The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony Volume II Part 23

A contemporary called the paper down as follows: "When it is remembered that Susan B. Anthony was one of the originators of the movement, that Lucy Stone and Mrs. Greenleaf and a host of others who have marched right along in the suffrage ranks from the beginning, were also the leaders in this 'low-voiced' a.s.sembly who came on tip-toe and acted in pantomime, the compliment, to say the least, has negative qualities." An interview on this statement contains the following paragraph:

"It simply shows," said Miss Anthony, smiling, "how differently the question is regarded now. Among the women who were pioneers in the movement were Elizabeth Cady Stanton and myself. I don't think it probable that we are any sweeter-faced or that our voices are any more melodious than they were thirty years ago. It is only that the whole matter was regarded with such horror and aversion then that any one connected with it was looked upon in a disagreeable light; it is very different now." Her pleasant face, with a suggestion of her Quaker descent in its soft bands of gray hair, took on a gently reminiscent expression, which her visitor could not help but contrast amusedly with the imaginary portrait of the redoubtable Amazon that in her early years was conjured up by the sound of Susan B. Anthony's name.

Thanksgiving Day she attended service at the Universalist church and comments in her diary: "Mr. Morrill, the a.s.sociate pastor, spoke on 'The undiscovered Church without a Bishop;' Mr. Gannett, 'The undiscovered State without a King;' Mr. Lansberg, 'Many States in One;'

all good, but all alike gave not the faintest hint of any undiscovered America, where the male head of the family should not be considered 'divinely appointed.' I had hard work to keep my peace."

The next day she went to Buffalo to address the alumnae of the ladies'

academy, and was entertained by Miss Charlotte Mulligan, founder of the missionary school for boys. During this time she was investigating the new law permitting women to vote for county school commissioners in New York, and found to her disgust that by the use of the words "county clerk" instead merely of "clerk who prints and distributes the ballots,"

all the women of the large towns and cities were still disfranchised; just as the law of 1880 had used the words "school meeting," which also cut off the women of the cities. This was another ill.u.s.tration of the manner in which every step of the way to suffrage for women has been made as difficult as possible.

In December Miss Anthony became an office-holder! It happened in this way: Her neighbor, Dr. Jonas Jones, who had been one of the trustees of the State Industrial School located at Rochester, died on the 4th. She immediately wrote to Governor Roswell P. Flower requesting that a woman be put on the board in his place, in addition to the one already serving (Mrs. Emil Kuichling), and suggested Mrs. Lansberg, wife of the rabbi; at the same time she asked Mary Seymour Howell, who resided in Albany, to see the governor and use her influence. She did so and found he was quite willing to appoint a woman but would not consider any but Miss Anthony. She, however, was away from home so much she thought that in justice to the inst.i.tution she ought not take the position; but when she learned that her refusal might result in a man's being given the place, she telegraphed her willingness to accept. She was appointed at once to fill out the unexpired term of Dr. Jones, and May 4, 1893, was re-appointed by Governor Levi P. Morton for a full term. Of course numerous letters and telegrams of congratulation were received and the newspapers contained many kind notices, similar in tone to this from the Democrat and Chronicle:

It is a good appointment; a fitting recognition of one of the ablest and best women in the commonwealth. There has been a vast amount of cheap wit expended upon Miss Anthony during the past years, and although it has been almost entirely good-natured it has served to give a wrong impression to the unthinking of one of the clearest-headed and most unselfish women ever identified with a public movement.... Speaking of her appointment she said: "You see I have been regarded as a hoofed and horned creature for so long that even a little thing touches my heart, and when it comes to being recognized as an American citizen after fighting forty years to prove my citizenship, it begins to look as if we women have not fought in vain." ... A braver-hearted woman than Susan B. Anthony never lived, but those who can read between the lines of her remark will not miss the little touch of pathos in her pride, and the hint of the disappointments which have hurt in the long struggle.

A new charter for the city of Rochester had been prepared and a ma.s.s meeting of citizens was announced for December 12, to hear an exposition of its points. The morning paper said: "By far the most largely attended meeting the Chamber of Commerce has ever held was that of last evening.

The large attendance was due to the announcement that the new charter would be discussed by Miss Susan B. Anthony, and the interest of the meeting was largely due to the fact that, true to her colors, she kept her engagement...." Miss Anthony's commission had been received from the governor that day, which fact was announced by President Brickner as he introduced her, and she was greeted with cheers. In the course of her speech she said:

Since promising to address this body, I have tried in vain to find some word which would settle the question with every member present in favor of so amending the charter as to give our women equal voice in conducting the affairs of the city. It seems such a self-evident thing that the mother's opinion should be weighed and measured in the political scales as well as that of her son. It is so simple and just that the wife's judgment should be respected and counted as well as the husband's. And who can give the reason why the sister's opinion should be ignored and the brother's honored?... Over 5,000 women of this city pay taxes on real estate, and who shall say they are not as much interested in every question of financial expenditure as any 5,000 men; in the public parks, street railways, grade crossings, pavements, bridges, etc.?

And not only the 5,000 tax-paying women, but all the women of the city are equally interested in the sanitary condition of our streets, alleys, schools, police stations, jails and asylums....

To repair the damages of society seems to be the mission a.s.signed to women, and we ask that the necessary implements shall be placed in their hands. But, you say, women can be appointed to see to these matters without voting. Yes, but they are not; and if they were, without the ballot they would be powerless to effect the improvements they might find necessary. If the women of this city had the right to vote, those on the board of charities, for instance, would not be compelled year after year to beg each member of every new council for the appointment of some women as city physicians, as scores of them have done for the past six or eight years. Had we the right to vote, do you suppose we should have to plead in vain before the two parties to place women in nomination for the school board?

I want this amendment of the charter first, because it is right and just to women; second, that women may have a political fulcrum on which to plant their lever for everything they wish to secure through government; third, that the opinions of the women of this city may be respected, and there is no other way to secure respect but to have them counted with those of men in the ballot-box on every possible question which is carried to that tribunal; and fourth, to free the mothers from the cruel taunt of being responsible for the character of their grown-up sons while denied all power to control the conditions surrounding them after they pa.s.s beyond the dooryards of their homes.

She continued by showing the good effects of woman's munic.i.p.al suffrage in England, Canada and also in Kansas, and full suffrage in Wyoming; and closed with an earnest appeal for an amendment to the new charter which should confer the munic.i.p.al franchise upon women. A few days later the board of trustees took final action on the charter, of which the Democrat and Chronicle said: "The amendment proposed by Miss Susan B.

Anthony extending the suffrage to women was defeated, although by a close vote. Had there been a full meeting of the board it is a question whether it would not have been adopted, as several of the members who were not present last evening had expressed themselves as favorable."[78]

Miss Anthony addressed the Monroe County Teachers' Inst.i.tute at Brighton, December 16. The diary records many visits to the Industrial School, conferences with the other fourteen trustees and much correspondence with the boards of similar inst.i.tutions elsewhere. In her mail this year were letters from most of the civilized countries on the globe, among them several from the leaders of the movement in New Zealand, saying that her name was more familiar than all others there, and asking for advice and encouragement in their work of securing the ballot for women.[79] The following was received from Mrs. Kate Beckwith Lee, Dowagiac, Mich.: "Mr. Bonet, our sculptor, obtained your photograph, and we now have your grand face looking down in stone from the front of our theater, which was erected as an educator to our people and a memorial to my father, P. D. Beckwith, who was liberal toward all mankind and a believer in woman's equality, and I sincerely hope you may some time see the building." The other women sculptured on this handsome edifice are George Eliot, George Sand, Rachel, Mary Anderson and Sarah Bernhardt. Among the great ma.s.s of correspondence, this is selected:

An incident which is of no particular consequence to this inquiry, constrains me to write in the hope that you may find time to place upon paper your recollection of the connection that my father (the late George H. Thacher, then mayor of the city of Albany) had with your anti-slavery meeting in this city just before the war. I was too young to have it make a vivid impression upon me, but it has sometimes been said that was the first opportunity your organization had to freely express its views within the State of New York. I will be very grateful if you will permit your memory to go back some thirty years and recall that incident.[80] Yours,

JOHN BOYD THACHER.

This ill.u.s.trates the pride which the children of the future will have in showing that their parents or grandparents rendered some a.s.sistance to the cause of woman and of freedom. Yet Mr. Thacher, who, as a member of the New York Board of General Managers of the Columbian Exposition, had the selection of those who should compose the Woman's Board of the State, did not name one who had been identified with the great movement for equal rights during the past forty years, and had made it possible for women to partic.i.p.ate in this celebration.

A case which had been commenced in the courts of New York in 1891 and had run along through several years, may as well be described here as elsewhere. Miss Anthony had but an indirect connection with it and it is mentioned more for its utter ridiculousness than for any other reason. A woman's art a.s.sociation in New York City, Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson, president, Miss Alice Donlevy, secretary, had the promise of a legacy to build an academy, and they decided to place a statue or bust at each side of the entrance, representing Reform and Philanthropy. Miss Anthony was selected for the one and Mrs. Mary Hamilton Schuyler for the other.

The latter, in 1852, founded the New York School of Design for Women, had been the friend and patron of art, and for many years before her death had been noted for her philanthropic work.

A serious difficulty at once arose in the opposition of Mrs. Schuyler's nephew and stepson, Philip Schuyler, who objected to the "disagreeable notoriety." He carried the matter into the courts, which of course attracted the comment of all the newspapers of the country, pro and con, and caused more "disagreeable notoriety" than a dozen statues would have done. He obtained a preliminary injunction against the art a.s.sociation and then took the case to the supreme court for a permanent injunction, on the ground that the "right of privacy" had been violated. The real secret of his objections, however, was exposed in his complaint before the supreme court. Among the twenty-eight grievances alleged were the following:

Twenty-second.--The said Mary M. Hamilton Schuyler took no part whatever in any of the various so-called woman's rights agitations, with which the aforesaid Susan B. Anthony was, and is, prominently identified; and that she took no interest in such agitations or movements, and had no sympathy whatever with them; and that, as the plaintiff believes, she would have resented any attempt such as is made by the defendants to couple her name with that of the said Susan B. Anthony.

Twenty-third.--The acts of the defendants in attempting to raise money by public subscription for a statue of the said Mary M.

Hamilton Schuyler; in a.s.sociating her name with the name of Susan B. Anthony, and in announcing that the projected statue of her is to be placed on public exhibition at the Columbian Exposition as a companion piece to a statue of the said Susan B. Anthony, const.i.tute, and are an unlawful interference with the right of privacy, and a gross and unwarranted outrage upon the memory of the said Mary M. Hamilton Schuyler, under the specious pretense of doing honor to her memory; and that the surviving members of her family have been, and are, greatly distressed and injured thereby.

The supreme court continued the injunction, and the art a.s.sociation then carried the case up to the court of appeals. Here the decision of the lower court was reversed. The opinion was rendered by Justice Rufus W.

Peckham, afterwards appointed by President Cleveland to the Supreme Bench of the United States. It is not often that a judge of the highest court in the State incorporates in a legal decision a compliment to a woman, and for this reason the tribute of Justice Peckham is the more highly appreciated. After holding that "persons attempting to erect a statue or bust of a woman no longer living, if their motive is to do honor to her, and if the work is to be done in an appropriate manner, can not be restrained by her surviving relatives," he continued:

Many may, and probably do, totally disagree with the advanced views of Miss Anthony in regard to the proper sphere of women, and yet it is impossible to deny to her the possession of many of the enn.o.bling qualities which tend to the making of great lives. She has given the most unselfish devotion of a long life to what she has considered would tend most for the benefit and practical improvement of her s.e.x, and she has thus lived almost literally in the face of the whole world, and during that period there has never been a single shadow of any dark or ugly fact connected with her or her way of life to dim the l.u.s.tre of her achievements and of her efforts.

FOOTNOTES:

[73] In the center of the Anthony lot, not far from the main gateway, is a square monument of Medina granite, the four sides of its cap-stone inscribed Liberty, Justice, Fraternity, Equality.

[74] At the convention of Republican clubs a few days previous, Senator Ingalls, having been defeated for re-election to the Senate and feeling somewhat humbled, said in his speech: "I believe every man ought to be a politician; I might say every woman also. If a plank endorsing woman suffrage were inserted in the Republican platform, I would stand upon it." Ten years before, in this same city, he had declared it to be "that obscene dogma, whose advocates are long-haired men and short-haired women, the uns.e.xed of both s.e.xes, human capons and epicenes."

[75] Henry B. Blackwell delivered the address at Chautauqua. At its close he asked all who were opposed to woman suffrage to rise, and about twenty persons stood up. He then asked all who were in favor to stand, and the great audience, filling the huge amphitheater, rose in a body.

[76] When she spoke in the New York State Teachers' Convention in 1853, the first time a woman's voice had been heard in that body, Professor Farnham, then superintendent of the Syracuse public schools, was one of the three men who came up and congratulated her.

[77] While here Miss Anthony received a telegram: "Greeting, grat.i.tude and good-by to the n.o.blest Roman of them all and her brave host, from Isabel Somerset and Frances E. Willard." They had expected to stop in Rochester and visit her before leaving for England, but had gone to New York by another route.

[78] Jean Brooks Greenleaf, at this time in Washington with her husband, wrote Miss Anthony:

"I felt heart-sick when I learned the result of the charter business and I am not over it yet. I told Mr. Greenleaf I would dispose of every bit of taxable property I have in Rochester. I can not bear to think that, with so glorious an opportunity to be just, men prefer to be so unjust.

They can help it if they will, those men who speak us so fair. If they would make one solid stand for our rights they could overrule the ma.s.ses who are not half so unready to do women justice as they are represented.

Good G.o.d! when I think of it I wonder how you have borne it all these years and not gone wild."

[79] Full suffrage was granted to the women of New Zealand in 1893.

[80] In February, 1861; see Chapter XIII.

CHAPTER XLI.

WORLD'S FAIR--CONGRESS OF REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN.

1893.

It is not surprising that Miss Anthony writes in her journal at the beginning of the New Year, 1893: "The clouds do not lift from my spirit.

I am simply overwhelmed with the feeling that I can not make my way through the work before me." Never a year in all her crowded life opened with such a mountain of things to be attended to--suffrage conventions, council meetings, the great Woman's Congress at the World's Fair, State campaigns, Industrial School matters, lecture engagements--the list seemed to stretch out into infinity, and it is no wonder that it appalled even her dauntless spirit.

The first necessity was to get the Washington annual convention out of the way. It had been set for an early date this winter, and she left home January 5. Headquarters were at Willard's Hotel and the convention opened in Metzerott's Music Hall, January 15, continuing the usual five days. At the opening session Miss Anthony read beautiful tributes by Mrs. Stanton to George William Curtis, John Greenleaf Whittier, Ernestine L. Rose and Abby Hutchinson Patton, who had died during the year, all earnest and consistent friends of woman's equality.

Resolutions were adopted recognizing the splendid services of Francis Minor, Benjamin F. Butler, Abby Hopper Gibbons, Rev. Anna Oliver and a number of other active and efficient workers who also had pa.s.sed away.

Miss Anthony, in her president's address, gave a strong, cheery account of the past year's work and an encouraging view of the future, and at both day and evening sessions there were the usual number of able and entertaining speeches. Reports were made by delegates from thirty-six States. At the business meeting the question again came up of holding the annual convention in Washington at the beginning of each new Congress and in some other part of the country in alternate years. This plan was vigorously opposed by Miss Anthony, who said in her protest:

The sole object, it seems to me, of this national organization is to bring the combined influence of all the States upon Congress to secure national legislation. The very moment you change the purpose of this great body from National to State work you have defeated its object. It is the business of the States to do the district work; to create public sentiment; to make a national organization possible, and then to bring their united power to the capital and focus it on Congress. Our younger women naturally can not appreciate the vast amount of work done here in Washington by the National a.s.sociation in the last twenty-five years. The delegates do not come here as individuals but as representatives of their entire States. We have had these national conventions here for a quarter of a century, and every Congress has given hearings to the ablest women we could bring from every section. In the olden times the States were not fully organized--they had not money enough to pay their delegates' expenses. We begged and worked and saved the money, and the National a.s.sociation paid the expenses of delegates from Oregon and California in order that they might come and bring the influence of their States to bear upon Congress.

Last winter we had twenty-three States represented by delegates.

Think of those twenty-three women going before the Senate committee, each making her speech, and convincing those senators of the interest in all these States. We have educated at least a part of three or four hundred men and their wives and daughters every two years to return as missionaries to their respective localities.

I shall feel it a grave mistake if you vote in favor of a movable convention. It will lessen our influence and our power; but come what may, I shall abide by the decision of the majority.

Miss Anthony was warmly supported by a number of delegates but the final vote resulted: in favor, 37; opposed, 28.