Susan B. Anthony Part 32

From now on Susan hoped to turn over to the younger women much of the lecturing and organizing in the West, and she needed an anchorage, a home of her own from which she could direct the work. Her mother had willed 17 Madison Street to Mary, who had rented the first floor and was living on the second where there was a room for Susan. Now that Susan planned to spend more time at home and Mary had retired from teaching, they decided to take over the whole house, modernize and redecorate it, and enjoy it the rest of their lives. Mary as usual took charge, but Susan had definite ideas about what should be done.

Mary, who had learned to be cautious and frugal, was more willing than Susan to make old furnishings do, but their friends came to the rescue, showering them with gifts.

Freshly painted and papered, with new rugs on the floor, lace curtains at the windows, easy chairs and new furniture here and there, the house was all Susan had wished for, and everywhere were familiar touches, such as her mother's spinning wheel by the fireplace in the back parlor.

She spent most of her time in her study on the second floor. Here she hung her pictures of the reformers she admired and loved; and right over her desk, looking down at her, was the comforting picture of her dearest friend, Mrs. Stanton. Hour after hour, she sat at this desk, writing letters, hurriedly dashing off one after another, writing just as the thoughts came, as if she were talking, bothering little with punctuation, using dashes instead, and vigorously underlining words and phrases for emphasis. Instructions to workers in all parts of the country, letters of friendship and sympathy, answers to the many questions which came in every mail, these were signed and sealed one after another, and slipped into the mail box when she took a brisk walk before going to bed.

She started each day with the morning newspaper, stepping out on the front veranda to pick it up, taking a deep breath of fresh air, and enjoying the green gra.s.s and the tall graceful chestnut trees in front of the house. Then sitting down in the back parlor beside the big table covered with magazines and mail, she carefully read her paper before beginning the work at her desk, for she must keep up-to-date on the news.

Rochester was important to her. It was her city, and she was on hand with her colleagues whenever there was an opportunity for women to express interest in its government, progress, or welfare. Not only did she encourage women to make use of their newly won right to vote in school elections, she also urged munic.i.p.al suffrage for women.

Appealing to the governor to appoint a woman to fill a vacancy on the board of trustees of Rochester's State Industrial School, she herself received the appointment which the _Democrat and Chronicle_ called "a fitting recognition of one of the ablest and best women in the commonwealth."[374]

One of her first acts as trustee was a practical one for the girls.

"Spent entire day at State Industrial School," she wrote in her diary, "getting the laundry girls--who had always washed for the entire inst.i.tution by hand and ironed that old way--transferred to the boys'

laundry room to use its machinery--am sure it will work well--girls 12 of them delighted."[375] She also taught the boys to patch and darn, and later asked for coeducation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Susan B. Anthony at her desk]

Susan looked forward to welcoming Mrs. Stanton at 17 Madison Street when she returned to this country in 1891, particularly because she had sold her home in Tenafly after her husband's death, in 1887, and now had no home to go to. Susan hoped that as they again worked together she could persuade Mrs. Stanton to concentrate on more serious writing than the chatty reminiscences she had just published and which Susan felt were "not the greatest" of herself.[376] When she heard that Mrs. Stanton seriously contemplated living in New York with two of her children, she begged her to reconsider, writing, "This is the first time since 1850 that I have anch.o.r.ed myself to any particular spot, and in doing it my constant thought was that you would come here ... and stay for as long, at least, as we must be together to put your writings into systematic shape to go down to posterity. I have no writings to go down, so my ambition is not for myself, but is for the one by the side of whom I have wrought these forty years, and to get whose speeches before audiences ... has been the delight of my life."[377]

Mrs. Stanton decided to make her home in New York, but first she visited Susan who found her as stimulating as ever and brimful of ideas. They plotted and planned as of old and managed to stir up public opinion on the question of admitting women to the University of Rochester. With women enrolled at the University of Michigan since 1870, and at Cornell since 1872, and with Columbia University yielding at last to women's entreaties by establishing Barnard College in 1889, they felt it their duty to awaken Rochester, and although their agitation produced no immediate results, it did start other women thinking and made news for the press. The cartoons on the subject delighted them both.[378]

Susan soon realized that the writing she had planned for Mrs. Stanton would never be done, for Mrs. Stanton had already made up her mind to write for magazines and newspapers on new and controversial subjects, feeling this was the best contribution she could make to the cause.

Susan also found it increasingly difficult to hold her old friend to the straight path of woman suffrage, Mrs. Stanton insisting that too much concentration on this one subject was narrowing and left women unprepared for the intelligent use of the ballot. Women, Mrs. Stanton argued, needed to be stirred up to think, and this they would not do as long as their minds were dominated by the church, which, she believed, had for generations hampered their development by emphasizing their inferiority and subordination. She was determined to a.n.a.lyze and rebel, and Susan could in no way divert her. Completely absorbed in trying to prove that the Bible, accurately translated and interpreted, did not teach the inferiority or the subordination of women, she was writing a book which she called _The Woman's Bible_, chapters of which were already appearing in the _Woman's Tribune_.

Susan was not unsympathetic to Mrs. Stanton's ideas, but she opposed this excursion into religious controversy because she was sure it would stir up futile wrangles among the suffragists and keep Mrs.

Stanton from giving her best to the cause. Her lack of interest then and her frank disapproval as _The Woman's Bible_ progressed were a great disappointment to Mrs. Stanton, and these two old friends began to grow somewhat apart as they took different roads to reach their goal, the one intent on freeing women's minds, the other determined to establish their citizenship. Yet their friendship endured.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton]

In 1892 Susan reluctantly consented to Mrs. Stanton's retirement as president of the National American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation. Mrs.

Stanton's request that she be followed by Susan won unanimous approval, and Anna Howard Shaw was moved up to second place, vice-president at large. For forty years, Susan had watched Mrs.

Stanton preside with a poise, warmth, and skill which few could equal.

She knew she would miss her dynamic rea.s.suring presence at the conventions. Yet she was obliged to admit to herself that it was more than fitting that she should at last head the ever-growing organization which she had built up. This was the last convention which Mrs. Stanton attended, and it was the last for Lucy Stone who died the next year. Susan appreciated the eager young women who now took their places, but she did not yet feel completely at home with them. "Only think," she wrote an old-time colleague, "I shall not have a white-haired woman on the platform with me, and I shall be alone there of all the pioneer workers. Always with the 'old guard' I had perfect confidence that the wise and right thing would be said. What a platform ours then was of self-reliant strong women! I felt sure of you all.... I can not feel quite certain that our younger sisters will be equal to the emergency, yet they are each and all valiant, earnest, and talented, and will soon be left to manage the ship without even me."[379]

In 1892, the year of the presidential election, Susan hopefully attended the national political conventions. Again the Republicans made their proverbial excuses, explaining that they not only faced a formidable opponent in Grover Cleveland but also the threat of a new People's party. The familiar ring of their alibis, which they had repeated since Reconstruction days, made Susan wonder when and if ever the Republicans would feel able to bear the strain of woman suffrage.

Their platform remembered the poor, the foreign-born, and male Negroes, but it still ignored women. Yet hope for the future stirred in her heart as she saw at the convention two women serving as delegates from Wyoming. Here was the entering wedge.

The Democrats as usual were silent on woman suffrage, but undismayed by them or by the Prohibitionists, who this year failed to endorse votes for women, Susan moved on to Omaha with Anna Howard Shaw for the first national convention of the new People's party. Here she met representatives of the Farmers' Alliance and the Knights of Labor, both friendly to woman suffrage, and men from other groups, critical of the two major political parties for their failure to solve the pressing economic problems confronting the nation. Susan was sympathetic with many of the aims of the People's party, having seen with her own eyes the plight of debt-burdened, hard-working farmers and having crusaded in her own paper, _The Revolution_, for the rights of labor and for the control of industrial monopoly. However, she still viewed minor, reform parties with a highly critical eye. The People's party gave her no woman suffrage plank and she found them "quite as oblivious to the underlying principle of justice to women as either of the old parties...."[380]

With the election of Grover Cleveland, whose opposition to woman suffrage was well known, and with the Democrats in the saddle for another four years, Congressional action on the woman suffrage amendment was blocked. Nevertheless, the cause moved ahead in the states; Colorado was to vote on the question in 1893 and Kansas in 1894, and New York was revising its const.i.tution. In addition, the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893 offered endless opportunities to bring the subject before the people.

As soon as plans for the World's Fair were under way, Susan began to work indirectly through prominent women in Washington and Chicago for the appointment of women to the board of management. "Lady Managers"

were appointed, 115 strong, who proved to be very much alive under the leadership of Mrs. Bertha Honore Palmer. Susan found Mrs. Palmer almost as determined as she to secure equality of rights for women at the World's Fair, and nothing that she herself might have planned could have been more effective than the series of world congresses in which both men and women took part, or than the World's Congress of Representative Women.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Elizabeth Smith Miller, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony]

Two of Susan's "girls," as she liked to call them, Rachel Foster Avery[381] and May Wright Sewall, were appointed by Mrs. Palmer to take charge of the World's Congress of Representative Women, and they arranged a meeting of the International Council of Women as a part of this Congress.

Convening soon after the opening of the World's Fair, the Congress of Representative Women drew record crowds at its eighty-one sessions.

Twenty-seven countries and 126 organizations were represented. Here Susan, to her joy, heard Negroes, American Indians, and Mormons tell of their progress and their problems, and saw them treated with as much respect as American millionaires, English n.o.bility, or the most virtuous, conservative housewife. Watching these women a.s.semble, talking with them, and listening to their well-delivered speeches, she felt richly rewarded for the lonely work she had undertaken forty years before, when scarcely a woman could be coaxed to a meeting or be persuaded to express her opinions in public. Although only one session of the congress was devoted to the civil and political rights of women, it was gratifying to her that women's need of the ballot was spontaneously brought up in meeting after meeting, showing that women, whatever their cause or whatever their organization, were recognizing that only by means of the vote could their reforms be achieved.

Speaking on the subject to which she had dedicated her life, Susan gave credit to the pioneering suffragists for the change which had taken place in public opinion regarding the position of women. She urged women's organizations to give suffrage their wholehearted support and pointed out the great power of some of the newer organizations, such as the W.C.T.U. with its membership of half a million and the young General Federation of Women's Clubs of 40,000 members. Confessing that her own National American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation in comparison was poor in numbers and limited in funds, she added, "I would philosophize on the reason why. It is because women have been taught always to work for something else than their own personal freedom; and the hardest thing in the world is to organize women for the one purpose of securing their political liberty and political equality."[382] Even so, the vital woman's rights organizations, she concluded, drew the whole world to them in spirit if not in person.

Her very presence among them without her words, in fact her very presence on the fair grounds, advertised her cause, for in the mind of the public she personified woman suffrage. This tall dignified woman with smooth gray hair, abundant in energy and spontaneous friendliness, was the center of attraction at the World's Congress of Representative Women. In her new black dress of Chinese silk, brightened with blue, and her small black bonnet, trimmed with lace and blue forget-me-nots, she was the perfect picture of everyone's grandmother, and the people took her to their hearts.[383] She was the one woman all wanted to see. Curious crowds jammed the hall and corridors when she was scheduled to speak, and often a policeman had to clear the way for her. At whatever meeting she appeared, the audience at once burst into applause and started calling for her, interrupting the speakers, and were not satisfied until she had mounted the platform so that all could see her and she had said a few words. Then they cheered her. After years of ridicule and unpopularity, she hardly knew what to make of all this, but she accepted it with happiness as a tribute to her beloved cause. Many who had been critical and wary of her newfangled notions began to reverse their opinions after they saw her and heard her words of good common sense. Even those who still opposed woman suffrage left the World's Fair with a new respect for Susan B. Anthony.

She stayed on in Chicago for much of the summer and fall, for she was in demand as a speaker at several of the world congresses and had five speeches to read for Mrs. Stanton, who felt unable to brave the heat and the crowds. She felt at home in this bustling, rapidly growing city which for so many years had been the halfway station on her lecture and campaign trips through the West. Here she had always found a warm welcome, first from her cousins, the d.i.c.kinsons, then from the ever-widening circle of friends she won for her cause. Now she was literally swamped with hospitality.[384] She rejoiced that such great numbers of everyday people were able to enjoy the beauty of the fair grounds and the many interesting exhibits, and when a group of clergymen urged Sunday closing, she took issue with them, declaring that Sunday was the only day on which many were free to attend. Asked by a disapproving clergyman if she would like to have a son of hers attend Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show on Sunday, she promptly and bluntly replied, "Of course I would, and I think he would learn far more there than from the sermons in some churches!"[385]

Hearing of this, Buffalo Bill offered her a box at his popular Wild West Show, and she appeared the next day with twelve of her "girls."

Dashing into the arena on his spirited horse while the band played and the spotlight flashed on him, Buffalo Bill rode directly up to Susan's box, reined his horse, and swept off his big western hat to salute her. Quick to respond, she rose and bowed, and beaming with pleasure, waved her handkerchief at him while the immense audience applauded and cheered.

She returned home early in November 1893, with happy memories of the World's Fair and to good news from Colorado. "Telegram ... from Denver--said woman suffrage carried by 5000 majority," she recorded in her diary.[386] This laconic comment in no way expressed the joy in her heart.

Her diaries, written hurriedly in small fine script, year after year, in black-covered notebooks about three inches by six, were a brief terse record of her work and her travels. Only occasionally a line of philosophizing shone out from the ma.s.s of routine detail, or an illuminating comment on a friend or a difficult situation, but she never failed to record a family anniversary, a birthday, or a death.

The Colorado victory, referred to so casually in her diary, was actually of great importance to her and her cause, for it carried forward the trend initiated by the admission of Wyoming as a woman suffrage state in 1890. Colorado also proved to her that her "girls"

could take over her work. So busy had she been winning good will for the cause at the World's Fair that she had left Colorado in the capable hands of the women of the state and of young efficient Carrie Chapman Catt, to whom she now turned over the supervision of all state campaigns.

Encouragement also came from another part of the world, from New Zealand, where the vote was extended to women. This confirmed her growing conviction that equal citizenship was best understood on the frontier and that in her own country victory would come from the West.

FOOTNOTES:

[367] Minor vs. Happersett, _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp.

741-742. North and South Dakota, Washington and Montana were admitted in 1889, Wyoming and Idaho in 1890.

[368] _Ibid._, IV, pp. 999-1000.

[369] North Dakota's const.i.tution provided that the legislature might in the future enfranchise women.

[370] _History of Woman Suffrage_, IV, p. 556.

[371] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 690.

[372] _Ibid._, p. 688.

[373] Anna Howard Shaw, _The Story of a Pioneer_ (New York, 1915), p.

202.

[374] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 731.

[375] Ms., Diary, Feb. 28, April 18, 1893.

[376] Published first in the _Woman's Tribune_, then as a book in 1898 under the t.i.tle, _Eighty Years and More_.