The History of Woman Suffrage Volume IV Part 30

Miss Harriet A. Shinn (Ills.), president of the National a.s.sociation of Women Stenographers, gave unanswerable testimony from employers in many different kinds of business expressing a preference for women stenographers. Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates (Me.) ill.u.s.trated how cla.s.s distinctions, public schools, religious liberty and social life have been affected by the thought of the times, by fashionable thought. The official report said: "So bristling with humor was this address that there were several times when the speaker had to stop and wait for the laughter to subside. At the conclusion, her effort was acknowledged by long applause."

Miss Shaw closed an evening which had been full of mirth, saying in the course of her vivacious remarks:

I spoke at a woman's club in Philadelphia yesterday and a young lady said to me afterwards: "Well, that sounds very nice, but don't you think it is better to be the power behind the throne?"

I answered that I had not had much experience with thrones, but a woman who has been on a throne, and who is now behind it, seems to prefer to be on the throne.[98] Mr. Edward Bok, editor of the _Ladies' Home Journal_, says that by careful watching for many years, he has come to the conclusion that no woman has had any business relations with men who has not been contaminated by them; and this same individual who does not want us to have business relations with men, lest we be contaminated by the a.s.sociation, wants us to marry these same men and live with them three hundred and sixty-five and one-fourth days a year!

On Sunday Mrs. Chapman Catt gave a sermon in the People's Church, Mrs.

Ellen Battelle Dietrick in All Soul's Church (Unitarian), and the Rev.

Anna Howard Shaw in Metzerott's Music Hall. At the last named meeting Mrs. Howe offered the prayer and, at the close, recited her Battle Hymn of the Republic. Miss Shaw preached from the text, "Let no man take thy crown."

....Since the beginning of the Christian era those who have expounded the Scriptures have been princ.i.p.ally men, and the Gospel has been presented to us from the standpoint of men. In all these interpretations Heaven has been peopled with men, G.o.d has been pictured as a man, and even the earth has been represented as masculine.

In the beginning this was wise, because people have always been more impressed by law, order, system and government than by the spirit of faith. But we have pa.s.sed the stage of force in nature, of force in physical life, and have arrived at the age of spiritual thought and earthly needs when the mother comes to the front. In the Old World I have seen venerable men, strong men, and women kneeling together at the shrine of Mary pouring out their sufferings into the mother heart of the Virgin and rising refreshed and solaced. What Catholicism has done for its church, Protestantism must do for Christianity everywhere, by revealing the mother-life and the mother-spirit of divine nature. In the lesson of life there is not only a father but a mother-love.

Jesus Christ, we are told, was a man and so were His disciples, and this is given as the reason why men only should preach the Gospel, yet the Scriptures tell us that the first divinely-ordained preacher was a woman. All the way down in the history of Christianity are found women side by side with men, always ready and willing to bear the burdens and sorrows of life in order to better their fellows. In this country every reformation has been urged by women as well as men. The names of William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips will go down to posterity linked with those of Lucretia Mott, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Susan B. Anthony. In the great temperance movement the name of Gough will at once bring to mind Frances E. Willard.

There is no name more prominently identified in the effort to uplift the Indian than that of Helen Hunt Jackson. Wherever there has been a wrong committed there have always been women to defend the wronged. Julia Ward Howe gave us the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," while Lucy Stone's last words should be the motto of every young girl's life, "Make the world better."

With respect to my text, "Let no man take thy crown," these words were written to the church, and not to the men alone, and the command should be obeyed by every woman. If the churches then were anything like the churches of to-day, they were composed of three-fourths women. Hence this injunction was intended especially for women. This crown, I take it, means the crown of righteousness, of regeneration, of redemption, of purity, and applies to the whole body of the church. I believe the crown of womanhood in its highest sense means womanly character and nature. We never can wear a higher or n.o.bler crown than pure and womanly womanhood....

The world has always been more particular how we did things than what things we did.... All human beings are under obligations first to themselves. If self-sacrifice seems best, then we should practice that; while if self-a.s.sertion seems best, then we should a.s.sert ourselves. The abominable doctrine taught in the pulpit, the press, in books and elsewhere, is that the whole duty of women is self-abas.e.m.e.nt and self-sacrifice. I do not believe subjection is woman's duty any more than it is the duty of a man to be under subjection to another man or to many men. Women have the right of independence, of conscience, of will and of responsibility.

Women are robbed of themselves by the laws of the country and by fashion. The time has not pa.s.sed when women are bought and sold.

Social custom makes the world a market-place in which women are bought and sold, and sometimes they are given away. In the marriage ceremony woman loses her name, and under the old Common Law a married woman had no legal rights. She occupied the same position to her husband as the slave to his master. These things degraded marriage, but the home would be the holiest of spots if the wife a.s.serted her individuality and worked hand-in-hand with her husband, each uplifting the other. Women are robbed of the right of conscience. Their silence and subjection in the church have been the curse not only of womanhood but of manhood. No other human being should decide for us in questions pertaining to our own moral and spiritual welfare. Women are beginning to believe that G.o.d will listen to a woman as quickly as to a man.

The time has come when councils of women will gather and do their work in their quiet way without regard to men.

No person is human who may not "will" to be anything he can be.

When the woman says "I will," there is not anything this side of the throne of G.o.d to stop her, and the girls of the present day should learn this lesson. Now there is placed upon women the obligation of service without the responsibility of their actions. The man who leads feels the responsibility of his acts, and this urges him to make them n.o.ble. Women should have this same responsibility and be made to feel it. The most dangerous thing in the world is power without responsibility....

Monday night's session was designated "president's evening" and many short, clever talks were given.[99] James L. Hughes, Superintendent of Schools in Toronto and president of the Equal Suffrage a.s.sociation of that city, told how the women of Canada voted, sat on the public and High School boards and even served as president of the Toronto board.

At the Tuesday evening meeting Miss Anthony introduced Senator W. A.

Peffer and Representatives Jerry Simpson, John C. Davis, Case Broderick and Charles Curtis of Kansas, and Henry A. Coffeen of Wyoming. Ex-Senator Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi was invited to the platform and responded by saying he hoped to see the day when every qualified woman could exercise the suffrage. The Hon. Simon Wolf, commissioner of the District, urged equality of rights for women.

Grace Greenwood was presented as one of the pioneer woman suffragists.

Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell (N. Y.), the heroine of many campaigns, in a stirring speech related her varied experiences and said: "Ours is one of the greatest wars of the centuries. Indeed, it is a continuation of the same battle which has been waged almost since the world began but carried on with different tactics. It stands unique. No cannon is heard. No smoke tells of defeat or victory. No b.l.o.o.d.y battlefields lift their blushing faces to the heavens. It is a battle of ideas, a battle of prejudices, the right and the wrong, the new and the old, meeting in close contact. It is the 'war of the roses,' if you so please to call it. It is the motherhood of the republic asking for full political recognition."

The last address of the convention was made by the Rev. Ida C. Hultin, on the Crowning Race, whose men and women should be equally free. Gov.

Davis H. Waite of Colorado sent a letter in relation to the enfranchising of women the previous year, in which he said:

The Populists more than any other political party in Colorado favored equal suffrage, but many Republicans and Democrats also voted for it, and in my opinion the result may be considered as due to the enlightened public sentiment of the common people of the State. The more I consider the matter the more it grows upon me in importance, and the more I realize the fact that all the patriotism, all the intelligence and all the virtue of the commonwealth are necessary to preserve it from the corrupt and mercenary attacks made upon it from all points by corporate trusts and monopolies. Equal suffrage can not fail to encourage purity in both private and public life, and to elevate the official standard of fitness.

A letter from Mrs. May Wright Sewall, regretting her enforced absence, closed by saying:

Many of you know that the last few months I have spent in editing the papers presented at the World's Congress of Representative Women, held in Chicago last May. It is a remarkable and to me quite an unexpected fact that the papers upon the subject of Civil and Political Reform are hardly more earnest appeals for political equality than are the addresses to be found in every other chapter. Hereafter if one a.s.serts that the interest in the woman suffrage movement is not growing, let him be cited to this galaxy of witnesses, whose testimony is all the more valuable because in the large majority of instances it proceeds from women who never have identified themselves with it, and are not at all known as advocates of political equality. The meaning of the entire report is equality, co-operation, organization; that is, the demand made by the National Suffrage a.s.sociation is the demand borne to us by the echoes of that great congress.

Among the committee reports that of Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery, Chairman of Columbian Exposition Work, attracted especial attention and was in part as follows:

There is a most valuable and interesting bit of unpublished history which seems to me to form an integral part of your committee's report. It concerns the origin of the Board of Lady Managers, and this a.s.sociation should be proud to be able to feel that to our president is largely due the recognition of women in official capacity at the World's Fair. The fact that women were not officially recognized during the Centennial Exposition in 1876 was a great disappointment to all interested in the advancement of womankind, and while it was suggested on every side that women must have a voice in the management of the World's Fair in 1893, it remained for Susan B. Anthony to take the initiatory step which led to the creation of the Board of Lady Managers. She had invitations sent to women of official and social position to meet in the Riggs House parlors to consider this matter, in December, 1889. At this meeting Mrs. Conger, wife of Senator Omar D. Conger of Michigan, was made chairman, and Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, secretary. Miss Anthony was not present, fearing lest her well-known radical views might hinder the progress of affairs in the direction she wished them to take, but she restlessly walked about her room in the hotel anxiously awaiting the result.

Several meetings followed this and a committee was appointed to wait upon Congress, asking that the commission should consist of both men and women. Meanwhile the World's Fair Bill had been brought before the House and Miss Anthony soon saw that there would not be time for this committee to act. She therefore prepared pet.i.tions, sent them to women in official life and asked them to obtain signatures of official people.[100] On the strength of these pet.i.tions there was added to the bill, in March, 1890, an amendment providing for the appointment of women on the Board.

Miss Anthony's self-effacement was perhaps the wisest thing under the circ.u.mstances, for the Board, as appointed, being unconnected with woman suffrage, proved an immense source of education to the conservative women of the whole world--an education not needed by the radical women of our own ranks. I think the time has surely come when the truth of this history should be known to all.

The election of officers resulted in Miss Anthony's receiving for president 139 out of 140 possible votes; Miss Shaw for vice-president-at-large, 130; Rachel Foster Avery for corresponding secretary, unanimous; Alice Stone Blackwell for recording secretary, 136; Harriet Taylor Upton for treasurer, unanimous.

During the convention the death of Miss Anna Ella Carroll was announced. A resolution of sympathy with her sister was adopted and a collection was taken up, as had been done for Miss Carroll a number of times during the past twenty-five years, which resulted in over forty dollars.

Mrs. Sallie Clay Bennett (Ky.), the faithful champion of Federal Suffrage, insisted that, instead of asking for an amendment to confer suffrage, we should demand protection in the right already guaranteed by the U. S. Const.i.tution: "Even when asking for Munic.i.p.al Suffrage, we never should fail to a.s.sert that it is already ours under the Const.i.tution, and that there is strength enough in our national government to protect every woman in the Union provided the men had interpreted the laws right." Miss Sara Winthrop Smith (Conn.) supported Mrs. Bennett, saying: "It is useless labor to pet.i.tion for a Sixteenth Amendment--we do not need it. Our fundamental inst.i.tutions most adequately protect the rights of all citizens of the United States, irrespective of s.e.x. In the twenty-four years since the pa.s.sage of the Fifteenth Amendment, 300 amendments to the Const.i.tution have been introduced into Congress which never met with any approval from either House. I think it is wasted time for us to continue in this work, and therefore I feel that it concerns our dignity as a part of the people of this great United States that we declare and ask only for that which recognizes the dignity of such citizens." Mrs. Diggs, Mrs. Dietrick, Mrs. Colby and others supported this view.

In expressing his dissent Mr. Blackwell said: "I do not believe in Federal Suffrage. I agree with the State's Rights party in their views." Miss Blackwell and others took the same position, and Miss Anthony closed the debate by saying: "There is no doubt that the spirit of the Const.i.tution guarantees full equality of rights and the protection of citizens of the United States in the exercise of these rights, but the powers that be have decided against us, and until we can get a broader Supreme Court--which will not be until after the women of every State in the Union are enfranchised--we never will get the needed liberal interpretation of that doc.u.ment." The majority concurred in this view.

The most spirited discussion of the convention was in regard to the place of holding the next annual meeting. Urgent invitations were received from Detroit and Cincinnati, but the persuasive Southern advocates, Claudia Howard Maxwell, Miriam Howard DuBose and H. Augusta Howard, three Georgia delegates, carried off the prize for Atlanta.

This was the first and last appearance on the suffrage platform of Miss Kate Field, who was introduced by Miss Anthony with her characteristic abruptness: "Now, friends, here is Kate Field, who has been talking all these years against woman suffrage. She wants to tell you of the faith that is in her." Miss Field responded quickly:

I take exception to what Miss Anthony has said, because I think she has misconstrued my position entirely. I never have been against woman suffrage. I have been against universal suffrage of any kind, regardless of s.e.x. I think that morally woman has exactly as much right to the suffrage as man. It is a disgrace that such women as you and I have not the suffrage, but I do think that all suffrage should be regarded as a privilege and should not be demanded as a right. It should be the privilege of education and, if you please--I will not quarrel about that--of a certain property qualification. I have not changed my opinion, but I did say that I was tired of waiting for men to have common sense, that there evidently never would be any restriction in suffrage and that I should come in for the whole thing, woman included. Now, that is my position.... I withdraw my former att.i.tude and take my stand on this platform.

The usual able "hearings" were held. Before the Senate committee--Senators h.o.a.r, Teller, Wolcott, Blackburn and Hill--the speakers were the Rev. Ida C. Hultin, Miss Blackwell, Mrs. Lucretia Mitch.e.l.l, Mrs. Diggs, Mrs. Phoebe C. Wright, Miss Alice Smith, Mrs.

Bennett, Mrs. Colby, Representative John C. Davis of Kansas. Although the majority of the committee were in favor of woman suffrage no report was made.

The Hon. Isaac H. Goodnight (Ky.) was in the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, which was addressed by the Reverends Miss Shaw and Miss Hultin, Mrs. Young, Mrs. Emily G. Ketcham, Miss Lavina A.

Hatch, Prof. Jennie Gifford, Mrs. Alice Waugh, Mrs. Pickler, Miss Howard, Mrs. Meredith, Mrs. Greenleaf, Mr. Blackwell. Miss Anthony presented the speakers and closed the discussion. Later Mr. Goodnight submitted an adverse report for a majority of the committee.

FOOTNOTES:

[98] The Hawaiian ex-queen, then in the United States endeavoring to have her throne restored to her.

[99] Among the speakers were Mrs. Mary L. Bennett, Mrs. Lucretia L.

Blankenburg, Miss Laura Clay, Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby, Mrs. Etta Grymes Farrah, Mrs. Jean Brooks Greenleaf, Mrs. Florence Howe Hall, Mrs. Rebecca Henry Hayes, Mrs. Laura M. Johns, Mrs. Emily B. Ketcham, Mrs. Claudia Howard Maxwell, Mrs. Ellis Meredith, Mrs. Mary Bentley Thomas, Mrs. Emmeline B. Wells, Mrs. Virginia D. Young.

[100] Miss Anthony herself also went among prominent persons of her own acquaintance obtaining signatures. In a few days 111 names were secured of the wives and daughters of Judges of the Supreme Court, the Cabinet, Senators, Representatives, Army and Navy officers--as influential a list as the national capital could offer. These names may be found in the published minutes of this convention of 1894, p.

135.

At the time Miss Anthony secured this pet.i.tion no organization of women had considered the question and, if she had not been on the ground and taken immediate action, there is every reason to believe that the bill would have pa.s.sed Congress without any provision for a board of women. For a further account of this matter, and for a description of this great Congress of Women, see Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, Chap. XLI; also chapter on Illinois in this volume of the History.

CHAPTER XV.

THE NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1895.

The Twenty-seventh annual convention--Jan. 31-Feb. 5, 1895--possessed an unusual interest because of its being held outside of Washington.

The American society had been accustomed to migratory conventions, but the National had gone to the capital for twenty-six winters. The _Woman's Journal_, whose editors were strongly in favor of the former plan, said of the Atlanta meeting:

There had been some fears that holding the convention so far south might result in a smaller attendance of delegates than usual; but there were ninety-three delegates, representing twenty-eight States, and also a large number of visitors. Some, like Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway of Oregon, had come nearly 4,000 miles to be present. De Give's Opera House was crowded. Even at the morning meetings the seats were full and men stood for hours, several rows deep all around the sides and back of the house--a novel and gratifying sight at a business meeting. The proportion of men among the delegates and in the audiences, both day and evening, was larger than usual....