Volume V Part 6 (1/2)
The _Picayune_ thus described the occasion: ”In the presence of a magnificent audience that packed the Athenaeum to its utmost capacity, the thirty-fifth annual convention of the National American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation was formally opened last night, with the president, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, in the chair. Seldom perhaps in its history has the a.s.sociation received such a greeting, for the audience was not only deeply interested and sympathetic but it was representative of the finest culture in the city and State.
Distinguished jurists, physicians and teachers, staid men of business and leaders in many lines united with women of the highest social standing in giving the convention a hearty and earnest welcome. Many were no doubt attracted by the memory of the former visits of Miss Susan B. Anthony and Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt and the remarkable personality of the pioneer suffrage workers, but whether they came from pure interest in these famous leaders or deep sympathy with the cause, all were generous in giving to both the credit and applause they justly deserved....
Mayor Paul Capdeville, who was to welcome the convention, was ill and this was very acceptably done by ”Tom” Richardson, secretary of the Progressive Union, an important commercial body of 1,600 members that had joined in the invitation for it to come to New Orleans and contributed the rent of the Athenaeum. He expressed his pleasure at being a.s.sociated with the suffragists of the city, ”who had never neglected any opportunity to promote its best interests,” and said: ”No other cla.s.s of our citizens have done it so much good.” He was followed by the Hon. Edgar H. Farrar, an eminent lawyer, author of the Drainage and Sewerage plan, who told of the valuable a.s.sistance of women in the strenuous fight against the State lottery ten years before and described the splendid work of the women since the const.i.tutional convention of 1898 had given them taxpayers' suffrage.
Miss Gordon read a poem of welcome by Mrs. Grace G. Watts and gave the Era Club's welcome and then Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, who was presiding, introduced Miss Anthony to respond. The _Picayune_ said in its report:
Seated upon the platform was Miss Susan B. Anthony, the woman who for two-score years stood the brunt of ridicule, sarcasm and cartooning and never once was deterred from the course that she fully believed to be the just and true one. Of the great leaders in this movement she alone remains.... Spanning a distance of forty years stood at her side Mrs. Catt, the younger woman who has taken up the battle, and grouped around were earnest young girls and middle-aged women fired with her enthusiasm and looking up to her with a reverence that was very beautiful and a most gracious tribute from youth to old age. When Miss Jean Gordon advanced to present her with a great cl.u.s.ter of Marechal Neil roses and took her so sweetly by the hand and in the name of the young women of today and of the Era Club thanked her for the battles she had fought, the scene was most touching, representing as it did the two extremes of the suffrage workers, those of half-a-century ago and those of today.
There was another there, a woman who has been very near to the hearts of New Orleans people, who has never been aggressive in her advocacy of the cause but whose quiet approval, whose earnest sympathy, whose expenditure of time and money and whose high social standing gave to it a strength even in those early days that one of less ability and social position and more p.r.o.nounced opposition could not have secured. Mrs. Caroline E.
Merrick, the pioneer suffragist of Louisiana and the lifelong friend of Miss Anthony, came in for her share of the honors of the evening. With equal grace and tenderness Miss Gordon advanced to her and offered her too the fragrant expressions of more youthful workers. For a moment Miss Anthony and Mrs. Merrick stood together, and the audience, rising to its feet in a great wave of enthusiasm, waved handkerchiefs and fans in greeting.
Perhaps that precious hour of triumph, away down here in this old southern State, as she stands nearing the border land of another world, recompensed the great pioneer for much that she had borne when life was young and audiences, as she said, less sympathetic.
Mrs. Merrick's remarks, also, touched a deep chord and roused the audience to a state of earnest sympathy.
Miss Anthony told of her visit to New Orleans in 1884 during the Centennial Exposition, when she was the guest of Mrs. Merrick, and spoke of Mrs. Eliza J. Nicholson, owner and editor of the _Picayune_, paying a tribute to her and to the gifted writer, ”Catharine Cole,” of its editorial staff, both now pa.s.sed from earth. In Dr. Shaw's eloquent response to the greetings she said: ”Nothing has given me greater hope for women and has made me prouder of women than the splendid reserve power shown by southern womanhood for the last twenty-five years. When your hearthstones were left desolate and your bravest and strongest had gone forth never to come back, your women, who had been cared for as no other women ever were cared for, who were uneducated to toil, unacquainted with business requirements, averse to them by instinct and tradition--when they had to face the world they went out uncomplaining and worked with sublime heroism.... I am glad to come among you southern women and to say that you have been an inspiration to the women of the North and to whole world. The daughters of those women of twenty-five years ago are the ones who have made this splendid convention possible. Over our country now there floats only one flag but that is a flag for women as well as men. If there are any men who ought to have faith in women and in their power to dare and do it is southern men, who owe so much to southern women.”
Mrs. Catt then gave her president's address of which an extended press notice said: ”Never was there a more masterly exposition of a theme, never a more earnest or cogent argument. A distinguished Justice of the Supreme Court who was present remarked to the writer: 'I have heard many men but not one who can compare with Mrs. Catt in eloquence and logical power.' So the entire audience felt and at the close of her magnificent discourse she was the recipient of an ovation that came spontaneously from their hearts. The scene presented in the Athenaeum was indeed a remarkable one.” The address was not written and no essential part of it can be reproduced from fragmentary newspaper reports.
A discordant note in the harmony was struck by the _Times-Democrat_, which, in a long editorial, Woman Suffrage and the South, a.s.sailed the a.s.sociation because of its att.i.tude on the race question. The board of officers immediately prepared a signed statement which said in part:
The a.s.sociation as such has no view on this subject. Like every other national a.s.sociation it is made up of persons of all shades of opinion on the race question and on all other questions except those relating to its particular object. The northern and western members hold the views on the race question that are customary in their sections; the southern members hold the views that are customary in the South. The doctrine of State's rights is recognized in the national body and each auxiliary State a.s.sociation arranges its own affairs in accordance with its own ideas and in harmony with the customs of its own section.
Individual members in addresses made outside of the National a.s.sociation are of course free to express their views on all sorts of extraneous questions but they speak for themselves as individuals and not for the a.s.sociation....
The National American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation is seeking to do away with the requirement of a s.e.x qualification for suffrage.
What other qualifications shall be asked for it leaves to each State. The southern women most active in it have always in their own State emphasized the fact that granting suffrage to women who can read and write and who pay taxes would insure white supremacy without resorting to any methods of doubtful const.i.tutionality.
The Louisiana a.s.sociation asks for the ballot for educated and taxpaying women only and its officers believe that in this lies ”the only permanent and honorable solution of the race question.”
The suffrage a.s.sociations of the northern and western States ask for the ballot for all women, though Maine and several other States have lately asked for it with an educational or tax qualification. To advise southern women to beware of lending ”sympathy or support” to the National a.s.sociation because its auxiliary societies in the northern States hold the usual views of northerners on the color question is as irrelevant as to advise them to beware of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union because in the northern and western States it draws no color line; or to beware of the General Federation of Women's Clubs because the State Federations of the North and West do not draw it; or to beware of Christianity because the churches in the North and West do not draw it....
The _Times-Democrat_ published this letter in full and endeavored by its press reports afterwards to atone for its blunder. It had been feared that trouble over this question would arise but no other paper referred to it. The _Picayune_, _Item_ and _States_ were most generous with s.p.a.ce and complimentary in expression throughout the convention.[24]
The reports at the executive sessions were possibly of more interest to the delegates than the public addresses. Miss Gordon in her secretary's report spoke of the 12,000 or 13,000 letters which had been sent out since the last convention, many of them made necessary by the International Conference of the preceding year, and of the ending of its proceedings. To the 14,000 newspapers on the list to receive the quarterly _Progress_ the names of legislators in various States had been added, and to the latter leaflets attractively prepared by Miss Blackwell also were sent. She described the new suffrage postage stamp, a college girl in cap and gown holding a tablet inscribed: ”In Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho women vote on the same terms as men,” to offset the prevailing ignorance of this fact. Resolutions endorsing woman suffrage had been secured from the National Grange, the American Federation of Labor and a number of large labor unions. For the first time in the history of the National Education a.s.sociation, three-fourths of whose members are women, a woman had been invited to address their annual convention and the one selected was the president of the National American Suffrage a.s.sociation. Mrs. Catt was cordially received by them in July at Minneapolis.
Four of the five morning sessions were given over completely to Work Conferences. The usual ones on Organization and Press were held with Miss Mary Garrett Hay and Mrs. Elnora Babc.o.c.k respectively presiding.
The conference on Enrollment gave way to one on Literature, Dr. Mary D. Hussey presiding, and a new one on Legislation was added. A president's and a delegates' conference completed the list. The Plan of Work again presented by the Executive Committee emphasized the line of action adopted in the first year of Mrs. Catt's presidency and urged that the States endeavor to secure recommendations of their Legislatures asking the submission of a 16th Amendment; that special efforts be made to secure the appointment of a Commission to investigate the working of full suffrage in States where it now exists; that correspondence be taken up vigorously with all members of Congress giving them the arguments in favor of a Federal Amendment and of a Commission on Investigation; that the a.s.sociation aim to double its members.h.i.+p the coming year and that a catalogue of woman suffrage literature be prepared for libraries.
Only $3,000 in pledges were called for and $3,200 were quickly subscribed.[25] The treasurer, Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, announced receipts during the year of $18,310 with a balance of $6,183 now in the treasury. ”New York has always been the largest contributor and paid the largest auxiliary fee,” she said, ”and it never has any aid from the national treasury. Its temper is always sweet and its methods always business-like but to be sure it has always been blessed by having one of its citizens as national president. This year, however, Ma.s.sachusetts has won the place at the head of the list.”
Mrs. Catt reported for the Congressional Committee that Congress had entirely ignored the urgent appeals of last year for a committee to investigate the effects of woman suffrage in the equal franchise States. Mrs. Sallie Clay Bennett (Ky.) made her usual strong plea for an effort to secure from Congress Federal suffrage or the right to vote for members of Senate and House Representatives. For many years Mrs. Bennett, as chairman of the committee, had appealed to the a.s.sociation for action but while it considered that the measure would be perfectly valid it believed it to be hopeless of attainment.
[History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV, page 6.] Mrs. Elnora M. Babc.o.c.k (N. Y.), chairman of the Press Committee, made a comprehensive report of the constantly increasing favorable comment of the newspapers. Mrs.
Boyer, chairman for Pennsylvania, had placed 5,700 suffrage articles and the chairmen of various other States had a proportionate record.
Miss Blackwell gave as a recipe for finding favor with editors: ”Make your articles short; make them newsy; don't denounce the men.” Mrs.
Priscilla D. Hackstaff (N. Y.), chairman of the Enrollment Committee, reported a good start on the nation-wide enrollment of men and women who believe in woman suffrage.
Henry B. Blackwell, chairman of the Presidential Suffrage Committee, urged the southern women to pet.i.tion their Legislatures, seven of which would meet during the year, to give women the right to vote for presidential electors. ”The choice of President and Vice-president of the United States,” he said, ”is the most important form of suffrage exercised by an American citizen.... The King of England and the Emperor of Germany are practically possessed of no greater political power than our President during his official term,” and he continued:
Here then is an open door to equal suffrage. Once let the women of any State take their equal part in this great national election and their complete equality is a.s.sured. Without change of State or Federal Const.i.tution, without ratification by the individual voters, a simple majority of both houses of any Legislature at any time in any State can confer upon women citizens this magnificent privilege, which will carry with it a certainty of speedy future concessions of all minor rights and privileges. It is amazing that no concerted effort has been made until recently to secure this right, so easily obtained and of so much transcendent importance. Especially is it strange that in States where iron-bound const.i.tutional restrictions forbid any exercise whatever of local or munic.i.p.al woman suffrage and where the social conditions make an amendment of State const.i.tution almost impossible, suffragists allow year after year to elapse without any effort to get the only practical thing possible, action by the State Legislature conferring Presidential suffrage on women. Suffrage in school or munic.i.p.al elections cannot give us a full and fair test of the value of equal suffrage or of woman's willingness to partic.i.p.ate. Suffrage in State elections cannot be had without amendment of State const.i.tutions, always difficult and usually impossible of attainment in the face of organized opposition. Why not then avail ourselves of this unique, this providential opportunity?
Among other committees reporting was that on Church work, Miss Laura De Merritte (Me.) chairman, and her recommendations were adopted that the committee on National Sunday School lessons be asked to prepare one each year on the rights and duties of women citizens; that ministers of all denominations be urged to preach one sermon each year on this topic; that all women's missionary societies be requested to make it a part of their regular program at their annual conventions and that a place be sought on the program of national conventions of the Epworth League and Christian Endeavor Societies to present the question of woman's enfranchis.e.m.e.nt. The valuable report of the Committee on Industrial Problems Relating to Women and Children by the chairman, Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby (D. C.) said: ”Everyone can recall instances of discrimination against women by factories, business firms, school boards and munic.i.p.alities, making it plain that women are at a disadvantage as non-voting members of the community. As a recent fact in regard to the government I would cite the order by Postmaster-General Payne that a woman employee must give up her position if she marries.” The report continued: