The History of Woman Suffrage Volume IV Part 34

Do not misunderstand me here. I am far from decrying the benefits of education. n.o.body believes in its necessity more sincerely than I do. In fact I hold that, other things being equal, the educated man is immeasurably in advance of the uneducated one; but the trouble is that other things are often very far from being equal and it is utterly impossible for the average man, educated or not, to be trusted to decide with entire justice between himself and another person when their interests are equally involved....

The intelligent voter in a democratic community can not abdicate his responsibility without being punished. He is the natural leader, and if he refuses to fulfil his duties the leadership will inevitably fall into the hands of those who are unfitted for the high and holy task--and who is to blame? It is the educated men, the professional men, the men of wealth and culture, who are themselves responsible when things go wrong; and the refusal to acknowledge their responsibility will not release them from it....

The principle of universal suffrage, like every other high ideal, will not stand alone. It carries duties with it, duties which are imperative and which to shirk is filching benefits without rendering an equivalent. How dare a man plead his private ease or comfort as an excuse for neglecting his public duties? How dare the remonstrating women of Ma.s.sachusetts declare that they fear the loss of privileges, one of which is the immunity from punishment for a misdemeanor committed in the husband's presence?

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I thought as a child, I understood as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

Throughout history all women and many men have been forced, so far as government has been concerned, to speak, think and understand as children. Now, for the first time, we are asking that the people, as a whole body, shall rise to their full stature and put away childish things.

The sermon on Sunday afternoon was given by Mrs. Stetson from the topic which was to have been considered by the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer, The Spiritual Significance of Democracy and Woman's Relation to It. She spoke without notes and ill.u.s.trated the central thought that love grows where people are brought together, and that they are brought together more in a democracy than in any other mode of living.

"Women have advanced less rapidly than men because they have always been more isolated. They have been brought into relation with their own families only. It is men who have held the inter-human relation.... Everything came out of the home; but because you began in a cradle is no reason why you should always stay there. Because charity begins at home is no reason why it should stop there, and because woman's first place is at home is no reason why her last and only place should be there. Civilization has been held back because so many men have inherited the limitations of the female s.e.x. You can not raise public-spirited men from private-spirited mothers, but only from mothers who have been citizens in spite of their disfranchis.e.m.e.nt. In holding back the mothers of the race, you are keeping back the race."

At the memorial services loving tributes were paid to the friends of woman suffrage who had pa.s.sed away during the year. Among these were ex-Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch, ex-Governor Oliver Ames (Ma.s.s.), Dr. James C. Jackson of Dansville (N. Y.), Dr. Abram W.

Lozier of New York City, Thomas Davis, Sarah Wilbur of Rhode Island, Marian Skidmore of Lily Dale, N. Y., and Amelia E. H. Doyon of Madison, Wis., who left $1,000 to the National a.s.sociation.

Henry B. Blackwell spoke of Theodore D. Weld, the great abolitionist, leader of the movement to found Oberlin, the first co-educational college, and one of the earliest advocates of equal rights for women.

He told also of Frederick Dougla.s.s, whose last act was to bear his testimony in favor of suffrage for women at the Woman's Council in Washington on the very day of his death. Mrs. Avery gave a tender eulogy of Theodore Lovett Sewall of Indianapolis, his brilliancy as a conversationalist, his charm as a host, his loyalty as a friend, his beautiful devotion to his wife, Mrs. May Wright Sewall, and his lifelong adherence to the cause of woman.

The loss of Mrs. Ellen Battelle Dietrick came with crushing force, as her services to the a.s.sociation were invaluable. To her most intimate friend, the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, was a.s.signed the duty of speaking a word in her memory, and in broken sentences she said: "I never knew such earnest purpose and consecration or such a fund of knowledge in any one as Mrs. Dietrick possessed. She never stopped thinking because she had reached the furthest point to which some one else had thought.

She was the best antagonist I ever saw; I never knew any one who could differ so intensely, and yet be so perfectly calm and good-tempered.

What she was as a friend no one can tell. Her death is a great loss to our press work. Perhaps no one ever wrote so many articles in the same length of time. This was especially the case last summer. It seemed as if she had a premonition that her life would soon end, for she sat at her desk writing hour after hour. I believe it shortened her life. She had just finished a book--Women in the Early Christian Ministry--and she left many other ma.n.u.scripts. It would be a pity if the rich, ripe thought of this woman should not be preserved. Her funeral was like her life, without show or display. No one outside the family was present except myself. No eulogy was uttered there; she would not have wanted it. Tennyson's last poem, Crossing the Bar, was recited by her brother-in-law, the Rev. J. W. Hamilton.[106]" Miss Shaw ended her remarks by reciting this poem.

Miss Anthony, who was to close the exercises, was too much affected to speak and motioned that the audience was dismissed, but no one stirred. At length she said: "There are very few human beings who have the courage to utter to the fullest their honest convictions--Mrs.

Dietrick was one of these few. She would follow truth wherever it led, and she would follow no other leader. Like Lucretia Mott, she took 'truth for authority, not authority for truth.' Miss Anthony spoke also of the "less-known women": "Adeline Thomson, a most remarkable character, was a sister to J. Edgar Thomson, first president of the Pennsylvania railroad. She lived to be eighty, and for years she stood there in Philadelphia, a monument of the past. Her house was my home when in that city for thirty years. We have also lost in Julia Wilbur of the District a most useful woman, and one who was faithful to the end. This is the first convention for twenty-eight years at which she has not been present with us. We should all try to live so as to make people feel that there is a vacancy when we go; but, dear friends, do not let there be a vacancy long. Our battle has just reached the place where it can win, and if we do our work in the spirit of those who have gone before, it will soon be over."

There was special rejoicing at this convention over the admission of Utah as a State with full suffrage for women. Senator and Mrs. Frank J. Cannon and Representative and Mrs. C. E. Allen of Utah were on the platform. In her address of welcome Miss Shaw said:

Every star added to that blue field makes for the advantage of every human being. We are just beginning to learn that we are all children of one Father and members of one family; and when one member suffers or is benefited, all the members suffer or rejoice. So when Utah comes into the Union with every one free, it is not only that State which is benefited, but we and all the world. As the stars at night come out one by one, so will they come out one by one on our flag, till the whole blue field is a blaze of glory.

We expected it of the men of Utah. No man there could have stood by the side of his mother and heard her tell of all that the pioneers endured, and then have refused to grant her the same right of liberty he wanted for himself, without being unworthy of such a mother. They are the crown of our Union, those three States on the crest of the Rockies, above all the others. In the name of the National American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation, we extend our welcome, our thanks and our congratulations to Utah, as one of the three so dear to the heart of every woman who loves liberty in these United States.

Senator Cannon said in response: " ... Only one serious question came before our const.i.tutional convention, and that was whether the adoption of woman suffrage would hinder the admission of our Territory as a State.... But our women had furnished courage, patience and heroism to our men, and so we said: 'Utah shall take another forty-nine years of wandering in the wilderness as a Territory before coming in as a State without her women.' My mother wandered there for twelve years. Women trailed bleeding feet and lived on roots that those of to-day might reap bounteous harvests. Utah gave women the suffrage while still a Territory. Congress, in its not quite infinite wisdom, took it away after they had exercised it intelligently for seventeen years; but the first chance that the men of Utah had they gave it back."

Representative Allen was called on by Miss Anthony to "tell us how nice it seems to feel that your wife is as good as you are," and said in part: "Perhaps you have read what the real estate agents say about Utah--how they praise her sun and soil, her mountains and streams, and her precious metals. They tell you that she is filled with the basis of all material prosperity, with gold, silver, lead and iron: but greatness can not come from material resources alone--it must come from the people who till and delve. Utah is great because her people are great. When she has centuries behind her she will make a splendid showing because she has started right. She has given to that part of the people who instinctively know what is right, the power to influence the body politic.... This movement is destined to go on until it reaches every State in the Union."

Mrs. Allen and Mrs. Sarah A. Boyer told of the heroic efforts the women had made for themselves; and Mrs. Emily S. Richards, vice-president of the Territorial suffrage a.s.sociation, described in a graphic manner the systematic and persistent work of this organization. The tribute to its president, Mrs. Emmeline B. Wells, whose influence had been paramount in securing the franchise for the women of Utah, was heartily applauded and a telegram of congratulation was sent to her.[107]

The address of Mrs. Ella Knowles Haskell, a.s.sistant Attorney-General of Montana, on The Environments of Woman as Related to her Progress, attracted much attention. She had been the Populist candidate for Attorney-General and made a strong canva.s.s but went down to defeat with the rest of her party. Soon afterward she married her compet.i.tor, who appointed her his a.s.sistant. She reviewed the laws of past ages, showing how impossible it was then for women to rise above the conditions imposed upon them, and pointed out the wonderful progress they had made as soon as even partial freedom had been granted.

Mrs. Virginia D. Young (S. C.), taking as a subject The Sunflower Bloom of Woman's Equality, gave an address which in its quaint speech, dialect stories and attractive provincialisms captivated the audience.

The convention received an invitation from Mrs. John R. McLean for Monday afternoon to meet Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant on her seventieth birthday. The ladies were welcomed by their hostess and Mrs. Nellie Grant Sartoris, while Miss Anthony, who had attended the luncheon which preceded the reception, presented the ladies to Mrs. Grant.

Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery, corresponding secretary, devoted a portion of her report to an account of the visit made by the delegates of the a.s.sociation in response to an invitation from the Woman's Board of Congresses of the Atlanta Exposition, Oct. 17, 1895. The princ.i.p.al address on that occasion was made by Mrs. Helen Gardiner.

This convention was long remembered on account of the vigorous contest over what was known as the Bible Resolution. Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton recently had issued a commentary on the pa.s.sages of Scripture referring to women, which she called "The Woman's Bible." Although this was done in her individual capacity, yet some of the members claimed that, as she was honorary president of the National a.s.sociation, this body was held by the public as partly responsible for it and it injured their work for suffrage. A resolution was brought in by the committee declaring: "This a.s.sociation is non-sectarian, being composed of persons of all shades of religious opinion, and has no official connection with the so-called 'Woman's Bible' or any theological publication."

The debate was long and animated, but although there was intense feeling it was conducted in perfectly temperate and respectful language. Those partic.i.p.ating were Rachel Foster Avery, Katie R.

Addison, Henry B. Blackwell, Alice Stone Blackwell, Carrie Chapman Catt, Annie L. Diggs, Laura M. Johns, Helen Morris Lewis, Anna Howard Shaw, Frances A. Williamson and Elizabeth U. Yates speaking for the resolution; Lillie Devereux Blake, Clara B. Colby, Cornelia H. Cary, Lavina A. Hatch, Harriette A. Keyser, J. B. Merwin, Caroline Hallowell Miller, Althea B. Stryker, Charlotte Perkins Stetson, Mary Bentley Thomas and Victoria C. Whitney speaking against it.

Miss Anthony was thoroughly aroused and, leaving the chair, spoke against the resolution as follows:

The one distinct feature of our a.s.sociation has been the right of individual opinion for every member. We have been beset at each step with the cry that somebody was injuring the cause by the expression of sentiments which differed from those held by the majority. The religious persecution of the ages has been carried on under what was claimed to be the command of G.o.d. I distrust those people who know so well what G.o.d wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. All the way along the history of our movement there has been this same contest on account of religious theories. Forty years ago one of our n.o.blest men said to me: "You would better never hold another convention than allow Ernestine L. Rose on your platform;"

because that eloquent woman, who ever stood for justice and freedom, did not believe in the plenary inspiration of the Bible.

Did we banish Mrs. Rose? No, indeed!

Every new generation of converts threshes over the same old straw. The point is whether you will sit in judgment on one who questions the divine inspiration of certain pa.s.sages in the Bible derogatory to women. If Mrs. Stanton had written approvingly of these pa.s.sages you would not have brought in this resolution for fear the cause might be injured among the _liberals_ in religion.

In other words, if she had written _your_ views, you would not have considered a resolution necessary. To pa.s.s this one is to set back the hands on the dial of reform.

What you should say to outsiders is that a Christian has neither more nor less rights in our a.s.sociation than an atheist. When our platform becomes too narrow for people of all creeds and of no creeds, I myself can not stand upon it. Many things have been said and done by our _orthodox_ friends which I have felt to be extremely harmful to our cause; but I should no more consent to a resolution denouncing them than I shall consent to this. Who is to draw the line? Who can tell now whether these commentaries may not prove a great help to woman's emanc.i.p.ation from old superst.i.tions which have barred its way?

Lucretia Mott at first thought Mrs. Stanton had injured the cause of all woman's other rights by insisting upon the demand for suffrage, but she had sense enough not to bring in a resolution against it. In 1860 when Mrs. Stanton made a speech before the New York Legislature in favor of a bill making drunkenness a ground for divorce, there was a general cry among the friends that she had killed the woman's cause. I shall be pained beyond expression if the delegates here are so narrow and illiberal as to adopt this resolution. You would better not begin resolving against individual action or you will find no limit. This year it is Mrs. Stanton; next year it may be I or one of yourselves who will be the victim.

If we do not inspire in women a broad and catholic spirit, they will fail, when enfranchised, to const.i.tute that power for better government which we have always claimed for them. Ten women educated into the practice of liberal principles would be a stronger force than 10,000 organized on a platform of intolerance and bigotry. I pray you vote for religious liberty, without censorship or inquisition. This resolution adopted will be a vote of censure upon a woman who is without a peer in intellectual and statesmanlike ability; one who has stood for half a century the acknowledged leader of progressive thought and demand in regard to all matters pertaining to the absolute freedom of women.

Notwithstanding this eloquent appeal the original resolution was adopted by 53 yeas, 41 nays.[108]

At the request of about thirty of the delegates, mostly from the far Western States, Miss Anthony sent a message to Mrs. Cleveland asking that they might be permitted to call upon her, and she received them with much courtesy.

The a.s.sociation decided to help California and Idaho in whatever manner was desired in their approaching campaigns for a woman suffrage amendment. Invitations for holding the national convention were received from Springfield, Ill.; Denver, Col.; Cincinnati, O.; St.

Louis, Mo.; Portland, Ore.; Charleston, S. C. It was voted to leave the matter to the business committee, who later accepted an invitation from Des Moines, Ia., as the suffrage societies of that State were organizing to secure an amendment from the Legislature.

At the last meeting, on Tuesday evening, every inch of s.p.a.ce was occupied and people were clinging to the window sills. Miss Anthony stated that since Frederick Dougla.s.s was no longer among them as he had been for so many years, his grandson, Joseph Dougla.s.s, who was an accomplished violinist, would give two selections in his memory.

Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.), spoke on Presidential Candidates and the Interests of Women, outlining the att.i.tude of the various nominees and parties. Miss Harriet May Mills (N. Y.) discussed Our Unconscious Allies, the Remonstrants, ill.u.s.trating from her experience as organizer how their efforts really help the cause they try to hinder. Mrs. Emma Smith DeVoe (Ills.), in demonstrating that The Liberty of the Mother means the Liberty of the Race, showed the need of truer companionship between man and woman and that the political disabilities of women affect all humanity. This was further ill.u.s.trated by Mrs. Annie L. Diggs (Kas.) under the topic Women as Legislators. She said in part:

You have before you a great problem as to whether republican government itself is to be successful at this time, and statesmen to save their souls can not tell what will be the outcome. We believe that women have in their possession what is needed to make it a success--those things upon which are built the home life and the ethical life of the nation. We can supply what is lacking, not because women are better than men, but because they are other than men; because they have a supplementary part, and it is their mission to guard most sacredly and closely those things which protect the home life. Because of their womanhood, because of their divine function of motherhood, women must always be most closely concerned with the matters that pertain to the home. It belongs to man, with his strong right arm, to pioneer the way, and then woman comes along to help him build the enduring foundation upon which everything rests.

Miss Shaw, in a short, good-naturedly sarcastic speech on The Bulwarks of the Const.i.tution, showed the illogical position of President Eliot of Harvard in declaiming grand sentiments in favor of universal suffrage and then protesting against having them applied to women. The last number on the program was The Ballot as an Improver of Motherhood, by Mrs. Stetson. It was an address of wonderful power which thrilled the audience. Among other original statements were these:

We have heard much of the superior moral sense of woman. It is superior in spots but not as a whole.... Here is an imaginary case which will show how undeveloped in some respects woman's moral sense still is: Suppose a train was coming with a children's picnic on board--three hundred merry, laughing children. Suppose you saw this train was about to go through an open switch and over an embankment, and your own child was playing on the track in front of it. You could turn the switch and save the train, or save your own child by pulling it off the track, but there was not time to do both. Which would you do? I have put that question to hundreds of women. I never have found one but said she would save her own child, and not one in a hundred but claimed this would be absolutely right. The maternal instinct is stronger in the hearts of most women than any moral sense....

What is the suffrage going to do for motherhood? Women enter upon this greatest function of life without any preparation, and their mothers permit them to do it because they do not recognize motherhood as a business. We do not let a man practice as a doctor or a druggist, or do anything else which involves issues of life and death, without training and certificates; but the life and death of the whole human race are placed in the hands of utterly untrained young girls. The suffrage draws the woman out of her purely personal relations and puts her in relations with her kind, and it broadens her intelligence. I am not disparaging the n.o.ble devotion of our present mothers--I know how they struggle and toil--but when that tremendous force of mother love is made intelligent, fifty per cent of our children will not die before they are five years old, and those that grow up will be better men and women. A woman will no longer be attached solely to one little group, but will be also a member of the community.

She will not neglect her own on that account, but will be better to them and of more worth as a mother.

Mrs. Stetson closed with her own fine poem, Mother to Child.

The usual congressional hearings were held on Tuesday morning, January 28.[109] The speakers were presented by Miss Shaw, who made a very strong closing argument. At its conclusion Senator Peffer announced his thorough belief in woman suffrage, and Senator h.o.a.r planted himself still more firmly in the favorable position he always had maintained.[110]

Miss Anthony led the host before the Judiciary Committee of the House, and opened with the statement that the women had been coming here asking for justice for nearly thirty years. She gave a brief account of the status of the question before Congress and then presented her speakers, each occupying the exact limit of time allotted and each taking up a different phase of the question.[111] Miss Anthony called on Representative John F. Shafroth of Colorado, who was among the listeners, to say something in regard to the experiment in his State.

He spoke in unqualified approval, saying: "In the election of 1894 a greater per cent. of women voted than men, and instead of their being contaminated by any influence of a bad nature at the polls, the effect has been that there are no loafers, there are no drunkards, there are no persons of questionable character standing around the polls. One of the practical effects of woman suffrage will be to inject into politics an element that is independent and does not have to keep a consistent record with the party. We find that the ladies of Colorado do not care whether they vote for one ticket or the other, but they vote for the men they think the most deserving. Consequently if a man is nominated who has a questionable record invariably they will strike the party that does it. That tendency, I care not where it may exist, must be for good."

Miss Anthony closed with an earnest appeal that the committee would report in favor of a Sixteenth Amendment to the Const.i.tution, thus enabling the women to carry their case to the Legislatures of the different States instead of to the ma.s.ses of voters. She then submitted for publication and distribution the address of Mrs.

Stanton, which said in part:

There is not a principle of our Government, not an article or section of our Const.i.tution, from the preamble to the last amendment, which we have not elucidated and applied to woman suffrage before the various committees in able arguments that have never been answered. Our failure to secure justice thus far has not been due to any lack of character or ability in our advocates or of strength in their propositions, but to the popular prejudices against woman's emanc.i.p.ation. Eloquent, logical arguments on any question, though based on justice, science, morals and religion, are all as light as air in the balance with old theories, creeds, codes and customs.

Could we resurrect from the archives of this Capitol all the pet.i.tions and speeches presented here by women for human freedom during this century, they would reach above this dome and make a more fitting pedestal for the G.o.ddess of Liberty than the crowning point of an edifice beneath which the mother of the race has so long pleaded in vain for her natural right of self-government--a right her sons should have secured to her long ago of their own free will by statutes carved indelibly on the corner-stones of the Republic.

As arguments have thus far proved unavailing, may not appeals to your feelings, to your moral sense, find the response so long withheld by your reason? Allow me, honorable gentlemen, to paint you a picture and bring within the compa.s.s of your vision at once the comparative position of two cla.s.ses of citizens: The central object is a ballot box guarded by three inspectors of foreign birth. On the right is a mult.i.tude of coa.r.s.e, ignorant beings, designated in our const.i.tutions as male citizens--many of them fresh from the steerage of incoming steamers. There, too, are natives of the same type from the slums of our cities. Policemen are respectfully guiding them all to the ballot box. Those who can not stand, because of their frequent potations, are carefully supported on either side, each in turn depositing his vote, for what purpose he neither knows nor cares, except to get the promised bribe.