Volume V Part 8 (1/2)

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, Honorary President.

CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT, President.

ANNA HOWARD SHAW, Vice-President-at-Large.

KATE M. GORDON, Corresponding Secretary.

ALICE STONE BLACKWELL, Recording Secretary.

HARRIET TAYLOR UPTON, Treasurer.

LAURA CLAY, } MARY J. COGGESHALL, } Auditors.

[24] The colored women had some excellent organizations in New Orleans, the most notable being the Phyllis Wheatley Club, which in addition to its literary and social features maintained a training school for nurses, a kindergarten and a night school. It invited Miss Anthony, Miss Blackwell and Mrs. Elizabeth Smith Miller to address it and they were accompanied by ”Dorothy Dix,” the well-known writer, a New Orleans woman. In the large a.s.semblage were some of the teachers from the four colleges for colored students--Methodist, Congregational, Baptist and the State. ”Dorothy Dix” said in her brief address that no woman in the city was more respected or had more influence than Mrs. Sylvanie Williams, the club's president, and gave several instances to ill.u.s.trate it. After the addresses Mrs. Williams presented Miss Anthony with a large bouquet tied with yellow satin ribbon and said: ”Flowers in their beauty and sweetness may represent the womanhood of the world. Some flowers are fragile and delicate, some strong and hardy, some are carefully guarded and cherished, others are roughly treated and trodden under foot. These last are the colored women. They have a crown of thorns continually pressed upon their brow, yet they are advancing and sometimes you find them further on than you would have expected. When women like you, Miss Anthony, come to see us and speak to us it helps us to believe in the Fatherhood of G.o.d and the Brotherhood of Man, and at least for the time being in the sympathy of woman.”

[25] The important decision was made at this convention to remove the headquarters on May 1 from New York to Warren, O., the home of the national treasurer, Mrs. Upton. The burden of having charge of them had borne heavily upon Mrs. Catt for the past three years and it grew more difficult as each year she had to spend more time in field work.

Miss Gordon, the corresponding secretary, wished to remain in New Orleans because of her mother's failing health and it was necessary to have a national officer in charge. Mrs. Upton consented reluctantly to a.s.sume the responsibility and only on the a.s.surance of Miss Elizabeth Hauser, a capable executive, that she would manage the details of the office. The arrangement was to be temporary but it continued for six years.

[26] Quotations are given from each of the opening prayers because each of them endorsed woman suffrage.

[27] Mrs. Hussey left a bequest of $10,000 to the National American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation.

[28] For appreciations of Mrs. Stanton see Appendix.

CHAPTER IV.

THE NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1904.

The Thirty-sixth annual convention opened the afternoon of Feb. 11, 1904, in National Rifles' Armory Hall, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., and closed the evening of the 17th.[29] There was a good attendance of delegates from thirty States and the audiences were large and appreciative. Mrs.

Carrie Chapman Catt, the president, was in the chair at the opening session. The delegates were welcomed by Mrs. Carrie E. Kent in behalf of the District Equal Suffrage a.s.sociation and the response was made by Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, vice-president-at-large, who began by saying: ”If the women here welcome us after we have been coming for thirty years it must be because we deserve it; the men welcome us because in the District they are in the same disfranchised condition as we are.”

A cordial letter of greeting was read from Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, whose headquarters were in Was.h.i.+ngton.

Greetings were received from Mrs. Florence Fenwick Miller of London, whose letter commenced: ”Beloved Friends: As president of the British National Committee of the International Woman Suffrage Committee, I write to send you greetings from English, Scotch, Irish and Welsh fellow-workers in the woman's cause. It seems but a short time since the convention of 1902, which I attended as the delegate appointed by the British United Women's Suffrage Societies and also of the Scottish National Society. The admiration and affection that the ability, the earnestness and sincerity, the sisterliness and the sweetness of temper and manners of the American suffragists then aroused in me, are unabated at this moment.” She told of the progress that had been made by the various societies toward uniting in an International Woman Suffrage Alliance, gave a glowing forecast of the ultimate triumph of their common cause and ended: ”With admiring and abiding love for America's grand women, the suffrage leaders.” The convention sent an official answer. Mrs. Mary Bentley Thomas (Md.) read an interesting paper, Our Four Friends, compiled from the answers by the Governors of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho to a letter from Miss Anthony asking for a summary of the results of woman suffrage after a trial of from eight to thirty-five years. A Declaration of Principles, which had been prepared by Mrs. Catt, Dr. Shaw, Miss Alice Stone Blackwell and Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, was read by Mrs. Harper and adopted by the convention as expressing the sentiment of the a.s.sociation. [See Appendix, chapter IV.] Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery (Penn.) and Dr. Shaw were appointed delegates to the International Suffrage Conference at Berlin in June in addition to the International Suffrage Committee from the United States, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Catt, Mrs. Lucretia L.

Blankenburg (Penn.), with three others yet to be selected.

In her report as corresponding secretary Miss Kate M. Gordon (La.) told of the interest which the convention of the preceding year in New Orleans had awakened in the South and of the generous donation of a month of Dr. Shaw's valuable time which she had given to a Southern tour. This included the State Agricultural, State Normal and State Industrial Colleges of Louisiana and various places in Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee. ”While it might be said of her addresses, 'She came, she spoke, she conquered,'” declared Miss Gordon, ”it was clearly shown that the South was not ready for organization.” Miss Gordon said of attending the National Conference of Charities and Corrections as a State delegate appointed by the Governor of Louisiana: ”I found that resolutions of endors.e.m.e.nt were contrary to the policy of the conference, yet, except in our own organization, I have never met such a unanimity of opinion upon the justice of woman suffrage as well as upon the expediency of the woman's vote to secure intelligent and preventive legislation as a remedy for the many evils they were seeking to combat.”

The program for the first evening included short addresses by the general officers and in opening the meeting Mrs. Catt said: ”You will all be disappointed not to have the promised addresses from Miss Anthony and Mrs. Upton. It has been suggested that I might say that Miss Anthony has been unavoidably detained but I can't see why I should not tell the truth. Miss Anthony is out in society tonight. She was invited by President and Mrs. Roosevelt to the Army and Navy reception at the White House and Mrs. Upton is with her.[30] Our vice-president-at-large will speak to you on What Cheer?”

Dr. Shaw said that once when she was travelling about the prairies of Iowa she met a woman who was always referring to her home town ”What Cheer,” and when she was asked to give a t.i.tle to her address she could think of nothing better. She continued: ”There are no problems so difficult to understand as those of our own time, because of the lack of perspective. The arrogant and insistent and noisy things press to the front and the silent and eternal fall into the rear. But as time pa.s.ses it is as when we climb a mountain--we gradually rise to where we can see over the foothills and everything appears in its proper place and proportion. Out of the present, its arrogant militarism, its sordid commercialism and wors.h.i.+p of gold, is there anything to give us cheer and hope for tomorrow? There never was greater reason for hope for humanity. Underlying all the tumult and disorder of our time is one grand, golden thought, that of the human brotherhood of the world. There never was a democracy comparable to ours, faulty as it is and hopeless as it appears to some. Though the ideal does not seem to impress itself upon the world, yet in the silence it is there.... Today is the best this world has ever seen.

Tomorrow will be still better.”

Miss Gordon spoke on A Sustaining Faith, showing that from labor, from all forms of social service and from countless sources was converging the demand for the reform which the suffrage a.s.sociation was seeking.

Miss Blackwell (Ma.s.s.) talked briefly as always but clearly and convincingly on The New Woman. Miss Laura Clay (Ky.) began her address on Dimes: ”As an auditor I have been going over our treasurer's books.

Usually such books are mere debits and credits but in ours those stiff rows of figures tell many beautiful things--the sacrifices of the poor and the generosity of the rich--but best of all are the 'dimes'

because they are the dues paid to the a.s.sociation. They bear the figure of Liberty and they stand for it.... These dimes are inspiring, for they represent our members.h.i.+p when we gather here from the four corners of the nation. Therefore I rejoice over these thousands and thousands, each with a human heart behind it.”

”No woman has a record of greater faithfulness in this cause,” Mrs.

Catt said in introducing Mrs. Mary J. Coggeshall, who began her remarks on Precedents by saying: ”I come from Iowa where things are very different from those in this beautiful capital. We do not see Senators and Representatives on every hand but we have lent to Was.h.i.+ngton, Secretary of Agriculture Wilson, Secretary of the Treasury Shaw, Speaker of the House Henderson and also Mrs. Catt to lead the suffrage clans.”

The evening closed with Mrs. Catt's presidential address, the full report of which filled eleven columns of the _Woman's Journal_. The subject was the vital necessity of an educational qualification for the use of the ballot in a country which opens its gates to immigration from the whole world. Little idea of its logic and virility can be conveyed by detached quotations. Referring to the necessity for enfranchising women she said: ”Despite the fact that education even yet is not so generally advocated for girls as for boys among our foreign and ignorant cla.s.ses of society, the census of 1900 reveals that between the ages of ten and twenty-one, representing school years, there are 117,362 more illiterate males than females. If men and women had been ent.i.tled to the franchise upon equal terms in 1900, the political parties, which always make their appeals to the young man just turned twenty-one to cast his first vote for 'the party of right and progress,' would of necessity have made the same appeal to young women, but they would have appealed to 20,000 fewer illiterates among the women than the men of from twenty-one to twenty-four. If the same conditions continue for the next twenty years--that is, if there is no restriction in the suffrage for men and women still remain disfranchised, and if the proportionate increase of women over men in the output of our public schools continues, we shall witness the curious spectacle of the illiterate s.e.x governing the literate s.e.x.”

Mrs. Catt did not, however, attribute all the evils of universal suffrage to the ignorant vote but said: ”It may be that an investigation would reveal the fact that a very important source of difficulty is to be found in the failure of intelligent men to exercise their citizens.h.i.+p. If this proves true it may be found necessary to turn a leaf backward in our history and adopt the plan in vogue in some of the New England colonies which made voting compulsory, and it may be found feasible to demand of every voter who absents himself on election day an excuse for his absence, and when he has absented himself without good excuse for a definite number of elections, he may be made to suffer the punishment of disfranchis.e.m.e.nt....” She called attention to the record that at the last presidential election more than 7,000,000 men over twenty-one years of age did not vote and asked: ”What is to be done about it? Are qualified women citizens to wait in patience until influences now unseen shall sweep away the difficulties and restore the lost enthusiasm for democracy? Or shall they attempt to determine causes, apply remedies and clear the way for their own enfranchis.e.m.e.nt? That is our problem. For myself, I will say I prefer not to wait. I prefer to do my part, small as it must be, in the great task of the removal of the obstructions which clog the wheels of the onward movement of popular government.”