The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-05-24

Womenl women womeni Legions Of
them, swarms of them, floods of them in.
undated the Woman's Congress at the
three meetings yesterday afternoon. They
crowded the seats and jammed the aisles.
They packed the galleries of the First
Congregational Church and they over
flowed the platform. The chancel was
filled with them, the organ loft was
thronged and the corridors were alive with
them. 1t was woman's congress with a
vengeance-an apotheosis of wonderland
the temerarious man who ventured into
the wilderness of spring millinery, per-
fume and balloon sleeves was lucky to es-
cape even with the loss of his antagonism
to woman suffrage.
And no man who attended the congress
yesterday was bold enough to declare that
he had not experienced change of heart
on the suffrage question. He might have
gone there a skeptic as to the necessity or
probable efficacy of womans exercising
the franchise, but when the speakers in
the congress had finished there was little
left of him and nothing of his previous
convictions. In the language of the Jersey
farmer, he was "gone gosling."
Politics" was the theme, and the pot
boiled merrily on red-hot fire of feminine
oratory against the old-the present
order. The Rev. Anna Shaw, who is also
bachelor of medicine, announced her
ardent desire to be policeman to begin
with. She twisted her wrist as she swung
an imaginary billy on the hydra-headed
wrongs of which she complained, and the
most near-sighted could easily see what she
hn he
inveighed bitterly against the liquor traffic
and described the Government as a mod
ern minotaur in a labyrinth of saloons
calling upon the mothers of the country
to furnish forth on each new year 100000
young victims to take the place of those
she claimed were yearly sent to destruction
by rum.
Miss Shaw was terrific in her denouncia-
ton of the obstinacy or the incompetency
of man, she did not know which, in the
direction of municipal affairs and sug-
gested, what to her was the only remedy,
woman with big w.
And Miss Susan B. Anthony. What a
grand reception she got from the crowds.
They applauded loudly at each of the ses-
sions at her appearance on the platform,
and grew positively wild in their enthu-
siasm at some of her very positive state
ments. The grand old new woman" was
enough Of woman to appreciate the ova-
tons, and during the entire day smiled and
beamed and dubbed over with Joy at the
success of the congress and the interest it
had excited.
But it was not the visitors alone who
made such an impression on the vast audi
Of
Park fell the honor of making the big hit
of the day and the session so far. Her adj
dress was so filled with unctuous humor,
so exquisite in it's irony, SO clean in
its thrusts at sham and pretension and
popular assumption, that she was encored
and encored again and, what is more, was
compelled to respond. Miss Severance is
the most convincing humorist in the West
to-day, and that means the country.
Not one of the speakers but handled her
subject in the most perfect manner. Mrs.
Alice Moore McComas, Mrs. Nellie Bles-
sing Eyster, Mrs. Phillip Weaver, Mrs.
Ada c. Bowles, Mrs. Mia Topper May
nard, all furnished burning thoughts on
the political aspect, and the other ladies
who joined in the discus sion of the papers
presented struck the nail on the head
every time. They hammered diligently
away at old notions and never struck a
feminine thumb-which is more than the
"old" woman can say.
So great was the crowd last evening that
there was a great deal of talk about an
overflow meeting. Over $500 people were
crowded into the church, and more than
1000 stood hopelessly in the streets half an
hour before the meeting, still half an hour
too late to reach the promised land of seats
within. 1t was decided, however, that no
overflow meeting would be held, and the
poor outsiders were fain to be content with
the prospect that the congress lasts two
days longer.
To-day and tomorrow the congress will
meet in the church, as it has been fully
proved that Golden Gate Hall is entirely
too small to accommodate the crowds that
press to the shrine of the priestesses of the
new women.