The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony Volume II Part 29

To John W. Breidenthal, of the People's party, she wrote: "Do you not think it will be a great deal better, both for the suffrage amendment and the Populist party, if in all the announcements it shall be distinctly stated that Miss Anthony speaks only on the subject of woman's enfranchis.e.m.e.nt?" To this he replied, August 6: "I leave the matter entirely with you whether you confine yourself only to the suffrage amendment, or whether you add to that the discussion of the other questions now attracting public attention." Meanwhile she had been receiving cheerful messages from the Populist women of Kansas, among them a long and cordial letter from Annie L. Diggs, written August 16:

Nearly everything along the line of my experience and observation would make you glad. I have large audiences, say the best and strongest things I know for suffrage and always find the heartiest response. I see more and more the wisdom of your insistence on platform mention. Oh, I am so thankful that I, too, saw straight before it was too late to get the Populist endors.e.m.e.nt. I have been speaking almost constantly, sometimes twice a day, and at every meeting other speakers and _candidates_ say the best kind of words for the amendment. Governor Lewelling speaks in warm endors.e.m.e.nt, reports to the contrary notwithstanding. I can not say that he does so always, but he did at the three meetings which we held together.

The Populists who wanted to shake my head off at the convention, give me, if possible, warmer greetings than the others. They are truly glad they took that righteous step....

We Populists wish so much for you and Miss Shaw to come to Kansas.

People constantly ask me if you will talk for the Populists when you come. I answer that you will talk suffrage at Populist meetings and will also say that, inasmuch as in Kansas the Populists endorse suffrage, therefore the party ought to win. Is not that your intention? How I wish I could describe to you some of the success I have had in talking to German audiences. But I have not another minute only to thank you for your kind words about me, and to say again, as I have said so many years, "I love and revere you."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Autograph: "Faithfully yours, Annie L. Diggs."]

Mrs. Johns wrote, August 27: "I think the Republicans are conscious dimly of the increasing strength of the Populists. It looks as if they will win, and it is generally believed the amendment will go through."

As late as October 12, Mrs. Catt, who had been speaking at suffrage meetings for the past six weeks and whose judgment was generally sound, said in a letter from Hutchinson:

After all the vicissitudes, hard feelings and distresses of the campaign, it begins to look as if we were going to come in "on the home stretch." The last two weeks have wrought wonderful changes.

The tide has set in our favor. I think the chief cause is the published fact that we are going to count the votes to see how many out of each party are cast for the amendment, and Republicans understand they will be in a bad way if they don't make a good showing. Since this came out, Morrill has spoken for the amendment.

Judge Peters, at the big McKinley meeting here, advocated it and they tell me it created more enthusiasm than anything else during the meeting. Cyrus Leland admits that it will carry. The Republicans are coming over splendidly and, if the Populists stand firm, we will surely come in with a fine majority. It seems as if nothing can defeat us now.

Two weeks before the election, October 21, Mr. Breidenthal wrote her: "I am confident the amendment will have 30,000 majority." Miss Anthony reached the State October 20 and began her two weeks' tour the 22d, speaking at Populist meetings in the largest cities up to election day, November 6.[105] From the hour of her arrival she realized there was not a shadow of hope for the amendment, and it was marvellous to her how the others could have been so deceived.

At the previous election when the Populists came into power it had been through a fusion with the Democrats. This year the Democrats had their own ticket, and not only had ignored the pleading of the Democratic women for a suffrage plank, but had adopted a resolution denouncing it.[106] The great railroad strike and its attendant evils, during that summer, were attributed by many to Populistic sentiment and created a strong prejudice against the party. The argument was made that if the amendment carried, the women would feel so grateful to the Populists that it would result in securing to them the woman's vote, thus keeping them in power. This induced many to vote against it who disliked Populism, and it decided a number of even those Republicans who believed in woman suffrage to reject the amendment this year rather than allow the Populists to have the credit of carrying it. To destroy the last hope, word came from Colorado that the People's party was about to be defeated there. It was the first time for the women of that State to vote and, while there was no evidence to prove that they were responsible, the bare possibility was enough to stampede the Kansas Populists and prevent their giving the ballot to the women of that State.

The amendment was lost by 34,827 votes; 95,302 for; 130,139 against. The total vote cast for governor was 299,231; total vote on suffrage amendment, 225,441; not voting on amendment, 73,790. There was an attempt to keep count of the ballots according to parties, but it was not successful and there was no way of correctly estimating the political complexion of the vote. The vote for Governor Morrill lacked only 1,800 of that for the other three candidates combined, which shows how easily the Republican party might have carried the amendment.

Subtracting the 5,000 Prohibition votes which it was conceded were cast for the amendment, it lacked 28,000 of receiving as many votes as were cast for the Populist candidate for governor. Since some Republicans must have voted for it, the figures prove that a vast number of Populists did not do so. In Miss Anthony's journal on the night of the election she wrote: "Our friends remembered to forget to vote for the suffrage amendment, while not an enemy forgot to remember to stamp his ticket against it."

Though she had expected defeat, her regret was none the less keen. In all the past years she had given more time and work to Kansas than to any other State, even her own. Her hopes had been centered there. It having been the first State to grant school suffrage and the first to grant munic.i.p.al suffrage to women, she had confidently expected that when the amendment for full suffrage was again submitted it would be carried. The events of the campaign confirmed her belief that the granting of munic.i.p.al suffrage is a hindrance rather than a help toward securing full enfranchis.e.m.e.nt. By its exercise women naturally become partisan, show the influence they can wield through the ballot, and thereby create enmities and arouse antagonisms which bitterly oppose any further extension of this power. She resolved henceforth to advise women not to attempt to secure fragmentary suffrage, but to demand the whole right and work for nothing less.

FOOTNOTES:

[101] It was the Republicans who framed the original const.i.tution of the State so as to give women liberal property rights, equal guardianship of their children, and school suffrage. In 1867 they gave to women an equal voice on the question of local option. In 1887 they granted to them munic.i.p.al suffrage. In various State conventions they adopted an unequivocal endors.e.m.e.nt of full suffrage for women.

[102] See Appendix for full speech.

[103] The women of the Topeka Equal Suffrage Club, at their next meeting, adopted a resolution thanking the Republican convention _for not declaring against the amendment_!

[104] It will be cowardice for the Republicans to fail to endorse woman suffrage in their State platform. In past years, when no amendment was pending, the Republican party of Kansas has encouraged the presentation of such an amendment. Will it now attempt to sneak out of the responsibility and go back on its past record? The women of our State have shown themselves intelligent voters, in every way worthy of being entrusted with full suffrage. None of the evils have come upon us which were predicted by the opponents of the reform, and they never will come.

To place a plank in the platform will save many votes to the party. It is the right, the brave thing to do. What is brave and right has, in the past, been the thing that the Republican party has done. Let it not now begin to do the cowardly thing.--Leavenworth Times, May 17, 1894.

[105] Miss Anthony did not receive a dollar for her services daring the year in Kansas, and was enabled to make the three trips there solely through the kindness of her brother Daniel R., who furnished transportation. It was also by his a.s.sistance that she had made her long railroad journeys from east to west during the past thirty years.

[106] Fifteenth.--We oppose woman suffrage as tending to destroy the home and family, the true basis of political safety, and express the hope that the helpmeet and guardian of the family sanctuary may not be dragged from the modest purity of self-imposed seclusion to be thrown unwillingly into the unfeminine places of political strife.

CHAPTER XLIV.

THE SOUTHERN TRIP--THE ATLANTA CONVENTION.

1895

The day following the Kansas election, November 7, 1894, Miss Anthony started at 10 o'clock in the morning for Beatrice, Neb., to make the opening speech at the State Suffrage Convention; arrived at 6 P. M., took a cup of tea, dressed and, without having had one moment's rest, found herself at the opera house in the presence of a splendid audience.

After she was seated on the platform a telegram was handed her saying the suffrage amendment had been lost in Kansas by an immense majority.

Yet, in spite of the terrible physical strain of the past weeks and in the face of this stunning news, it is said she never made a stronger, more logical and comprehensive speech than on this occasion. She reviewed the amendment campaigns of the last twenty-five years, describing the causes of defeat or success, and pointing out the necessity of educational effort beginning with the primaries and continuing through all the conventions and political meetings up to the very day of election.

Although she received urgent invitations to speak at various points in the State, she declined all and left the next morning early for Leavenworth; and the day following, November 9, was on her way eastward.

After a day in Chicago she went directly to Philadelphia, where she attended a reception given by the New Century Club to Mary Mapes Dodge; had several business meetings regarding the affairs of the national a.s.sociation; then hastened by night train to the New York convention at Ithaca. Here again, without a day's rest, she made a stirring address to an audience which packed the opera house to the top row of the upper gallery, sat on the steps and filled the aisles. The convention was welcomed by the mayor of Ithaca and President Schurmann, of Cornell. The latter invited the officers and delegates to visit the university and accompanied them on their tour of inspection. Miss Anthony spoke to the girls of Sage College after dinner, gave them many new ideas long to be remembered, and was received with enthusiasm and affection.

The next evening, November 15, she returned to Rochester. She had just concluded two of the hardest campaigns ever made for woman suffrage; for almost one year she had found no rest for the sole of her foot, not an hour's respite for the tired brain, and yet the letters and the entries in the journal show her to be as cheerful, as philosophical, as full of hopeful plans, as ever she had been in all her long and busy life. After just one day at home she started for Cleveland. The W. C. T. U. were holding a national convention in that city and were to have a great "gospel suffrage" meeting in Music Hall, Sunday afternoon, which she was invited to address. The Cleveland Leader, in describing the occasion, said:

Miss Willard, the chieftain of the white ribbon army, introduced Miss Anthony, the chieftain of the yellow ribbon army, saying: "Once we would not have allowed the yellow ribbon to be so generously displayed here. Had its wearers asked us to admit it with the white we might have voted it down; but the yellow badge of the suffragists looks natural now. The golden rule has done it.

Well do I remember that in the hard struggle mother and I had in paying the taxes on our little home, no man appeared to pay them for us. Had I been condemned to death I would not have expected a man to startup and take my place. Susan B. Anthony--she of the senatorial mind--will be remembered when the politicians of today have long been doomed to 'innocuous desuetude.'" Miss Willard then quoted a few familiar lines ending with the sentence, "And Susan B.

Anthony has been ordained of G.o.d to lead us on."

Miss Anthony was greeted with a rousing Chautauqua salute. "I am delighted beyond measure," she said, "that at last the women of this great national body have found there is only one way by which they can reach their desired end, and that is by the ballot. What is 'gospel suffrage?' It is a system by which truth and justice might be made the uppermost principles of government. Every election is the solution of a mathematical problem, the figuring out of what the majority desire. We have in this country mercantile, mining, manufacturing and all kinds of business by which money can be made. The interests of every one of these are put into the political scale, but when the moral issues are put in the other side the material pull them down. Why? Because the moral issues are not weighted with votes. The men who are a.s.sociated with women in movements of reform get no more in the way of legislation than do women themselves, because when they go to the legislatures or to Congress they have back of them only a disfranchised cla.s.s.

"If you would have your requests granted your legislators must know that you are a part of a body of const.i.tuents who stand with ballots in their hands. Women, we might as well be dogs baying the moon as pet.i.tioners without the power to vote! If you have no care for yourselves, you should at least take pity on the men a.s.sociated with you in your good works. So long as State const.i.tutions say that all may vote when twenty-one, save idiots, lunatics, convicts and women, you are brought down politically to the level of those others disfranchised. This discrimination is a relic of the dark ages. The most ignorant and degraded man who walks to the polls feels himself superior to the most intelligent woman. We should demand the wiping out of all legislation which keeps us disfranchised.

Almost every sentence of this brief address was punctuated with applause from the immense audience.

Always when in Cleveland Miss Anthony was a guest at the palatial home of Mrs. Louisa Southworth, At this time, with her hostess' permission, she had summoned the entire National-American Board to a business meeting, and all were entertained under this hospitable roof. For thirty years Mrs. Southworth had been among the leading representatives of the suffrage movement in northern Ohio, and during all that time had been Miss Anthony's staunch and unfailing friend. She had given thousands of dollars to the suffrage cause, and hundreds to Miss Anthony for her personal use. On this occasion she presented her with $1,000 to open the much desired national headquarters. One such supporter in every State would win many battles which are lost because of insufficient funds to do the necessary work.

Miss Anthony soon afterwards went to New York to prepare with Mrs.

Stanton the call and resolutions for the approaching national convention, and to revise the article on "Woman's Rights" for Johnson's new edition of the Encyclopedia. She was the guest of her cousin, Mrs.

Semantha Vail Lapham, whose home overlooked Central Park. Mrs. Stanton's cosy flat was on the other side, and through this lovely pleasure ground each bright day Miss Anthony took her morning walk. When the weather was inclement she was sent in the carriage, and the two old friends talked and worked together as they had done so many times in days gone by.

The evenings were spent with her cousin and various friends and relatives. Once they dined with a kinsman in his elegant Tiffany apartments. She and Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, Mrs. Henry M. Sanders and Mrs. George Putnam, had a delightful luncheon with Dr.

Mary Putnam Jacobi. She was invited by Mr. and Mrs. Edward Lauterbach to hear the opera of Faust, which was followed by a supper at the Waldorf.

With a relative she attended the "Authors' Uncut Leaves Club," at Sherry's. One Sunday she went to hear Robert Collyer and the diary says: "His grand face, his rich voice, his white hair, were all as attractive as ever; he was a beautiful picture in the pulpit. He gave me a cordial greeting at the close of the sermon." She ran over to Orange for a few days with a loved cousin, Ellen Hoxie Squier; and then on down to Philadelphia and Somerton for a little visit with the friends there, of which she writes: "Rachel and I had a soul-to-soul talk all the day long and until after midnight." She was a guest at the Foremothers' Dinner, December 22, given at Jaeger's by the New York City Woman Suffrage League, Lillie Devereux Blake, president, with nearly 300 prominent women at the table.[107] The dinner and the speeches lasted until after 5 o'clock, Miss Anthony responding to the toast, "Our Future Policy."

Thus a month slipped pleasantly by, and then, with the work all finished, the body rested and the mind refreshed, she returned home to spend Christmas. The two sisters dined with Dr. and Mrs. F. H. Sanford and a few old-time friends, and pa.s.sed a happy day. Among the numerous Christmas remembrances were several pieces of fine china and an elegant velvet cloak from Mrs. Gross.[108]

On December 30, Miss Anthony received word of the death of her old co-worker, Amelia Bloomer, at Council Bluffs, Ia., aged seventy-seven, and sent a telegram of sympathy to the husband. A death felt most keenly in 1894 was that of Virginia L. Minor, of St. Louis, August 14, which closed a beautiful and unbroken friendship of thirty years. She left Miss Anthony a testimonial of her love and confidence in a legacy of $1,000.

The year ended amidst the usual pressure of requests, invitations and engagements. Would she lecture for the Art League, for the Musical Society, for the Church Guild and for a dozen other organizations of whose purposes she knew practically nothing? Would she accept a "reception" from the Scribblers' Club of Buffalo? Would she send a package of doc.u.ments to the girls of Va.s.sar College, who were going to debate woman suffrage? Would she please reply to the following questions, from various newspapers: "Have not women as many rights now as men have? What is woman's ideal existence and what woman has most nearly attained it? Have you formed any resolutions for the coming year, and what has been the fate of former New Year's resolutions?" and so on, ad infinitum.

The "woman's edition" fever raged with great violence at this time, and it is not an exaggeration to say that the editors of ninety-nine hundredths of them wrote to Miss Anthony for an article. Of course it was an impossibility to comply, but occasionally some request struck her so forcibly that she made time for an answer. For instance, the woman's edition of the Elmira Daily Advertiser was for the purpose of helping the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation, and to its editor, Mrs. J. Sloat Fa.s.sett, she wrote:

I should feel vastly more interested in, and earnest to aid the Y.

M. C. A., if the men composing it were, as a body, helping to educate the people into the recognition of the right of their mothers and sisters to an equal voice with themselves in the government of the city, State and nation. Nevertheless, I avail myself of your kindly request, and urge all to study the intricate problem of bettering the world; not merely the individual sufferings in it, but the general conditions. Such study will show the great need of a new balance of power in the body politic; and the conscientious student must arrive at the conclusion that this will have to be obtained by enfranchising a new cla.s.s--women. If the Y. M. C. A. really desire to make better moral and social conditions possible, they should hasten to obey the injunction of St. Paul, and "help those women" who are working to secure enfranchis.e.m.e.nt.

Miss Anthony received soon after this a consignment of pamphlets, etc., that she had ordered printed, on the outside of which the manager of the printing house, a man entirely unknown to her, had written:

"A wreath, twine a wreath for the brave and the true, Who, for love of the many, dared stand with the few."

Among the pleasant letters was one from Mrs. Mary B. Willard, who was then abroad, in which she said: "I am so glad that you live on to know how much you are loved and to enjoy the fruit of your blessed labors."

One invitation which Miss Anthony especially appreciated came from Rev.

Jenkin Lloyd Jones, of Chicago, editor of Unity and pastor of All Souls church: "I am sure your heart goes out with us in our dreams as represented by the enclosed printed matter.[109] One number of the program is, 'What is woman's part in this larger synthesis,' or 'What can woman do for liberal religion?' I enclose Dr. Thomas' letter that it may reinforce my own pleading that you should come and speak on this topic. Phrase it yourself. Pour your whole heart into it. Make it the speech of your life. Give your large religious nature freedom. We will pay all your expenses and I do hope you will make an effort to come. We will give you from thirty to forty minutes, then we would want to ask one or two women to follow in the discussion, perhaps a Jewess and may be some woman who represents the independent church, like Dr. Thomas'

and Prof. Swing's...."