"No, Susan," she insisted, "you"re wrong for once. I remember perfectly when that happened, for it was at the time I was beginning to wean Harriet."
Aunt Susan, though somewhat staggered by the force of this testimony, still maintained that Mrs. Stanton must be mistaken, whereupon the latter repeated, in exasperation, "I tell you it happened when I was weaning Harriet." And she added, scornfully, "What event have you got to reckon from?"
Miss Anthony meekly subsided.
Mrs. Stanton had wonderful blue eyes, which held to the end of her life an expression of eternal youth. During our conventions she usually took a little nap in the afternoon, and when she awoke her blue eyes always had an expression of pleased and innocent surprise, as if she were gazing on the world for the first time--the round, unwinking, interested look a baby"s eyes have when something attractive is held up before them.
Let me give in a paragraph, before I swing off into the bypaths that always allure me, the consecutive suffrage events of the past quarter of a century. Having done this, I can dwell on each as casually as I choose, for it is possible to describe only a few incidents here and there; and I shall not be departing from the story of my life, for my life had become merged in the suffrage cause.
Of the preliminary suffrage campaigns in Kansas, made in company with "Aunt Susan," I have already written, and it remains only to say that during the second Kansas campaign yellow was adopted as the suffrage color. In 1890, "92, and "93 we again worked in Kansas and in South Dakota, with such indefatigable and brilliant speakers as Mrs. Catt (to whose efforts also were largely due the winning of Colorado in "93), Mrs. Laura Johns of Kansas, Mrs. Julia Nelson, Henry B. Blackwell, Dr.
Helen V. Putnam of Dakota, Mrs. Emma Smith DeVoe, Rev. Olympia Browne of Wisconsin, and Dr. Mary Seymour Howell of New York. In "94, "95, and "96 special efforts were devoted to Idaho, Utah, California, and Washington, and from then on our campaigns were waged steadily in the Western states.
The Colorado victory gave us two full suffrage states, for in 1869 the Territory of Wyoming had enfranchised women under very interesting conditions, not now generally remembered. The achievement was due to the influence of one woman, Esther Morris, a pioneer who was as good a neighbor as she was a suffragist. In those early days, in homes far from physicians and surgeons, the women cared for one another in sickness, and Esther Morris, as it happened, once took full and skilful charge of a neighbor during the difficult birth of the latter"s child. She had done the same thing for many other women, but this woman"s husband was especially grateful. He was also a member of the Legislature, and he told Mrs. Morris that if there was any measure she wished put through for the women of the territory he would be glad to introduce it. She immediately took him at his word by asking him to introduce a bill enfranchising women, and he promptly did so.
The Legislature was Democratic, and it pounced upon the measure as a huge joke. With the amiable purpose of embarra.s.sing the Governor of the territory, who was a Republican and had been appointed by the President, the members pa.s.sed the bill and put it up to him to veto. To their combined horror and amazement, the young Governor did nothing of the kind. He had come, as it happened, from Salem, Ohio, one of the first towns in the United States in which a suffrage convention was held.
There, as a boy, he had heard Susan B. Anthony make a speech, and he had carried into the years the impression it made upon him. He signed that bill; and, as the Legislature could not get a two-thirds vote to kill it, the disgusted members had to make the best of the matter. The following year a Democrat introduced a bill to repeal the measure, but already public sentiment had changed and he was laughed down. After that no further effort was ever made to take the ballot away from the women of Wyoming.
When the territory applied for statehood, it was feared that the woman-suffrage clause in the const.i.tution might injure its chance of admission, and the women sent this telegram to Joseph M. Carey:
"Drop us if you must. We can trust the men of Wyoming to enfranchise us after our territory becomes a state."
Mr. Carey discussed this telegram with the other men who were urging upon Congress the admission of their territory, and the following reply went back:
"We may stay out of the Union a hundred years, but we will come in with our women."
There is great inspiration in those two messages--and a great lesson, as well.
In 1894 we conducted a campaign in New York, when an effort was made to secure a clause to enfranchise women in the new state const.i.tution; and for the first time in the history of the woman-suffrage movement many of the influential women in the state and city of New York took an active part in the work. Miss Anthony was, as always, our leader and greatest inspiration. Mrs. John Brooks Greenleaf was state president, and Miss Mary Anthony was the most active worker in the Rochester headquarters.
Mrs. Lily Devereaux Blake had charge of the campaign in New York City, and Mrs. Marianna Chapman looked after the Brooklyn section, while a most stimulating sign of the times was the organization of a committee of New York women of wealth and social influence, who established their headquarters at Sherry"s. Among these were Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, Mrs. Joseph H. Choate, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, Mrs. J. Warren G.o.ddard, and Mrs. Robert Abbe. Miss Anthony, then in her seventy-fifth year, spoke in every county of the state sixty in all. I spoke in forty, and Mrs. Catt, as always, made a superb record. Miss Harriet May Mills, a graduate of Cornell, and Miss Mary G. Hay, did admirable organization work in the different counties. Our disappointment over the result was greatly soothed by the fact that only two years later both Idaho and Utah swung into line as full suffrage states, though California, in which we had labored with equal zeal, waited fifteen years longer.
Among these campaigns, and overlapping them, were our annual conventions--each of which I attended from 1888 on--and the national and international councils, to a number of which, also, I have given preliminary mention. When Susan B. Anthony died in 1906, four American states had granted suffrage to woman. At the time I write--1914--the result of the American women"s work for suffrage may be briefly tabulated thus:
SUFFRAGE STATUS
FULL SUFFRAGE FOR WOMEN
Number of State Year Won Electoral Votes Wyoming 1869 3 Colorado 1893 6 Idaho 1896 4 Utah 1896 4 Washington 1910 7 California 1911 13 Arizona 1912 3 Kansas 1912 10 Oregon 1912 5 Alaska 1913 -- Nevada 1914 3 Montana 1914 4
PRESIDENTIAL AND MUNIc.i.p.aL SUFFRAGE FOR WOMEN Number of State Year Won Electoral Votes
Illinois 1913 29
STATES WHERE AMENDMENT HAS Pa.s.sED ONE LEGISLATURE AND MUST Pa.s.s ANOTHER
Number Goes to State House Senate Voters Electoral Votes Iowa 81-26 31-15 1916 13 Ma.s.sachusetts 169-39 34-2 1915 18 New Jersey 49-4 15-3 1915 14 New York 125-5 40-2 1915 45 North Dakota 77-29 31-19 1916 5 Pennsylvania 131-70 26-22 1915 38
To tabulate the wonderful work done by the conventions and councils is not possible, but a con secutive list of the meetings would run like this:
First National Convention, Washington, D.C., 1887.
First International Council of Women, Washington, D.C., 1888.
National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., 1889.
National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., 1890.
National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., 1891.
National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., 1892.
National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., 1893.
International Council, Chicago, 1893.
National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., 1894.
National Suffrage Convention, Atlanta, Ga., 1895.
National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., 1896.
National Suffrage Convention, Des Moines, Iowa, 1897.
National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., 1898.
National Suffrage Convention, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1899.
International Council, London, England, 1899.
National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., 1900.
National Suffrage Convention, Minneapolis, Minn., 1901.
National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., 1902.
National Suffrage Convention, New Orleans, La., 1903.
National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., 1904.
International Council of Women, Berlin, Germany, 1904.
Formation of Intern"l Suffrage Alliance, Berlin, Germany, 1904.
National Suffrage Convention, Portland, Oregon, 1905.
National Suffrage Convention, Baltimore, Md., 1906.
International Suffrage Alliance, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1906.
National Suffrage Convention, Chicago, III., 1907.
International Suffrage Alliance, Amsterdam, Holland, 1908.
National Suffrage Convention, Buffalo, N. Y., 1908.
New York Headquarters established, 1909.
National Suffrage Convention, Seattle, Wash., 1909.
International Suffrage Alliance, London, England, 1909.
National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., 1910.
International Council, Genoa, Italy, 1911.
National Suffrage Convention, Louisville, Ky., 1911.
International Suffrage Alliance, Stockholm, Sweden, 1911.
National Suffrage Convention, Philadelphia, Pa., 1912.
International Council, The Hague, Holland, 1913 National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C.; 1913.
International Suffrage Alliance, Budapest, Hungary, 1913.
National Suffrage Convention, Nashville, Tenn., 1914.
International Council, Rome, Italy, 1914.
The winning of the suffrage states, the work in the states not yet won, the conventions, gatherings, and international councils in which women of every nation have come together, have all combined to make this quarter of a century the most brilliant period for women in the history of the world. I have set forth the record baldly and without comment, because the bare facts are far more eloquent than words. It must not be forgotten, too, that these great achievements of the progressive women of to-day have been accomplished against the opposition of a large number of their own s.e.x--who, while they are out in the world"s arena fighting against progress for their sisters, still shatter the ear-drum with their incongruous war-cry, "Woman"s place is in the home!"
here: We were attending the Republican state nominating convention at Mitch.e.l.l--Miss Anthony, Mrs. Catt, other leaders, and myself--having been told that it would be at once the largest and the most interesting gathering ever held in the state as it proved to be. All the leading politicians of the state were there, and in the wake of the white men had come tribes of Indians with their camp outfits, their wives and their children--the groups forming a picturesque circle of tents and tepees around the town. It was a great occasion for them, an Indian powwow, for by the law all Indians who had lands in severalty were to be permitted to vote the following year. They were present, therefore, to study the ways of the white man, and an edifying exhibition of these was promptly offered them.