The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-10-19
AMERICAN SUFFRAGE
 PIONEERS WE'RE RAD-
 ICALS IN MANY WAYS

It was 65 years ago today that the first national convention of the woman's suffrage party held it's open ing session in Worcester, Mass. There had been few local meetings of suf- fragists on a general scale. Most of the pioneers who braved ostracisn and obloquy for ''the cause'' are now dead. Perhaps the only survivor of the Worcester congress is Mrs. An toinette Louise Brown Blackwell, now pastor emeritus of a liberal church in Elizabeth, N. J. Miss Brown as she then was, addressed the gathering in the Massachusetts city, and her elo- quence charmed and delighted the faithful few who took part in the birth of @ movement which has since encircled the globe, and has placed the ballot in the hands of the women of countries as. remote as Finland and New Zealand, Sweden and AusraIia~ Miss Brown had at that time just completed a theological course at Oberlin College, but had been refused a license to preach because Of her sex, and was told by the tinaid 4heoIo- gians that she must speak or be si- lent on his own responsibility After leaving Oberlin she lectured on the abolition of slavery, temperance and woman suffrage, and was invited to preach in many churches of the Con- gregationalist, Methodist, Baptist, Quaker, Unitarian and Universalist demno Like most of the early sufrragists, Mrs Blackwell
 gradually drtfted away from orth- odoxy, and finally became an expo nent of religious liberalism.
 Soon after the Worcester conven- ton, John Stuart NH, the celebrated English political economist and free thinker. published his famous article in the Westminster Review in which he favored granting the ballot to the fair sex. The modern suffrage move men in Great Britain really dates from the publication of ATills article, and throughout his life the economist labored zealously in behalf Of the movement he had fathered.
 Of the other pioneers of the suf- frage cause. among the most famous were Elizabeth Cady stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, Dr. Hlfza- beth Blackwell, Lucy Stone Black well and Matilda Joslyn Gage. At a somewhat later period Mrs. Belva Lockwood, MariIla M. Kicker, the CIafiin sisters. pr. Mary Walker and others took up the burden. In 1869 they gained their first victory, when Wyoming gave the ballot to women on equal terms with men.
 The pioneer suffargists suffered much for the cause not only from the jeers and jibes of the minimizing, but from the deliberate opposition of ser ious-Ininded people who firmly be- Iieved that the success of the suffrage movement would involve the down fall of the home, religion. and civil ization in general. The clergy were almost a unit in their opposition to
 woman's suffrage, their objections being based in pares on the fact that a majority of the leaders were far from orthodox in their religious views, and not a few of them openly hostile to Christianity. The 'FWomen's Bible, in which Mrs Stanton and others collaborated, aroused a storm of disapproval in religious circles Mrs Gage's Woman, Church, and State,' was frankly and avowed1y an attack on Christianity. Mrs. Kicker was a professed Hagnostic, and started a project to place the works of Rob- ert G. Ingersoll in all public libraries. Helen H. Gardener, one of the most gifted of the lecturers of "the cause, was called ssIngerso1I in soprano" be- cause of her attitude toward Christi anity Colonel Ingersou himself was one of the first prominent men to ad- vocate suffrage, and it was also point ed out by the clergy that "owmen's rights were first advocated in Amer ica by Thomas Paine.