Volume IV Part 39 (1/2)
Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.) with clever satire and amidst laughter and applause, considered Women in Munic.i.p.alities.
The Pioneers' Evening was one of great interest, when Miss Anthony marshalled her hosts and made ”the roll-call of the years.” As each decade was called, beginning with 1848, those who began the suffrage work at that time rose on the stage and in all parts of the house and remained standing. Not one was there who was present at the original Seneca Falls Convention, but it had held an adjourned meeting at Rochester, three weeks later, and Miss Anthony's sister, Mary S., responded as having attended then and signed the Declaration of Rights. The daughters of Mrs. Martha C. Wright, who called this convention--Mrs. Eliza Wright Osborne and Mrs. Wm. Lloyd Garrison--and also Mrs. Millie Burtis Logan, whose mother, Miss Anthony's cousin, served as its secretary, were introduced to the audience. The children of Frederick Dougla.s.s, who had spoken at both meetings, were present and should have come forward with this group. The Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell stated that she had spoken in favor of woman's rights in 1846. Among the earliest of the pioneers present were John W.
Hutchinson, the last of that famous family of singers; Henry B.
Blackwell, Mrs. Helen Philleo Jenkins (Mich.), Miss Sarah Wall (Ma.s.s.) and Mrs. Hooker. Many of those who arose made brief remarks and the occasion was one which will not be forgotten by those who witnessed it.
Among the letters received from the many pioneers still living was one from Mrs. Abigail Bush, now eighty-eight years old and residing in California, who presided over the Rochester meeting, Aug. 2, 1848. It is especially interesting as showing that even so advanced women as Lucretia Mott and Mrs. Stanton, although they dared call such a meeting, were yet so conservative as to object to a woman's presiding over it:
TO SUSAN B. ANTHONY, GREETING: You will bear me witness that the state of society is very different from what it was fifty years ago, when I presided at the first Woman's Rights Convention. I had not been able to meet in council at all with the friends until I met them in the hall as the congregation was gathering, and then fell into the hands of those who urged me to take part with the opposers of a woman serving, as the party had with them a fine-looking man to preside at all of their meetings, James Mott, who had presided at Seneca Falls. Afterward I fell in with the old friends, Amy Post, Rhoda de Garmo and Sarah Fish, who at once commenced labors with me to prove that the hour had come when a woman should preside, and led me into the church. Amy proposed my name as president; I was accepted at once, and from that hour I seemed endowed as from on high to serve.
It was a two days' meeting with three sessions per day. On my taking the chair, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton left the platform and took their seats in the audience, but it did not move me from performing all my duties, and at the close of the meeting Lucretia Mott came forward, folded me tenderly in her arms and thanked me for presiding. That settled the question of men's presiding at a woman's convention. From that day to this, in all the walks of life, I have been faithful in a.s.serting that there should be ”no taxation without representation.” It has seemed long in coming, but I think the time draws near when woman will be acknowledged as equal with man. Heaven grant the day to dawn soon!
Mrs. Catharine A. F. Stebbins (Mich.), who had attended the Seneca Falls Convention and signed the Declaration of Rights, sent an interesting descriptive letter. Mrs. Lucinda H. Stone (Mich.), the mother of women's clubs and a pioneer on educational lines, wrote:
You wanted I should write you any anecdotes of early interest in woman suffrage. The remembrance of Dr. Stone's waking up to that subject has come to me, and I have thought I would tell you about it.
It was some time in the forties that he was requested to deliver a Fourth of July oration in Kalamazoo. I can not tell the exact year, but it was before I had ever heard of the Rochester Convention, or of you or Mrs. Stanton, and he was looking up all that he could find in the early history of our Declaration of Independence, and the principles of Jefferson and the early revolutionists. I remember his coming in one day (it must have been before 1848), seeming very much absorbed in something that he was thinking about. He threw down the book he had been reading, and said to me: ”The time will come when women will vote. Mark my words! We may not live to see it, we probably shall not, but it will come. It is not a woman's right or a man's right; it is a human right, and their voting is but a natural process of evolution.” ...
Mrs. Esther Wattles, who helped secure School Suffrage and equal property laws for women in the State const.i.tution of Kansas in 1859, sent this message: ”My attention was first called to the injustice done to women by a lecture given near Wilmington, Ohio, by John O.
Wattles in 1841. He devoted most of his time to lecturing on Woman's Rights, The Sin of Slavery, The Temperance Reform and Peace. I heard him on all these subjects, off and on, till 1844, when we were married.... Seventy-nine summers with their clouds and suns.h.i.+ne, make it fitting I should greet you by letter rather than personal presence.
May the cause never falter till the victory is won.”
Most of the letters were sent to Miss Anthony personally. Among these were the following:
We, the members of the National a.s.sociation of Woman Stenographers, take great pleasure in extending congratulations to you on the occasion of your seventy-eighth birthday, and hope that the days of your years may still be many and happy. We also desire to express our appreciation of and grat.i.tude for the work you have done in securing freedom and justice for women. As business women we are better able to comprehend what you have accomplished, especially for those who are bread-winners, and we trust the time may soon come when we shall not be limited to understanding what freedom is, but be able to act in accordance with its principles.
THE NEVADA EQUAL SUFFRAGE a.s.sOCIATION: Although we are young in the ranks and few in number compared with the older States, yet we are none the less loyal to the principles advocated and established by the National a.s.sociation. We are brave because we draw inspiration from the thoughts and acts of that Spartan band of suffragists of fifty years ago, who devoted the suns.h.i.+ne of their lives and the energies of their philosophic minds to the effort to obtain for womankind their inherent right to have a voice in the Government which derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.
ALFRED H. LOVE, president of the Universal Peace Union: From our rooms in the east wing of Independence Hall, I send greetings to you and your cause. Your cause is ours, and has been one of our essential principles since our organization. Your success is a triumph for peace.
MARY LOWE d.i.c.kINSON, secretary of the International Order of the King's Daughters and Sons: I hope you will live to see the full day for the cause whose dawn owed so much to your labors, and I can ask nothing better for you than that you have ”the desire of your heart,” which I am sure will be the ballot for us all.
DR. ELIZABETH BLACKWELL, the first woman physician: Although I can not respond in person to your very friendly invitation to be a representative of ”the pioneers,” yet I gladly send my hearty greeting to you and to the other brave workers for the progress of the race--a progress slow but inevitable. Amongst all its steps I consider the admission of women to the medical profession as the most important. Whilst thankfully recognizing the wonderful acc.u.mulations of knowledge which generations of our brethren have gathered together, our future women physicians will rejoice to help in the construction of that n.o.ble temple of medicine, whose foundation stone must be sympathetic justice.
Pray allow me to send my warm greeting to the Congress through you.
There were messages and grateful recognition from so many societies and individuals in the United States that it would be impossible even to call them by name; also from the Dominion of Canada Suffrage Club, through Dr. Augusta Stowe Gullen; the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in Great Britain, with individual letters from Lady Aberdeen, Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Mrs. Priscilla Bright McLaren and others; on behalf of the Swedish Frederika Bremer Forbundet, by Carl Lindhagen; on behalf of Finnish women by Baroness Alexandra Gripenberg; on behalf of German women by Frau Hanna Bieber-Bohm, president of the National Council of Women; on behalf of the Woman Suffrage Society of Holland by its secretary, Margarethe Galle; from the Norwegian Woman Suffrage Club; from the Verein Jugendschutz of Berlin, and from the Union to Promote Woman's Rights in Finland.
The remarkable scenes of the closing evening made a deep impression upon the large audience. After fifty years of effort to overcome the most stubborn and deeply-rooted prejudices of the ages, the results were beginning to appear. Among the speakers were a woman State senator from Utah, Mrs. Martha Hughes Cannon; a woman member of the Colorado Legislature, Mrs. Martha A. B. Conine; a woman State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Miss Estelle Reel of Wyoming; U.
S. Senators Henry M. Teller of Colorado, and Frank J. Cannon of Utah, States where women have full suffrage; Representative John F. Shafroth of Colorado--and in the center of this distinguished group, Susan B.
Anthony, receiving the fruits of her half century of toil and hards.h.i.+p.
MISS REEL: I want to tell you a little about our work in Wyoming, where women have been voting and holding office for nearly thirty years, and where our people are convinced that it has been of great benefit. Our home life there is as sacred and sweet as anywhere else on the globe. Equal suffrage has been tried and not found wanting. You may ask, What reforms has Wyoming to show? We were the first State to adopt the Australian ballot, and to accept a majority verdict of juries in civil cases. We are noted for our humane treatment of criminals, our care of the deserving poor and the education of our young. Child labor is prohibited. The Supreme Court has just decided that every voter must be able to read the Const.i.tution in English. We have night schools all over the State for those who can not attend school by day. Equal suffrage was given to help protect the home element, and the home vote is a great conservative force. Woman suffrage means stable government, anch.o.r.ed in the steadfast rock of American homes.
Mrs. Conine was commissioned as a delegate to the convention by Gov.
Alva Adams of Colorado. She read the statement recently put forth, testifying to the good results of equal suffrage and signed by the Governor, three ex-Governors, all the State Senators and the Representatives in Congress, the Chief Justice and the a.s.sociate Justices of the Supreme Court, the Judges of the Court of Appeals, the Judges of the District Court, the Secretary of State, the State treasurer, auditor, attorney-general, the mayor of Denver, the presidents of the State University and of Colorado College, the president of the General Federation of Women's Clubs and the presidents of thirteen women's clubs, and said:
During the session of the Legislature last winter, there were three women in the House. We met the other members upon terms of absolute equality. No thought of incongruity or unfitness seems to have arisen, and at the same time those little courtesies which gentlemen instinctively pay to ladies were never omitted.
Each of the ladies was given a chairmans.h.i.+p, one of them that of the Printing Committee, and the printing bill was lower by thousands of dollars than for any previous session. The women were as frequently called to the chair in Committee of the Whole as were the men. One of them was placed upon the Judiciary Committee at the request of its chairman. Every honorary committee appointed during the session included one or more of the ladies.
Our State Federation of Women's Clubs now numbers about 100, representing a united members.h.i.+p of 4,000. They are largely occupied in studying social and economic questions, earnestly seeking for the best methods of educating their children, reforming criminals, alleviating poverty and purifying the ballot; in short, striving to make their city and their State a cleaner, better home for their families. Their work receives added encouragement from the knowledge that by their ballots they may determine who shall make and administer the laws under which their children must be reared. The home has always been conceded to be the woman's kingdom. In the free States she has but expanded the walls of that home, that she may afford to the inmates, and also to those who unfortunately have no other home, the same protection and loving care which was formerly limited to the few short years of childhood pa.s.sed beneath the parental roof.