Volume IV Part 38 (1/2)

That we appeal to Congress to submit a Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Const.i.tution, thereby enabling the citizens of each State to carry this question of woman suffrage before its Legislature for settlement.

That we will aid, so far as practicable, every State campaign for woman suffrage; but we urgently recommend our auxiliary State societies to effect thorough county organizations before pet.i.tioning their Legislatures for a State const.i.tutional amendment.

WHEREAS, The good results of woman suffrage in Wyoming since 1869 have caused its adoption successively by the three adjoining States; therefore,

_Resolved_, That we earnestly request the citizens of these four free States to make a special effort to secure the franchise for women in the States contiguous to their own.

That we demand for mothers equal custody and control of their minor children, and for wives and widows an equal use and inheritance of property.

That we ask for an equal representation of women on all boards of education and health, of public schools and colleges, and in the management of all public inst.i.tutions; and for their employment as physicians for women and children in all hospitals and asylums, and as police matrons and guards in all prisons and reformatories.

That this a.s.sociation limits its efforts exclusively to securing equal rights for women, and it appeals for co-operation to the whole American people.

Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, Mrs. Ida Porter Boyer and Mrs. Harper were appointed fraternal delegates to the Woman's Press a.s.sociation, in session at this time in Was.h.i.+ngton.

A beautiful feature of this occasion was the luncheon given by Mrs.

John R. McLean to Miss Anthony on her seventy-eighth birthday, February 15, attended by thirty-six of the most distinguished ladies in the national capital, and followed by a reception to the members of the convention. Mrs. McLean was a.s.sisted in receiving by Miss Anthony and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant. Seventy-eight wax tapers burned upon the birthday cake, which was three feet in diameter and decorated with flowers. It was presented to Miss Anthony, who carried it in triumph to the convention in Columbia Theatre, where it was cut into slices that were sold as souvenirs and realized about $120, which she donated to the cause.

Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, at the age of eighty-two, sent two papers for this fiftieth anniversary, one for the congressional hearing, on The Significance of the Ballot; the other, Our Defeats and our Triumphs, was read to the convention by Mrs. Colby. Both displayed all the old-time vigor of thought and beauty of expression. The latter, filled with interesting reminiscence, closed with these words:

Another generation has now enlisted for a long or short campaign.

What, say they, shall we do to hasten the work? I answer, the pioneers have brought you through the wilderness in sight of the promised land; now, with active, aggressive warfare, take possession. Instead of rehearsing the old arguments which have done duty fifty years, make a brave attack on every obstacle which stands in your way.... Lord Brougham said: ”The laws for women [in England and America] are a disgrace to the civilization of the nineteenth century.” The women in every State should watch their law-makers, and any bill invidious to their interests should be promptly denounced, and with such vehemence and indignation as to agitate the whole community....

There is no merit in simply occupying the ground which others have conquered. There are new fields for conquest and more enemies to meet. Whatever affects woman's freedom, growth and development affords legitimate subject for discussion here....

Some of our opponents think woman would be a dangerous element in politics and destroy the secular nature of our Government. I would have a resolution on that point discussed freely, and show liberal thinkers that we have a large number in our a.s.sociation as desirous to preserve the secular nature of our Government as they themselves can possibly be.... When educated women, teachers in all our schools, professors in our colleges, are governed by rulers, foreign and native, who can neither read nor write, I would have this a.s.sociation discuss and pa.s.s a resolution in favor of ”educated suffrage.” ...

The object of our organization is to secure equality and freedom for woman: First, in the State, which is denied when she is not permitted to exercise the right of suffrage; second, in the Church, which is denied when she has no voice in its councils, creeds and discipline, or in the choice of its ministers, elders and deacons; third, in the Home, where the State makes the husband's authority absolute, the wife a subject, where the mother is robbed of the guardians.h.i.+p of her own child, and where the joint earnings belong solely to the husband.

....Let this generation pay its debt to the past by continuing this great work until the last vestige of woman's subjection shall be erased from our creeds and codes and const.i.tutions. Then the united thought of man and woman will inaugurate a pure religion, a just government, a happy home and a civilization in which ignorance, poverty and crime will exist no more. They who watch behold already the dawn of a new day.

The Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell (N. Y.), the first woman to graduate in theology and be ordained, delineated The Changing Phases of Opposition, pointing out that when the first Woman's Rights Convention was held the general tone of the press was shown in that newspaper which said: ”This bolt is the most shocking and unnatural incident ever recorded in the history of humanity; if these demands were effected, it would set the world by the ears, make confusion worse confounded, demoralize and degrade from their high sphere and n.o.ble destiny women of all respectable and useful cla.s.ses, and prove a monstrous injury to all mankind.” Yet this present convention was celebrating the granting of all those demands except the suffrage and not one of the predicted evils had come to pa.s.s. The direful prophecies of the early days were taken up, one by one, and their utter absurdity pointed out in the light of experience. Now all of those ancient, stereotyped objections were concentrated against granting the suffrage.

Mrs. Virginia D. Young (S. C.) delighted the audience with one of her characteristic addresses. Prof. Frances Stewart Mosher, of Hillsdale College (Mich.), gave an exhaustive review of the great increase and value of Woman's Work in Church Philanthropies. Mrs. May Wright Sewall (Ind.) demonstrated the wonderful Progress of Women in Education. The New Education possessed the charm of novelty in being presented by Miss Grace Espy Patton, State Superintendent of Public Instruction in Colorado, a lady so delicate and dainty that, when Miss Anthony led her forward and said, ”It has always been charged that voting and officeholding will make women coa.r.s.e and unwomanly; now look at her!”

the audience responded with an ovation.

Miss Belle Kearney (Miss.) discussed Social Changes in the South, depicting in a rapid, magnetic manner, interspersed with flashes of wit, the evolution of the Southern woman and the revolution in customs and privileges which must inevitably lead up to political rights. Mrs.

Mary Seymour Howell (N. Y.) gave an eloquent review of the splendid services of Women in Philanthropy.

At the memorial services Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby (D. C.) offered the following resolutions:

It is fitting in this commemorative celebration to pause a moment to place a laurel in memory's chaplet for those to whom it was given to be the earliest to voice the demand that woman should be allowed to enter into the sacred heritage of liberty, as one made equally with man in the image of the Creator and divinely appointed to co-sovereignty over the earth. To name them here is to recognize their presence with us in spirit and to invoke their benediction upon this generation which, entering into the results of their labors, must carry them forward to full fruition.

Lucretia Mott always will be revered as one of those who conceived the idea of a convention to make an organized demand for justice to women. She became a Quaker preacher in 1818 at the age of twenty-five, and the last suffrage convention she attended was in her eighty-sixth year. Her motto, ”Truth for authority and not authority for truth,” is still the tocsin of reform. Sarah Pugh, the lovely Quaker, was ever her close friend and helper.

Frances Wright, a n.o.ble Scotchwoman, a friend of General Lafayette, early imbibed a love for freedom and a knowledge of the principles on which it is based. In this the land of her adoption she was the first woman to lecture on political subjects, in 1826.

Ernestine L. Rose, the beautiful Polish patriot, sent the first pet.i.tion to the New York Legislature to give a married woman the right to hold real estate in her own name. This was in 1836, and she continued the work of securing signatures until 1848, when the bill was pa.s.sed. She was a matchless orator and lectured on woman suffrage for nearly fifty years.

Lucy Stone's voice pleaded the wide continent over for justice for her s.e.x. Her life-long devotion to the woman suffrage cause was idealized by the companions.h.i.+p and a.s.sistance of her husband, Henry B. Blackwell, the one man in this nation who under any and all circ.u.mstances has made woman's cause his chief consideration.

Her first lecture on woman's rights was given in 1847, the year of her graduation at Oberlin College, and her life work was epitomized in her dying words, ”Make the world better.”