Volume V Part 23 (1/2)

At the afternoon session a vote of thanks was given to Senator LaFollette and all the Senators and Representatives who presented the pet.i.tions. Deep appreciation was expressed of the labor of Mrs. Catt in connection with the pet.i.tions and regret that she was not able to be present at the Capitol. This was the last of the hundreds of thousands of pet.i.tions to Congress for the submission of a National Amendment to enfranchise women which began in 1866.[67]

Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton in her treasurer's report said the past year had been an unusually hard one financially not because of adversity but because of prosperity. Formerly the States had sent their money to the national treasury to be used as the Official Board thought best, but now there were so many campaigns and new lines of work in various States that they wanted to disburse their own money. This was encouraging but hard on the national work. Few were the years between 1899 and 1908 when some legacy was not received, as Miss Anthony never missed an opportunity to urge women to make such bequests. After her death Miss Mary Anthony followed her example but since both had pa.s.sed away little had been done in this direction. The total receipts for 1909 were $21,466, and the general disburs.e.m.e.nts $19,814. With the headquarters in New York more money had been received but more also had to be spent. Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont furnished the offices of the Press Committee, paid their rent, the salaries of three workers and all other expenses connected with it. Mrs. William M. Ivins of New York City and Mrs. Mary Ely Parsons of Rye, N. Y., furnished Dr.

Shaw's office.

In closing Mrs. Upton said that the duties of the headquarters and of the treasurer's office had been so closely connected that up to this time it had been difficult to separate them. In fact from the time she was elected to date she had always done some work properly belonging to headquarters. From the first a clerk was supplied to her and she was so situated that she could do this and was more than willing to.

She had edited twelve reports of annual conventions and was editor and manager of _Progress_ for seven years. She told how letters and requests continued to come to her after the headquarters went to New York and she was obliged to employ another clerk, whose salary she herself paid. In closing she said: ”Since 1893 your treasurer has received and disbursed more than $275,000 and she wishes the treasurer for the coming year could have that full amount for the next twelve months' work.” The convention accepted the report with a rising vote of thanks for her many years of continuous service.

The general subscriptions at the convention, including those for the South Dakota campaign, were $4,363. Mrs. Belmont continued her pledge of $600 a month. The a.s.sociation had various funds to draw from, which were supplied by contributions. It was voted to appropriate $150 a month for six and a half months' work in Oklahoma if the amendment was to go to the voters in November.

Memorial services were held on the morning of April 15 for two distinguished members of the a.s.sociation, Henry B. Blackwell, who had died Sept. 7, 1909, and William Lloyd Garrison, five days later. On the program was an extract from a speech made by Mr. Blackwell at a national Woman's Rights Convention in Cleveland, O., in 1853: ”The interests of the s.e.xes are inseparably connected and in the elevation of the one lies the salvation of the other. Therefore, I claim a part in this last and grandest movement of the ages, for whatever concerns woman concerns the race.” Affectionate and beautiful tributes to Mr.

Blackwell's nearly fifty years' devotion to the cause of woman suffrage were paid by those who had known him long and intimately, which are partially quoted here.

Mrs. f.a.n.n.y Garrison Villard: I have ever regarded Mr. Blackwell as a many-sided reformer, one whose most distinguished claim to remembrance consists in the fact that no other man has devoted so much of his life to the task of securing the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women. Only those who have read the _Woman's Journal_ regularly and depended on it for an accurate record of the slow but steady march of progress of this great movement can fully realize the enormous amount of editorial work contributed to it by him during the past forty years. The combination of superior intellectual powers with tenderest sympathies formed a rare equipment for success in his chosen field of usefulness. In truth his advocacy of the woman's cause was marked by such zeal and enthusiasm that one not knowing the initials ”H. B. B.” stood for a man might quite naturally have believed that only a woman could own them.

Fortunately he was possessed of the sunniest possible temperament and blessed with an unusual sense of humor which enabled him to see things in their true proportions and make light of obstacles in his path. The many and varied tributes that have been paid to his memory all dwell upon his intense love of justice which led him to wage war against oppression wherever he found it.... It was my good fortune to be present at the celebration of Mr.

Blackwell's eightieth birthday in Faneuil Hall in Boston. With great clarity of vision he defined the duty of the hour and said: ”But we can not afford to be a mutual admiration society, there is still work to do.” ... With what patience, fort.i.tude and true courage he and Lucy Stone, his wife, played their part in the face of ridicule and opprobrium is now a matter of history. Women who today live a freer life because of their labors and those of their coadjutors must offer to their memory the highest meed of praise.

Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch: Lives consecrated to great reforms, particularly to the advancement of a reform to emanc.i.p.ate women, teach us that the age of chivalry is not past.

These great men whom we honor to-day were not, like the knights of old, inspired by the love of some one woman whom they desired to possess, but they strove for justice for those they loved best and for us too, who were their friends, and for millions of women they never knew. Their far-reaching chivalry was one of the most important elements in the characters of Mr. Blackwell and Mr.

Garrison. Both of them were unusually fortunate in the women who were their nearest and dearest. Mr. Blackwell's sister Elizabeth was the first woman physician in the United States; his sister-in-law, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, the first ordained minister; his wife, Lucy Stone, one of the sweetest and truest of the pioneer suffrage lecturers.

Mr. Garrison was not old enough to be related to so many pioneers, except through his ill.u.s.trious father, but his wife's devotion to the suffrage work, his sister's unfaltering activity and his a.s.sociation from boyhood with Boston's brilliant coterie of renowned women, might well have influenced him to have a higher regard and deeper respect for all their s.e.x.... Mr.

Blackwell and Mr. Garrison, in their beautiful family lives, are particularly ill.u.s.trious examples that woman suffrage will not break up the home. Many long years did these pairs of married friends work together for our cause....

To-day we sorrow for the loss of these men but not without hope, for there are other men coming forward to take up the work they have dropped. We women who are here to-day do not represent merely ourselves and the tens of thousands of other suffrage women but we are backed by the sympathy, the active encouragement and the money of our husbands, our brothers, our fathers, and many of us have chivalrous sons. More even than sympathy they now give, as some are giving themselves for service. One of Mr.

Blackwell's last letters to me related to securing a large members.h.i.+p among men, and our Men's Suffrage Leagues, now springing up in all large cities, might well name themselves for him.... Go forward, men, with the spirit of Blackwell and Garrison!

Mrs. McCulloch paid a beautiful tribute to the human side of Mr.

Blackwell's character, his love of nature and his companions.h.i.+p with children.

Miss Jane Campbell: I need not enter into the details of the life, public or private, of Mr. Blackwell. They are written in letters of gold in the annals of the suffrage movement from the moment when in the beautiful, unselfish ardor of youth, with his wife, the silver-tongued Lucy Stone, he entered upon a career of patient, unflagging devotion to the cause of woman's rights....

It evinced a high and n.o.ble spirit, a great courage, for any man to espouse an almost universally ridiculed cause, as did Mr.

Blackwell; possibly greater courage than even a woman, conservative and timid if not by nature yet made so by education, showed when she emerged from her awed subjection and ventured to demand her equal share of privileges as well as of disabilities.

The woman had the burning sense of injustice to arouse her, the indignation caused by her calm relegation to the position of an inferior to inspire her with courage to fight for freedom, but a man, a man like Mr. Blackwell, had no such bitter sense of personal wrong to impel him. He entered the contest not for himself, for he had no wrongs to redress, but his great soul saw that woman had and he devoted life, means, energy, talents to redress them. It is a rarely high, unselfish record of a n.o.ble life that he has left for the admiration and example of other men.... He was one of the most eloquent, forceful and logical speakers we have ever had on our platform, with his fine, resounding voice giving clear expression to his logical thinking, and he was a ready and forceful writer....

Miss Anne Fitzhugh Miller: It was always a joy to meet Mr.

Blackwell for there was never any picking up of broken threads of our spinning or knitting or weaving of good comrades.h.i.+p, which at once continued as if no absence had intervened. I felt at home with him always, he was a man after my own heart, direct, decided, accurate, devoted to high ideals, and yet he possessed an elasticity of nature which made him the most comfortable of comrades. His sense of humor and his love of fun made the best of good times for those who were fortunate enough to share his merry moods.... It was always a delight to hear him speak. The sound of his voice rested and refreshed and the soundness of his thought inspired confidence and admiration. His half-century of continuous and absolute devotion to the cause of woman suffrage gives Mr. Blackwell a unique position in history. All women owe him a debt of grat.i.tude which they can best pay by renewed devotion to the cause to which he dedicated his life. In the truest and broadest sense he was and should be remembered as a ”Brother of Women.”

Dr. Shaw added her own fine appreciation of the two men and speaking from almost a lifetime of acquaintance with Mr. Garrison gave a glowing eulogy of his n.o.ble character, lofty convictions and fearless courage, a worthy son of a great father. Among other prominent friends of woman suffrage who had pa.s.sed away during the year, recorded in the memorial resolutions, were Justice Brewer, of the U. S. Supreme Court; Dr. Borden P. Bowne, head of the department of philosophy and dean of the graduate school in Boston University; Judge Charles B. Waite and Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson of Chicago; Charles Sprague Smith, director of Cooper Inst.i.tute, New York, and many devoted workers in the various States.

At one interesting evening session Mrs. Kate Trimble Woolsey (Ky.) spoke on Republics versus Women, the t.i.tle of her book; Mrs. Meta L.

Stern on Woman Suffrage from a Socialist's Point of View; Miss Alice Paul on The English Situation. Mrs. Catt's subject was Caught in a Snare and the convention voted to have it printed for circulation. As Miss Alice Stone Blackwell was ill at home, missing the annual convention for the first time, the readers of the _Woman's Journal_ were deprived of her usual comprehensive reports and abstracts of the speeches where the ma.n.u.script was not available. That of Miss Paul was published in full. She had recently returned from London, where she had been a member of Mrs. Pankhurst's organization, had been sent to prison, had gone on a ”hunger strike” and been forcibly fed, and she felt the situation keenly. A part of her speech was as follows:

As we gather here as suffragists, our hearts naturally go out to those women at the storm-center of our movement--to those women in Great Britain who are having a struggle such as women have never had in any other land. The violent criticism, the suppression and distortion of facts from which they have suffered at the hands of the politically-inspired press of their own country have made it difficult for one on this side to gain any true conception of their movement....

The essence of the campaign of the suffragettes is opposition to the Government. The country seems willing that the vote be extended to women. This last Parliament showed its willingness by pa.s.sing their franchise bill through its second reading by a three-to-one majority, but the Government, that little group which controls legislation, would not let it become law. It is not a war of women against men, for the men are helping loyally, but a war of men and women together against the politicians at the head, who because of their own political interests seem afraid to enfranchise women. The suffragettes have gone with pet.i.tions to the head of the Government, as our representatives will go in a few days to the authorities in Was.h.i.+ngton. Here they will be received with courtesy, but Mr. Asquith has never since he has been Prime Minister received a deputation of women on this question of their suffrage. Each time he curtly refuses to see them and orders the police to drive them away or arrest them.

Thirteen times the deputations of one society alone have been arrested....

The Earl of Lytton said the other day that more violence had been done by the men during the three weeks of the recent election than by the women during their entire agitation. Such action on the part of voters is wrong for they have a const.i.tutional way, through the ballot, of redressing their grievances, but on the part of a disfranchised cla.s.s, after half a century's trial has proved all their methods to be of no avail, a protest such as these women have made seems entirely right. We are so close at hand that perhaps we hardly realize the full significance of their movement. The greatest drama that is being enacted in the world today, it seems to me, is the battle of the British women.