Gregory.
[12] Among those who took part in conferences and on committees were Helen Rand Tindall (D. C.); Annie R. Wood (Cal.); Ellen Powell Thompson (D. C.); Mariana W. Chapman, Lila K. Willets and Florence Gregory (N. Y.); Clara Bright and Jean Gordon (La.); Etta Dann (Mont.); Emily B. Ketcham and Maud Starker (Mich.); Maude I. Matthews (N. D.); Eleanor M. Hall (O.); Helen Kimber (Kas.); Eleanor C.
Stockman, Dr. Frances Woods and Dollie R. Bradley (Ia.); Emily S.
Richards (Utah); Bertha G. Wade (Ind.); Clara A. Young (Neb.); Evelyn H. Belden (Ia.); Addie N. Johnson (Mo.); Mrs. E. A. Brown (Minn.); Cornelia Cary (Brooklyn); Ida Porter Boyer (Penn.). Valuable reports were made by all of the State presidents.
[13] At the close of the convention twenty-seven of the visitors made a trip in a special car to Yellowstone Park, which was arranged by Mrs. Catt and Miss Hay. They had a most interesting time which was graphically described by Miss Blackwell in the _Woman"s Journal_ of June 22. It also published some of the humorous poems written en route by the gay excursionists.
CHAPTER II.
THE NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1902.
The a.s.sociation held its Thirty-fourth annual convention, which was especially distinguished by the presence of visitors from other lands, in the First Presbyterian Church, Washington, D. C., Feb. 12-18, 1902.[14] There was special significance in this meeting place, as the pastor of the church for many years was the Rev. Byron Sutherland,[15]
who from its pulpit had more than once denounced woman suffrage and its advocates; but it was now under the liberal ministry of the Rev.
T. DeWitt Talmage, their strong and valued advocate. The Washington _Post_ said: "More than a thousand visitors were present yesterday afternoon at the first session of the National American Suffrage Convention and the first International Woman Suffrage Conference.
Perhaps no other meeting of its kind ever has occasioned as much interest on the part of Washington women generally.[16] The large audience room was packed to the doors ... and it has been arranged to hold overflow meetings in the church parlors." The platform was banked with flowers over which waved the flags of thirty nations, lent by Miss Clara Barton, founder of the Red Cross, to whom they had been presented by representatives of each individual nation. Above them all hung the "suffrage flag" with four golden stars on its blue ground for the four States where women were fully enfranchised--Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho. The president, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, was in the chair.
This convention will be ever memorable because under its auspices the First International Woman Suffrage Conference was held which resulted later in the founding of the International Alliance. The proceedings of this conference are described in the chapter devoted to the Alliance. Ten countries were represented and their delegates took part in the convention, which was welcomed on the opening afternoon by the Hon. Henry B. F. McFarland, president of the board of commissioners of the District of Columbia. He addressed the delegates as "stockholders in the national capital" and said: "Personally I welcome not only you but your cause. In common, I believe, with the majority of intelligent men I think you have won your case on the argument. Equal suffrage is equal justice and there is no reason why such women as you should be cla.s.sed in the States with idiots and criminals." Mrs. May Wright Sewall, who was to greet the foreign guests in the name of the International Council of Women, of which she was president, was detained until later. Mrs. Catt with words of highest eulogy introduced Miss Barton, who said:
Madam President, Ladies and Delegates: Among many honors which from time to time have been tendered me by my generous country people, not one has been more appreciated than the privilege of giving this word of public welcome to the honored delegation of women present with us.
Ladies of Europe, if a hundred tongues were mine they could not speak the glad welcome in our hearts. It is an epoch in the history of the world that your coming marks. For the first time within the written history of mankind have the women of the nations left their homes and a.s.sembled in council to declare the position of women before the world, bringing to national and international view the injustice and the folly of the barriers which ignorance has created and tradition fostered and preserved through the unthinking ages until they came to be held not only as a part of the natural laws and rights of man but as the immutable decrees of Divinity itself.... If woman alone had suffered under these mistaken traditions, if she could have borne the evil by herself, it would have been less pitiful, but her brother man, in the laws he created and ignorantly worshipped, has suffered with her. He has lost her highest help; he has crippled the intelligence he needed; he has belittled the very source of his own being and dwarfed the image of his Maker.
Ladies, there is a propriety in your crossing the seas to hold the first council in America, for it was in this new untrammeled land of freedom, free birth, free thought and free speech that the first outspoken notes were given, the first concerted action taken toward the release of woman, the enlightenment of man as a lawmaker, and the attention of the world directed to the injustice, unwisdom and folly of the code under which it lived.
It was here that the first hard blows were struck. It was here the paths were marked out that have been trodden with bleeding feet for half a century, until at length the blows no longer rebound and the hands of the grateful, loving womanhood of the world struggle for a place to scatter roses in the paths which erstwhile were flint and thorns; and an admiring world of women and men alike breathe in tones of respect, grat.i.tude and love the names of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.
Miss Anthony, I am glad to stand beside you while I tell these women from the other side of the world who has brought them here.
This, ladies of Europe, is your great prototype--this the woman who has trodden the trackless fields of the pioneer till the thorns are buried in roses; this, the woman who has lived to hear the hisses turn to dulcet strains of music; the woman who has dared to plead for every good cause under heaven, who opened her door to the fleeing slave and claimed the outcast for a brother; the woman beloved of her own country and honored in all countries.
Although a slow lesson to learn it has always proved that the grandeur of a nation was shown by the respect paid to woman. The brightest garlands of Spain, linked with immortelles, twine about the name of Isabella. The highest glory of England today is not that she placed her crown on the brow of her trusted and beloved new monarch, a man whom the nations of the earth welcome to their galaxy of rulers, but that she lays her mantle of fifty years"
rule through war and peace and progress such as never was known before, upon the grave of a woman--that mantle on which no stain has ever rested and on which the sunlight of happiness is shadowed and dimmed only by the tears of a sorrowing nation, as it is reverently borne to its honored rest. England, thank G.o.d you had no Salic law! America has none, and, Miss Anthony, the path which you have trodden through these oft painful years leads to that goal; and, though your eyes will have opened upon the blessed light of the heaven beyond, verily there may be some standing here who shall not taste death until these things come.
Ladies and Delegates: In the name of the n.o.ble leader who has called you, we welcome you. In the name of our country, its great inst.i.tutions of learning and equal privileges to all, we welcome you. In the name of the brotherhood of man, we welcome you. In the name of our never-forgotten pioneers, a Mott, a Stone, a Gage, a Griffing, a Garrison, a May, a Foster, a Dougla.s.s, a Phillips, we reverently welcome you. In the name of G.o.d and humanity, in the name of the angels of earth and the angels of heaven, we welcome you to our sh.o.r.es, to our halls, to our homes and to our hearts.
Miss Susan B. Anthony, honorary president of the a.s.sociation, who was next presented and enthusiastically received, closed her brief welcome by saying that Mrs. Stanton and herself conceived the idea of holding an International Suffrage Conference in 1883 when they were in Europe but the time was too early for it, and now, twenty years later, European women had come as delegates to one in the United States and henceforth the women of the two countries would go forward together in this cause. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, vice-president-at-large, referred to the fact that she was born in England and transplanted to America, and said: "While you are divided from us by geographical lines, which are imaginary, and by a language which is not the same, you have not come to an alien people or land. In the realm of the heart, in the domain of mind, there are no geographical lines dividing the nations. You come to us as members of one family. You come that we may all stand on one plane of freedom. I wish we could take you to our four "star States" where women vote. We mean to give you of our best but we expect to get from you much more than we give. You will show us that those who speak English are not the only ones whose hearts are alive to the great flame of liberty."
The national corresponding secretary, Miss Kate Gordon, read a telegram from Dr. Augusta Stowe Gullen, leader of the suffrage movement in Canada: "Greetings and best wishes from your sisters across the line"; a cablegram from Christiana: "Success to your work, from the National Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation of Norway." A letter was read by the delegate from Norway, Mrs. Gudrun Drewsen, from the president of the a.s.sociation, Miss Gina Krog, which said in part: "The woman suffrage movement! I know of no movement, no cause that is at the same time so national and so international. The victory now gained in Norway, munic.i.p.al suffrage and eligibility to munic.i.p.al office for a great many women, will no doubt in time influence every home in our country; but we could not have won this victory without receiving impulses from other civilized nations. We are indeed indebted to men and women in several European countries for the privileges which we now possess, but from no other country in the world have we received the inspiration in our work which we have had from the United States; to no women in the world are we so indebted as to the women of this country. Those great and n.o.ble pioneers and their fervent struggle--how they have inspired us and awakened our enthusiasm! That a.s.siduous work, year after year--how it has strengthened our hands!
That glorious example, those results attained in your country--how we have brought them before our legislators to awaken their sense of justice! I sincerely wish that the news of the victory achieved in our country may prove an impetus to you in your work. To be a.s.sured of this would give us the great satisfaction of feeling that at all events a small fraction of our great debt to you was paid."
Miss Gordon read a letter from the Federation of Progressive Women"s Societies in Germany which declared that its first and foremost object was to secure for German women full political rights and continued: "We watch with especial interest and sympathy the effort of those who persistently and courageously work for the full citizenship of women.
The women of the United States have, in this struggle, set a n.o.ble example to the women of Europe. In Germany we recall with tender veneration such names as Lucy Stone, Frances Willard, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw and Susan B. Anthony. The women of Germany are without political rights. It is far easier to fight for equality and freedom in a young country, like the United States, than in an old civilization, c.u.mbered with traditions--a country that looks back on a history of many centuries, that only a few decades ago fought its way through severe conflicts and painful changes to political unity and is now slowly growing into responsibilities which social and political problems impose on a modern State."
"The Woman"s Christian Temperance Union of Tasmania sends hearty greetings and trusts that the International Suffrage Conference may be successful and that it will bring nearer that day when man and woman shall sit "side by side, full summed in all their powers,"" was the message signed by Jessie S. Rooke, its president, which was given by Miss Anna Gordon, president of the W. C. T. U. of the United States.
The response to the addresses of welcome was made by Madame Sofja Levovna Friedland of Russia, who said in beautiful English:
I am a loyal daughter of a friendly country, who thanks you for your welcome and brings greetings from her distant home. Russia and the United States have been friends for many a year and are friends today, proven friends, who have stood by each other in the hour of need. In 1863 the French amba.s.sador at the court of St. Petersburg laid before the Czar the proposition of Napoleon III, to interfere in your civil war for the purpose of perpetuating the division between the North and the South. After listening to this bold proposal of the French Emperor, Czar Alexander, the man who had freed twenty-five million slaves in one stroke of his pen, replied: "Tell your Emperor that the United States is our friend and tell him also that it has the same right to maintain a republican form of government as we have to choose a monarchy. Tell him also that he must keep his hands off and not meddle in its affairs for I will not allow anyone to interfere on the other side of the Atlantic. He who strikes my friend, strikes me." This answer in diplomatic language went the same day to Paris and soon after Russian battleships arrived in the harbors of New York and San Francisco. There are still men and women who remember them. They used to wonder why the Russian men-of-war were lying peacefully in American waters. President Lincoln could have given the answer, for in a private message from the Czar he had been a.s.sured of the friendship of the great Eastern Empire. He knew that the commanders of the Russian ships had secret orders to act in case of necessity.
But the American people have done more, for there came a morning when the glorious winter sun of Russia greeted the Star-Spangled Banner, when American ships landed on Russian sh.o.r.es ready to protect us from a more cruel enemy--hunger. The cry of distress from our famine-stricken villages had found an echo in American hearts and the ships which came did not bear government orders, they bore the tokens of love from one brother to another; they brought us wheat and corn to feed our people.
Madame Friedland told of the visit of the Grand Duke Alexis to this country and of the poem read by Oliver Wendell Holmes at a banquet given in his honor, and closed: "Thus an American poet has expressed the feelings of his countrymen and women. G.o.d bless the United States!
Long life to President Roosevelt and prosperity to you all! In the days to come and the years to follow may our two great nations stand side by side in harmony and peace. May the Star-Spangled Banner and the Russian Double Eagle soar aloft, not on battlefields, not against any nation, but for a brotherhood of men in the federation of the world." The opening session ended with the president"s address by Mrs.
Catt, in the course of which she said:
In ready response to growing intelligence and individualism the principle of self-government has been planted in every civilized nation of the world. Before the force of this onward movement the most cherished ideals of conservatism have fallen. Out of the ashes of the old, phoenix-like has arisen a new inst.i.tution, vigorous and strong, yea, one which will endure as long as men occupy the earth. The little band of Americans who initiated the modern movement would never have predicted that within a century "Taxation of men without representation is tyranny" would have been written into the fundamental law of all the monarchies of Europe except Russia and Turkey and that even there self-government would obtain in the munic.i.p.alities. The most optimistic seer among them would not have prophesied that Mongolian j.a.pan, then tightly shutting her gates against the commerce of the world and jealously guarding her ancient customs, would before the century closed have welcomed Western civilization and established universal suffrage for its men. He would not have dreamed that every inch of the great continent of South America, then chiefly an unexplored region over which bands of savages roved at will, would be covered by written const.i.tutions guaranteeing self-government to men inspired by Declarations of Independence similar to that of this country; that the settlements in Mexico and Central America and many islands of the ocean would grow into republics, and least of all that the island continent of Australia, with its a.s.sociates of New Zealand and Tasmania, then unexplored wildernesses, would become great democracies where self-government would be carried on with such enthusiasm, fervor and wisdom that they would give lessons in methods and principles to all the rest of the world....
Hard upon the track of the man suffrage movement presses the movement for woman suffrage, a logical step onward. It has come as inevitably and naturally as the flower unfolds from the bud or the fruit develops from the flower. Why should woman suffrage not come? Men throughout the world hold their suffrage by the guarantee of the two principles of liberty and for these reasons only: One, "Taxation without representation is tyranny"; who dares deny it? And are not women taxed? The other, "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." How simple and unanswerable that pet.i.tion of justice!... Woman suffrage must meet precisely the same objections which have been urged against man suffrage and in addition it must combat s.e.x-prejudice, a prejudice against the rights, liberties and opportunities of women.
Mrs. Catt closed her address with these words: "Yet before the attainment of equal rights for men and women there will be years of struggle and disappointment. We of a younger generation have taken up the work where our n.o.ble and consecrated pioneers left it. We in turn are enlisted for life and generations yet unborn will take up the work where we lay it down. So through centuries if need be the education will continue, until a regenerated race of men and women who are equal before G.o.d and man shall control the destinies of the earth. It will be the proud duty of the new International Alliance, if one shall be formed, to extend its helping hand to the women of every nation and every people and its completed duty will not have been performed until the last vestige of the old obedience of one human being to another shall have been destroyed."
The presence of the foreign visitors and the greetings from abroad made an original and pleasing variation of the usual program at national conventions. The Evening with the Pioneers opened with the singing by the audience of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, written by one of them, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, led by another, John Hutchinson, a member of the famous family of singers, who the day before had celebrated his 90th birthday. Miss Anthony presided and the Washington _Times_ said that she "was greeted with a storm of applause, the convention rising as one woman and with waving handkerchiefs cheering her to the echo for several minutes." The Loyal Legion of Women through its president gave her an armful of red roses and in accepting them she observed smilingly: "I can only say what I have often said in late years--it is much pleasanter to be pelted with roses than stones!
The National Suffrage a.s.sociation stands like a Mother Church with her arms wide open to those who want to come in and we are especially glad to receive loyal women."[17]
Mrs. Florence Fenwick Miller, a member of the London School Board for nine years, brought greetings from Mrs. Priscilla Bright McLaren, 87 years old, of whom Miss Anthony said: "She is an elder sister of John and Jacob Bright. John was the great champion of manhood suffrage but Jacob was still greater, for he was a champion of suffrage for women also. Mrs. McLaren sent a loving and appreciative message to "the dear American women who have so steadfastly held up the banner of woman suffrage and especially to the octogenarians, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony," and closed it with a Christmas poem. Miss Anthony recalled her last visit to Mrs. McLaren in Edinburgh three years before and said: "I wish you could see how beautiful she looked as she lay on the bed in her pretty white cap and blue dressing sack.
She is an inspiration to the women of Great Britain and she has been to me."
Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby (D. C.), gave a greeting from Mrs. Stanton, in her 87th year, and read her paper on Educated Suffrage.[18] In this able and scholarly doc.u.ment Mrs. Stanton said:
The proposition to demand of immigrants a reading and writing qualification on landing strikes me as arbitrary and equally detrimental to our mutual interests. The danger is not in their landing and living in this country but in their speedy appearance at the ballot-box, there becoming an impoverished and ignorant balance of power in the hands of wily politicians. While we should not allow our country to be a dumping-ground for the refuse population of the old world, still we should welcome all hardy, common-sense laborers here, as we have plenty of room and work for them.... The one demand I would make for this cla.s.s is that they should not become a part of our ruling power until they can read and write the English language intelligently and understand the principles of republican government.... To prevent the thousands of immigrants daily landing on our sh.o.r.es from marching from the steerage to the polls the national Government should prohibit the States from allowing them to vote in less than five years and not then unless the applicant can read and write the English language.... To this end, Congress should enact a law for "educated suffrage" for our native-born as well as foreign rulers, alike ignorant of our inst.i.tutions. With free schools and compulsory education, no one has an excuse for not understanding the language of the country. As women are governed by a "male aristocracy" we are doubly interested in having our rulers able at least to read and write.
The popular objection to woman suffrage is that it would "double the ignorant vote." The patent answer to this is, abolish the ignorant vote. Our legislators have this power in their own hands. There have been various restrictions in the past for men.
We are willing to abide by the same for women, provided the insurmountable qualification of s.e.x be forever removed....
Surely, when we compel all cla.s.ses to learn to read and write and thus open to themselves the door of knowledge not by force but by the promise of a privilege all intelligent citizens enjoy, we are benefactors, not tyrants. To stimulate them to climb the first rounds of the ladder that they may reach the divine heights where they shall be as G.o.ds, knowing good and evil, by withholding the citizen"s right to vote for a few years will be a blessing to them as well as to the State....
Mrs. Stanton had made her last address in person to a national convention in 1892, when she resigned the presidency of the a.s.sociation--that incomparable essay on The Solitude of Self--but she never had failed to send her annual battle cry. The one to this convention, which began the fulfilment of her dream of a world-wide movement for woman suffrage, was written with all her old-time logic and forceful argument and it proved to be her last, as her long and valuable life was ended the next November.
Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton (O.) read the paper of Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller (Md.), detained at the last moment, on Why We Come Again, in which she explained why the suffragists would continue to come to Washington and haunt Congress until their object, a Federal Amendment, had been attained. The humor for which Mrs. Miller, a staid "Quaker," was noted sparkled in its sentences although she protested that she was entirely serious. Miss Anthony introduced Henry B.
Blackwell (Ma.s.s.) with the quaint remark: "He was the husband of Lucy Stone; I don"t think he can quite represent her but he will do the best he can!" Mr. Blackwell briefly reviewed the agitation for women suffrage during the first half of the 19th century. He told of meeting Lucy Stone in 1850 and being so charmed he advised his elder brother to make her acquaintance; of hearing her address a Ma.s.sachusetts const.i.tutional convention in 1852 with William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips; of making his own first suffrage speech in Cleveland, O., in 1853 and of his marriage in 1855. In presenting the next speaker Miss Anthony said: "Mr. Blackwell alluded to his brother, who did not marry Lucy but Antoinette--the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, the first ordained woman minister--who will now address you." Her paper on Chivalry was a clear a.n.a.lysis of the changed ideas of this word, touching with sarcasm on that of the days when the effort for the rights of women began, a chivalry which gave the person and property of the wife, the guardianship of the children, all her legal privileges, to the husband. She traced the evolution from the early privations of the pioneer suffragists to the honors that are now showered upon them and drew a striking contrast between "the dying old chivalry, which made itself the sole umpire of the benefits to be granted, and the increasing new chivalry, which consults the beneficiaries themselves as to their needs and desires."
Miss Anthony then introduced the first woman ordained by the Universalist Church, the Rev. Olympia Brown, who struck the keynote of her address in saying: "When we are vexed by the seeming irrationality of some of our Congressmen, may we not explain it as due to the fact that they are thinking of the kind of men who elected them? The United States debars intelligent American women from voting and says to the riffraff of Europe, "Come over and help govern us." It is an experiment which no other country in the world ever did make and no other ever will make and I predict that it will be a failure. It will be necessary to call in the aid of the intelligent American women and soon or late this will be done."
Mrs. Elizabeth Smith Miller, daughter of the noted Abolitionist, Gerrit Smith, was asked to rise and Miss Anthony paid glowing tribute to him and to many men and women who had stood by the cause of woman suffrage in its early days. The audience were pleased to enjoy once more her informal and unique method of presiding, as glancing over the audience she singled out veteran suffragists who had come to hear and not to speak, calling them by name with some reminiscent comment. Her eye fell upon William H. Bright, who sponsored the bill in the Legislature of Wyoming which gave the first equal suffrage ever granted anywhere to women. In answering the demand of the audience for a speech he told how Mrs. Esther Morris had come from New York State to Wyoming in 1867 and how she and his wife had persuaded him to prepare the bill, which was pa.s.sed by a Democratic Legislature and signed by a Republican Governor. In response to a general request Miss Anthony told the story, of which audiences never seemed to tire, of that historic occasion when she broke all precedents by addressing a Teachers" Convention in 1853. This interesting session closed with the singing of Auld Lang Syne led by the venerable John Hutchinson.
During a morning session Miss Gordon made her report as corresponding secretary, saying that although it covered only the seven months since the last convention it showed that 6,500 letters had been sent out from the headquarters during this period. In 1895, when Mrs. Catt became chairman of the Organization Committee, she had established headquarters for her work in one little room in the New York _World_ building, that was really an annex of her husband"s offices, and begun the publication of a Bulletin, which was the organ of the committee. In 1897 it became the organ of the National a.s.sociation and had now expanded into a quarterly paper called _Progress_, which was edited by Alice Stone Blackwell, Ellis Meredith and Laura Gregg. A preliminary edition of 100,000 had been sent out from the headquarters, the expense borne by Boston women, and later 16,000 copies of the October and 20,000 of the January editions had gone to the 14,000 newspapers of the country, to members of Congress and others. A monthly series of Political Equality Leaflets was also commenced and a Course of Study for Clubs and individuals was established for which a dozen or more books were published. These two valuable features were carried on without any expense to the a.s.sociation, as they paid for themselves.
Miss Gordon described the National Conference held in Charleston, S.
C., February 3-4, at the invitation of the board of the Inter-State and West Indian Exposition; told of the conference in Baltimore[19]
and said of the one in Buffalo: "The far-reaching effect and impetus given to the woman"s movement by the Congress of Women held in connection with the Chicago Exposition, determined the Business Committee"s acceptance of an invitation to hold a National Conference during the Pan-American Exposition. Too late did we learn that the invitation extended included no responsibility whatever upon the Exposition to further the success of the conference. Buffalo did not represent an organized center and after several fruitless attempts to form a local committee, the headquarters realized that every little detail essential to success must be attended to by the board. From all sides reports of the most discouraging nature were received as to the absolute failure attending all conferences there but nevertheless we started a vigorous correspondence and for five preceding weeks every Sunday paper in Buffalo was supplied with matter from headquarters. To make a long story short, September 9-10 witnessed our conference well attended, with the night sessions crowded and success acknowledged on all sides, even though we labored under the disadvantage of its being held during the season of sorrow and distress in that city while President McKinley"s life hovered in the valley of the shadow of death."
Miss Gordon said that during the year Mrs. Catt had made a tour of nine States and taken part in forty meetings. Referring to the efforts made to have a woman suffrage clause put into new const.i.tutions that were being framed in several States she said: "The clause which lived twenty-four hours in the Alabama Const.i.tution, granting to taxpaying women owning $500 worth of property the suffrage on questions of bonded indebtedness, was killed by a disease peculiar to the genus h.o.m.o known as chivalry. In the case in point, the diagnosis revealed that the fairest, purest and brightest jewels that ever shone under the brilliant rays of G.o.d"s shining sun would be immeasurably lowered by voting upon questions relating to the taxation of their own property. Yet, under the vagaries of this disease, this same convention conferred on husbands the right to vote on their wives"
property. This is the same character of chivalry which gives the wages of the brightest, fairest jewels to the husband, which makes impossible equal pay for equal work and which cla.s.ses the jewels with the idiots, insane and criminals in that and other States."
The program was so crowded with attractions that it left no time for the usual conferences on work and campaigns, so they were placed at 9:30 a.m. As they had been so largely attended by visitors the preceding year as to call forth a rule from the Board of Officers that thereafter delegates only should be permitted to attend them, this was not disastrous. Early morning conferences therefore were held on Organization and Press and two others took the form of State presidents" councils. The Plan of Work recommended again by the Executive Committee and adopted by the convention urged work in Congressional districts for the 16th Amendment; an attempt to secure tax-paying suffrage; more resolutions by national and State conventions; a campaign to secure suffrage speakers at Chautauqua a.s.semblies and State and county fairs; prizes for essays on woman suffrage in schools and colleges; circulating suffrage libraries and the general use of a suffrage stamp on letters.
Two novel evening programs were devoted to The New Woman and The New Man, the first with the following speakers: Mrs. Helen Adelaide Shaw of Boston; Mrs. Elizabeth M. Gilmer of New Orleans, known far and wide as "Dorothy Dix," said to receive the highest salary of any woman journalist; Dr. Cora Smith Eaton, a prominent physician and surgeon of Minneapolis; Miss Gail Laughlin (N. Y.) who had taken the highest honors in the Law Cla.s.s of Cornell University; the Rev. Ida C. Hultin, a successful Unitarian minister of Boston. Miss Margaret Haley of Chicago, who led the great fight of the Teachers" Federation of that city to compel the big corporations to pay their taxes in order that the public schools should not be crippled for lack of funds, could not be present because of a crisis in the legal proceedings. Each of the women representing the four professions of law, medicine, theology and journalism, in addresses scintillating with humor, reviewed the early prejudices which had been overcome, told of the large number of women who had entered the field when the opportunity came but showed that they could never have an even chance until there was complete obliteration of s.e.x prejudice. Little idea of their interest could be obtained from fragmentary paragraphs.
The house was crowded to hear about The New Man,[20] represented first on the program by Oswald Garrison Villard, grandson of William Lloyd Garrison and owner and editor of the New York _Evening Post_, who gave a spirited and effective account of Women in the New York Munic.i.p.al Campaign. This was the first in which women ever had taken a prominent part and it had attracted wide attention, a revolt against Tammany corruption under Richard Croker. Mr. Villard told of the remarkable work done by the Women"s Munic.i.p.al League under direction of the Citizen"s Union for the election of Seth Low as Mayor and a reform ticket. He paid a sarcastic tribute to the a.s.sistance of the women anti-suffragists. "To have been really consistent," he said, "they should have urged upon their more emanc.i.p.ated sisters that woman"s sphere is the home and any steps that lead beyond it tend in the long run to the destruction both of the home and of the eternal feminine." He closed by declaring that "the t.i.tanic struggle between right and wrong in the great cities can not be won without the cooperation of that half of the nation"s citizens in whose hearts are ever found the truest ideals of family and society, of city life and State life and of national existence." At its conclusion Mrs. Catt said: "And yet after Mr. Low was elected Mayor of Greater New York a large number of the women who had helped him win the victory urged him to appoint some women on the school board and he refused. So we must suppose that he is willing to have women pull the chestnuts out of the fire for men but is not willing to give them a share of the chestnuts."