# History of Woman Suffrage/Volume 4/Chapter 18

Contents
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1898.
The Thirtieth annual convention of the suffrage association took place in the Columbia Theatre, Washington, D. C, Feb. 13-19, 1898, and celebrated the Fiftieth Anniversary of the First Woman's Rights Convention. In the center of the stage was an old-fashioned, round mahogany table, draped with the Stars and Stripes and the famous silk suffrage flag with its four golden, stars. In her opening address the president, Miss Susan B. Anthony, said: "On this table the original Declaration of Rights for Women was written at the home of the well-known McClintock family in Waterloo, N. Y., just half a century ago. Around it gathered those immortal four, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright and Mary Ann McClintock, to formulate the grievances of women. They did not dare to sign their names but published the Call for their convention anonymously, We have had that remarkable document printed for distribution here, and you will notice that those demands which were ridiculed and denounced from one end of the country to the other, all have now been conceded but the suffrage, and that in four States."
This convention was the largest in number of delegates and States represented of any in the history of the association, 154 being in attendance and all but four of the States and Territories represented.
The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw devoted the most of her vice-president's report to an account of the work to secure a suffrage amendment from the Legislature which was being done in Iowa, where she had been spending considerable time. The report on Press Work by the chairman, Miss Jessie J. Cassidy, stated that ​30,000 suffrage articles had been sent from headquarters to the various newspapers of the country and the number willing to accept these was constantly increasing. The headquarters had been removed from Philadelphia to New York City during the year and united with the organization office. The Committee on Course of Study, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, chairman, reported that during the past three years they had published 25,000 books and pamphlets, purchased from publishers 3,100 and had 9,000 contributed. The treasurer, Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, announced the receipts of the past year to be $14,055. Bequests had been received of $500 by the will of Mrs. Eliza Murphy of New Jersey, and $500 from Mrs. A. Viola Neblett of South Carolina. :
The report of the Organization Committee, Mrs. Chapman Catt, chairman, showed a large amount of work done in Iowa, Iilinois, South Dakota and the Southern States, the writing of 10,000 letters, the holding of 1,000 public meetings under the auspices of this committee. It closed by saying:
Mrs: Sallie Clay Bennett, chairman, presented the report on ​Federal Suffrage; Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake, chairman, on Legislation; and Miss Laura Clay on the Suffrage Convocation at the Tennessee Exposition the preceding year. The Plan of Work, offered by the chairman, Mrs. Mariana W. Chapman, and adopted, represented the best result of many years' experience and exemplified the aims and methods of the association. The old board of officers was almost unanimously re-elected.
The afternoon Work Conferences, to exchange ideas as to methods for organizing, raising funds, etc., which met in a small hall, aroused so much interest and attracted so many people that it was necessary to transfer them to the large auditorium. The Resolutions Committee presented by its chairman, Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, a brief summary of the results already accomplished and the rights yet to be secured, in part as follows:
Resolved, That we hereby express our profound appreciation of the prophetic vision, advanced thought and moral courage of the pioneers in this movement for equality of rights, and our sincere gratitude for their half century of toil and endurance to secure for women the privileges they now enjoy, and to make the way easier for those who are to complete the work. We, their successors, a thousandfold multiplied, stand pledged to unceasing effort until women have all the rights and privileges which belong equally to every citizen of a republic.
That in every State we demand for women citizens equality with male citizens in the exercise of the elective franchise, upon such terms and conditions as the men impose upon themselves.
​That we appeal to Congress to submit a Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, thereby enabling the citizens of each State to carry this question of woman suffrage before its Legislature for settlement.
That we will aid, so far as practicable, every State campaign for woman suffrage; but we urgently recommend our auxiliary State societies to effect thorough county organizations before petitioning their Legislatures for a State constitutional amendment.
Whereas, The good results of woman suffrage in Wyoming since 1869 have caused its adoption successively by the three adjoining States; therefore,
Resolved, That we earnestly request the citizens of these four free States to make a special effort to secure the franchise for women in the States contiguous to their own.
That we demand for mothers equal custody and control of their minor children, and for wives and widows an equal use and inheritance of property.
That we ask for an equal representation of women on all boards of education and health, of public schools and colleges, and in the management of all public institutions; and for their employment as physicians for women and children in all hospitals and asylums, and as police matrons and guards in all prisons and reformatories.
Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, Mrs. Ida Porter Boyer and Mrs. Harper were appointed fraternal delegates to the Woman's Press Association, in session at this time in Washington.
A beautiful feature of this occasion was the luncheon given by Mrs. John R. McLean to Miss Anthony on her seventy-eighth birthday, February 15, attended by thirty-six of the most distinguished ladies in the national capital, and followed by a reception to the members of the convention. Mrs. McLean was assisted in receiving by Miss Anthony and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant. Seventy-eight wax tapers burned upon the birthday cake, which was three feet in diameter and decorated with flowers. It was presented to Miss Anthony, who carried it in triumph to the convention in Columbia Theatre, where it was cut into slices that were sold as souvenirs and realized about $120, which she donated to the cause.
Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, at the age of eighty-two, sent two papers for this fiftieth anniversary, one for the congressional hearing, on The Significance of the Ballot; the other, Our Defeats and our Triumphs, was read to the convention by Mrs. ​Colby. Both displayed all the old-time vigor of thought and beauty of expression. The latter, filled with interesting reminiscence, closed with these words:
There is no merit in simply occupying the ground which others have conquered. There are new fields for conquest and more enemies to meet. Whatever affects woman's freedom, growth and development affords legitimate subject for discussion here.
.... Some of our opponents think woman would be a dangerous element in politics and destroy the secular nature of our Government. I would have a resolution on that point discussed freely, and show liberal thinkers that we have a large number in our association as desirous to preserve the secular nature of our Government as they themselves can possibly be. .... When educated women, teachers in all our schools, professors in our colleges, are governed by rulers, foreign and native, who can neither read nor write, I would have this association discuss and pass a resolution in favor of "educated suffrage." ....
The object of our organization is to secure equality and freedom for woman: First, in the State, which is denied when she is not permitted to exercise the right of suffrage; second, in the Church, which is denied when she has no voice in its councils, creeds and discipline, or in the choice of its ministers, elders and deacons; third, in the Home, where the State makes the husband's authority absolute, the wife a subject, where the mother is robbed of the guardianship of her own child, and where the joint earnings belong solely to the husband.
The Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell (N. Y.), the first woman to graduate in theology and be ordained, delineated The Changing Phases of Opposition, pointing out that when the first ​Woman's Rights Convention was held the general tone of the press was shown in that newspaper which said: "This bolt is the most shocking and unnatural incident ever recorded in the history of humanity; if these demands were effected, it would set the world by the ears, make confusion worse confounded, demoralize and degrade from their high sphere and noble destiny women of all respectable and useful classes, and prove a monstrous injury to all mankind." Yet this present convention was celebrating the granting of all those demands except the suffrage and not one of the predicted evils had come to pass. The direful prophecies of the early days were taken up, one by one, and their utter absurdity pointed out in the light of experience: Now all of those ancient, stereotyped objections were concentrated against granting the suffrage.
Mrs. Virginia D. Young (S. C.) delighted the audience with one of her characteristic addresses. Prof. Frances Stewart Mosher, of Hillsdale College (Mich.), gave an exhaustive review of the great increase and value of Woman's Work in Church Philanthropies. Mrs. May Wright Sewall (Ind.) demonstrated the wonderful Progress of Women in Education. The New Education possessed the charm of novelty in being presented by Miss Grace Espy Patton, State Superintendent of Public Instruction in Colorado, a lady so delicate and dainty that, when Miss Anthony led her forward and said, "It has always been charged that voting and office-holding will make women coarse and unwomanly; now look at her!" the audience responded with an ovation.
Miss Belle Kearney (Miss.) discussed Social Changes in the South, depicting in a rapid, magnetic manner, interspersed with flashes of wit, the evolution of the Southern woman and the revolution in customs and privileges which must inevitably lead up to political rights. Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell (N. Y.) gave an eloquent review of the splendid services of Women in Philanthropy.
At the memorial services Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby (D. C.) offered the following resolutions:
Lucretia Mott always will be revered as one of those who conceived the idea of a convention to make an organized demand for justice to women. She became a Quaker preacher in 1818 at the age of twenty-five, and the last suffrage convention she attended was in her eighty-sixth year. Her motto, "Truth for authority and not authority for truth," is still the tocsin of reform. Sarah Pugh, the lovely Quaker, was ever her close friend and helper.
Frances Wright, a noble Scotchwoman, a friend of General Lafayette, early imbibed a love for freedom and a knowledge of the principles on which it is based. In this the land of her adoption she was the first woman to lecture on political subjects, in 1826.
Ernestine L. Rose, the beautiful Polish patriot, sent the first petition to the New York Legislature to give a married woman the right to hold real estate in her own name. This was in 1836, and she continued the work of securing signatures until 1848, when the bill was passed. She was a matchless orator and lectured on woman suffrage for nearly fifty years.
Lucy Stone's voice pleaded the wide continent over for justice for her sex. Her life-long devotion to the woman suffrage cause was idealized by the companionship and assistance of her husband, Henry B. Blackwell, the one man in this nation who under any and all circumstances has made woman's cause his chief consideration. Her first lecture on woman's rights was given in 1847, the year of her graduation at Oberlin College, and her life work was epitomized in her dying words, "Make the world better."
Martha C. Wright, Jane Hunt and Mary Ann McClintock were three of those noble women who issued the call for the Seneca Falls Convention, and were ever ready for service.
Paulina Wright Davis, who called the first National Convention in 1850 and presided over its twentieth celebration in 1870, was one of the moving spirits of the work for more than twenty-five years. Assisted by Caroline H. Dall, she edited the Una, founded in 1853, the first distinctively woman suffrage paper.
Frances Dana Gage, better known by her pen-name, "Aunt Fanny," was farmer, editor, lecturer and worker in the Sanitary Commission. Of her eight children six were stalwart sons, and she used to boast that she was the mother of thirty-six feet of boys. She was a pillar of strength to the movement in early days.
Clarina Howard Nichols is associated with the seed-sowing in Vermont, in Wisconsin and especially in Kansas, where her labors with the first constitutional convention, in 1859, engrafted in organic law many rights for women which were obtained elsewhere, if at all, only by slow and difficult legislative changes. Susan E. Wattles led the Kansas campaign of 1859 with Mrs. Nichols.
Emily Robinson of Salem, Ohio, was one of the chief movers in ​the second Woman's Rights Convention, and this was held in her own town in 1850. From that time until the present year she has been unfaltering in her devotion.
Dr. Susan A. Edson, who was graduated in medicine in 1854, was a fellow-pioneer in the District of Columbia with Dr. Caroline B. Winslow, whose death preceded hers by about one year. She was one of the most distinguished army nurses and the friend and faithful attendant of President Garfield. For many years she was the president of the District Woman Suffrage Association. Among the earlier woman physicians who espoused the cause were Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, Dr. Mary B. Jackson, Dr. Ann Preston, one of the founders and physicians of the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia, and Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, a founder and physician of the New York Medical College for Women.
Sarah Helen Whitman was the first literary woman of reputation who gave her name to the movement, which later counted among its warmest friends Lydia Maria Child, Alice and Phoebe Cary and Mary Clemmer.
Amalia B. Post of Cheyenne, to whom the enfranchisement of the women of Wyoming was largely due, was ready, as she often said, at the first tap of the drum at Seneca Falls. She occupied the place of honor by the side of the Governor on that proud day when the admission of Wyoming as a State was celebrated.
Josephine S. Griffing, organizer of the Freedman's Bureau; Amelia Bloomer, editor of the Lily, the first temperance and woman's rights paper; Mary Grew, for twenty-three years president of the Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association; Myra Bradwell, the first woman to enter the ranks of legal journalism; Virginia L. Minor, the dove with the eagle's heart, who took to the U. S. Supreme Court her suit against the Missouri officials for refusing her vote—all these, and many more who might be added, form the noble galaxy who brought to the cause of woman's liberty rare personal beauty, social gifts, intellectual culture, and the all-compelling eloquence of earnestness and sincerity.
Albert O. Willcox of New York, whose eighty-seven years were filled with valuable work for reforms, was drawn to the conviction that women should have a share in the Government by a sermon preached by Lucretia Mott in 1831, and from that time declared himself publicly for the movement and was its life-long supporter.
James G. Clark, the sweet-souled troubadour of reform, sang for woman's freedom in suffrage conventions all over the land.
Joseph N. Dolph was always to be counted on to further the political emancipation of women, both in his own State of Oregon and in the U. S. Senate, of which he was long an honored member.
To name the men who have been counselors and friends of the woman suffrage movement is to name the greatest poets, preachers and statesmen of the last half century. Wherever there has been a woman strong enough to demand her rights there has been a man generous and just enough to second her.. Surely we may say ​that "the spirits of just men made perfect" are our strength and our inspiration.
The Woman's Tribune thus described one scene of the convention:
Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller (Md.), one of the first suffrage advocates south of Mason and Dixon's line, gave A Glimpse of the Past and Present. Dr. Clara Marshall, Dean of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, presented the history of Fifty Years in Medicine. She related in a graphic manner the strug​gle of women to gain admission to the colleges, the embarrassments they suffered, the obstacles they were obliged to overcome, reading from published reports the hostile demonstrations of the male students. In closing she bore testimony to the encouragement and assistance rendered by those men who were broadminded and generous enough to recognize the rights of women in this profession and help secure them. The Ministry of Religion as a Calling for Women was the subject of an able and interesting address by the Rev. Florence Buck of Unity Church, Cleveland, Ohio. Mrs. Ella Knowles Haskell, assistant attorney-general of Montana, spoke on Women in the Legal Profession, giving many incidents of the practice of law in the far West.
Samuel J. Barrows, member of Congress from Massachusetts, was called from the audience by Miss Anthony, and closed his brief remarks by saying: "I believe in woman suffrage; it has in it the elements of justice which entitle it to every man's support, and we all ought to help secure it." A leading feature of the program was the speech of August W. Machen, head of the free delivery division of the national post office, on Women in the Departmental Service of the United States. He gave the history of their employment by the government, declared they had raised the standard of work and testified to their efficiency and faithfulness.
The Civil Rights of Women were ably discussed by the Rev. Frederick A. Hinckley of the Second Unitarian Church, Philadelphia, who reviewed the existing laws and pointed out the changes in favor of women. In regard to the prevalence of divorce he said: "There is a large class of our fellow-citizens who greatly misinterpret, in my opinion, the significance of the increase in the number of divorces. No one would counsel more earnestly than I, patience and consideration and every reasonable effort on the part of people once married to live together. But I can not dispute the proposition, nor do I believe any one can dispute it, that in the great process of evolution divorce is an indication of growing independence and self-respect in women, a proclamation that marriage must be the union of self-respecting and mutually respected equals, and that in the ideal home of the future that hideous thing, the subjugation of woman, is to be unknown."
Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch (Ills.) discussed The Eco​nomic Status of Women. Madame Clara Neymann (N. Y.) read a philosophical paper on Marriage in the Light of Woman's Freedom. The Progress of Colored Women was pictured in an impassioned address by Mrs. Mary Church Terrell, president of the National Association of Colored Women. She received numerous floral tributes at its close. Mrs. Emmy C. Evald of Chicago, with an attractive foreign enthusiasm, told of the work of Swedish women in their own country and in the United States. Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.) with clever satire and amidst laughter and applause, considered Women in Municipalities.
The Pioneers' Evening was one of great interest, when Miss Anthony marshalled her hosts and made "the roll-call of the years." As each decade was called, beginning with 1848, those who began the suffrage work at that time rose on the stage and in all parts of the house and remained standing. Not one was there who was present at the original Seneca Falls Convention, but it had held an adjourned meeting at Rochester, three weeks later, and Miss Anthony's sister, Mary S., responded as having attended then and signed the Declaration of Rights. The daughters of Mrs. Martha C. Wright, who called this convention—Mrs. Eliza Wright Osborne and Mrs. Wm. Lloyd Garrison—and also Mrs. Millie Burtis Logan, whose mother, Miss Anthony's cousin, served as its secretary, were introduced to the audience. The children of Frederick Douglass, who had spoken at both meetings, were present and should have come forward with this group. The Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell stated that she had spoken in favor of woman's rights in 1846. Among the earliest of the pioneers present were John W. Hutchinson, the last of that famous family of singers; Henry B. Blackwell, Mrs. Helen Philleo Jenkins (Mich.), Miss Sarah Wall (Mass.) and Mrs. Hooker. Many of those who arose made brief remarks and the occasion was one which will not be forgotten by those who witnessed it.
Among the letters received from the many pioneers still living was one from Mrs. Abigail Bush, now eighty-eight years old and residing in California, who presided over the Rochester meeting, Aug. 2, 1848. It is especially interesting as showing that even so advanced women as Lucretia Mott and Mrs. Stanton, although they dared call such a meeting, were yet so conservative as to object to a woman's presiding over it:
Mrs. Catharine A. F. Stebbins (Mich.), who had attended the Seneca Falls Convention and signed the Declaration of Rights, sent an interesting descriptive letter. Mrs. Lucinda H. Stone (Mich.), the mother of women's clubs and a pioneer on educational lines, wrote:
​Mrs. Esther Wattles, who helped secure School Suffrage and equal property laws for women in the State constitution of Kansas in 1859, sent this message: "My attention was first called to the injustice done to women by a lecture given near Wilmington, Ohio, by John O. Wattles in 1841. He devoted most of his time to lecturing on Woman's Rights, The Sin of Slavery, The Temperance Reform and Peace. I heard him on all these subjects, off and on, till 1844, when we were married. .... Seventy-nine summers with their clouds and sunshine, make it fitting I should greet you by letter rather than personal presence. May the cause never falter till the victory is won."
Most of the letters were sent to Miss Anthony personally. Among these were the following:
The Nevada Equal Suffrage Association: Although we are young in the ranks and few in number compared with the older States, yet we are none the less loyal to the principles advocated and established by the National Association. We are brave because we draw inspiration from the thoughts and acts of that Spartan band of suffragists of fifty years ago, who devoted the sunshine of their lives and the energies of their philosophic minds to the effort to obtain for womankind their inherent right to have a voice in the Government which derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.
Alfred H. Love, president of the Universal Peace Union: From our rooms in the east wing of Independence Hall, I send greetings to you and your cause. Your cause is ours, and has been one of our essential principles since our organization. Your success is a triumph for peace.
Mary Lowe Dickinson, secretary of the International Order of the King's Daughters and Sons: I hope you will live to see the full day for the cause whose dawn owed so much to your labors, and I can ask nothing better for you than that you have "the desire of your heart," which I am sure will be the ballot for us all.
There were messages and grateful recognition from so many societies and individuals in the United States that it would be impossible even to call them by name; also from the Dominion of Canada Suffrage Club, through Dr. Augusta Stowe Gullen; the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in Great Britain, with individual letters from Lady Aberdeen, Mrs.Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Mrs. Priscilla Bright McLaren and others; on behalf of the Swedish Frederika Bremer Forbundet, by Carl Lindhagen; on behalf of Finnish women by Baroness Alexandra Gripenberg; on behalf of German women by Frau Hanna Bieber-Bohm, president of the National Council of Women; on behalf of the Woman Suffrage Society of Holland by its secretary, Margarethe Gallé; from the Norwegian Woman Suffrage Club; from the Verein Jugendschutz of Berlin, and from the Union to Promote Woman's Rights in Finland.
The remarkable scenes of the closing evening made a deep impression upon the large audience. After fifty years of effort to overcome the most stubborn and deeply-rooted prejudices of the ages, the results were beginning to appear. Among the speakers were a woman State senator from Utah, Mrs. Martha Hughes Cannon; a woman member of the Colorado Legislature, Mrs. Martha A. B. Conine; a woman State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Miss Estelle Reel of Wyoming; U. S. Senators Henry M. Teller of Colorado, and Frank J. Cannon of Utah, States where women have full suffrage; Representative John F. Shafroth of Colorado—and in the center of this distinguished group, Susan B. Anthony, receiving the fruits of her half century of toil and hardship.
Mrs. Conine was commissioned as a delegate to the convention by Gov. Alva Adams of Colorado. She read the statement recently put forth, testifying to the good results of equal suffrage and signed by the Governor, three ex-Governors, all the State Senators and the Representatives in Congress, the Chief Justice and the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court, the Judges of the Court of Appeals, the Judges of the District Court, the Secretary of State, the State treasurer, auditor, attorney-general, the mayor of Denver, the presidents of the State University and of Colorado College, the president of the General Federation of Women's Clubs and the presidents of thirteen women's clubs, and said:
Our State Federation of Women's Clubs now numbers about 100, representing a united membership of 4,000. They are largely occupied in studying social and economic questions, earnestly seeking for the best methods of educating their children, reforming criminals, alleviating poverty and purifying the ballot; in short, striving to make their city and their State a cleaner, better home for their families. Their work receives added encouragement from ​the knowledge that by their ballots they may determine who shall make and administer the laws under which their children must be reared. The home has always been conceded to be the woman's kingdom. In the free States she has but expanded the walls of that home, that she may afford to the inmates, and also to those who unfortunately have no other home, the same protection and loving care which was formerly limited to the few short years of childhood passed beneath the parental roof.
Senator Teller: I want to indorse what has been said by the two members from Colorado and Wyoming. The former is rather young as a suffrage State, but we are living side by side with the latter, where they have had equal suffrage for nearly thirty years. The results of woman suffrage have proved entirely satisfactory —not to every individual, but to the great mass of the people: I hear it said in this city every day that if women are allowed to vote the best women will not take part. I want to say to you that this is a mistake. To my certain knowledge, the best women do take part. When I went back to Colorado, after the granting of equal suffrage, a prominent society woman, whom I had known for years, telephoned me to come up and speak to the ladies at her house. I found her big parlors full of representative women—the wives of bankers, lawyers, preachers—society women. If you put any duty upon women they are not going to shirk it. Those who feared the responsibility are now as enthusiastic as those who had been "clamoring" for it. In the past, women have had no object in studying political questions; now they have, and they are taking them up in their clubs. We find that women are less partisan than men. Why? Because they generally have more conscience than men. They will not vote for a dissolute and oes man who may happen to force himself on a party ticket. ....
We are an intelligent community; we have long had a challenge to our fellow-citizens to show any other city that has as large a proportion of college graduates as Denver. Colorado people are proud of equal suffrage. The area where it prevails spread last year and took in Utah and Idaho. It will take in more neighboring States. I predict that in ten years, instead of four suffrage States, we shall have twice as many—perhaps three or four times that number.
Representative Shafroth: I want to say this, as coming from Colorado: The experience we have had ought to demonstrate to every one that woman suffrage is not only right but practical. It tends to elevate. There is not a caucus now but is better attended and by better people, and held in a better place. I have seen the time when a political convention without a disturbance and the drawing of weapons was rare. That time is past in Colorado, and it is due to the presence of women. Every man now shows that civility which makes him take off his hat and not swear, and deport himself decently when ladies are present. Instead of women's going to the polls corrupting them it has purified the polls. Husband and wife go there together. No one insults them. There are ​no drunken men there, nothing but what is pleasant and decorous.
Woman is an independent element in politics. She has no allegiance to any party. When a ticket is presented to her, she asks, "Are these good men?" A man is apt to say, "Well, this is a bad ticket, but I must stand by my party." He wants to keep his party record straight. She votes for the best man on the ticket. That element is bound to result in good in any State.
People say they don't know how it will work; they are afraid of it. Can it be that we distrust our mothers and sisters? We shall never have the best possible government till women participate in it.
Senator Cannon: No nation can exist half slave and half free. Ten years before I was old enough to vote, my mother was a voter. I learned at her knee to vote according to my conscience, and not according to the dictation of the bosses. The strongest argument for the suffrage of any class exists in behalf of womankind, because women will not be bound by mere partisanship. If the world is to be redeemed, it must be by the conscience of the individual voter. The woman goes to the truth by instinct. Men have to confer together and go down street and look through glasses darkly. The woman stays at home and rocks the cradle, and God tells her what to do. The suffrage never was abused by women in Utah. During the seventeen years that they voted in the Territory there was not a defalcation in any public office.
In the midst of the convention came the sad news on February 17 of the death of Miss Frances E. Willard, president of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Affectionate tributes were offered by Miss Anthony, Miss Shaw and other members; a telegram of sympathy was sent to her secretary and close companion, Miss Anna Gordon, by a rising vote, and the audience remained standing for a few moments in silent prayer. A. large wreath of violets and Southern ivy, adorned with miniatures of Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony and other pioneer suffrage workers was sent by the delegates to be laid on her coffin.
The congressional hearings on the morning of February 15, Miss Anthony's birthday, attracted crowds of people to the Cap​itol. The hearing before the Senate Committee was conducted by the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, and considered The Philosophy of the Movement for Woman Suffrage. Only two members of the committee were present—James H. Berry of Arkansas, and George P. Wetmore of Rhode Island—but a number of other senators were interested listeners, and the large Marble Room was crowded with delegates and spectators. The first paper, by Wm. Lloyd Garrison (Mass.) considered The Nature of a Republican Form of Government:
Woman suffragists are not unconscious of the glaring contrast between declared principles and actual practice, and they venture to believe that a professed self-government which deliberately ignores its own axioms is tending to decadence. They are not unmindful of the slow evolution of human government from earliest history, beginning in force and greed, reaching through struggles of blood, in the course of time, to the legislative stage where differences are adjudicated by reason, and the sword reserved as the last resort. This vantage ground has been gained only by a recognition of the primal right of the people to be consulted in regard to public affairs; and in proportion as this right has been respected and the franchise extended has government grown more stable and society more safe. It has come through a succession of steps, invariably opposed by the dominant classes, and only permitted after long contest and a changed public opinion.
In England, where the progress of constitutional government can be most accurately traced, there was a time when the land Owning aristocracy controlled the franchise and elected the members of Parliament. The dawn of a sense of injustice in the minds of the mercantile classes brought with it a demand for the extension of the suffrage, which was of course vigorously combated. It was an illogical resistance, which ended in the admission of the tradesmen. Later the workingmen awakened to their political disability and asserted their rights, only to be promptly antagonized by both classes in power. Eventually logic and justice won in this issue. In the light of history none of the objections urged against ​the extension of the right of voting have been sustained by subsequent facts. On the contrary, the broadening of the suffrage base has been found to add stability to the superstructure of British government and to have been in the interest of true conservatism.
In the course of time the woman’s hour has struck. Her cause is now going: through the same ordeal suffered by the classes referred to. Her triumph is as sure as theirs. The social and industrial changes of constitutional government in all countries have revolutionized her condition. Fifty years ago the avenues of employment open to women were few and restricted. To-day, in every branch of manufacture and trade, and in the professions formerly monopolized by men, they are actively and successfully engaged. Every law put upon the statute books affects their interests directly and indirectly—undreamed of in a social order where household drudgery and motherhood limited a woman’s horizon.
It is inevitable, therefore, that, feeling the pressure of legislation under which they suffer, a new intelligence should stir the minds of women such as stirred the once disfranchised classes of men in Great Britain. It leads to an examination of the principles of self-government and to their application on lines of equality and not of sex. In them is found no justification for the present enforced political disability. Therefore all legislative bodies vested with the power to change the laws are petitioned to consider the justice and expediency of allowing women to register their opinions, on the same terms with men, at the ballot-box.
The principles at stake are rarely alluded to by the opponents of woman suffrage. The battle rages chiefly upon the ground of expediency. Every argument formerly used by the English Tories is to-day heard in the mouths of men who profess a belief in a democratic form of government. ....
In the discussion of the rights of labor, the inadequacy of wages, the abuses of the factory system, the management of schools, of reformatory and penal institutions, the sanitary arrangements of a city, the betterment of public highways, the encroachment of privileged corporations, the supervision of the poor, the improvement of hospitals, and the many branches of collective housekeeping 1ncluded in a municipality—women are by nature and education adapted to participate. In many States, certainly in Massachusetts, it is a common practice to appoint women to responsible positions demanding large organizing and directing power. If thus fitted to rule, are women unfitted to have a voice in choosing rulers?
​Mrs. May Wright Sewall (Ind.) discussed the Fitness of Women to Become Citizens from the Standpoint of Education and Mental Development.
In this year of 1897-98 not less than 20,000,000 pupils and students of all ages, from the toddlers in the kindergartens to the full-grown candidates for post-graduate honors, are registered in the schools, academies, colleges and universities of the United States. The average length of time which girls spend in school exceeds by nearly three years the average length of time which boys stay there; while the number of girls graduating from highschool courses, those which include United States history and civil government, is almost double the number of boys. Thus, at the present time, largely more than one-half of the moneys spent by the governments, local and national, in support of free schools, is used in the education of girls. By what authority does the Government tax its citizens to support schools for the education of millions of women to whom, after they have received the education declared necessary to citizenship, this is denied?
Is it urged that the Government gets its return upon its investment in the education of women through the increased intelligence with which women rear their children, manage their homes and conduct the larger social affairs outside the boundary of their home life? I have no disposition to diminish the Government's recognition of such return, but I wish to remind you that no one has ever justified the maintenance of public schools, and an enforced attendance upon them, on the theory that the Government has a right to compel men to be agreeable husbands and wise fathers, or that it is responsible for teaching men how to conduct their own business with discretion and judgment. Quite in another tone is it urged that the schools are the fountains of the nation's liberties and that a government whose policy is decided by a majority of the votes cast by its men is not safe in the hands of uneducated voters.
.... It is the political life of our nation which stands in the sorest need; yet this is the only department of our national life which rejects the aid of women.
If intelligence is vital to good citizenship in a republic, it would seem that, to justify the exclusion of the present generation of American women, whose. intelligence is bought at so high a price and at the expense of the whole people, there must be some proof that they have qualities which so vitiate it as to render it unserviceable. Such proof has never yet been presented.
The Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer (R. I.) considered the Fitness of Women to Become Citizens from the Standpoint of Moral Development.
It is, moreover, increasingly apparent that for these wider and more delicate functions a higher order of electorate, ethically as well as intellectually advanced, is necessary. Democracy can succeed only by securing for its public service, through the rule of the majority, the best leadership and administration the State affords. Only a wise electorate will know how to select such leadership, and only a highly moral one will authoritatively choose such. ....
When the State took the place of family bonds and tribal relationships, and the social consciousness was born and began its long travel toward the doctrine of "equality of human rights" in government and the principle of human brotherhood in social organization, man, as the family and tribal organizer and ruler, of course took command of the march. It was inevitable, natural and beneficent so long as the State concerned itself with only the most external and mechanical of social interests. The instant, however, the State took upon itself any form of educative, charitable or personally helpful work, it entered the area of distinctive feminine training and power, and therefore became in need of the service of woman. Wherever the State touches the personal life of the infant, the child, the youth, or the aged, helpless, defective in mind, body or moral ​nature, there the State enters "woman's peculiar sphere," her sphere of motherly succor and training, her sphere of sympathetic and self-sacrificing ministration to individual lives. If the service of women is not won to such governmental action (not only through "influence or the shaping of public opinion," but through definite and authoritative exercise), the mother-office of the State, now so widely adopted, will be too often planned and administered as though it were an external, mechanical and abstract function, instead of the personal, organic and practical service which all right helping of individuals must be.
In so far as motherhood has given to women a distinctive ethical development, it is that of sympathetic personal insight respecting the needs of the weak and helpless, and of quick-witted, flexible adjustment of means to ends in the physical, mental and moral training of the undeveloped. And thus far has motherhood fitted women to give a service to the modern State which men can not altogether duplicate. ....
Whatever problems might have been involved in the question of woman's place in the State when government was purely military, legal and punitive have long since been antedated. Whatever problems might have inhered in that question when women were personally subject to their families or their husbands are well-nigh outgrown in all civilized countries, and entirely so ir the most advanced. Woman's nonentity in the political department of the State is now an anachronism and inconsistent with the prevailing tendencies of social growth. ....
Miss Laura Clay (Ky.) illustrated the Fitness of Women to Become Citizens from the Standpoint of Physical Development.
It is by no means self-evident that women are naturally unfitted for fighting or are unwarlike in disposition. The traditions of Amazons and the conduct of savage women give room to believe that the instinct for war was primitively very much the same in both sexes. Though the earliest division of labor among savages known to us is that of assigning war and the chase to men, yet we have no reason to believe that this was done by way of privilege to women; but in the struggle for tribal supremacy that tribe must have ultimately survived and succeeded best which exposed its women the least. Polygamy, universal among primitive races, could in a degree sustain population against the ravages among men of con​tinual warfare, but any large destruction of women must extinguish a tribe that suffered it. So those tribes which earliest engrafted among their customs the exclusion of women from war were the ones that finally survived. ....
Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch (Eng.) treated of Woman as an Economic Factor.
​It is often urged that women stand greatly in need of training in citizenship before being finally received into the body politic. ....
As a matter of fact women are the first class who have asked the right of citizenship after their ability for political life has been proved. I have seen in my time two enormous extensions of the suffrage to men—one in America and one in England. But neither the negroes in the South nor the agricultural laborers in Great Britain had shown before they got the ballot any capacity for government; for they had never had the opportunity to take the first steps in political action. Very different has been the history of the march of women toward a recognized position in the State. We have had to prove our ability at each stage of progress, and have gained nothing without having satisfied a test of capacity. ....
The public demand for "proved worth" suggests what appears to me the chief and most convincing argument upon which our future claims must rest—the growing recognition of the economic value of the work of women. .... There has been a marked change in the estimate of our position as wealth producers. We have never been "supported" by men; for if all men labored hard every hour of the twenty-four, they could not do all the work of the world. A few worthless women there are, but even they are not so much supported by the men of their family as by the overwork of the "sweated" women at the other end of the social ladder. From creation's dawn our sex has done its full share of the world's work; sometimes we have been paid for it, but oftener not.
Unpaid work never commands respect; it is the paid worker who has brought to the public mind conviction of woman's worth. The spinning and weaving done by our great-grandmothers in their own homes was not reckoned as national wealth until the work was carried to the factory and organized there; and the women who followed their work were paid according to its commercial value. It is the women of the industrial class, the wage-earners, reckoned by the hundreds of thousands, and not by units, the women whose work has been submitted to a money test, who have been the means of bringing about the altered attitude of public opinion toward woman's work in every sphere of life.
Mrs. Florence Kelley, State Factory Inspector of Illinois, showed the Working Woman's Need of the Ballot.
​The wages paid any body of working people are determined by many influences, chief among which is the position of the particular body of workers in question. Thus the printers, by their intelligence, their powerful organization, their solidarity and united action, keep up their wages in spite of the invasion of their domain by new and improved machinery. On the other hand, the garment-workers, the sweaters' victims, poor, unorganized, unintelligent, despised, remain forever on the verge of pauperism, irrespective of their endless toil. If, now, by some untoward fate the printers should suddenly find themselves disfranchised, placed in a position in which their members were politically inferior to the members of other trades, no effort of their own short of complete enfranchisement could restore to them that prestige, that good standing in the esteem of their fellow-craftsmen and the public at large which they now enjoy, and which contributes materially in support of their demand for high wages.
In the garment trades, on the other hand, the presence of a body of the disfranchised, of the weak and young, undoubtedly contributes to the economic weakness of these trades. Custom, habit, tradition, the regard of the public, both employing and employed, for the people who do certain kinds of labor, contribute to determine the price of that labor, and no disfranchised class of workers can permanently hold its own in competition with enfranchised rivals. But this works both ways. It is fatal for any body of workers to have forever hanging from the fringes of its skirts other bodies on a level just below its own; for that means continual pressure downward, additional difficulty to be overcome in the struggle to maintain reasonable rates of wages. Hence, within the space of two generations there has been a complete revolution in the attitude of the trades-unions toward the women working in their trades. Whereas forty years ago women might have knocked in vain at the doors of the most enlightened trade-union, to-day the Federation of Labor keeps in the field paid organizers whose duty it is to enlist in the unions as many women as possible. The workingmen have perceived that women are in the field of industry to stay; and they see, too, that there can not be two standards of work and wages for any trade without constant menace to the higher standard. Hence their effort to place the women upon the same industrial level with themselves in order that all may pull together in the effort to maintain reasonable conditions of life.
But this same menace holds with regard to the vote. The lack of the ballot places the wage-earning woman upon a level of irresponsibility compared with her enfranchised fellow workingman. By impairing her standing in the community the general rating of her value as a human being, and consequently as a worker, is lowered. In order to be rated as good as a good man in the field of her earnings, she must show herself better than he. She must be more steady, or more trustworthy, or more skilled, or more cheap in order to have the same chance of employment. Thus, while women are accused of lowering wages, might they not justly reply ​that it is only by conceding something from the pay which they would gladly claim, that they can hold their own in the market, so long as they labor under the disadvantage of disfranchisement? ....
Mrs. Mariana W. Chapman (N. Y.) spoke from the standpoint of Women as Capitalists and Taxpayers.
In 1894 a careful copy was made of the women taxpayers of Brooklyn. Names with initials were not placed on the list, so that the total was probably under rather than over estimated. This showed 22.03, or nearly one-fourth of all the assessable realty in the names of women, amounting to $110,000,000, besides many large estates in which they were interested. In 1896 the assessed value of real estate in the State of New York was $4,506,985,694, which, if estimated in the same ratio, would give taxable property owned by women to the extent of $1,124,221,423.
They are agriculturally interested, inasmuch as they are frequently owners of large tracts of land in the West as well as of smaller farms in our Eastern States. What shall we say to a Government that gives land in severalty to the Indian, supplies him with tools and rations, puts a ballot in his hand, and then says to the American woman who purchases the same right to land, "You shall not have the political privileges of American citizenship?" Under the laws of our country every stock company is obliged to ​give men and women shareholders a vote upon the same basis, and one fails to see why a government, which professedly exists to maintain the rights of the people, should practice in its own dealing such flaunting injustice. ....
Miss Elizabeth Burrill Curtis (N. Y.) answered the question, Are Women Represented in our Government?
That a century ago the latter were not thought of as having any rights under this motto is not surprising. So few women then held property in their own name that the injustice done them was not sO apparent. But the situation is changed now, and the right of women to be considered as individuals is everywhere acknowledged save in this one particular. Even those who feel that the granting of universal male suffrage was a mistake, and that the right to self-government should be proved by some test, educational or otherwise—even those do not assert that it would be anything but gross injustice to tax men without allowing them a voice in the disposal of their money. ....
But there is still another side to the question. It is not only that the disfranchised women are unfairly treated, but the public good inevitably suffers from the political nonexistence of half the citizens of the republic. Either women are interested in politics or they are not. If the former, the country is distinctly injured, for nothing is more fatal to good government than the intermeddling of a large body of people who have never studied the questions at issue and whose only interest is a personal one. If, on the other hand, women are not interested in politics, what is the condition of that country, half of whose citizens do not care whether it be well or ill governed? That women influence men is never denied, even by the most strenuous opponents of woman suffrage. It is, on the contrary, most ​violently asserted by those very people; but of what value is that interest if woman is utterly ignorant of one of the most important duties of a man's life? ....
Woman Suffrage and the Home was the topic of Henry B. Blackwell (Mass.).
People who make this objection seem to regard the conjugal and maternal instincts as artificial, as the result of education and circumstances, losing sight of the fact that these qualities are innate in the feminine soul. Mental cultivation and larger views of life do not tend to make women less womanly any more than they tend to make men less manly. No one imagines that business or politics diminishes or destroys the conjugal and paternal instinct in men. We do not look for dull or idle or indolent men as husbands for our daughters. Ignorant, narrow-minded men do not make the best husbands and fathers. Ignorant, narrow-minded women do not make the best wives and mothers. Mental discipline and intelligent responsibility add strength to the conjugal and parental sentiment alike in men and women. ....
But fortunately this is no longer a question of theory. We appeal to the experience of the four States which have extended equal suffrage to women. Wyoming has had complete woman suffrage since 1869. For twenty-nine years, as a Territory and a State, women have voted there in larger ratio than men. Supreme Judge J. W. Kingman many years ago testified that the actual proportion of men voting had increased to 80 per cent., but that 90 per cent, of the women went to the polls. And now, after a generation of continuous voting, the percentage of divorces in Wyoming is smaller than in the surrounding States where women do not vote, and while the percentage in the latter is rapidly increasing, in Wyoming it is steadily diminishing. Where women have once voted the right has never been taken away by the people. In Utah women voted for seventeen years while it was a Territory, until Congress abolished it for political reasons. But when Utah was about to be admitted to statehood the men in framing their constitution restored the suffrage to women. Would they have done so if it had proved injurious to their homes? Impossible! You have eight Senators and seven Representatives in Congress from the four States where ​women have the full franchise. Ask them if it has demoralized their homes or the homes of their fellow-citizens, and your fears, if you have any, will be forever set at rest. ....
The Senate Hearing closed with the paper of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton on the Significance and History of the Ballot, which was in part as follows:
With free schools and compulsory education, no one has an excuse for not understanding the language of the country. As women are governed by a "male aristocracy," they are doubly interested in having their rulers able at least to read and write. See with what care in the Old World the prospective heirs to the throne are educated. There was a time when the members of the British Parliament could neither read nor write, but these accomplishments are now required of the Lords and Commons, and even of the King and Queen, while we have rulers, native and foreign, who do not ​understand the letters of the alphabet; and this in a republic supposed to be based on intelligence of the people!
Much as we need this measure for the stability of our Government, we need it still more for the best interests of women. This ignorant vote is solid against woman's emancipation. In States where amendments to their constitutions are proposed for the enfranchisement of women, this vote has been in every case against them. We should ask for national protection against this hostile force playing football with the most sacred rights of one-half of the people. .... In all national conflicts it is ever deemed the most grievous accident of war for the conquered people to find themselves under a foreign yoke, yet this is the position of the women of this republic to-day. Foreigners are our judges and jurors, our legislators and municipal officials, and decide all questions of interest to us, even to the discipline in our schools, charitable institutions and prisons. Woman has no voice as to the education of her children or the environments of the unhappy wards of the State. The love and sympathy of the mother-soul have but an evanescent influence in all departments of human interest until coined into law by the hand that holds the ballot. Then only do they become a direct and effective power in the Government. ....
The popular objection to woman suffrage i is that it would "double the ignorant vote." The patent answer to this is, "Abolish the ignorant vote." Our legislators have this power in their own hands. There have been serious restrictions in the past for men. We are willing to abide by the same for women, provided the insurmountable qualification of sex be forever removed. Some of the opponents talk as if educated suffrage would be invidious to the best interests of the laboring masses, whereas it would be most beneficial in its ultimate influence. .... Surely when we compel all classes to learn to read and write and thus open to themselves the door to knowledge, not-by force, but by the promise of a privilege which all intelligent citizens enjoy, we are benefactors and not tyrants. To stimulate them to climb the first rounds of the ladder that they may reach the divine heights where they shall be as gods, knowing good and evil, by withholding the citizen's right to vote for a few years is a blessing to them as well as to the State.
The Washington Star said of the hearing before the House Judiciary Committee:
The speakers before this committee presented The Practical Working of Woman Suffrage. Miss Anthony introduced them. Limited Suffrage in the United States was discussed by Prof. Ellen H. E. Price of Swarthmore College, Penn., whose address was rendered especially valuable by a carefully compiled table of statistics showing the amount of suffrage possessed by women in every State and Territory. Municipal Suffrage in Kansas was described by J. W. Gleed; Woman Suffrage in Wyoming by exU. S. Senator Joseph M. Carey; Woman Suffrage in Colorado by ​the Hon. Martha A. B. Conine, member of its State Legislature; Woman Suffrage in Idaho by Vm. Balderston, editor of the Boise Statesman; Woman Suffrage in Foreign Countries by Miss Helen Blackburn, editor The Englishwomen's Review. Woman Suffrage in Utah was depicted by State Senator Martha Hughes Cannon:
I can say, in all sincerity, that there is a strong and cumulative evidence that even those who opposed equal suffrage with the greatest ability and vehemence would not now vote for the repeal of the measure. The practical working of the law demonstrates its wisdom and verifies the claims which were advanced by its ardent advocates. It has proved to the world that woman is not only a helpmeet by the fireside, but when allowed to do so she can become a most powerful factor in the affairs of the Government.
None of the unpleasant results which were predicted have occurred. The contentions in families, the tarnishment of woman's charm, the destruction of ideals, have all been proved to be but the ghosts of unfounded prejudices. "The divinity which doth hedge woman about like subtle perfume" has not been displaced. Women have quietly assumed the added power which always was theirs by right, and with the grace and ready adaptation to circumstances peculiar to the women of America, they have so conducted themselves that they have gained admiration and respect while losing none of their old-time prestige.
Before suffrage was granted to women they had ideas upon public questions. Suffrage has given them opportunity for practical expression of these views. They pay more attention to political affairs. They studied political economy more earnestly. They familiarize themselves with public questions, and their mistakes, if they have made any, have not thus far been brought to light.
Women have acted as delegates to county and State conventions, and represented Utah in the national convention of one of the great political parties, held in Chicago in 1896. They have acted upon political committees and have taken part in political management, and, instead of being dragged down, as was most feared, their enfranchisement has tended to elevate them. Under our system of ​the Australian ballot, they have found that the contaminating influence of which they had been told was but a bugbear, born of fright, produced by shadows. They learned that to deposit their vote did not subject them to anything like the annoyance which they often experienced from crowds on "bargain days," while their presence drove from the polls the ward workers who had been so obnoxious in the past.
Through the courtesy of the Governor and the approval of the Senate they have been given places upon various State boards, and in the last Legislature, in both the Senate and the House, they represented the two most populous and wealthy counties of Utah. The bills introduced by women received due consideration, and a majority were enacted into laws. Whatever they have been required to do they have done to the full satisfaction of their constituents, and they have proved most careful and painstaking public officers.
No one in Utah will dispute the statements I have made. To the people of that young commonwealth, destined by its manifold resources and the intelligence of its men and women to become the Empire State of the Rocky Mountains, I refer you, in the fullest confidence that, with scarcely a dissenting voice, they will say that woman suffrage is no longer an experiment, but is a practical reality, tending to the well-being of the State.
Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, national recording secretary, took for a subject The Indifference of Women:
When a man in Saco, Me., first employed a saleswoman the men boycotted his store, and the women remonstrated with him on the sin of which he was guilty in placing a young woman in a position of such publicity. When Lucy Stone tried to secure for married women the right to their own property, they asked with scorn, "Do you think I would give myself where I would not give my property?" When Elizabeth Blackwell began to study medicine, the women at her boarding house refused to speak to her, and those passing her on the streets would hold their skirts aside so as not to touch her. It is a matter of history with what ridicule and opposition Mary Lyon's first efforts for the education of women were received, not only by the mass of men, but by the mass of women as well. In England when the Oxford examinations were thrown open to women, the Dean of Chichester preached a sermon against it, in which he said: "By the sex at large, certainly, the new cur​riculum is not asked for. I have ascertained, by extended inquiry among gentlewomen, that, with true feminine instinct, they either entirely distrust or else look with downright disfavor on so wild an innovation and interference with the best traditions of their sex." Pundita Ramabai tells us that the idea of education for girls is so unpopular with the majority of Hindoo women that when a progressive Hindoo proposes to educate his little daughter it is not uncommon for the women of his family to threaten to drown themselves.
All this merely shows that human nature is conservative, and that it is fully as conservative in women as in men. The persons who take a strong interest in any reform are always comparatively few, whether among men or women, and they are habitually regarded with disfavor, even by those whom the proposed reform is to benefit. Thomas Hughes says, in School Days at Rugby: "So it is, and must be always, my dear boys. If the Angel Gabriel were, to come down from heaven and head a successful rise against the most abominable and unrighteous vested interest which this poor old world groans under, he would most certainly lose his character for many years, probably for centuries, not only with the upholders of the said vested interest, but with the respectable mass of the people whom he had delivered."
Miss Anthony closed with an impassioned argument which profoundly moved both the committee and the audience. The chairman said that in all the years there had never been so dignified, logical and perfectly managed a hearing before the Judiciary, and several of its members corroborated this statement and assured the ladies present of a full belief in the justice of their cause. Yet neither the Senate nor the House Committee made any report or paid the slightest heed to these earnest and eloquent appeals.
* ↑ The Sunday afternoon preceding the convention religious services were held in the theatre, which was crowded. The sermon was given by the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, from the text, "One shall chase a thousand and two put ten thousand to flight"
* ↑ A most interesting account of that historic occasion may be found in the History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. I, p. 67.
* ↑ Federal Suffrage is considered in Chapter I.
* ↑ David B. Henderson, Ia.; George W. Ray, N. Y.; Case Broderick, Kan.; Thomas Updegraff, Ia.; James A. Connolly, Ill.; Samuel W. McCall, Mass.; John J. Jenkins, Wis.; Richard Wayne Parker, N. J.; Jesse R. Overstreet, Ind.; DeAlva S. Alexander, N. Y.; Warren Miller, W. Va.; William L. Terry, Ark.; David A. DeArmond, Mo.; Samuel W. T. Lanham, Tex.; William Elliott, S. C.; Oscar W. Underwood, Ala.; David H. Smith, Ky.
* ↑ The main facts brought out in all these addresses are fully included in the various State chapters in this volume.