At the very moment that you will be planning the work for the sixty-third year of the American suffrage campaign, the suffragists of this new-east of all nations will be sitting in their first national convention at Durban, the metropolis of Natal. The movement here is young but is wholly unlike the beginnings of the campaigns in England and America, for our revered pioneers fought their battle against the prejudice and intolerance of their time for the women of the whole world. These women are beginning at the very point where we of the older movements find ourselves today. The old-time arguments are not heard and here, as everywhere, expediency and political advantage are the causes of opposition.
No two cities could be more unlike than Louisville and Durban.
The latter lies in a tropical country with its buildings buried in ma.s.ses of luxuriant and brilliant flora, all unfamiliar to American eyes. The delegates will look out upon the placid waters of the Indian Ocean and will ride to and fro from their meetings in rickshas drawn by Zulus in the most fantastic dress imaginable, the chief feature being long horns bound upon the head. In Louisville it will be autumn, in Natal it will be spring. Yet, dissimilar as are the scenes of these two conventions, the women composing them will be actuated by the same motives, inspired by the same hopes and working to the same end. The rebellion fomented in that little Seneca Falls convention has overspread the wide earth and from the frigid lands above the North Polar Circle to the most southerly point of the Southern Temperate Zone, the mothers of our race are listening to the new call to duty which these new times are uttering. It is glorious to be a suffragist today, with all the hard times behind us and certain victory before.
May wisdom guide us to do the right thing; may love unite us; may charity temper our differences and may we never forget the obligations we owe the blessed pathfinders of our movement who made the present position of our cause possible!
The election resulted in several changes in the board of officers. Dr.
Shaw was re-elected. Mrs. McCulloch declined to stand for re-election as first vice-president and Miss Gordon as second and Miss Addams and Professor Breckinridge were chosen. For corresponding secretary Mrs.
Dennett was re-elected. Mrs. Stewart withdrew as recording secretary and Mrs. Susan W. Fitzgerald (Ma.s.s.) was elected. Miss Ashley was re-elected treasurer. Mrs. Robert M. LaFollette was elected first auditor and Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw (N. Y.) second. Later Mrs.
LaFollette declined to serve and Mrs. Katharine Dexter McCormick was appointed by the board.
In all preceding conventions there had been such unanimity in the choice of officers that the secretary had been able to cast the informal ballot for the election. This new division of sentiment was frequently ill.u.s.trated during the meetings and indicated that an element had come into the movement, which, as usual with newcomers, wanted a change to accord with its ideas. This was particularly noticeable in the discussion of the proposed new const.i.tution but the differences of opinion were peaceably adjusted by compromise.
After the election Mrs. McCormick, who had recently come into close touch with the National a.s.sociation, spoke on the Effect of Suffrage Work on Women Themselves, saying in part: "So much attention has been given to the growth and development of the movement for woman suffrage that the effect on the women themselves has been lost sight of or has been little considered but today it is becoming clear that the cause of suffrage is more valuable to the individual woman than she is to the cause. The reason is that this movement has the great though silent force of evolution behind it, impelling it slowly forward; whereas the individual is largely dependent for her development on her own powers and especially on those expressions of life with which she brings herself into contact. The woman suffrage movement offers the broadest field for contact with life. It offers cooperation of the most effective kind with others; it offers responsibility in the life of the community and the nation; it offers opportunity for the most varied and far-reaching service. To come into contact with this movement means to some individuals to enter a larger world of thought than they had known before; to others it means approaching the same world in a more real and effective way. To all it gives a wider horizon in the recognition of one fact--that the broadest human aims and the highest human ideals are an integral part of the lives of women."
The report of the Committee on Church Work by its chairman, Mrs. Mary E. Craigie, (N. Y.) began: "It is estimated that there is in the United States a total church membership of 34,517,317 persons. It would mean a great deal to the woman suffrage cause if this great organized force, representing the most thoughtful and influential men and women of every community, could be brought to endorse it and work for it. The experiences of this committee seem to prove that in the transition taking place in the world of religious thought this is the most propitious time to obtain such support." She gave a resume of the splendid work that had been done by the branch committees in the various States, the religious gatherings that had been addressed, often resulting in the adoption of a resolution for woman suffrage, and the hundreds of letters sent to ministers asking for sermons favorable to the cause, which were many times complied with. She closed by saying: "It needs neither figures nor argument to establish the fact that church attendance and church worship are in a condition of decline. It is a critical period in the history of the church, which is changing from the exercise of power to the employment of influence, and the appeals that are coming to the churches are for service from the men and women who are their real strength. The church is not appreciating the resources that are lying dormant, when two-thirds of its membership--the women--are left powerless to carry on the moral and social reform work, because, as a disfranchised cla.s.s having no political status, they are not counted as a potential force."
Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates (R. I.), chairman, made the report on Presidential suffrage. The report of the Committee on Peace and Arbitration, Mrs. Lucia Ames Mead (Ma.s.s.), chairman, spoke of the Ginn Endowment of a million dollars for the World"s Peace Foundation and of Mr. Carnegie"s great gift of ten million dollars, creating a fund to secure the peace of the world. It told of the vast work that was being done for peace by the women in the various States and said: "The world for the first time has seen the head of a great government declare that all questions between nations can be peacefully settled.
President Taft"s n.o.ble effort to secure treaties with other nations, to ensure arbitration between them of every justiciable question, should command the grat.i.tude of every patriotic woman. I had hoped to felicitate you on the ratification of these treaties by the necessary two-thirds of the Senate, but in chagrin and disappointment I must instead appeal to you to endeavor instantly to create such public sentiment as shall result in December in the acceptance of the treaties without amendment. If they are thus ratified they will be secured not only with Great Britain and France but certainly Germany, and I have no doubt j.a.pan and most other nations will agree to identical treaties."
Miss Florence H. Lus...o...b..(Ma.s.s.) gave an interesting report of the Sixth Congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance held in Stockholm in June, 1911. [See chapter on the Alliance.] Mrs. Agnes M.
Jenks, proxy for the president of the New Hampshire a.s.sociation, asked a.s.sistance in getting a clause for woman suffrage in the new const.i.tution to be made for that State. Conferences were held throughout the week on legislative work, district organization, publicity, raising money and other branches of the vast activities of the a.s.sociation. The convention Monday afternoon adjourned early in order that the members might enjoy the hospitality of the Woman"s Club of Louisville at a "tea" in their attractive rooms, and at another time take the beautiful Riverside Drive. One evening was devoted to light entertainment with two suffrage monologues by Miss Marjorie Benton Cooke; a suffrage slide talk by Mrs. Fitzgerald; a clever speech portraying the results if women voted, by Miss Inez Milholland (N. Y.) and the sparkling play, How the Vote Was Won, read by Miss Fola La Folette. A striking address was given one afternoon by Mrs. T.
P. O"Connor, an American woman but long a resident of England and Ireland, who took for her subject, Let Our Watchword be Unity.
One of the most valuable contributions to the convention was Mrs.
McCulloch"s report as Legal Adviser. This was the result of a list of forty-four questions sent to presidents of State suffrage a.s.sociations, Woman"s Christian Temperance Unions, Federations of Clubs and leading lawyers, followed up by many letters. One of these questions related to the guardianship of children, of which she said:
The subject of the guardianship of children could have been treated a century ago in a few words. The father of the legitimate child was his sole guardian and the mother had no authority or right concerning their child except such as the husband gratuitously allowed her. She had, however, all the duties which the husband might put upon her. This meant that the husband decided about the children"s food, clothing, medicine, school, church, home, a.s.sociates, punishments, pleasures and tasks and that he alone could apprentice a child, could give him for adoption and control his wages. Many mothers were kept in happy ignorance of such unjust laws because their husbands voluntarily yielded to them much of the authority over the children but this was not so in all families and many mothers took cases to Supreme Courts, protesting against the absolute paternal power. When mothers learned what this sole guardianship meant they urged legal changes. Our present guardianship laws, very few alike, show how women, each group alone in their own States, have struggled to mitigate the severest evils of sole fatherly guardianship, especially of the child"s person. This to mothers was more important than the guardianship of the child"s property.
Perhaps the greatest suffering came from the father"s power to deed or to bequeath the guardianship to a stranger and away from the mother. Most of the States now allow a surviving mother the sole guardianship of the child"s person with certain conditions.
Six States have not yet thus limited the father"s power and in those where the guardianship is not specifically granted to the surviving mother, the father"s sole power of guardianship covers his child even if yet unborn.
The report gave a thorough digest of these guardianship laws filling eight printed pages and this and Mrs. McCulloch"s digest of other laws were printed in the _Woman"s Journal_ and the Handbook of the convention.
Miss Alice Henry presented greetings from the National Womens" Trade Union League; Miss Caroline Lowe from the Women"s National Committee of the Socialist Party; Mrs. A. M. Harrison from the State Federation of Woman"s Clubs; Mrs. Charles Campbell of Toronto from the Canadian Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation; Mrs. W. S. Stubbs, wife of the Governor, and Mrs. William A. Johnston, wife of the Chief Justice and president of the State Suffrage a.s.sociation, from Kansas. A letter of love and good wishes with regrets for her absence was ordered sent to Mrs. Catt and one of affectionate sympathy to Mrs. Susan Look Avery (Ky.) for the death of her son, which prevented her attendance. During the convention Mrs. Lida Calvert Obenchain, author of Aunt Jane of Kentucky, and Miss Eleanor Breckenridge, president of the Texas Suffrage a.s.sociation, were introduced and said a few words. A telegram of greeting was read from Mrs. Caroline Meriwether Goodlett, a founder of the Daughters of the Confederacy.
The resolutions were presented by the chairman, Miss Bertha Coover, corresponding secretary of the Ohio Suffrage a.s.sociation, the committee as usual consisting of one member from each State delegation. They urged the ratification of the Arbitration Treaties in the form desired by President Taft; expressed sympathy with Finland in its struggle for liberty; endorsed the proposed Federal Amendment for the election of U. S. Senators by popular vote and demanded that women should have part in this vote; endorsed the campaign for pure food and drugs; called for the same moral standard for men and women and the same legal penalties for those who transgress the moral law; asked the Government to erect a colossal statue of Peace at the entrance to the Panama Ca.n.a.l, and there were others on minor points. Greetings and appreciation were sent to "the justice-loving men of Washington and California, whose example will be an inspiration to the men of other States." Memorial resolutions were adopted for prominent suffragists who had died during the year, among them Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Dr. Emily Blackwell, Ellen C. Sargent, William A. Keith, the artist; Samuel Walter Foss, the poet; Lillian M. Hollister, Elizabeth Smith Miller, Eliza Wright Osborne and Dr. Annice Jeffreys Myers.
There was a long resolution of thanks for the courtesy and hospitality received in Louisville, which included the clergymen who opened the sessions with prayer, the musicians, who gave their services, the press committees, the hostesses and others.[71]
On the last evening with a large audience present Mrs. Desha Breckinridge spoke on The Prospect for Woman Suffrage in the South.
"Although Kentuckians are wont to boast that within these borders is the purest Anglo-Saxon blood now existing, the spirit of their ancestors has departed," she said, and continued:
Since 1838 Kentucky has retrograded. An effort to obtain School suffrage for a larger cla.s.s of women has brought about a reactionary measure. Kentucky women at present have no greater political rights than the women of Turkey--for we have none at all--but the action of certain male politicians in defeating the School suffrage measure in the last two Legislatures has really been of advantage to the movement. It has put not only women but the progressive men of the State into fighting trim.... The opposition of the non-progressive element has made of this "sc.r.a.p of suffrage" a live, political issue. It is likely to be carried in the next Legislature by the determination of the better men of the State even more than of the women, and the fight made against it has gone far to convince both that the full franchise should be granted to women. The action of the Democratic party, when leadership in it is resumed by the best element, shows a realization that the wishes of the women of the State are to be reckoned with and that the friendship of the women, which may be gained by so simple an act of justice in their favor, is a political a.s.set of no small importance. It is quite possible that the party in Kentucky and throughout the South may eventually realize that by advocating and securing suffrage for women it may bind to itself for many years to come, through a sense of grat.i.tude and loyalty, a large number of women voters, just as the Republican party since the emanc.i.p.ation of the negro has had without effort the unquestioning loyalty of thousands of negro voters; although the women would never vote so solidly as do the negroes, because they would represent a much more thoughtful and independent body....
After showing what had been the results in the South from admitting a great body of illiterate voters she said:
A conference of southern women suffragists at Memphis a few years ago, in asking for woman suffrage with an educational qualification, pointed out that there were over 600,000 more white women in the southern States than there were negroes, men and women combined. If the literate women of the South were enfranchised it would insure an immense preponderance of the Anglo-Saxon over the African, of the literate over the illiterate, and would make legitimate limitation of the male suffrage to the literate easily possible....
Conditions of life in the South have made and kept Southerners individualists. The southern man believes that he should personally protect his women folk and he does it. He is only now slowly realizing that, with the coming of the cotton mills and other manufactories and with the growth of the cities, there has developed a great body of women, young girls and children who either have no men folk to protect them or whose men folk, because of ignorance and economic weakness, are not able to protect them against the greed and rapacity of employers or of vicious men. It is a shock to the pride of southern chivalry to find that women are less protected by the laws in their most sacred possessions in the southern States than in any other section of the Union; that the States which protect their women most effectively are those in which women have been longest a part of the electorate....
In the community business of caring for the sick, the incurable, the aged, the orphaned, the deficient and the helpless, women of the South bear already so important a part that to withdraw them from public affairs would mean sudden and widespread calamity.
Women in the South are in politics, in the higher conception of the word. "Politics," says Bernard Shaw, "is not something apart from the home and the babies--it is home and the babies." Women have long since gotten into politics in the South in the sense that they have labored for the pa.s.sage and enforcement of legislation in the interest of public health, the betterment of schools and the protection of womanhood and childhood--for the preservation, in short, "of home and the babies."
Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst of England, received an ovation when she rose to speak and soon disarmed prejudice by her dignified and womanly manner. She began by pointing out the fallacy that the women of the United States had so many rights and privileges that they did not need the suffrage and in proof she quoted existing laws and conditions that called loudly for a change. She then took up the situation in Great Britain and explained how many years the women had tried to get the franchise by const.i.tutional methods only to be deceived and spurned by the Government. She told how at last a small handful of them started a revolution; how they had grown into an army; how they had suffered imprisonment and brutality; how the suffrage bill had again and again pa.s.sed the second reading by immense majorities and the Government had refused to let it come to a final vote. "We asked Prime Minister Asquith to give us a time for this," she said. "For eight long hours in a heavy frost some of the finest women in England stood at the entrance to the House of Commons and waited humbly with pet.i.tions in their hands for their rulers and masters to condescend to receive them but the House adjourned while they stood there. The next day, while they waited again, there was an a.s.sault by the police, acting under instructions, that I do not like to dwell upon outside of my own country."
Dr. Shaw made the closing address, eloquent with hope and courage for the future and, as always, the final blessing at the convention as the benediction is at church.
In summing up the week the _Woman"s Journal_ said: "Only those who attended our national convention at Louisville can understand how really wonderful it was. For hospitality, for good management, for beautiful cooperation and self-effacement, the Kentucky women set a standard that will long be remembered and will be very hard to equal in the future. It made hard work easy and all work a joy. The grat.i.tude of the National a.s.sociation is theirs forever. They gave much to us, did we give anything to them? Here we can only say we trust that we did and accept with confidence what one of the State"s great women said many times: "This convention has done wonders for Kentucky; it has surpa.s.sed my hopes.""
FOOTNOTES:
[70] Part of Call: Within the year the State of Washington has completed its work of fully enfranchising its adult citizens. Before the convention a.s.sembles, California will no doubt have accepted the idea of true democracy. We also rejoice because the Legislatures of Kansas, Wisconsin, Oregon and Nevada have voted to submit the question to their electors. Many States, however, still refuse to allow the voters to pa.s.s upon the question of giving political independence to women. Since the purpose of the National American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation is "to secure the right to vote to women citizens of the United States," we have called this national convention of suffragists. From every State will come delegates, who will bring with them the growing spirit of rebellion against injustice....
We call upon every public-spirited woman to come and help devise methods of carrying on the fight, to strengthen the fire of revolt, to show by overwhelming numbers and determined earnestness that women will no longer be satisfied to be treated with political contempt by the legislators who are supposed to represent them.... Do your part to inspire our workers with courage, determination, fervor and consecration; to arouse them to put forth their full strength, even to the utmost sacrifice, to obtain universal recognition of the truth that every adult citizen should have a voice in the government of a free country.
ANNA HOWARD SHAW, President.
CATHARINE WAUGH MCCULLOCH, First Vice-President.
KATE M. GORDON, Second Vice-President.
MARY WARE DENNETT, Corresponding Secretary.
ELLA S. STEWART, Recording Secretary.
JESSIE ASHLEY, Treasurer.
LAURA CLAY, } ALICE STONE BLACKWELL, }Auditors.
[71] Of the press the _Woman"s Journal_ said: "The Louisville papers gave the convention full and fair reports and the _Herald_ and _Times_ had editorials declaring woman suffrage to be inevitable. Colonel Henry Watterson in the _Courier-Journal_ struggled between a sincere desire to be courteous and hospitable to a convention of distinguished women meeting in his city and an equally sincere belief that woman suffrage would be a bad thing. A rousing editorial in favor of it appeared in Desha Breckinridge"s paper, the _Lexington Leader_.
CHAPTER XII.
NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1912.
The Forty-fourth annual convention, which met in Witherspoon Building, Philadelphia, Nov. 21-26, 1912, celebrated three important victories.
At the general election in the early part of the month, Oregon, Arizona and Kansas had amended their const.i.tutions and conferred equal suffrage on women by large majority votes and the result in Michigan was still in doubt. It was the sentiment of the country that the eastward sweep of the movement was now fully under way. There was a new and vibrant tone in the Call and in the speeches and proceedings.[72] The _Woman"s Journal_ said in its account: "Another new feature was the enormous crowds that turned out at the convention.
Evening after evening, in conservative Philadelphia, ten or a dozen overflow meetings had to be held for the benefit of the people who could not possibly get into the hall. At the Thanksgiving service on Sunday afternoon, not only was the great Metropolitan Opera House filled to its capacity but for blocks the street outside was jammed with a seething crowd, eager to hear the ill.u.s.trious speakers. It looked more like an inauguration than like an old-fashioned suffrage meeting."
There was a great out-door rally in Independence Square at the beginning, such as had been witnessed many times on this historic spot conducted by men but never before in the hands of women. Miss Elizabeth Freeman was manager of this meeting, a.s.sisted by Miss Jane Campbell, the Rev. Caroline Bartlett Crane, Mrs. Camilla von Klenze, Mrs. Teresa Crowley and Miss Florence Allen. From five platforms over forty well-known speakers demanded that the principles of the Declaration of Independence signed in the ancient hall close by should be applied to women and that the old bell should ring out liberty for all and not for half the people. Mrs. Otis Skinner read the Women"s Declaration of Rights, which had been written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage in 1876 and presented at the great centennial celebration in that very square,[73]
and a little ceremony was held in honor of Mrs. Charlotte Pierce of Philadelphia, the only one then living who had signed it, with a remembrance presented by Mrs. Anna Anthony Bacon.
The convention was noteworthy for the large number of distinguished speakers on its program. On the opening afternoon, after a moment of silent prayer in memory of Lucretia Mott, the welcome of the city was extended by the widely-known "reform" Mayor Rudolph Blankenburg, who pointed out the vast field of munic.i.p.al work for women and expressed his firm conviction of their need for the suffrage. He was followed with a greeting by Mrs. Blankenburg, a former president of the State Suffrage a.s.sociation. Its formal welcome to the delegates was given by the president, Mrs. Ellen H. Price, who said in part: "We hope that you will feel at home in Pennsylvania, for the idea that has called this organization into being--that divine pa.s.sion for human rights--actuated the great founder of our Commonwealth in setting up his "holy experiment in government."" After regretting that a State founded on so broad a conception had not applied it to women Mrs.
Price said:
We welcome you in the name of William Penn, who, antedating the Declaration of Independence by nearly a century, enunciated in his Frame of Government the truth that the States of today are coming very rapidly to acknowledge: "Any Government is free to the people under it when the laws rule and the people are a party to those laws; anything more than this (and anything less) is oligarchy and confusion." We welcome you in the name of our only woman Governor, Hannah Penn, who, as we are told, for six years managed the affairs of the infant colony wisely and well.
We welcome you in the name of the patriots who placed on our Liberty Bell the injunction, "Proclaim Liberty throughout the Land to all the Inhabitants Thereof"; in the name of those ancestors of ours (yours and mine) who here gave up their lives in that struggle to establish the principle that "taxation without representation is tyranny" for a nation; in the name of those uncompromising agitators who delivered their message of liberty even at the risk of life itself, till the shackles fell from a race enslaved; in the name of Lucretia Mott, that gentle, that queenly champion of the downtrodden and oppressed, that inspired preacher whose motto, "Truth for Authority, not Authority for Truth," should be the watchword of every soul that seeks for freedom.