As the headquarters were soon to be removed from Warren, Ohio, and Miss Hauser had resigned as secretary, this was the last of her excellent reports and the convention sent her a letter of thanks and appreciation for her admirable work. Dr. Shaw said of her: "There never was a woman who gave more consecrated service; she dreamed of woman suffrage by night and toiled for it by day." [Afterward Miss Hauser went to the headquarters in New York as vice-chairman of the National Press Committee.]
In the evening Mayor John F. Miller welcomed the convention and congratulated the a.s.sociation on the personnel of its members in Washington. "This has been a pioneer State in the woman"s rights movement," he said. "In 1854 Arthur Denny introduced a woman suffrage bill in the Territorial Legislature. In 1878 the civil disabilities of married women were removed and this was the first State west of the Rocky Mountains to say that a wife"s property should be her own. Women here have all the rights of men except to vote and hold office. I do not know whether woman suffrage will bring in everything good and abolish everything evil but if it will by all means let us have it."
He closed with a tribute to the mothers in the State.
In an eloquent response Mrs. Villard reminded the Mayor that if a cause is just the consequences following in its path need not be feared and said: "I was early taught by my father that moral principle in vigorous exercise is irresistible. It has an immortal essence. It may disappear for a time but it can no more be trod out of existence by the iron foot of time or the ponderous march of iniquity than matter can be annihilated. It lives somewhere, somehow, and rises again in renovated strength. The women of this country who are advocating the cause of woman suffrage are animated by a great moral principle. They are armed with a spiritual weapon of finest caliber and one that is sure to win." She told of the great reception given in 1883 to her husband and his guests when they reached Seattle for the opening of the railroad after its completion; of his response and that of the Hon. Carl Schurz. She described an address made by a young girl, the daughter of Professor Powell of the university, the entire expenses of which Mr. Villard had paid for several years, in which she said he would be remembered more for what he had done for education than for the building of the railroad. "In the retrospect of time,"
said Mrs. Villard, "I can see her, sweetly modest and gracious, standing as it were with outstretched arms inviting the women who are gathered here today to come and help make the State of Washington free." Then in an appeal for the pending suffrage amendment she said: "Many tributes of respect and admiration have been paid to my n.o.ble companion in the great northwest, which are carefully cherished by me and my children, but I crave one more and it is this--that Mr.
Villard"s keen sense of justice and fair play for women shall find echo in the hearts of the men of Washington, to whose extraordinary development he gave such powerful impetus, so that in November, 1910, they will proclaim with loud accord that the women of Washington are no longer bond but free, no longer disfranchised but regenerated and disenthralled, equal partners in the unending struggle of the human race for n.o.bler laws and higher moral standards."
The evening session closed with the president"s address of Dr. Shaw, which the _Woman"s Journal_ described as "inimitable" but not a paragraph of it can be found after the lapse of years. Her speeches always were inspired by the occasion and only a stenographic report could give an adequate idea of them. Miss Anthony mourned because this was not made and others often spoke of it but Dr. Shaw herself was indifferent. There were pressing demands for money and the endless details of these meetings absorbed the time and strength of those who might otherwise have attended to it.
Mrs. Upton in her report as treasurer made a stirring appeal in which she said: "The most important question before this convention is that of money. A grave responsibility rests upon the shoulders of each delegate. She should know how much money we have had in the last year, where it went and why. More than this, she should decide for herself how money for the coming year shall be disbursed and suggest ways of raising the same. No delegate ought to quiet her conscience with the thought that the judgment of the general officers is the best judgment. Each State has entrusted into the hands of its delegates precious business and the responsibility is great and cannot honestly be disregarded. In the long ago we worked until our money gave out.
Now, as the beginning of the end of our work is in sight, demands for money are many and if business rules are followed they must be met.
The small self-sacrifices must be continued and larger ways of obtaining money created. We are all shouting for a fifth star on our suffrage flag but we must remember that no star was ever placed upon any flag without cost, without sacrifice. Our fifth star will find its place because we explain to voters what a fifth star really means.
These voters will not come to us; we must go to them. To go anywhere costs money. To go to the voters of a large and thinly populated State means much money. Shall we be content with four stars or shall we provide the means to get a fifth?"
The total receipts of the past year were $15,420; disburs.e.m.e.nts, $14,480. She told of the many ways in which the money was being used--over $2,000 added to several other thousands spent in field work in Oklahoma for the next year"s amendment campaign; $3,000 to the College League; headquarters" expenses, literature, posters, etc. Part of the money came from the Anthony Memorial Fund, part from the fund raised by Dr. Thomas and Miss Garrett, the rest from individual subscriptions. The convention, which was not a large one, subscribed over $3,000. The following recommendations of the Business Committee were adopted by the convention: Appropriations shall be made for educational, church and pet.i.tion work; financial aid shall not be given to States having campaigns on hand unless there be perfect harmony within the ranks of the workers of those States; an organizer shall be sent to Arizona to prepare the Territory for const.i.tutional or legislative work and a campaign organizer to South Dakota.
There was much interest in the question of returning the national headquarters to New York City. It was long the desire of Miss Anthony to do this on a scale befitting so large a city and so important a cause and the funds had never been available. Mrs. Oliver H. P.
Belmont, who had lately come into the suffrage movement, had taken the entire twentieth floor of a new office building for two years and invited the New York State Suffrage a.s.sociation to occupy a part of it. She now extended an invitation to the National a.s.sociation to use for this period as many rooms as it needed and she would pay the difference in the rent between these and the headquarters at Warren, O. In addition she would maintain the press bureau. The advantages of this great newspaper and magazine center were recognized by the general officers, executive committee and delegates, the offer was gladly accepted and a rising vote of thanks was sent to Mrs. Belmont.
Miss Perle Penfield (Texas) read the report of Mrs. Lucia Ames Mead, chairman of the Committee on Peace and Arbitration. She told of the tenth anniversary this year of The Hague Conference, which was attended by representatives of forty-six instead of twenty-six nations and had made various international agreements that would lessen the likelihood of war. She spoke of attending the second National Peace Congress in Chicago in May, at which all the women who took part were suffragists. Mrs. Mead referred to having spoken eighty-six times during the year. In pointing out the work that should be done in the United States for peace she said:
A great campaign of education is needed in the schools and colleges, in the press and pulpit and in every organization of men and women that stands for progress. Pre-eminently among women"s organizations, the National American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation, which opposes the injustice of refusing the ballot to women, should stand against the grossest of all injustices which leaves innocent women widowed and children orphaned by war, and which in time of peace diverts nearly two-thirds of the federal revenue from constructive work to payment for past wars and preparation for future wars. Thus far this a.s.sociation has been so absorbed in its direct methods of advancing suffrage that it has not perhaps sufficiently realized the power of many agencies that are furthering its cause by indirect means. I firmly believe that subst.i.tuting statesmanship for battleship will do more to remove the electoral injustices that still prevent our being a democracy than any direct means used to obtain woman suffrage, important and necessary as these are.
Women, though hating war, quite as frequently as men are deluded by the plea that peace can be ensured only by huge armaments. It is a question whether woman suffrage would greatly lessen the vote for these supposed preventives of war, but there is no question that more reliance on reason and less on force would exalt respect for woman and would remove the objection that woman"s physical inferiority has anything to do with suffrage.
Several delegates expressed the need and the right of mothers to strive to prevent war. Mrs. Duniway, Mrs. Philena Everett Johnson and Mrs. DeVoe spoke on the pending amendment campaigns in their respective States of Oregon, South Dakota and Washington. Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby"s subject was the American Situation vs. the English Situation and she described the conditions in England which caused the "suffragette" or "militant" movement. Mrs. Florence Kelley, chairman of the Industrial Committee, spoke on the Wage Earning Woman and the Ballot. "Because of the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the Oregon case," she said, "fourteen State Legislatures in the past year have considered bills for shortening the workday for women and six have enacted laws for it. South Carolina has taken a step backward by changing the hours from ten to twelve. Child labor is constantly increasing in spite of our efforts. I have seen the evolution of modern industry and it has meant the sacrifice of thousands of young lives." At the close of the afternoon session the delegates enjoyed an automobile ride of many miles amidst scenery which many who had travelled widely declared was unsurpa.s.sed in the whole world.
The most brilliant session of the convention probably was that of the College Women"s Evening, with Dr. Shaw presiding. Miss Caroline Lexow (N. Y.), secretary of the College Women"s League, spoke of its remarkable growth since its organization the preceding year and said that it now had twenty-four branches in as many States and twenty-five chapters in as many colleges. She called attention to the fact that no College Anti-Suffrage a.s.sociation had ever been formed and said that college women remembered the words of one of the pioneers: "Make the best use you can of your freedom for we have bought it at a great price." Mrs. Eva Emery Dye (Ore.) gave an able address on College Women in Civic Life. The Law and the Woman was the subject considered by Miss Adella M. Parker, a popular lawyer, president of the Washington College League. "I have been looking for years," she said, "to find any legislation that does not affect women, from a tariff on gloves to a declaration of war. The great problems which face the human race demand the genius of both men and women to solve them. The law needs women quite as much as women need the law." The closing address on College Women and Democracy by Frances Squire Potter, professor of English at the University of Minnesota, was a masterly review of the relation of college women to the life of the present, and later it was printed by the College League as a part of its literature. In the course of it she said:
The admission of women began with Oberlin, Ohio, in 1833, then a provincial inst.i.tution, religious in its purpose and one where the boys and girls did the work. From that time on the West was committed to the co-educational State university. The influence set back eastward and women demanded admittance successively in this college and that college. It is to be remembered that they did not go in naturally and pleasantly but at the point of the sword and to the sound of the trumpet. And to-day the segregated college life of the East ill.u.s.trates the "last entrenchments of the middle ages." Those monasteries and nunneries of learning crown the hilltops from Boston to Washington and "watch the star of intellectual empire westward take its way." ... Following upon the democratization of the university we now see rising a tide which is as inevitable as was that first movement, which will bear the college woman, as it bears the college man, out of the fostering shelter of the college hall into the great welter of life, of full citizenship.... Since the colleges of America opened to women, nothing so vital to the nourishment of this spirit has happened as the formation of the College Equal Suffrage League.... There are certain definite things for which a college woman registers herself in joining this league. First, a direct return to the country of the energy which it has trained.
A woman"s whole education to-day is toward direct results. She has been educated away from the old indirect ideal of the boarding-school. There she was taught to be a persuasive ornament, now she is taught to be an individual mind, will and conscience and to use these in acting herself. I hold that there is no more graphic ill.u.s.tration of inconsistent waste than the spectacle of a college-trained woman falsifying her entire education by shying away from suffrage.... The time has gone by when a college woman can be allowed to be noncommittal on this subject. If she has not thought about equal suffrage she must do so now, exactly as persons of intelligence were compelled to think about slavery in the time of Garrison, or about the reformation in the time of Martin Luther. To those who try to get out of it it is not unfitting to quote Thomas Huxley"s famous sentence: "He who will not reason is a bigot; he who dare not reason is a coward; he who can not reason is a fool." ...
It devolves upon the college woman more than upon any other one type to face and conquer a r.e.t.a.r.ding tendency which is becoming marked in this country. I refer to the anti-feminization movement. Dr. Stanley Hall has given voice to it in education; Dr. Lyman Abbott quavers about it in religion; the committee on tariff revision is an example of it in politics. When women sent a pet.i.tion to the committee against raising the duties on certain necessities of life of which they were the chief consumers, the chairman said: "It doesn"t make any difference whether these women send in a pet.i.tion signed by 500 or 5,000 names, they will receive no consideration. Let them talk things over in their clubs and other organizations; this will occupy them and do no one any harm; but it will not affect the tariff." On the same day the committee accorded a deferential hearing to a deputation of lumbermen.... This discrimination against woman, the vague feeling that she has been allowed to get on too fast, to get out of control, that she has slipped into too large activities while the good man slept, has come upon us at the very time when Scandinavia and Germany and England are getting rid of their simian chivalry. It is notorious that America, which once was the progressive nation, has been for a generation in a comatose state in the matter of social ideas. It is high time that our college women should stand solid against the blind superst.i.tion, whose mother is fear and whose father is egoism, that women can not be trusted in public affairs....
The report of Mr. Blackwell on Presidential suffrage was accepted by a rising vote and his report as chairman of the Committee on Resolutions was adopted, as usual, without change.[61] For many years he had served as chairman of these committees. His const.i.tutional argument for the right of Legislatures to grant women a vote for presidential electors always stood unchallenged and his faith that they would do this was eventually justified. One of the founders of the American Suffrage a.s.sociation in 1869, he had not during forty years missed attending a national suffrage convention, first with his wife, Lucy Stone, and later with his daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell. He had never seemed in better health and spirits than at this one in Seattle but two months later, on September 7, he died at the age of 84, a great loss to the cause of woman suffrage. (Memorials in next chapter.)
The Legislative Evening was in charge of the State suffrage a.s.sociation, Mrs. De Voe in the chair, and it was the intention to have those members of the Legislature who were princ.i.p.ally responsible for submitting the amendment address the convention but an extra session at that time spoiled this program. The Hon. Alonzo Wardell spoke for Charles R. Case, president of the State Federation of Labor, which was strongly in favor of the amendment, he said, and had votes enough to carry it if the members would go to the polls. Mrs. Lord represented the Grange, which she said could be depended on for an affirmative vote. Miss Parker gave a graphic description of the "illegal and dishonorable methods" by which the vote was taken away from the women while Washington was a Territory.[62] Mrs. John Moore of Tacoma read a powerful scene from The Spanish Gypsy by George Eliot. After a lively collection speech by Mrs. Upton, Dr. Shaw closed the evening with a mirth-provoking "question box."
At an afternoon session Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery read the report of the National Committee on the Pet.i.tion to Congress. It had been the plan of Mrs. Catt, as presented and adopted at the convention of 1908, to have one final pet.i.tion to Congress for the submission of the Federal Amendment and she had consented to take the chairmanship temporarily. Headquarters had been opened in the Martha Washington, the woman"s hotel in New York City, where the headquarters of the Interurban Woman Suffrage Council, of which Mrs. Catt was chairman, were located. Here she and Miss Mary Garrett Hay spent many months from 9 a. m. to 5 p. m., a.s.sisted by Miss Minnie J. Reynolds, who did press work and correspondence with the States. Mrs. Priscilla D.
Hackstaff of Brooklyn, a former Missourian, took charge of the work in that State from these headquarters and there was an energetic volunteer sub-committee of New York suffragists. The report continued:
"The Governors of the four enfranchised States served on an honorary Advisory Committee, as did the following men and women: Anna Howard Shaw, Clara Barton, Julia Ward Howe, William Lloyd Garrison, William Dudley Foulke, Jane Addams, Mary E. Garrett, Sarah Platt Decker, the Hon. John D. Long, Samuel Gompers, Colonel George Harvey, Rabbi Charles Fleischer (Ma.s.s.), Dr.
Josiah Strong, Edward T. Devine, John Mitch.e.l.l, Judge Ben Lindsey, Mrs. Clarence Mackay, Lillian M. Hollister, Mary Lowe d.i.c.kinson, Mrs. Bourke c.o.c.kran and Cynthia Westover Alden.
When Mrs. Catt left for London in March, 1909, in the interests of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, the work came to me. At that time upwards of 10,000 letters had been written and 100,000 pet.i.tions distributed and twenty-three State organizations were collecting, counting, pasting and cla.s.sifying the lists. Since then five other States have gone to work.
Letters were written to all the newspapers in the four equal suffrage States asking the insertion of a coupon pet.i.tion and these coupons brought in the names of many friends who could not otherwise be reached and who were enthusiastic workers for the pet.i.tion. Others to the _Age of Reason_ and _Wilshire"s Magazine_ brought hundreds of willing workers. Letters were sent in every direction, friends stirred up, reminded of their task and requested to send names of others who would work. Every sheet that came in was searched for names of possible friends who might circulate the pet.i.tions. Between March 1 and July 1, 1909, nearly 2,000 letters were written and 45,000 blanks distributed....
Later the work was removed to Washington and headquarters established there to finish the pet.i.tion by 1910.
The report of Mrs. Lucretia L. Blankenburg (Penn.), chairman of the Committee on Civil Rights, showed the usual painstaking year"s work.
Her letters to all the State presidents for information had brought answers from twenty-two and eleven of these showed advanced legislation for women and children. In some of them it was amended labor laws or new ones; in others for a Juvenile Court, for improving the position of teachers, for the advantage of children in the public schools, for property rights of wives. Maine reported nearly a dozen such new laws. Minnesota was in the lead with thirty Acts of the Legislature.
Mrs. Mary E. Craigie (N. Y.), chairman of the Committee on Church Work, introduced her excellent report by saying: "President Taft recently said in a public address: "Christianity and the spirit of Christianity are the only basis for the hope of modern civilization and the growth of popular self-government." ... Women are to-day and always have been the mainstay and chief support of the churches and the leaders in all great moral reforms; yet as a disfranchised cla.s.s they are powerless to aid in bringing about any reforms that depend upon legislative or governmental action and the church is thereby deprived of more than two-thirds of its power to help extend civic righteousness throughout the land. Now that there is a world-wide movement among women to demand the political power to do their part in the world"s work, they have a right to ask and to receive from ministers and from all Christian people support and help in working for this greatest of all reforms." ... Mrs. Craigie told of addressing the ministerial a.s.sociation of Canada at Toronto, where fifteen minutes had been allotted to her but by unanimous insistence she was obliged to keep on for an hour. An interesting discussion followed, after which an endors.e.m.e.nt of the principle of woman suffrage was unanimously voted. She spoke at a meeting of the Dominion Temperance Alliance, where there were 600 delegates, many of them clergymen, and a resolution by the chairman endorsing the woman suffrage bill then before the Provincial Legislature was carried without a dissenting vote. Reports were included of the good work accomplished by the members of her committee in the various States.
The usual Sunday afternoon convention meeting was held in the auditorium on the Exposition grounds, under the auspices of this church committee, with a large audience who listened to an able presentation of The Sacred Duties and Obligations of Citizenship. Dr.
Shaw presided and the speakers were the Rev. C. Lyng Hansen, Mrs.
Craigie, Professor Potter and Miss Janet Richards. Mrs. Kelley spoke in the First Christian Church, Mrs. Eva Emery Dye in the Second Avenue Congregational Church and the Rev. Mary G. Andrews preached for the Universalists on The Freedom of Truth. At the First Methodist Protestant Church, Miss Laura Clay talked on Christian Citizenship in the morning and Dr. Shaw preached in the evening. Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman spoke at the Boylston Avenue Unitarian Church in the morning and Mrs. Gilman and Mrs. Pauline Steinem at a patriotic service in Plymouth Church in the evening. Mr. Blackwell and Mrs.
Steinem spoke in the Jewish synagogue.[63] In the evening the officers of the a.s.sociation were "at home" to the members of the convention and friends at the Lincoln Hotel.
The election of officers took place Monday morning. At Miss Blackwell"s request she was permitted to retire from the office of recording secretary, which she had filled for twenty years, and the convention gave her a rising vote of thanks for her most efficient service. Her complete and satisfactory reports of the national conventions in her paper, the _Woman"s Journal_, had formed a standard record that nowhere else could be found. She exchanged places with Mrs. Ella S. Stewart, second auditor, and was thus retained on the board. The remainder of the officers were re-elected but Miss Gordon, the corresponding secretary, stated that with the removal of the headquarters to New York and the increased work which would follow, this officer should be there all the time, which was impossible for her. Professor Potter was the unanimous choice of the convention, and, after communicating with the university and securing a leave of absense for two years, she accepted the office. Her a.s.sistant and friend, Professor Mary Gray Peck, accepted the office of headquarters secretary. Both were prominent in the College Suffrage League in that State. The convention by a rising vote expressed its appreciation of the excellent work Miss Gordon had done, "and for the still greater work that she will yet do," added Dr. Shaw.
It was voted to change the name of the Business Committee to the Official Board and to add Mrs. Catt, the only ex-president, to this board. Urgent invitations were received from Governor Robert S. Vessey of South Dakota and the Mayor and Chamber of Commerce of Sioux Falls to hold the convention of 1910 there, as an amendment was to be voted on in the autumn. Dr. Shaw commented: "Governor Vessey is a man who has convictions and is not afraid to stand by them. I am grateful that he dares to do this while he is in office." A delegate spoke of the appointment of a woman for the first time to an office in her State and immediately delegates from other States gave the same announcement until it was necessary to stop the flood. Miss Penfield, one of a number of national organizers who were kept constantly in the field, told of having worked in six States in the past six months. In Pennsylvania she visited thirty-five small towns, holding parlor meetings, which she advocated as leading to the formation of suffrage clubs. In Kentucky she addressed fifteen colleges and schools. Mrs.
Ida Porter Boyer (Penn.), Miss Mary N. Chase (N. H.) and Miss Laura Gregg (Kans.) gave experiences in field work.
Mrs. Villard presided Monday evening and in introducing Mr. Blackwell, whom the audience rose to greet, she said: "It is a pleasure for me to pay also a tribute to the loveliness of his wife, Lucy Stone. To my childish vision she was a type of perpetual sunshine." Mr. Blackwell gave the opinion of a man of long observation and experience on How to Get Votes for Women. Mrs. Craigie spoke on Citizenship--What Is It?
Mrs. Stewart relieved Mrs. Upton of her usual task of taking a collection and among her witty remarks was one on Bartholdi"s statue of Liberty. "The real G.o.ddesses of Liberty in this country do not spend a large amount of time standing on pedestals in public places; they use their torches to startle the bats in political cellars."
Referring to the ignoring of women"s work in the histories she said: "When I was a child and studied about the Pilgrim Fathers I supposed they were all bachelors, as I never found a word about their wives."
Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman"s topic was Masculine, Feminine and Human, discussed with her usual keen a.n.a.lysis and illuminated with her pungent epigrams.
A spirited symposium took place on Pre-Election Methods, led by Mrs.
Stewart, who outlined the work done in Illinois, where it had been reduced to a system. "We find candidates much less tractable after election than before," she said, "although we always send literature and letters to the members-elect and subscribe for the _Woman"s Journal_ for them. We are now strong enough in some districts for pre-election work to elect our friends and defeat our enemies. Mrs.
Catharine Waugh McCulloch sent a circular letter to every member of the last Legislature, with questions as to his att.i.tude on woman suffrage and from the answers she compiled a leaflet recommending the election of the men who promised to vote for our measures. She sent this to every paper in Illinois and distributed it as widely as possible among the women"s clubs and women at large. She did the same with our Congressmen. Not one of the legislators who promised to vote for our bill voted against it. Our most important measure was lost in the Senate by a majority of only one vote. Eight of the Senators who voted against it are up for re-election and we shall do our best to keep them from going back. Illinois has printed for several years a Roll of Honor of the legislators who have voted right on our bills."
The discussion showed a general opinion that it was high time for action of this kind. Mrs. Kelley asked: "Why not do prenomination work?" and Dr. Shaw said: "I do not know a political method when I see it and I haven"t an ounce of political sense but I do believe heartily in this sort of work." Led by Mrs. Ella Hawley Crossett, president of the New York a.s.sociation, "Should there be concentration on one bill or work for several"? was discussed. Miss Gordon said: "Ask for everything in sight and you will get a little." Mrs. Cornelia Telford Jewett, editor of the _Union Signal_, brought a fraternal greeting from the National Woman"s Christian Temperance Union and when she said that most of the criticism she received was that she gave the readers too much suffrage, Dr. Shaw remarked in her jovial way: "They would get more if I could write, as Mrs. Jewett has often asked me for articles."
Among the symposiums and round table conferences in the morning and afternoon sessions were those on "How to make existing suffrage sentiment politically effective," Miss Clay presiding; "The tariff in its relation to women," and "Taxation without representation is tyranny in 1909 as much as in 1776," Mrs. Villard presiding in place of Mrs. DeVoe, who was ill; "Parents" organizations, their value in creating public sentiment," and "The self-government plan in our public schools as an aid in preparing the coming generations for woman suffrage," Mrs. B. W. Dawley (Ohio), presiding. The report of the Committee on Education, presented by its chairman, Mrs. Steinem, said that the princ.i.p.al work of the half-year had been to carry out the resolutions adopted at the Buffalo convention to investigate the text books on History and Civics used in the public schools and she had secured a valuable expression of opinion through letters sent to 400 superintendents of schools and twenty-six school book publishing houses. Some of them quoted the names of Betsy Ross, Molly Pitcher, Martha Washington and Dolly Madison to show that women were not neglected in the text books. Many declared they had given the subject no thought but were open to conviction. In summing up Mrs. Steinem expressed the belief that this lack of recognition of woman"s influence in history was not so much the result of intention as of the masculine point of view which has dominated civilization. "The impression conveyed by our text books," she said, "is that this world has been made by men and for men and the ideals they are putting forth are colored by masculine thought.... Our text books on Civics do not show the slightest appreciation of the significance of the "woman"s movement." ...
On the closing night Miss Richards, the noted lecturer of Washington, D. C., made a delightfully clever and sparkling speech on s.e.x Antagonism, Why and What is the Cure? Professor Potter gave a second splendid address and Dr. Shaw"s eloquent farewell sent the audience home in an exalted mood.
The excellent arrangements for the convention and the entertainment of the officers and delegates had been made with much care and judgment by the State a.s.sociation and the Seattle society, which appropriated $1,000 for the purpose.[64] The surpa.s.sing beauty of the city and the Exposition was an unceasing delight. Miss Blackwell said in her description in the _Woman"s Journal_: "The splendid setting of the convention was a constant pleasure--the tall firs, the beautiful water and picturesque mountains. Large bunches of sweet peas and of the enormous roses never seen but on the Pacific coast were constantly being handed up to the president and speakers in the course of the convention by the pretty little pages. All the delegates agreed that the display of flowers on the grounds was more beautiful than they had seen at any previous Exposition. Some of the delegates from the Atlantic coast said it was worth coming across the continent just to see this flower garden."
The always-to-be-remembered feature of the week was Suffrage Day at the Exposition, arranged by its officials for the day following the convention. To quote again from Miss Blackwell:
In the morning on arriving at the Exposition we found above the gate a big banner with the inscription, "Woman Suffrage Day."
Every person entering the grounds was presented with a special b.u.t.ton and a green-ribbon badge representing the Equal Suffrage a.s.sociation of Washington, the Evergreen State. High in the air over the grounds floated a large "Votes for Women" kite. All the toy balloons sold on the grounds that day were stamped with the words "Votes for Women" and many of the delegates bought them and went around with them hovering over their heads like j.a.panese lanterns--yellow, red, white or green but predominantly green. At the morning meeting in the great auditorium there was fine music by the Exposition band, with addresses of welcome from J. E.
Chilberg, president; Louis W. Buckley, director of ceremonies and special events, and R. W. Raymond, a.s.sistant director, and brief speeches by Dr. Shaw, Miss Gordon, Mrs. Upton, Miss Blackwell, Mrs. Stewart, Miss Clay, Mrs. Kelley, Mrs. Gilman and Professor Potter.... After the morning exercises, the national officers were taken to the Education building and treated to an excellent lunch cooked and served by the domestic science cla.s.s of the high school.
In the afternoon there was a reception in the magnificent room occupying the ground floor of the Washington State building with more addresses of welcome by prominent men connected with the Exposition and more short speeches by the visitors. Later in the afternoon there was another reception at the Idaho building by the Idaho and Utah women with more refreshments served by motherly matrons and pretty girls. The day closed with a "daylight dinner" given by the Washington Equal Suffrage a.s.sociation at The Firs, the headquarters of the Young Women"s Christian a.s.sociation. Hundreds of suffragists sat down to the table within the building and on the large veranda looking off over a delightful prospect and there were many appreciative speeches. It was long after nightfall when the happy gathering broke up and the visitors then had a chance to see the fairy-like spectacle of the Exposition by night, with every building outlined in electric lights, the pools shimmering, the fountain gleaming and a series of cascades coming down in foam, with electric lights of different colors glowing through each waterfall.
FOOTNOTES:
[60] Part of Call: In entering upon the fifth decade of its work for the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women in the United States, the National American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation invites all those to share in its councils who believe that the help of women is needed by the Government. It is a grave mistake of statesmanship to continue to ignore the wisdom of the thousands of our women citizens, who, fitted by education and home interests, are anxious to help solve the many and vital problems upon which our country"s future safety and prosperity depend....
During the year 1908 our cause won four solid victories. Michigan gave taxpaying women a vote on questions of local taxation and the granting of franchises; Denmark gave women who are taxpayers or wives of taxpayers a vote for all officers but members of Parliament; Belgium gave women engaged in trade a vote for the Conseils des Prudhommes; and Victoria in Australia gave full State suffrage to all women. The legislative hearings in New York, Ma.s.sachusetts and Nebraska have called out unprecedented crowds showing the growth of popular interest.... The Legislatures of Oregon, Washington and South Dakota have voted to submit the question of woman suffrage to the electors in 1910. The workers for woman"s political freedom have great cause for rejoicing.
ANNA HOWARD SHAW, President.
RACHEL FOSTER AVERY, First Vice-President.
FLORENCE KELLEY, Second Vice-President.