The History of Woman Suffrage Volume IV Part 54

Mrs. Howe, responding to the welcome of the citizens, said some one had spoken of woman suffrage as a hobby; she questioned whether the opposition to suffrage was not the hobby and suffrage the horse. The discussion of these great questions was doing much to make the women of the country one in feeling, and to do away with sectional prejudices. A most cordial hearing was given to the Woman's Congress lately held at Louisville, Ky., and especially to the woman suffrage symposium which occupied one evening. Mrs. Howe spoke of the wonderful, providential history of Kansas, and the way in which a new and unexpected chapter of the country's history opened out from the experience of the young Territory. She remembered when the name of Kansas was the word which set men's blood at the East tingling. She continued:

You men of Kansas, you who have been bought with a price, n.o.ble men have worked and suffered and died that you might be free. For you Charles Sumner fell in the Senate of the United States. He fell to rise again, but others fell for whom there was no rising.

Having received this great gift of freedom, pray you go on to make it perfect. You may think that you have a free State, well founded and stable, and that it will stand; but remember that the State, like the Church, is not a structure to be built and set up but a living organism to grow and move. Its life is progress and freedom. Do not think that you can stay this great tide of progress by saying, "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." No such limitation is possible. That tide will oversweep every obstacle set in its way.

Why, men of Kansas, having been so n.o.bly endowed at the beginning, have you let the younger children in the nursery of our dear mother country learn lessons that you have not learned?

Are the women of Wyoming and Washington better than your women, and do the men of those Territories love their women better than you love yours? You will say "no," with indignation; but remember that love is shown in deeds far more than in words. Until you make your women free I must hold that you do not love them as well as those do who have given their mothers and sisters the gift of political enfranchis.e.m.e.nt. This place is the temple of your liberties; here, if anywhere, should be spoken the words of wisdom and be enacted just and equal laws. However grand the words may be which have been spoken here, may they become grander and better and deeper, until to all your other glories shall be added that of having set the crown of freedom upon the heads of the women of your State!

Only a few gleanings from the many speeches can be given. Professor W.

H. Carruth, of the Kansas State University, said in part:

We are likely to meet some good-natured person who will say: "Why, yes, I am in favor of woman suffrage, but I don't see that there is any need of it here in Kansas. If I were in Rhode Island or Connecticut, where there are so many laws unjust to women, I would pet.i.tion and work for it; but I don't see that it is worth while to make a fuss about it here." Now, what can be said to such a person? Weapons are both defensive and aggressive. The ballot has both uses. What would a herdsman say if you told him his sheepfold was all that was needed, and refused to give him a gun? What would the farmer say if you gave him a cultivator but no plough? What would Christianity be if it had only the Ten Commandments and not the Golden Rule?

He who thinks the ballot is given simply as a means of protection--protection in a limited sense, against fraud and violence--has but a limited conception of the duties of American citizenship. The old let-alone theory of government has been found a failure, and instead of it people are coming to think that government is good to do anything that it can do best--just as they have already learned that it is proper for woman to do anything that she can do well. In a word, as Mrs. Howe said the other evening, the ballot is a means of getting things done which we want done.

When your good friend with a kind and prosperous husband, a pleasant home and nothing lacking which better laws could secure for her, says she thinks women are already pretty well treated and she doesn't know that she would care for the ballot, ask her how she would feel if she were a teacher and were expected to work beside a man, equal work and equal time, he to get $60 and she $40 a month? Ask her whether she would not want to have a vote then? Isn't this a case, kind mistress of a home, where you should remember those in bonds as bound with them? I very much fear there never will be a time when all the good people in this world can dispense with any effective weapon against wrong.

And, beyond this, there are all the offensive, aggressive uses of the ballot. We want a sewer here, a bridge there, a lamp-post or a hydrant yonder. A woman's nose will scent a defective drain where ten men pa.s.s it by, but votes get these things looked after. We want a new schoolhouse, or more brains or more fresh air in an old one. Don't you know that women will attend to such needs sooner than men?

Mr. Foulke said in part:

It is said that woman suffragists are dreamers. There was a time within our memory when human flesh in this our free America was sold at auction. In those days a few earnest men dreamed of a time when our flag should no longer unfurl itself over a slave.

Inspired by this great vision they bore the persecution and contumely of their fellows. In season and out of season they preached their glorious gospel of immediate and unconditional emanc.i.p.ation. Wild visionaries they, incendiaries whose very writings, like the heresies of old, must be consigned to the flames; impracticable enthusiasts, seditious citizens. But lo!

the flame of war pa.s.sed over us and their dream is true; and in the clearer light which shines upon us to-day, we can hardly realize that this great blot upon our civilization could have existed, the time seems so far away.

And we of America, we who have reached the summit of the prophecies of centuries past, we dream of new and loftier mountains in the distance. We who have realized in our political inst.i.tutions a universal equality of men before the law, find that we have only reached the foothills of the greater range beyond. There are men in our midst who are dreaming to-day of a time when mere political equality shall be based upon that broader social and economic equality which is so necessary to maintain it. They dream of a time when each man's reward shall be proportioned to his own exertions and his own desert, and nothing at all shall be due to the accident of birth; dream of a time when bitter, grinding poverty, save as a punishment for idleness, shall no longer exist in a world so full of the bounty of heaven.

Is it wilder than the dream of him who, under the despotism of the Bourbons, could dream of a great people whose birth should be heralded by the cry that all men are created equal? Is it wilder than the dream of him who, oppressed by the tyranny of Alva, could dream of a day of perfect religious toleration? Men talk with contemptuous pity of the dreamer. But he rather is the object of pity who bars the windows and draws the curtains of his soul to shut out the light of heaven that would smile in upon him. Let us rather pity the man who fears to utter the divine thought which fills him. Let us pity rather that man or that nation which lives in the complacent consciousness of its own virtue and blessedness, and dreams of no higher good than it possesses. He that has a dream of something better than he sees around him, let him tell it though the world smile. He that has a prophecy to utter, let him speak, though men account it his folly as much as they will. G.o.d bless the dreamers of all just and perfect dreams! The great wheel of the ages with ever-increasing motion is sure to roll out their accomplishment.

The Rev. Louis A. Banks, lately of Washington Territory, spoke of woman suffrage there. He said:

The first fact proved by experience is that women do vote. Before the law was enacted, the old objection used to meet us on every hand, "The women do not want to vote"--as though that, if true, were a valid reason. They ought to want to. It is my business to urge men to repent, and I have never supposed it a reason to cease preaching to them because they did not want to repent; they ought to want to. But our experience has proved that women do want to vote. It was universally conceded that in our first general Territorial election fully as many women voted in proportion to their numbers as men....

Woman's influence as a citizen has been of equal value in the jury-box. Experience shows that she is peculiarly fitted for that duty. Woe to the gambler who enriches himself by the folly or innocence of the ignorant, and the rum-seller who lures boys into his backroom! Woe to the human vultures who prey upon young lives, when they fall into the hands of a jury of mothers!...

You who have not hitherto been woman suffragists, why not espouse this cause now, when it is in the full flush of its heroic struggle? When John Adams went courting Abigail Smith, her proud father said to her: "Who is this young Adams? Where did he come from?" Abigail answered: "I do not know where he came from and I do not care, but I know where he is going and I am going with him." Ladies and gentlemen, you know where we are going; we invite your company for the journey.

State Senator R. W. Blue said: "One of the greatest questions of the day is how to counteract the influence of the vicious vote cast every year in the large cities. I believe the only way to do that is to enfranchise the women." He added that he had worked for the Munic.i.p.al Suffrage Bill in the preceding Legislature, and should do so in the next. President Foulke complimented him on his bold and outspoken remarks, and said he thought a man in politics never lost anything by telling the people exactly where he stood on vital issues.[141]

James G. Clark, a.s.sociate editor of the Minneapolis _Spectator_, was a delegate, and delighted the audience with his equal rights songs. A letter was received from Dr. Mary F. Thomas and, by a rising vote of the convention, it was decided to send her a telegram of greeting and congratulations on her seventieth birthday.

Letters were read from Chief-Justice Greene of Washington Territory, and from Mrs. Margaret Bright Lucas of England, sister of John and Jacob Bright; also telegrams from the Minnesota W. S. A., from Major and Mrs. Pickler of South Dakota, and from others, and reports from the different State societies.

Chancellor J. A. Lippincott, of the State University, invited the a.s.sociation to visit that inst.i.tution, and Mrs. Howe and Mrs. Stone to address the students. Mrs. Stone wrote in the _Woman's Journal_: "It was worth the journey to receive the warm welcome which greeted us on every hand, and still more to see the progress the cause has made in the nineteen years that have pa.s.sed since the first suffrage campaign in Kansas. It would not be surprising if Munic.i.p.al Suffrage should be secured in this State at the next session of the Legislature.[142] The very air was full of suffrage, even in the midst of the political contest."

_1887._--The Nineteenth annual meeting was held in a.s.sociation Hall, Philadelphia, October 31, November 1, 2. The platform had been beautifully decorated with tropical plants and foliage by Miss Elizabeth B. Justice and other Pennsylvania friends. The weather was fine, the audience sympathetic and the speaking excellent.

State Senator A. D. Harlan gave the address of welcome in behalf of the Pennsylvania W. S. A. President Wm. Dudley Foulke in responding paid a tribute to the Senator's good service in the Legislature in behalf of a const.i.tutional amendment for equal suffrage. A letter of welcome was read from the venerable and beloved president of the a.s.sociation, Miss Mary Grew, who was kept away by illness. Col. T. W.

Higginson said:

I have the sensations of a Revolutionary veteran, almost, in coming back to Philadelphia and remembering our early suffrage meetings here in that time of storm, in contrasting the audiences of to-day with the audiences of that day, and in thinking what are the difficulties that come before us now as compared with those of our youth. The audiences have changed, the atmosphere of the community has changed; nothing but the cause remains the same, and that remains because it is a part of the necessary evolution of democratic society and is an immortal thing.

I recall those early audiences; the rows of quiet faces in Quaker bonnets in the foreground; the rows of exceedingly unquiet figures of Southern medical students, with their hats on, in the background. I recall the visible purpose of those energetic young gentlemen to hear n.o.body but the women, and the calm determination with which their bootheels contributed to put the male speakers down. I recall also their too-a.s.siduous attentions in the streets outside when the meeting broke up....

Woman suffrage should be urged, in my opinion, not from any predictions of what women will do with their votes after they get them, but on the ground that by all the traditions of our government, by all the precepts of its early founders, by all the axioms which lie at the foundation of our political principles, woman needs the ballot for self-respect and self-protection.

The woman of old times who did not read books of political economy or attend public meetings, could retain her self-respect; but the woman of modern times, with every step she takes in the higher education, finds it harder to retain that self-respect while she is in a republican government and yet not a member of it. She can study all the books that I saw collected this morning in the political economy alcove of the Bryn Mawr College; she can master them all; she can know more about them perhaps than any man of her acquaintance; and yet to put one thing she has learned there in practice by the simple process of dropping a piece of paper into a ballot-box--she can no more do that than she could put out her slender finger and stop the planet in its course.

That is what I mean by woman's needing the suffrage for self-respect.

Then as to self-protection. We know there have been great improvements in the laws in regard to women. What brought about those improvements? The steady labor of women like these on this platform, going before Legislatures year by year and asking for something they were not willing to give, the ballot; but, as a result of it, to keep the poor creatures quiet, some law was pa.s.sed removing a restriction. The old English writer Pepys, according to his diary, after spending a good deal of money for himself finds a little left and buys his wife a new gown, because, he says, "It is fit that the poor wretch should have something to content her." I have seen many laws pa.s.sed for the advantage of women and they were generally pa.s.sed on that principle.

I remember going before the Rhode Island Legislature once with Lucy Stone and she unrolled with her peculiar persuasive power the wrong laws which existed in that commonwealth in regard to women. After the hearing was over the chairman of that committee, a judge who had served on it for years, said to her: "Mrs. Stone, all that you have stated this morning is true, and I am ashamed to think that I, who have been chairman for years of this judiciary committee, should have known in my secret heart that it was all true and should have done nothing to set these wrongs right until I was reminded of them by a woman." Again and again I have seen that experience. Women with bleeding feet, women with exhausted voices, women with wornout lives, have lavished their strength to secure ordinary justice in the form of laws which a single woman inside the State House, armed with the position of member of the Legislature and representing a s.e.x who had votes, could have had righted within two years. Every man knows the weakness of a disfranchised cla.s.s of men. The whole race of women is disfranchised, and they suffer in the same way.

Among the other speakers were the Rev. Charles G. Ames, Henry B.

Blackwell, the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Dr. Thomas, Mrs.

Campbell, Mrs. Mary E. Haggart, Mrs. Frances E. W. Harper, the Rev. S.

S. Hunting, Miss Cora Scott Pond, the Rev. Ada C. Bowles and Mrs.

Adelaide A. Claflin.

The chairman of the executive committee, Mrs. Lucy Stone, in her annual report, reviewed the year's activities and continued:

But the chief work of the American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation during the past year has been to obtain wide access to the public through the newspapers. Early in the year correspondence was opened with most of the papers in the United States. The editors were asked whether they would publish suffrage literature if it were sent them every week without charge. More than a thousand answered that they would use what we sent, in whole or in part.

Accepting this the a.s.sociation has, for the last eight months, furnished 1,000 weekly papers with a suffrage column. The cost of it consumes nearly the whole interest of the Eddy Fund, besides much time and strength gratuitously given. But as these papers come to us week by week containing the suffrage items and articles which through their columns reach millions of readers, we feel that no better use could be made of money or time.

The Revs. Anna H. Shaw and Ada C. Bowles were chosen national lecturers. Among the resolutions were the following:

We congratulate the Legislature of Kansas upon its honorable record in extending Munic.i.p.al Suffrage last February to the women of that State, and the 26,000 women of Kansas by whose aid, last April, reformed city governments were elected in every munic.i.p.ality; we hail the National W. C. T. U. as an efficient ally of the woman suffrage movement; we recognize the woman suffrage resolutions of the Knights of Labor, the Land and Labor organizations, the Third Party Prohibitionists and other political parties, as evidence of a growing public sentiment in favor of the equal rights of women; we rejoice that two-thirds of the Northern Senators in the Congress of the United States voted last winter for a Sixteenth Const.i.tutional Amendment prohibiting political distinctions on account of s.e.x; we observe an increasing friendliness in the att.i.tude of press and pulpit and the fact that 1,000 newspapers now publish a weekly column in the interests of woman suffrage; we are encouraged by more general discussions and more favorable votes of State Legislatures than ever before--all indicating a sure and steady progress toward the complete enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women.

WHEREAS, The woman suffragists of the United States were all united until 1868 in the American Equal Rights a.s.sociation; and

WHEREAS, The causes of the subsequent separation into the National and the American Woman Suffrage Societies have since been largely removed by the adoption of common principles and methods, therefore,

_Resolved_, That Mrs. Lucy Stone be appointed a committee of one from the American W. S. A. to confer with Miss Susan B. Anthony, of the National W. S. A., and if on conference it seems desirable, that she be authorized and empowered to appoint a committee of this a.s.sociation to meet a similar committee appointed by the National W. S. A., to consider a satisfactory basis of union, and refer it back to the executive committees of both a.s.sociations for final action.

A pleasant incident of the convention was the presentation to the audience of Mrs. E. R. Hunter, of Wichita, Kan., a real voter. Letters of greeting were read from Miss Matilda Hindman of Pennsylvania, Senator M. B. Castle of Illinois, Mrs. Mary B. Clay of Kentucky, and Judge Stanton J. Peelle of Indiana. Mrs. Stone, the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell and Mrs. Mary A. Livermore were elected delegates to the International Council of Women to be held in Washington, D. C., in 1888, with Dr. Mary F. Thomas, Miss Mary Grew and Mrs. Hannah M. Tracy Cutler as alternates.

After Mrs. Howe's address on the last evening, The Battle Hymn of the Republic was sung standing, the great a.s.sembly joining in the chorus.

The officers had the pleasure of visiting Bryn Mawr College, by invitation of Dean M. Carey Thomas, during the convention.

In December of this year, a Suffrage Bazar was held in Boston for the joint benefit of the American W. S. A. and of the State suffrage a.s.sociations that partic.i.p.ated,[143] which was a success both socially and financially. The _Woman's Journal_ of December 17 said:

Music Hall is a wonderful sight; the green and gold banner of Kansas occupies the place of honor in the middle of the platform, flanked on the left by the great crimson banner of Michigan with its motto "Neither delay nor rest," and on the right by the blue flag of Maine, decorated with a pine branch and cones. The bronze statue of Beethoven which has looked calmly down upon so many different a.s.semblages in Music Hall, gazes meditatively at the Kansas table, with a large yellow sunflower which surmounts the Kansas banner blazing like a great star at his very feet. Next comes the banner of Vermont, rich and beautiful, though smaller than the rest, in two shades of blue, with the seal of the State in the center surrounded by wild roses and bearing the motto "Freedom and Unity." At the extreme right of the platform hangs the banner of Pennsylvania, yellow, with heavy crimson fringe and the motto "Taxation _with_ Representation." On the other side of Michigan is a large portrait of Wendell Phillips, sent by friends in Minnesota. At the left are the _Woman's Journal_ exhibit, press headquarters and a display of exquisite blankets made at the Lamoille mills and contributed to the Vermont exhibit by the manufacturer, Mrs. M. G. Minot.

All down the hall on both sides and across the middle hang the many banners of the Ma.s.sachusetts local leagues, of all sizes and colors and with every variety of motto and device. At the extreme end hangs the white banner of the State a.s.sociation.

This handsome banner, bearing the motto, "Male and female created He them, and gave _them_ dominion," was presented to the a.s.sociation by Miss Cora Scott Pond and the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, to whose energetic work the success of the bazar was largely due.

Mrs. Livermore, the president of the bazar, made the opening address on the first evening. Floor and gallery were filled and scores of yellow-ribboned delegates threaded their way through the smiling crowd. Mrs. Howe followed, saying in part:

Addresses this evening are something like grace before meat; they are expected to be short and sweet. The grace is a good thing because it reminds us that we do not live by bread alone but by all the divine words with which the Creator has filled the universe. The most divine word of all is justice, and in that sacred name we are met to-night. In her name we set up our tents and spread our banners....