Volume V Part 18 (1/2)
FOOTNOTES:
[48] Part of Call: The friends of equal rights will come together on this occasion with an outlook even more than usually bright. During the last year full suffrage has been granted to the women of Finland, the greatest victory since full national suffrage was given to the women of Federated Australia in 1902. Within the past year the Munic.i.p.al franchise has been given to women in Natal, South Africa; national a.s.sociations have been organized in Hungary, Italy and Russia and the reports at the recent meeting of the International Alliance at Copenhagen showed a remarkable increase in the agitation for woman suffrage all over Europe. In England, out of the 670 members of the present House of Commons, 420 are pledged to its support.
In the United States widely circulated newspapers and magazines representing the most opposite political views have lately declared for woman suffrage; the National Grange and the American Federation of Labor have unanimously endorsed it. In Chicago 87 organizations with an aggregate members.h.i.+p of 10,000 women have pet.i.tioned for a Munic.i.p.al suffrage clause in the new charter and the men and women most prominent in the city's good works are supporting the plea.
Men and women are natural complements of one another. American political life today is marked by executive force and business ability, qualities in which men are strong, but it is often lacking in conscience and humanity. These a larger infusion of the mother element would supply. We believe that men and women in co-operation can accomplish better work than either s.e.x alone....
ANNA HOWARD SHAW, President.
FLORENCE KELLEY, Vice-President-at-Large.
KATE M. GORDON, Corresponding Secretary.
ALICE STONE BLACKWELL, Recording Secretary.
HARRIET TAYLOR UPTON, Treasurer.
LAURA CLAY, } ANNICE JEFFREYS MYERS, } Auditors.
[49] The proposition was defeated during the suffrage convention by a tie, with the chairman, Milton J. Foreman, giving the deciding vote against it. [See Illinois, Volume VI.]
[50] Miss Anthony helped arrange for the first National Woman Suffrage Convention and it was held in Was.h.i.+ngton in January, 1869. From that time to 1906 she missed but two of these annual meetings, when she was speaking in the far West under the auspices of a lecture bureau, and each time she sent the proceeds of a week's lectures as her contribution.
[51] Through lack of initiative and effort the money for the bust was never raised. For Mrs. Gannett's report and other matter about the Memorial Building see the Appendix to this chapter. See also page 442, Volume VI. Reports on the Memorial Fund were made to the convention year after year. The intention at first was to create a fund and use only the interest but immediate demands were so urgent that the money subscribed was appropriated as needed and an audited account given by the national treasurer at each annual convention.
[52] In the Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony Chapter LXXIV begins: ”The death of no woman ever called forth so wide an editorial comment as that of Miss Anthony, except possibly that of Queen Victoria, whose years in public life numbered about the same. On the desk where this is written are almost one thousand editorials, representing all the papers of consequence in the United States and many in other countries, and they form what may be accepted without reserve as the consensus of thought in the early years of the twentieth century in regard to Miss Anthony and the work she accomplished.”
Over eighty pages of extracts from these editorials are given and several memorial poems. A large number of magazines in this and other countries contained sketches and articles from which quotations are made. Tributes of her biographer were published in the April numbers of the _Review of Reviews_ and the North American _Review_, and on the week following her death in _Collier's_ and the New York _Independent_.
In Chapter LXXI and following in the Biography are full accounts of Miss Anthony's death and funeral services.
[53] By vote of the convention these volumes were to be presented to the club or individual member under whose auspices a new club of not less than twenty paid up members had been formed and remained in active existence for not less than a year and was properly certified.
The following year the Executive Committee voted to place 300 sets in public libraries.
[54] This work was continued year after year until the list became far too large to publish. Not one organization, save a few connected with the liquor business, ever adopted a resolution against woman suffrage except the anti-suffrage societies themselves.
[55] One of the striking features of the recent national suffrage convention in Chicago was the large number of very close votes on woman suffrage bills that were announced from different States, all taking place at about the same time. While the convention was in session, the Chicago charter convention defeated woman suffrage by a tie vote. The Nebraska delegates got word that it had been lost in their Lower House by a vote of 47 to 46, with a tie in the Senate. In the Oklahoma const.i.tutional convention, where the gambling and liquor forces as usual lined up against woman suffrage, it came so near pa.s.sing that a change of seven votes would have carried it. In the West Virginia Legislature, where the last time it was smothered in committee, the House vote this time stood 38 yeas to 24 nays. In South Dakota the measure pa.s.sed the Senate and came so near pa.s.sing the House that a change of seven votes would have carried it. In the Minnesota House the vote showed a small majority for suffrage but not the const.i.tutional one required. All these close legislative votes followed hard upon the remarkable vote in Vermont, where the suffrage bill pa.s.sed the House 130 to 25 and came so near pa.s.sing the Senate that a change of three votes would have carried it.--_Woman's Journal._
CHAPTER VIII.
NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1908.
The Fortieth annual convention, Oct. 15-21, 1908, celebrated a notable event, as it was the 60th anniversary of the first Woman's Rights Convention, that famous gathering of July 19-20, 1848, in Seneca Falls, N. Y., the home of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The celebration was appropriately held in Buffalo, the largest city in the western part of the State, and was one of the most interesting and successful of the organization's many conventions.[56] The evening before it opened the president and directors of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy gave a large reception to the officers, delegates, members and friends of the a.s.sociation.
The convention met in the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation building but this proved to be entirely too small for the evening sessions, which were held in the large Central Presbyterian Church. The excellent program was the work of Miss Kate Gordon, national corresponding secretary, and the admirable arrangements were due to Mrs. Richard Williams, president for the past eight years of the Political Equality Club, with a corps of local helpers, but an accident on the first day prevented her from welcoming the convention or taking part in its proceedings. With the national president, Dr.
Anna Howard Shaw, in the chair, it was opened with prayer by the Rev.
Antoinette Brown Blackwell.[57] Mrs. Helen Z. M. Rodgers, a lawyer of Buffalo, extended a welcome from women in the professions, who, she said, ”had only penetrated the ante-rooms and the annexes--the teachers never able to reach the salaries paid to men; the doctors shut out from the advantage of hospital positions; the lawyers allowed to help interpret the laws but not to help make them.” ”To get much further,” she said, ”we must be invested with full citizens.h.i.+p.”
Mrs. John Miller Horton gave a cordial welcome for the City Federation of Women's Clubs, of which she was president, and for the Buffalo Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Niagara Frontier Chapter of the Daughters of 1812 and the Nellie Custis Branch of the Children of the Revolution, as regent of each of them. She presented to Dr. Shaw a large cl.u.s.ter of American Beauty roses tied with the blue and gold of the federation and the blue and white of the D. A. R., which was accepted in the name of Susan B. Anthony and reverently laid over her portrait that stood on an easel. Dr. Ida C.
Bender, president of the Women Teachers' a.s.sociation, spoke earnestly in behalf of ”the army of teachers who are training the future citizens of the republic,” and Dr. Shaw commented: ”Political nonent.i.ties can hardly be expected to inspire a political ent.i.ty with enthusiasm.”
The Western Federation of Women's Clubs gave its welcome through its president, Mrs. Nettie Rogers Shuler, of whom the _Woman's Journal_ said: ”She spoke with an accent of unaffected sincerity and self-forgetfulness that recalled the spirit of the pioneers.” She referred with pride to the fact that this organization, with nearly 100 clubs and about 32,000 members, was the first Federation of Women's Clubs to admit suffrage societies. Mrs. Lucretia L.
Blankenburg, president of the Pennsylvania Suffrage a.s.sociation and officer of the General Federation, brought its greeting, the first it had ever sent to a national suffrage convention. Mrs. Frances W.
Graham, president of the New York State Woman's Christian Temperance Union, gave its greeting and spoke of the close cooperation which had always existed between the workers for temperance and suffrage. Dr.