FOOTNOTES:
[422] The History is indebted for this chapter to the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer of Providence, vice-president-at-large of the State Woman Suffrage Association.
[423] See [History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. III, p. 340].
[424] The annual meeting in October, 1895, celebrated the completion of a quarter of a century's service on the part of Mrs. Elizabeth Buffum Chace as president of the Rhode Island Woman Suffrage Association. Letters from absent friends were read expressing their high appreciation of her life-long service in the cause of humankind as well as womankind. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mr. William Lloyd Garrison and Miss Mary F. Eastman attended to speak for the cause, and to testify their love for Mrs. Chace. The Hon. E. L. Freeman, ex-Gov. John W. Davis and others of the State also spoke words of great respect. The association honored itself by once more electing Mrs. Chace its chief officer, although she had expressed a strong desire to retire from the position as she felt that the burden of the work should be borne by younger shoulders. [Annual Report to National Suffrage Convention.
[425] Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Julia Ward Howe, Rowland Hazard, Phebe Jackson, Susan Sisson, Sarah Helen Whitman, Elizabeth K. Churchill, Abraham Payne, Sarah T. Wilbour, Charlotte A. Jenckes, George L. Clarke, Francis C. Frost, Susan R. Harris, Augustus Woodbury and many others of the best known and most useful citizens.
[426] Others were Mrs. M. M. Brewster, Mrs. Mary C. Peckham, Mrs. Rowena P. B. Tingley, Miss Charlotte R. Hoswell, Mrs. Anna E. Aldrich and Mrs. Martha Knowles.
[427] Present board: President Mrs. A. C. Dewing; first vice-president, Mrs. Thomas W. Chase; second vice-president, Mrs. Ellen M. Bolles; third vice-president, Mrs. Charlotte B. Wilbour; secretary, Mrs. Annie M. Griffin; treasurer, Mrs. Mary K. Wood; auditors, Mrs. O. I. Angell, Mrs. Elizabeth Ormsbee; honorary vice-presidents, the Hon. H. B. Metcalf, Dr. L. F. C. Garvin and Arnold B. Chace.
[428] The officers were: President, Mrs. Chace; vice-presidents, Mr. Hinckley, Arnold B. Chace, Phebe Jackson, Mary O. Arnold and Julia Ward Howe; acting secretary, Mrs. Anna E. Aldrich; treasurer, Mrs. Mary K. Wood; executive committee, Mrs. S. E. H. Doyle, Miss Sarah J. Eddy, Mesdames Aldrich, Fanny Purdy Palmer, C. P. Norton, Louisa A. Bowen, Elizabeth C. Hinckley, Susan C. Kenyon, Mary E. Bliss, Frances S. Bailey and S. R. Alexander, from whom the campaign committee was selected.
[429] Occasional addresses were made by Gen. Thomas W. Chace, Col. J. C. Wyman, Judge R. C. Pitman, Dr. L. F. C. Garvin, the Revs. H. C. Westwood, Augustus Woodbury, H. I. Cushman, N. H. Harriman, Thomas R. Slicer, O. H. Still, J. H. Larry; Messrs. Olney Arnold, Augustine Jones, R. F. Trevellick, Ralph Beaumont, John O'Keefe and others.
[430] Dr. Helen C. Putnam represented the physicians, Mrs. Mary Frost Evans the editors, Miss Sarah E. Doyle the teachers, Mrs. Mary A. Babcock and Mrs. A. B. E. Jackson the W. C. T. U., Mrs. L. G. C. Knickerbocker and Mrs. S. M. Aldrich women in private life, while the W. S. A. contributed Mrs. J. S. French, Mrs. A. C. Dewing and Mrs. Ellen M. Bolles. Edwin C. Pierce and Rabbi David Blaustein, members of the association, also spoke in favor of suffrage for women.
[431] The right to be appointed by the court was given to married women by Act of 1902.
[432] Mrs. Francis W. Goddard, Miss Sarah E. Doyle, principal of the Girls' High School of Providence; Mrs. M. M. Brewster, president of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union; Mrs. Fanny Purdy Palmer and Mrs. R. A. Peckham, representing the State Suffrage Association; Mrs. Augustine Jones, representing the Friends' School, and Mrs. M. E. Tucker.
[433] The Suffrage Association has held one meeting in Pembroke Hall, however, which was presided over by its acting president and at which the daughter of Julia Ward Howe, Mrs. Florence Howe Hall, spoke upon "The Political Position of Women in England," and the use of Sayles Hall of Brown University was freely granted for a series of meetings under the auspices of the W. S. A. devoted to a presentation of "Woman's Contribution to the Progress of the World." These were addressed by Abba Goold Woolson, Mary A. Livermore, Lillie Devereux Blake, Lillie Chace Wyman, Alice Stone Blackwell, Mary F. Eastman, Prof. Katherine Hanscom and the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer.
In October, 1901, Miss Susan B. Anthony addressed the students and was enthusiastically received.
CHAPTER LXIII.
SOUTH CAROLINA.[434]
In 1890 Mrs. Virginia Durant Young being on a visit to Mrs. Adelaide Viola Neblett at Greenville, these two did so inspire each other that then and there they held a suffrage conference with Mrs. S. Odie Sirrene, Mrs. Mary Putnam Gridley and others, and pledged themselves to work for woman's enfranchisement in South Carolina.
Mrs. Young made a suffrage address to the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Beaufort in 1891, and later spoke on the subject by invitation at Lexington and in the Baptist church at Marion. She eventually succeeded in forming a State association of 250 men and women who believed in equal rights, and interested themselves in circulating literature on this question. Its officers for 1900 are Mrs. Young, president; Mrs. Mary P. Prentiss, vice-president; Miss Harriet B. Manville, corresponding secretary; Mrs. Gridley, treasurer.
In 1895 Miss Susan B. Anthony, president of the National Association, Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake of New York, and Mrs. Ellen Battelle Dietrick of Massachusetts, made addresses at various places, on their way home from the national convention in Atlanta. In April of this year Miss Laura Clay of Kentucky, Miss Helen Morris Lewis of North Carolina, and Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates of Maine, with Mrs. Young and Mrs. Neblett, began a suffrage campaign at Greenville. They went thence to Spartanburg, Columbia and Charleston. Here the party divided, Miss Clay and Mrs. Young going to Georgetown, Florence, Marion, Latta, Darlington, Timmonsville and Sumter. Later Mrs. Neblett, Miss Clay and Mrs. Young spoke at Allendale, Barnwell, Hampton and Beaufort.
Miss Clay, auditor of the National Association, worked four months in South Carolina this year at her own expense. Half of the time was spent in Columbia, assisting Mrs. Young and others in the effort to have an amendment giving suffrage to taxpaying women incorporated in the new constitution then being framed. They had hearings before two committees in September, and presented their arguments to the entire Constitutional Convention in the State House, with a large number of citizens present. The amendment failed by a vote of 26 yeas, 121 nays.
President D. B. Johnston, of the Girls' Industrial and Normal College, and John J. McMahan, State superintendent of instruction, have done much to advance the educational status of women, and both believe in perfect equality of rights. Among other advocates may be mentioned the Hon. Walter Hazard, Dr. William J. Young, McDonald Furman, B. Odell Duncan, George Sirrene, Col. John J. Dargan, Col. Ellison Keith, the Rev. Sidi H. Brown, Col. V. P. Clayton, the Rev. John T. Morrison, Samuel G. Lawton, J. Gordon Coogler and William D. Evans, president of the State Agricultural Society.
Miss Martha Schofield, superintendent of the Colored Industrial School at Aiken, regularly enters a protest against paying taxes without representation. Other women who have been devoted workers in the cause of suffrage are Miss Mary I. Hemphill, editor with her father of the Abbeville Medium; Mesdames Marion Morgan Buckner, Daisy P. Bailey, Florence Durant Evans, Lillian D. Clayton, Gertrude D. Lido, Cora S. Lott, Abbie Christensen, Martha Corley and Mary P. Screven; Dr. Sarah Allen; Misses Claudia G. Tharin, Iva Youmans, Annie Durant, Kate Lily Blue and Floride Cunningham.
Legislative Action and Laws: In 1892 Mrs. Virginia Durant Young petitioned the Legislature for her personal enfranchisement, adopting this method of presenting the arguments in a nutshell, and as "news" they were widely published and commented on. At this session Gen. Robert R. Hemphill, a stanch advocate, presented a bill in the Senate to give women the franchise and the right of holding office, and brought it to a vote on December 17; yeas, 14, nays, 21.
In 1895 numerously signed petitions for suffrage were sent to the Legislature by the women of Fairfax, Lexington and Marion. The right of petition was also frequently used by the members of the State W. C. T. U.
In 1896 Mrs. Young addressed the Legislature in behalf of Presidential Suffrage for women.
In 1892, '93, '95 and '98 the laws were improved in regard to married women's property rights, allowing them to hold real estate independently of their husbands, restraining husbands from collecting debts or wages owing to their wives, and making the wife's signature necessary to the legality of mortgage.
In 1895 was enacted by the Constitutional Convention that, "The real and personal property of a woman, held at the time of her marriage, or that which she may thereafter acquire, either by gift, grant, inheritance, devise or otherwise, shall be her separate property, and she shall have all the rights incident to the same, to which an unmarried woman or a man is entitled. She shall have the power to contract and be contracted with, in the same manner as if she were unmarried."
Dower prevails but not curtesy. If either husband or wife die without a will the other has an equal claim on the property. Should there be one or more children, the survivor receives one-third of the real and the personal estate. If there are no lineal descendants, but collateral heirs, the survivor takes one-half of the entire estate. If there are no lineal descendants, father, mother, brother, sister, child of such brother or sister, brother of the half-blood or lineal ancestor, the survivor receives two-thirds of the estate and the other third goes to the next of kin. If there is no kin, the survivor takes the whole estate.
A homestead to the value of $1,000 is exempted to "the head of the family."
South Carolina is the only State which does not allow divorce.
The father is the legal guardian of the children, and may appoint a guardian of their persons and property by will.
The law requires the husband to support the family, but there is no effective way for its enforcement. Any one may sell the wife necessaries and subject the husband's property to the payment of the bills, if he does not furnish a suitable support, but he can claim his homestead against such a debt and in many ways render this remedy unavailing.
In 1895 the "age of protection for girls" was raised from 10 to 14 years. The penalty is "death, with privilege of the jury to recommend to mercy, whereupon the penalty may be reduced to imprisonment in the penitentiary at hard labor during the whole lifetime of the prisoner."
Seduction under promise of marriage is punished by a fine of not less than $500 nor more than $5,000, or imprisonment for not less than six months nor more than five years.
Suffrage: Women possess no form of suffrage.
Office Holding: In the early '90's Gov. Benjamin R. Tillman secured the election of the first woman State librarian. Ever since this office has been filled by a woman, elected annually by the Legislature. No other elective office is open to women.
A number of the engrossing clerks in the Senate are women.
Through the efforts of the W. C. T. U. there is a police matron at Charleston.
Dr. Sarah Allen was appointed physician in the State hospital for the insane in 1896, and still holds the position.
There are women directors on the board of the Columbia Library Association.
Women do not serve on the board of any State institution.
They can not be notaries public.
Occupations: Women are not permitted to practice law. No other profession or occupation is legally forbidden to them.
Education: In 1894 the State University at Columbia opened its doors to women. In the same year the Medical College of Charleston admitted them, and still later Furman University (Baptist) at Greenville. These were direct results of the agitation for equal rights. Charleston College and Clemson Agricultural College are closed to women, but they may enter the other educational institutions. Gov. Benjamin R. Tillman was largely instrumental in securing the Girls' Industrial and Normal College at Rock Hill, in 1894.
In the public schools there are 2,245 men and 2,728 women teachers. The average monthly salary of the men is $25.18; of the women, $24.29.