"They shall be remembered forever, They shall be alive forever, They shall be speaking forever, The people shall hear them forever."
Miss Anthony was profoundly moved. This wonderful scene--the magnificent audience in one of the oldest and most conservative of cities; this group of the most distinguished women educators; the president of one of the leading universities of the world in the chair; the large number of college women in the audience, free, independent, equipped for life"s highest work--represented the culmination of what she had striven for during half a century. Her Biography gives this account: "After the applause had ended there was a moment of intense silence and then, as Miss Anthony came forward, the entire audience rose and greeted her with waving handkerchiefs, while tears rolled down the cheeks of many who felt that she would never be present at another convention. "If any proof were needed of the progress of the cause for which I have worked," she said, in clear, even tones, distinctly heard by all, "it is here tonight. The presence on the stage of these college women, and in the audience of all those college girls who will some day be the nation"s greatest strength, will tell their own story to the world. They give the highest joy and encouragement to me. I am not going to make a long speech but only to say thank you and good night." It was all she had the strength to say but she never would publicly confess it."
Interesting State reports, conferences and addresses filled the mornings, afternoons and evenings of this unparalleled week. The Initiative and Referendum was presented by an acknowledged authority, George H. Shibley of Washington, director of the department of representative government in the bureau of economic research. He congratulated the a.s.sociation 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 const.i.tuency back of them to influence his answers.
A valuable conference was opened with a comprehensive paper by Mrs.
Mary Kenney O"Sullivan (Ma.s.s.), 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 endors.e.m.e.nt 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 unsurpa.s.sed. She said in the course of it: "As the result of close observation I may state that the calm, judicial mind of the unbiased editor is never more in evidence than when he bends his energies to a consideration of the woman question--that is, the woman question in reference to politics. Then he is on sure ground and he always is actuated by a desire to serve the best interests of women. Does it come under his ken that a woman has the temerity to suggest even in faint tones the advisability and feasibility, the common sense and justice of being allowed to cast a ballot, then the opportunity of the unbiased editor has come and the rash claimant is admonished in fatherly, protecting tones to "Remember that only in the Home"--he always spells home with a capital in this connection--"should a woman be in evidence." He almost weeps when he pictures the dire consequences that would inevitably result should women enter the uncleanly pool of politics. Chivalry would become extinct--chivalry being the guiding principle, according to the unbiased editor, on which men act--and then would tired men no longer give up their seats in trolley cars to masculine women and no longer would they accord equal pay for equal work, as they chivalrously do now!"
Turning her shafts on Mr. Bok, editor of the _Ladies" Home Journal_, and ex-President Cleveland"s articles in it, Miss Campbell evoked so much laughter and applause that Miss Hauser became anxious as to the effect on the representatives of the press who were there and called on Mrs. Upton to calm the tempestuous waters, who offered some "golden precepts" for dealing with editors, among them the following: "Keep the paper fully informed of all suffrage news. If there is something unpleasant in it and the reporter tells you that the editor and not himself is responsible for it, smile and believe him. Take the reporter into your confidence and let him absorb the impression that you trust him implicitly. The result will be that you and your cause will get the best of it. In a word, treat the newspaper reporter as you would any other gentleman and in the long run you will profit by it. If you are the press representative of your local organization try to have from time to time items of news pertaining to matters other than that of woman suffrage. Use the telephone lavishly and let your home be a sort of stopping place for the reporter in his routine work.
When you present such an att.i.tude toward the press the editors cannot find it in their hearts to refuse if you want a little s.p.a.ce for yourself and your cause." The Baltimore _Evening Herald_ commented: "From the foregoing it will be observed that in the dark and devious avocation of working the unsophisticated editor, Mrs. Upton is truly a past mistress, ent.i.tled 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 a.s.sociations 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 subst.i.tute moral force for brute force, reason for pa.s.sion 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 (Ma.s.s.), 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 (Ma.s.s.), Mrs. Upton and Mrs. Barrows. It closed with a paper by the Rev. Marie Jenney Howe on Woman"s Munic.i.p.al Vote.
One of the most important evening sessions was devoted to the question of Munic.i.p.al Government, with Dr. William H. Welch, Professor of Pathology in Johns Hopkins University, presiding. A leading feature was the address of the Hon. Frederick C. Howe of Cleveland, O., The City for the People. He reviewed the mismanagement and political corruption of the large cities, "controlled by great financial interests and yet filled with eager, energetic people, struggling to organize a good democratic movement of humanity focused on a democratic ideal." In voicing the hope for the future he said:
There is an upward movement in all our cities. We are endeavoring to work out democracy and are doing amazingly well. When it is possible to organize the ideals of this new democratic movement it will be a city not for men alone but for men and women. It is business which has made our cities take the illogical position that women should not partic.i.p.ate in munic.i.p.al affairs as the chief corrective of the evils which underlie most of our munic.i.p.al 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 partic.i.p.ating 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 Munic.i.p.al Regeneration, was detained at home and his wife, Mrs. Lucretia L. Blankenburg, president of the Pennsylvania Suffrage a.s.sociation, told of the big campaign of the preceding autumn for better government in that city and the important part women had in it and said: "The men claimed that the women helped them a great deal but when the day came for the jubilation after the election, not a woman was invited to sit on the platform or to take part in the jubilee, except in the audience. In one of our suburbs the successful people gave a banquet and they did condescend to invite the women who had helped them win the election to sit in the gallery after the banquet and hear the speeches.... We are to have an election very soon and when I left home to come to this convention our city party was holding meetings in churches and halls and parlors and the chairman of the committee chided me for deserting my "home work." I told her that it was a greater work to try to get the right to vote and increase my influence."
The Hon. William Dudley Foulke, president of the National Civil Service Commission, spoke informally on An Object Lesson in Munic.i.p.al Politics, describing the revolution of the citizens against the corrupt government of his home city, Richmond, Ind., and the valuable a.s.sistance 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 Munic.i.p.al 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, prost.i.tution 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 munic.i.p.al consideration and control as soon as the population is congested. To test the elector"s fitness to deal with this situation by his ability to bear arms is absurd. These problems must be solved, if they are solved at all, not from the military point of view, not even from the industrial point of view, but from a third, which is rapidly developing in all the great cities of the world--the human-welfare point of view....
City housekeeping has failed partly because women, the traditional housekeepers, have not been consulted as to its multiform activities. The men have been carelessly indifferent to much of this civic housekeeping, as they have always been indifferent to the details of the household.... The very multifariousness and complexity of a city government demand the help of minds accustomed to detail and variety of work, to a sense of obligation for the health and welfare of young children and to a responsibility for the cleanliness and comfort of other people. Because all these things have traditionally been in the hands of women, if they take no part in them now they are not only missing the education which the natural partic.i.p.ation 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 cla.s.s 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 G.o.d 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 princ.i.p.al address on the work of the Volunteers of America for the men and women in prisons and after they are discharged. At its beginning she said: "I have never before stood on the platform with these leaders in the struggle for woman suffrage but I sympathize with any movement whose motive is, like theirs, the uplifting of humanity." Her beauty, her sweet voice and her rare eloquence made a deep impression on the audience, who responded with a generous collection for her Hope Halls. The meeting closed with the congregational singing of America and the benediction by the Rev.
Marie Jenney Howe. All of the women ministers occupied the pulpits of various churches in the morning or evening, and, according to the reporter for the _News_, "astonished the large congregations which a.s.sembled 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 a.s.sociation 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 unsurpa.s.sed 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 s.e.x. 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 a.s.suredly showed no inferiority of mental power. Mrs.
Belle de Rivera (N. Y.) depicted Women of Genius, quoting Sappho, Margaret of Navarre, Vittoria Colonna, Angelica Kauffman and others eminent in the annals of history. A newspaper report said of Mrs.
Oreola Williams Haskell (N. Y.): "The thoroughness of her address gave the lie to any intimation of frivolity made by her youth and beauty, the pink crepe de chine dress and the giddy pink bow in her fluffy brown hair." In discussing Women in Politics she said that, "even though debarred from Parliaments and Congresses women will take part in politics because political situations and public events vitally affect their lives" and concluded:
The student, remembering the laws that strove to make women nonent.i.ties, 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 munic.i.p.al reform in New York she was in the thick of it. After showing how women had led wars and fallen in battles she concluded:
In the middle ages, when the electors were called upon to defend their cities at the point of the bayonet, we can understand why men considered that women should be debarred from the privilege of citizenship; but today our cities are not walled, our foes are not without the gates trying to scale the walls. The enemies are within, often found sitting in high places. Today citizens are called upon to fight, not warriors, but vice and corruption and low standards. Are not our mothers quite as capable as our fathers to wage warfare against these, the enemies in our midst?
When I was in The Hague last summer I visited the only kind of battleground which any intelligent, progressive, self-respecting nation ought to show with pride.... There in the peaceful little House in the Wood national disputes are settled, not by sacrificing the lives of thousands of innocent, helpless young men, not by creating thousands of widows and orphans, but by threshing out all matters relating to the dispute in a rational, calm, judicial and honorable way.... It seemed to me that this 20th century battleground, this quiet, peaceful House in the Wood, augured well for a new era, one in which our swords will indeed be turned into ploughshares and our spears into pruning hooks, and the angels of peace and righteousness will hover over us.
The social features of the convention were of an unusually interesting character. The Garrett family mansion had been closed for the winter but Miss Garrett opened it completely, invited as home guests Miss Anthony, Mrs. Howe, Miss Addams, Dr. Thomas and other distinguished visitors and gave a series of entertainments that conferred on the convention a prestige which added much to its influence in that conservative city. In order that its representative men and women might meet the officers and delegates Miss Garrett had a luncheon and dinner every day, the formal invitations reading: "To meet Miss Susan B. Anthony and Governor and Mrs. Warfield"; "To meet Miss Anthony and the speakers of the College Evening," etc.,--on each invitation Miss Anthony"s name preceding those of the other guests of honor. All of the speakers on the College Women"s evening were her house guests and after the meeting she gave a large reception. To quote again from the Biography: "No one present will ever forget the picture of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Howe sitting side by side on a divan in the large bay window, with a background of ferns and flowers. At their right stood Miss Garrett and Dr. Thomas, at their left Dr. Shaw and the line of eminent college women, with a beautiful perspective of conservatory and art gallery.... There was nothing in the closing years of Miss Anthony"s life that offered such encouragement and hope as to see women possessing the power of high intellectual ability, wealth and social position taking up the cause which she had carried with patient toil through poverty and obscurity to this plane of recognition."
While Miss Anthony was a guest in the home of Miss Garrett she and Dr.
Thomas asked her what was the greatest service they could render to advance the movement for woman suffrage. She answered that the strongest desire of her later years had been to raise a large fund for the work, which was constantly impeded for the lack of money, but her impaired health had prevented it. This need was frequently discussed during the week, and before the convention closed they promised her that they would try to find a number of women who, like themselves, were unable to take an active part in working for woman suffrage but sincerely believed in it, who would be willing to join together in contributing $12,000 a year for the next five years to help support the work and to show in this practical way their grat.i.tude to Miss Anthony and her a.s.sociates 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 a.s.sociation 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 disburs.e.m.e.nts 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 Sat.u.r.day morning session," the Biography relates, "Dr. Shaw expressed the great regret of all at her enforced absence and their grat.i.tude 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 b.u.t.t of ridicule, yet in the light of history how ridiculous are the enemies of this idea. Fifty years ago no American college but Oberlin was open to women. Now a third of the college students in the United States are women." Mrs. Fessenden of Boston spoke eloquently on The Mount of Aspiration, and Mrs. Lydia A. c.o.o.nley Ward of Chicago represented the strong, practical side in her address on The Nearest Duty. Miss Alice Henry of Melbourne gave an interesting account of woman suffrage in Australia, where women now possessed the complete franchise, which had been followed by very advanced laws.
It was not supposed that Miss Anthony would be able to speak, but, stimulated by the occasion and longing no doubt to say what she felt might be her last words, she came forward near the close of the meeting. A report of the occasion in the New York _Evening Post_ said:
The entire house arose and the applause and cheers seemed to last for ten minutes. Miss Anthony looked at the splendid audience of men and women, many of them distinguished in their generation, with calm and dignified sadness. "This is a magnificent sight before me," she said slowly, "and these have been wonderful addresses and speeches I have listened to during the past week.
Yet I have looked on many such audiences and in my lifetime I have listened to many such speakers, all testifying to the righteousness, the justice and the worthiness of the cause of woman suffrage. I never saw that great woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, but I have read her eloquent and unanswerable arguments in behalf of the liberty of womankind. I have met and known most of the progressive women who came after her--Lucretia Mott, the Grimke sisters, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone--a long galaxy of great women. I have heard them speak, saying in only slightly different phrases exactly what I heard these newer advocates of the cause say at these meetings. Those older women have gone on and most of those who worked with me in the early years have gone. I am here for a little time only and then my place will be filled as theirs was filled. The fight must not cease; you must see that it does not stop."
There were indeed Miss Anthony"s last words to a woman suffrage convention and they expressed the dominant thought which had directed her own life--the fight must not stop!
The address of Mrs. Howe was read at a later session by her daughter, Mrs. Florence Howe Hall, who expressed her mother"s extreme disappointment at not being able to be present in person and said: "She regarded this convention as probably the last she should attend and she hoped to clasp hands with many whom she has known in former years and with many whom she has not known. She has heard with joy of its success and sends you her affectionate greeting and glad congratulations." In the course of this scholarly address Mrs. Howe said:
I can well recall the years in which I felt myself averse to the partic.i.p.ation 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, n.o.ble 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 ident.i.ty 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 a.s.sertion of conviction and will. Society everywhere is becoming converted to its use. Adopt it, oh, you women, with clean hands and a pure heart! Verify the best word written by the apostle; "In Christ Jesus there is neither bond nor free, neither male nor female, but a new creature," the harbinger of a new creation!
On the last evening Senorita Carolina Holman Huidobro told of The Women of Chili and Argentina in the Peace Movement. Mrs. Mead spoke on The World"s Crisis, and, with an unsurpa.s.sed 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 (Ma.s.s.) 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.