Volume V Part 15 (1/2)
”They shall be remembered forever, They shall be alive forever, They shall be speaking forever, The people shall hear them forever.”
Miss Anthony was profoundly moved. This wonderful scene--the magnificent audience in one of the oldest and most conservative of cities; this group of the most distinguished women educators; the president of one of the leading universities of the world in the chair; the large number of college women in the audience, free, independent, equipped for life's highest work--represented the culmination of what she had striven for during half a century. Her Biography gives this account: ”After the applause had ended there was a moment of intense silence and then, as Miss Anthony came forward, the entire audience rose and greeted her with waving handkerchiefs, while tears rolled down the cheeks of many who felt that she would never be present at another convention. 'If any proof were needed of the progress of the cause for which I have worked,' she said, in clear, even tones, distinctly heard by all, 'it is here tonight. The presence on the stage of these college women, and in the audience of all those college girls who will some day be the nation's greatest strength, will tell their own story to the world. They give the highest joy and encouragement to me. I am not going to make a long speech but only to say thank you and good night.' It was all she had the strength to say but she never would publicly confess it.”
Interesting State reports, conferences and addresses filled the mornings, afternoons and evenings of this unparalleled week. The Initiative and Referendum was presented by an acknowledged authority, George H. s.h.i.+bley of Was.h.i.+ngton, director of the department of representative government in the bureau of economic research. He congratulated the a.s.sociation on having endorsed the new experiment that would rapidly further the woman suffrage cause, in which he had long believed. The system of questioning candidates and publis.h.i.+ng their replies, developed by the Anti-Saloon League, was now being used with great success, he said, by many organizations. He described the carefully worked-out system in detail and declared that this, with the Initiative and Referendum, would terminate ”machine” rule in politics, and whatever did this would promote the advance of woman suffrage. The address called forth an animated discussion in which it was shown that when women questioned a candidate they had no const.i.tuency back of them to influence his answers.
A valuable conference was opened with a comprehensive paper by Mrs.
Mary Kenney O'Sullivan (Ma.s.s.), prominently identified with the women's trade unions, on the best methods of securing from Congress the submission of the Federal Suffrage Amendment. The question, if each State should secure an endors.e.m.e.nt from its Legislature of a uniform resolution calling for this submission would it not influence Congress and also compel favorable recommendation in the national platforms of the dominant political parties, was unanimously answered in the affirmative.
Miss Hauser, the new chairman, presided over the press conference, which was opened with a paper by Miss Jane Campbell, a veteran suffragist, president of the Philadelphia County Suffrage Club of 600 members, on The Unbiased Editor, which bristled with the humorous sarcasm in which she was unsurpa.s.sed. She said in the course of it: ”As the result of close observation I may state that the calm, judicial mind of the unbiased editor is never more in evidence than when he bends his energies to a consideration of the woman question--that is, the woman question in reference to politics. Then he is on sure ground and he always is actuated by a desire to serve the best interests of women. Does it come under his ken that a woman has the temerity to suggest even in faint tones the advisability and feasibility, the common sense and justice of being allowed to cast a ballot, then the opportunity of the unbiased editor has come and the rash claimant is admonished in fatherly, protecting tones to 'Remember that only in the Home'--he always spells home with a capital in this connection--'should a woman be in evidence.' He almost weeps when he pictures the dire consequences that would inevitably result should women enter the uncleanly pool of politics. Chivalry would become extinct--chivalry being the guiding principle, according to the unbiased editor, on which men act--and then would tired men no longer give up their seats in trolley cars to masculine women and no longer would they accord equal pay for equal work, as they chivalrously do now!”
Turning her shafts on Mr. Bok, editor of the _Ladies' Home Journal_, and ex-President Cleveland's articles in it, Miss Campbell evoked so much laughter and applause that Miss Hauser became anxious as to the effect on the representatives of the press who were there and called on Mrs. Upton to calm the tempestuous waters, who offered some ”golden precepts” for dealing with editors, among them the following: ”Keep the paper fully informed of all suffrage news. If there is something unpleasant in it and the reporter tells you that the editor and not himself is responsible for it, smile and believe him. Take the reporter into your confidence and let him absorb the impression that you trust him implicitly. The result will be that you and your cause will get the best of it. In a word, treat the newspaper reporter as you would any other gentleman and in the long run you will profit by it. If you are the press representative of your local organization try to have from time to time items of news pertaining to matters other than that of woman suffrage. Use the telephone lavishly and let your home be a sort of stopping place for the reporter in his routine work.
When you present such an att.i.tude toward the press the editors cannot find it in their hearts to refuse if you want a little s.p.a.ce for yourself and your cause.” The Baltimore _Evening Herald_ commented: ”From the foregoing it will be observed that in the dark and devious avocation of working the unsophisticated editor, Mrs. Upton is truly a past mistress, ent.i.tled to wear the regalia and jewels of the superlative degree.”
Mrs. May Arkwright Hutton of Idaho told of the excellent results of woman suffrage on the politics of that State. Mrs. Lucia Ames Mead, chairman of the Committee on Peace and Arbitration, gave her usual able report describing her extensive work during the past year, which neither in this or any other year was exceeded by that of any one individual. After her return from the International Peace Congress in London she succeeded in having the presidents of the suffrage a.s.sociations in fifteen States appoint supervisors of peace work and others were about to do so. The educational authorities in every State had been requested to arrange celebrations for May 18, the anniversary of the first Hague Conference, and she should notify the suffrage clubs to do this. Equal suffragists will aid the cause of justice for themselves in the nation by working also for justice between the nations. The abolition of war will do more than anything else to make women respected and influential. It will subst.i.tute moral force for brute force, reason for pa.s.sion and will forever remove one of the most popular arguments against giving political power to those who are incapable of military service.”
Mrs. Isabel C. Barrows (Ma.s.s.), the well known writer on social and economic subjects, took part in the symposium that followed. Miss Alice Stone Blackwell presided over the conference on What the Home Needs for its Protection--Women on Health Boards, School Boards and in the Police Department, and these subjects were considered by Mrs.
Susan S. Fessenden (Ma.s.s.), Mrs. Upton and Mrs. Barrows. It closed with a paper by the Rev. Marie Jenney Howe on Woman's Munic.i.p.al Vote.
One of the most important evening sessions was devoted to the question of Munic.i.p.al Government, with Dr. William H. Welch, Professor of Pathology in Johns Hopkins University, presiding. A leading feature was the address of the Hon. Frederick C. Howe of Cleveland, O., The City for the People. He reviewed the mismanagement and political corruption of the large cities, ”controlled by great financial interests and yet filled with eager, energetic people, struggling to organize a good democratic movement of humanity focused on a democratic ideal.” In voicing the hope for the future he said:
There is an upward movement in all our cities. We are endeavoring to work out democracy and are doing amazingly well. When it is possible to organize the ideals of this new democratic movement it will be a city not for men alone but for men and women. It is business which has made our cities take the illogical position that women should not partic.i.p.ate in munic.i.p.al affairs as the chief corrective of the evils which underlie most of our munic.i.p.al problems. I believe in woman suffrage not for women alone, not for men alone, but for the advantage of both men and women. Any community, any society, any State that excludes half of its members from partic.i.p.ating in it is only half a State, only half a city, only half a community. So, you see, woman suffrage does not interest me so much because woman is a taxpayer or because of justice as because of democracy; because I believe in the fullest, freest, most responsible democracy that it is possible to create. The city of the people will be a man and woman city. It will elect its officials for other than party reasons and will keep men and women in office who give good service.
The Hon. Rudolph Blankenburg, Philadelphia's noted reformer, who was to speak on Munic.i.p.al Regeneration, was detained at home and his wife, Mrs. Lucretia L. Blankenburg, president of the Pennsylvania Suffrage a.s.sociation, told of the big campaign of the preceding autumn for better government in that city and the important part women had in it and said: ”The men claimed that the women helped them a great deal but when the day came for the jubilation after the election, not a woman was invited to sit on the platform or to take part in the jubilee, except in the audience. In one of our suburbs the successful people gave a banquet and they did condescend to invite the women who had helped them win the election to sit in the gallery after the banquet and hear the speeches.... We are to have an election very soon and when I left home to come to this convention our city party was holding meetings in churches and halls and parlors and the chairman of the committee chided me for deserting my 'home work.' I told her that it was a greater work to try to get the right to vote and increase my influence.”
The Hon. William Dudley Foulke, president of the National Civil Service Commission, spoke informally on An Object Lesson in Munic.i.p.al Politics, describing the revolution of the citizens against the corrupt government of his home city, Richmond, Ind., and the valuable a.s.sistance rendered by the women, and, as always, demanding the suffrage for them.
It was at this meeting that Miss Jane Addams of Hull House, Chicago, made the address on The Modern City and the Munic.i.p.al Franchise for Women, which was thenceforth a part of the standard suffrage literature. Quotations are wholly inadequate.
It has been well said that the modern city is a stronghold of industrialism quite as the feudal city was a stronghold of militarism, but the modern cities fear no enemies and rivals from without and their problems of government are solely internal.
Affairs for the most part are going badly in these great new centres, in which the quickly-congregated population has not yet learned to arrange its affairs satisfactorily. Unsanitary housing, poisonous sewage, contaminated water, infant mortality, the spread of contagion, adulterated food, impure milk, smoke-laden air, ill-ventilated factories, dangerous occupations, juvenile crime, unwholesome crowding, prost.i.tution and drunkenness are the enemies which the modern cities must face and overcome, would they survive. Logically their electorate should be made up of those who can bear a valiant part in this arduous contest, those who in the past have at least attempted to care for children, to clean houses, to prepare foods, to isolate the family from moral dangers; those who have traditionally taken care of that side of life which inevitably becomes the subject of munic.i.p.al consideration and control as soon as the population is congested. To test the elector's fitness to deal with this situation by his ability to bear arms is absurd. These problems must be solved, if they are solved at all, not from the military point of view, not even from the industrial point of view, but from a third, which is rapidly developing in all the great cities of the world--the human-welfare point of view....
City housekeeping has failed partly because women, the traditional housekeepers, have not been consulted as to its multiform activities. The men have been carelessly indifferent to much of this civic housekeeping, as they have always been indifferent to the details of the household.... The very multifariousness and complexity of a city government demand the help of minds accustomed to detail and variety of work, to a sense of obligation for the health and welfare of young children and to a responsibility for the cleanliness and comfort of other people. Because all these things have traditionally been in the hands of women, if they take no part in them now they are not only missing the education which the natural partic.i.p.ation in civic life would bring to them but they are losing what they have always had.
The Sunday afternoon service was held in the Lyric Theater, whose capacity was taxed with an audience ”representing every cla.s.s of society, every creed and no creed,” according to the Baltimore papers.
It was preceded by a half-hour musical program by Edwin M. Shonert, pianist, and Earl J. Pfonts, violinist. The Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell made the opening prayer; the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw read the Scripture lesson and gave the day's text: ”Be strong and very courageous; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord thy G.o.d is with thee whithersoever thou goest.” The Battle Hymn of the Republic was beautifully read by the Rev. Olympia Brown and sung by Miss Etta Maddox, the audience joining in the chorus. Mrs. Maud Ballington Booth gave the princ.i.p.al address on the work of the Volunteers of America for the men and women in prisons and after they are discharged. At its beginning she said: ”I have never before stood on the platform with these leaders in the struggle for woman suffrage but I sympathize with any movement whose motive is, like theirs, the uplifting of humanity.” Her beauty, her sweet voice and her rare eloquence made a deep impression on the audience, who responded with a generous collection for her Hope Halls. The meeting closed with the congregational singing of America and the benediction by the Rev.
Marie Jenney Howe. All of the women ministers occupied the pulpits of various churches in the morning or evening, and, according to the reporter for the _News_, ”astonished the large congregations which a.s.sembled to do them honor with their facility of expression and the soundness of their logic!”[46]
The resolutions offered by Henry B. Blackwell, chairman of the committee, covered a wide and rather unusual range of subjects, showing the broad scope of the work of the a.s.sociation and expressing its pleasure at the world-wide indications of progress. Deep regret was expressed for the death of the friends of the cause during the year, among them George W. Catt of New York, husband of Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt; Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell of New York; Mrs. Jane H.
Spofford of Maine; Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller of Maryland; Mrs.
Sarah M. Perkins of Ohio; John K. Wildman of Pennsylvania, and Speaker Frederick S. Nixon of the New York Legislature.
Fraternal greetings were brought from the Ladies of the Maccabees by Mrs. Melva J. Caswell, State Commander of the District of Columbia, Maryland and Delaware; from the National W. C. T. U., by Miss Marie C.
Brehm, president for Illinois, and from the American Purity Alliance by its president, Dr. O. Edward Janney of Baltimore. A letter was read by Mrs. Mary Bentley Thomas (Md.), from Governor Warfield expressing his thanks for the opportunity of meeting so many distinguished women and his enjoyment of the convention. Letters and telegrams were read.
A letter of greeting was sent to Mrs. Ellen Clark Sargent, a veteran suffragist of San Francisco, and letters to Miss Laura Clay and Mrs.
Harriet Taylor Upton, regretting their absence. A special vote of appreciation was given to Dr. and Mrs. William Funck and a letter of thanks was sent to Dr. Thomas and Miss Garrett for their part in the unsurpa.s.sed success of the convention.
A comprehensive report of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, organized in Berlin in 1904, was given by its president, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, showing that ”the agitation throughout Europe for a broader democracy has naturally opened the way for the discussion of woman suffrage and the subject is being considered as never before in Europe.” [See Chapter on the Alliance.] The Evening with Women in History was opened by Mrs. Catt, who said: ”One idea is the mainspring of the opposition to woman suffrage--that women are by nature of the inferior s.e.x. Even Darwin, so scientific that he tried to see all things fairly, entertained this unjust view. When women have had the same inspiration and opportunity as men their work has been equal in merit.”