of the House, and she said:
It is quite true that my father, Judge Kelley of Pennsylvania, came to Congress in the year in which President Lincoln was first elected and for twenty-five years he patiently introduced at every session a resolution preliminary to a hearing for the woman suffragists. Through all that period of ridicule, when the hearings were not conducted so respectfully or in so friendly a manner as this one has been, he continued to introduce that resolution. In 1890 death removed him from the House of Representatives and I come here as the second generation. I assure you that I and the rest of the women throughout the country will come from generation to generation, just so long as it is necessary. Next year my oldest son will vote and that generation will take up the task on behalf of the enfranchisement of the women of this country.... Every time we come there is some gain to record, but, betweenthe times, at least 1,000,000 new immigrants have come into this country who will have to be brought to the American way of thinking about women before they will vote to give the ballot to those who are born here and whose forefathers have asked that we be enfranchised.It is an ignominious way to treat us, to send us to the Chinaman in San Francisco, to the enfranchised Indians of other western States, to the negroes, Italians, Hungarians, Poles, Bohemians and innumerable Slavic immigrants in Pennsylvania and other mining States to obtain our right of suffrage. There yet remain forty-three States in which women are not enfranchised and it looks as if it might take us a hundred years, at the present rate of progress, before we can relieve you and your successors from these annual hearings. What we are asking today is that you shall take a short cut and not oblige our great-grandchildren to come here and ask for a Federal Amendment.
It is quite true that my father, Judge Kelley of Pennsylvania, came to Congress in the year in which President Lincoln was first elected and for twenty-five years he patiently introduced at every session a resolution preliminary to a hearing for the woman suffragists. Through all that period of ridicule, when the hearings were not conducted so respectfully or in so friendly a manner as this one has been, he continued to introduce that resolution. In 1890 death removed him from the House of Representatives and I come here as the second generation. I assure you that I and the rest of the women throughout the country will come from generation to generation, just so long as it is necessary. Next year my oldest son will vote and that generation will take up the task on behalf of the enfranchisement of the women of this country.... Every time we come there is some gain to record, but, betweenthe times, at least 1,000,000 new immigrants have come into this country who will have to be brought to the American way of thinking about women before they will vote to give the ballot to those who are born here and whose forefathers have asked that we be enfranchised.
It is an ignominious way to treat us, to send us to the Chinaman in San Francisco, to the enfranchised Indians of other western States, to the negroes, Italians, Hungarians, Poles, Bohemians and innumerable Slavic immigrants in Pennsylvania and other mining States to obtain our right of suffrage. There yet remain forty-three States in which women are not enfranchised and it looks as if it might take us a hundred years, at the present rate of progress, before we can relieve you and your successors from these annual hearings. What we are asking today is that you shall take a short cut and not oblige our great-grandchildren to come here and ask for a Federal Amendment.
Although the women received courteous treatment and a respectful hearing from both committees no report was made by either, and the only advantage gained was that as usual thousands of franked copies of the hearings were sent to the national suffrage headquarters to be distributed throughout the States.
For some time arrangements had been under way to celebrate the birthday of Miss Anthony in the city where this had been so often done and which she loved above all others. By carefully conserving her strength she was able to attend the evening ceremonies in the Church of Our Father (Universalist) where many suffrage conventions had been held and where six years before, at the age of 80, she had resigned the presidency and laid down the gavel for the last time. Letters of congratulation were read from President Roosevelt, Vice-President Fairbanks, members of Congress and other prominent men; from Mrs. Russell Sage, Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick and other eminent women, and from organizations in this and other countries. Well known men and women brought their greetings in person. To quote again from her Biography:
"On account of her extreme weakness it was not expected that Miss Anthony would speak but at the close of the evening she seemed to feel that she must say one last word, and rising, with a tender, spiritual expression on her dear face, she stood beside Miss Shaw and explained in a few touching words how the greatwork of the National Association had been placed in her charge; turning to the other national officers on the stage she reached out her hand to them and expressed her appreciation of their loyal support, and then, realizing that her strength was almost gone, she said: 'There have been others also just as true and devoted to the cause—I wish I could name every one—but with such women consecrating their lives'—here she paused for an instant and seemed to be gazing into the future, then dropping her arms to her side she finished her sentence—'failure is impossible!' These were the last words Miss Anthony ever spoke in public and from that moment they became the watchword of those who accepted as their trust the work she laid down." One month later to the day she was laid to rest with her loved ones.
FOOTNOTES:[44]Part of Call: Never have we had so much cause to issue a thanksgiving proclamation. Never has it been so easy to love our enemies, for they have combined to fight for us in their courses.The inevitable logic of events is with us. All over the world intelligent women are interested in securing better protection for their homes and their children.... They are called upon to take part in civic affairs, and social and economic conditions force them into the world's broad field of battle where there is no place for non-combatants. The time has gone by for subterfuge and indirection.... The American Republic settles its questions in the light of day at the ballot box. No one, man or woman, has ever lost influence by the possession of power. We do not ask the ballot simply as a right, though if it be a right it cannot be rightfully denied us; we do not ask it as a privilege, though if it be a privilege it must be ours unless we admit the existence of a privileged class. We demand it because it is a duty and one which no good citizen has a right to shirk.If you are indifferent come and be convinced. What we ask is not revolutionary but is the reasonable and just demand of every being living under a democratic form of government. If you are opposed, come and let us reason together, consider our points of agreement and waive for a moment those of difference.... Let us have the truth for authority and we shall not need authority for truth....Susan B. Anthony, Honorary President.Anna Howard Shaw, President.Florence Kelley, Vice-President-at-Large.Kate M. Gordon, Corresponding Secretary.Alice Stone Blackwell, Recording Secretary.Harriet Taylor Upton, Treasurer.Laura Clay,}Auditors.Annice Jeffreys Myers,[45]Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, by Ida Husted Harper, Volume III, page 1383.[46]The clergymen of the city gave cordial assistance to the convention and among those who opened different sessions with prayer were the Reverends Dr. Van Meter of the Woman's College; George Scholl, D.D., Lutheran Church; Lloyd Coblentz, St. Paul's Reformed Church; John Y. Dobbins, Grace M. E. Church; E. L. Watson, Harlem Park M. E. Church; Alfred R. Hussey, First Independent Church; Peter Ainslee, Christian Temple; Oliver Huckel, Associate Congregational Church; Rabbi Adolf Guttmacher, Madison Avenue Temple; Marshall V. McDuffie, North Avenue Baptist Church; Ezra K. Bell, First English Lutheran Church; Edward W. Wroth, All Saints' Episcopal Church.[47]Although Miss Anthony lived only one month longer every day was made happy by the thought that those who would carry on the work would have the great assistance of this fund. A committee was formed the following summer with Miss Garrett as chairman and Dr. Thomas as treasurer and the work of securing subscriptions was begun on Miss Anthony's birthday the next year, 1907. By May 1 the $60,000 had been subscribed and put at the disposal of the national board of officers. The sum was completed by a subscription of $20,000 from "a friend" and not until after the death of Mrs. Russell Sage, who had headed the list with $5,000, was it known that she was the donor. Mrs. Sage had made generous subscriptions at other times. The full list of donors will be found in Miss Anthony's Biography, page 1401.
[44]Part of Call: Never have we had so much cause to issue a thanksgiving proclamation. Never has it been so easy to love our enemies, for they have combined to fight for us in their courses.The inevitable logic of events is with us. All over the world intelligent women are interested in securing better protection for their homes and their children.... They are called upon to take part in civic affairs, and social and economic conditions force them into the world's broad field of battle where there is no place for non-combatants. The time has gone by for subterfuge and indirection.... The American Republic settles its questions in the light of day at the ballot box. No one, man or woman, has ever lost influence by the possession of power. We do not ask the ballot simply as a right, though if it be a right it cannot be rightfully denied us; we do not ask it as a privilege, though if it be a privilege it must be ours unless we admit the existence of a privileged class. We demand it because it is a duty and one which no good citizen has a right to shirk.If you are indifferent come and be convinced. What we ask is not revolutionary but is the reasonable and just demand of every being living under a democratic form of government. If you are opposed, come and let us reason together, consider our points of agreement and waive for a moment those of difference.... Let us have the truth for authority and we shall not need authority for truth....Susan B. Anthony, Honorary President.Anna Howard Shaw, President.Florence Kelley, Vice-President-at-Large.Kate M. Gordon, Corresponding Secretary.Alice Stone Blackwell, Recording Secretary.Harriet Taylor Upton, Treasurer.Laura Clay,}Auditors.Annice Jeffreys Myers,
[44]Part of Call: Never have we had so much cause to issue a thanksgiving proclamation. Never has it been so easy to love our enemies, for they have combined to fight for us in their courses.
The inevitable logic of events is with us. All over the world intelligent women are interested in securing better protection for their homes and their children.... They are called upon to take part in civic affairs, and social and economic conditions force them into the world's broad field of battle where there is no place for non-combatants. The time has gone by for subterfuge and indirection.... The American Republic settles its questions in the light of day at the ballot box. No one, man or woman, has ever lost influence by the possession of power. We do not ask the ballot simply as a right, though if it be a right it cannot be rightfully denied us; we do not ask it as a privilege, though if it be a privilege it must be ours unless we admit the existence of a privileged class. We demand it because it is a duty and one which no good citizen has a right to shirk.
If you are indifferent come and be convinced. What we ask is not revolutionary but is the reasonable and just demand of every being living under a democratic form of government. If you are opposed, come and let us reason together, consider our points of agreement and waive for a moment those of difference.... Let us have the truth for authority and we shall not need authority for truth....
Susan B. Anthony, Honorary President.Anna Howard Shaw, President.Florence Kelley, Vice-President-at-Large.Kate M. Gordon, Corresponding Secretary.Alice Stone Blackwell, Recording Secretary.Harriet Taylor Upton, Treasurer.Laura Clay,}Auditors.Annice Jeffreys Myers,
[45]Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, by Ida Husted Harper, Volume III, page 1383.
[45]Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, by Ida Husted Harper, Volume III, page 1383.
[46]The clergymen of the city gave cordial assistance to the convention and among those who opened different sessions with prayer were the Reverends Dr. Van Meter of the Woman's College; George Scholl, D.D., Lutheran Church; Lloyd Coblentz, St. Paul's Reformed Church; John Y. Dobbins, Grace M. E. Church; E. L. Watson, Harlem Park M. E. Church; Alfred R. Hussey, First Independent Church; Peter Ainslee, Christian Temple; Oliver Huckel, Associate Congregational Church; Rabbi Adolf Guttmacher, Madison Avenue Temple; Marshall V. McDuffie, North Avenue Baptist Church; Ezra K. Bell, First English Lutheran Church; Edward W. Wroth, All Saints' Episcopal Church.
[46]The clergymen of the city gave cordial assistance to the convention and among those who opened different sessions with prayer were the Reverends Dr. Van Meter of the Woman's College; George Scholl, D.D., Lutheran Church; Lloyd Coblentz, St. Paul's Reformed Church; John Y. Dobbins, Grace M. E. Church; E. L. Watson, Harlem Park M. E. Church; Alfred R. Hussey, First Independent Church; Peter Ainslee, Christian Temple; Oliver Huckel, Associate Congregational Church; Rabbi Adolf Guttmacher, Madison Avenue Temple; Marshall V. McDuffie, North Avenue Baptist Church; Ezra K. Bell, First English Lutheran Church; Edward W. Wroth, All Saints' Episcopal Church.
[47]Although Miss Anthony lived only one month longer every day was made happy by the thought that those who would carry on the work would have the great assistance of this fund. A committee was formed the following summer with Miss Garrett as chairman and Dr. Thomas as treasurer and the work of securing subscriptions was begun on Miss Anthony's birthday the next year, 1907. By May 1 the $60,000 had been subscribed and put at the disposal of the national board of officers. The sum was completed by a subscription of $20,000 from "a friend" and not until after the death of Mrs. Russell Sage, who had headed the list with $5,000, was it known that she was the donor. Mrs. Sage had made generous subscriptions at other times. The full list of donors will be found in Miss Anthony's Biography, page 1401.
[47]Although Miss Anthony lived only one month longer every day was made happy by the thought that those who would carry on the work would have the great assistance of this fund. A committee was formed the following summer with Miss Garrett as chairman and Dr. Thomas as treasurer and the work of securing subscriptions was begun on Miss Anthony's birthday the next year, 1907. By May 1 the $60,000 had been subscribed and put at the disposal of the national board of officers. The sum was completed by a subscription of $20,000 from "a friend" and not until after the death of Mrs. Russell Sage, who had headed the list with $5,000, was it known that she was the donor. Mrs. Sage had made generous subscriptions at other times. The full list of donors will be found in Miss Anthony's Biography, page 1401.
The six preceding chapters have described at length and in detail the annual conventions of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in order to show that those who took part in them were the representative women and men of the day. Their addresses, reports of committees, resolutions adopted and other proceedings demonstrate the wide scope of the activities of this organization, which from 1869 was the foundation and the bulwark of the vast movement to obtain equality of rights for women. The Thirty-ninth convention met in Music Hall, Fine Arts Building, Chicago, Feb. 14-19, 1907, and received a cordial welcome to the State of Lincoln, who in 1836 was almost the first public man in the United States to declare in favor of suffrage for women.[48]Lorado Taft's bust of Susan B. Anthony, its pedestaldraped in the Stars and Stripes, adorned the platform and a portrait of Lucy Stone looked down on the speakers in serene benediction. The national president, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, was in the chair and addresses of welcome were made for Illinois by Mrs. Ella S. Stewart, president of the State Equal Suffrage Association; for the churches by the Right Rev. Samuel E. Fallows, Presiding Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church; for the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union by Mrs. Susanna M. D. Fry, its corresponding secretary. Mrs. Fannie J. Fernald, president of the Maine Suffrage Association, and Mrs. Mary S. Sperry, president of that of California, responded and in introducing them Dr. Shaw said: "These responses from the Atlantic and the Pacific Coasts represent greetings from all the women between them." The presidents of the Chicago North Side, the South Side and the Evanston Political Equality Clubs were presented and received with applause. Bishop Fallows expressed the wish that what he should say could be voiced by the ministers of all the churches in the land and said: "I am proud that from the period of the Civil War and a little before, when the cause of the emancipation of the slave was the foremost question of the time and was only settled by the horrors of a long struggle—from that time I espoused the cause of woman suffrage. I hope there will be no need to fight for it as we fought during those long years but at least there should be a war of words until women have the power to deposit a ballot, until they have complete enfranchisement. Your case is just; yours is a righteous cause. I cannot help believing that the exercise of the suffrage by women is necessary to the welfare and growth of the nation. Your cause stands for the home; it stands for political purity, for civic righteousness, for everything that is for the betterment of the State, and I should be guilty of high treason to my deepest convictions if I did not bid a hearty God-speed to your efforts until every State shall recognize the equality of woman before the great law of civic redemption, as God has recognized her right before the great law of human redemption."
The appointment of the usual committees was followed by a symposium on Municipal Suffrage, at this time a vital issue in Chicago, as a spirited campaign was in progress to secure a clausegiving it to women in the new city charter which a convention was preparing.[49]Mrs. Ellen M. Henrotin was to preside but she yielded to Mrs. Florence Kelley, who had to leave the city, and later took Mrs. Kelley's place in presiding over the symposium on Industrial Conditions. Professor Sophonisba Breckinridge (Ky.), of Chicago University, gave an able address on Municipal Housekeeping, saying in the course of it:
In all the things that make the city a good place in which to work, the woman is as much concerned as any one. When it comes to the questions which affect women, she has of course a peculiar ability to speak, a peculiar responsibility and an obligation to assume every right necessary to carry out that responsibility. It is incumbent upon her to secure the power to move in the most direct way upon the obstacles which lie in her path in the controlling of conditions.... It is to the housekeeper that I want to call your attention, rather than to the working woman. She has to decide how she will use her time, energy and money to promote the life, health, comfort and welfare of her family. The little group must live in a house. If she resides in a city, it is a matter of concern what shall be the structure of it, whether made of material endangering the household or not; if in an apartment house, she is concerned in the regulations under which such houses are built and controlled, in the fire escapes, the sort of gas, the dimensions of the apartments, the order of the rooms, the plumbing, etc.It is obvious that today no woman can be a competent housekeeper unless she has an intelligent knowledge of these subjects. She must exercise a control over the ordinances and have something to say about the men who make these ordinances and who enforce them. She has not the power she needs as a housekeeper unless she feels that the officials of the city are as much responsible to her, although they are not chosen by her alone, as are the domestic servants whom she does select. Her collective responsibility is just as great as her individual responsibility.... Women cannot stop either at the bottom or the top by asking for Municipal suffrage. If woman is going to be a complete housekeeper she must be a member of a political group and that leads to the demand for Municipal, State and Federal suffrage.
In all the things that make the city a good place in which to work, the woman is as much concerned as any one. When it comes to the questions which affect women, she has of course a peculiar ability to speak, a peculiar responsibility and an obligation to assume every right necessary to carry out that responsibility. It is incumbent upon her to secure the power to move in the most direct way upon the obstacles which lie in her path in the controlling of conditions.... It is to the housekeeper that I want to call your attention, rather than to the working woman. She has to decide how she will use her time, energy and money to promote the life, health, comfort and welfare of her family. The little group must live in a house. If she resides in a city, it is a matter of concern what shall be the structure of it, whether made of material endangering the household or not; if in an apartment house, she is concerned in the regulations under which such houses are built and controlled, in the fire escapes, the sort of gas, the dimensions of the apartments, the order of the rooms, the plumbing, etc.
It is obvious that today no woman can be a competent housekeeper unless she has an intelligent knowledge of these subjects. She must exercise a control over the ordinances and have something to say about the men who make these ordinances and who enforce them. She has not the power she needs as a housekeeper unless she feels that the officials of the city are as much responsible to her, although they are not chosen by her alone, as are the domestic servants whom she does select. Her collective responsibility is just as great as her individual responsibility.... Women cannot stop either at the bottom or the top by asking for Municipal suffrage. If woman is going to be a complete housekeeper she must be a member of a political group and that leads to the demand for Municipal, State and Federal suffrage.
Miss Kate M. Gordon (La.) told of the remarkable work the women of New Orleans had been able to do with their taxpayers' right to vote on matters of special taxation. "If the women of one part of the country more than another need the suffrage," shedeclared, "it is those of the South." The ChicagoTribunecommented: "As Miss Gordon sat down all the women clapped, many waved handkerchiefs and the applause continued several minutes." Mrs. Lilla Day Monroe described the excellent effects of the Municipal suffrage enjoyed by all women in Kansas, the only State where it existed in full. She called attention to the fact that the next day, February 15, would be the 20th anniversary of its granting by the Legislature. Miss Anna E. Nicholes of Chicago spoke on The Ballot for Working Women, saying in part: