Volume V Part 3 (1/2)
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, Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 Was.h.i.+ngton _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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 wors.h.i.+pped, 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 citizens.h.i.+p 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 battles.h.i.+ps 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 friends.h.i.+p of the great Eastern Empire. He knew that the commanders of the Russian s.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+ps 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.