That women would be effected by this industrial revolution was obvious to her, and she wanted them to understand it and play their part in it. For this reason she saw the importance of keeping the National American Woman Suffrage Association informed on all developments affecting wage-earning women and to her delight she found three young suffragists wide awake on this subject. One of them, Florence Kelley, had joined forces with that remarkable young woman, Jane Addams, in her valuable social experiment, Hull House, in the slums of Chicago, and was now devoting herself to improving the working conditions of women and children. She represented a new trend in thought and work—social service—which made a great appeal to college women and set in motion labor legislation designed to protect women and children. Another young woman of promise, Gail Laughlin, pioneering as a lawyer, approached the subject from the feminist viewpoint, seeking protection for women not through labor legislation based on sex, but through trade unions, the vote, equal pay, and a wider recognition of women's right to contract for their labor on the same terms as men. Her survey of women's working conditions, presented at a convention of the National American Association was so valuable and attracted so much attention that she was appointed to the United States Labor Commission. Harriot Stanton Blatch also understood the significance of the industrial revolution and woman's part in it, and she too opposed labor legislation based on sex. Coming from England occasionally to visit her mother in New York, she brought her liberal viewpoint into woman suffrage conventions with a flare of oratory matching that of her gifted parents. "The more I see of her," Susan remarked to a friend, "the more I feel the greatness of her character."[425]
Although it was Susan's intention to hew to the line of woman suffrage and not to comment publicly on controversial issues, she could not keep silent when confronted with injustice. Religious intolerance, bigotry, and racial discrimination always forced her to take a stand, regardless of the criticism she might bring on herself.
The treatment of the Negro in both the North and the South was always of great concern to her, and during the 1890s, when a veritable epidemic of lynchings and race riots broke out, she expressed herself freely in Rochester newspapers. She noted the dangerous trend as indicated by new anti-Negro societies and the limitation of membership to white Americans in the Spanish-American War veterans' organization. Whenever the opportunity presented itself, she put into practice her own sincere belief in race equality. During every Washington convention, she arranged to have one of her good speakers occupy the pulpit of a Negro church, and in the South she made it a point to speak herself in Negro churches and schools and before their organizations, even though this might prejudice southerners. In her own home, she gladly welcomed the Negro lecturers and educators who came to Rochester. This seeking out of the Negro in friendliness was a religious duty to her and a pleasure. She demanded of everyone employed in her household, respectful treatment of Negro guests. She rejoiced when she saw Negroes in the audience at woman suffrage conventions in Washington, and it gave her great satisfaction to hear Mary Church Terrell, a beautiful intelligent Negro who had been educated at Oberlin and in Europe, making speeches which equaled and even surpassed those of the most eloquent white suffragists.
Susan did not fail to keep in touch with the international feminist movement, and in the summer of 1899, when she was seventy-nine years old, she headed the United States delegation to the International Council of Women, meeting in London. Visiting Harriot Stanton Blatch at her home in Basingstoke, she first conferred with the leading British feminists, bringing herself up to date on the progress of their cause. In England as in the United States, the burden of the suffrage campaign had shifted from the shoulders of the pioneers to their daughters, and they were carrying on with vigor, pressing for the passage of a franchise bill in the House of Commons.
Moving on to London, she was acclaimed as she had been at the World's Fair in Chicago. "The papers here have been going wild over Miss Anthony, declaring her to be the most unaggressive woman suffragist ever seen," reported a journalist to his newspaper in the United States.
From China, India, New Zealand, and Australia, from South Africa, Palestine, Persia, and the Argentine, as well as from Europe and the United States, women had come to London to discuss their progress and their problems, and Susan, pointing out to them the goal toward which they must head, declared with confidence, "The day will come when man will recognize woman as his peer, not only at the fireside but in the councils of the nation. Then, and not until then, will there be the perfect comradeship ... between the sexes that shall result in the highest development of the race."[426]
She had hoped that Queen Victoria would receive the delegates at Windsor Castle, thus indicating her approval of the International Council. She longed to talk with this woman who had ruled so long and so well. That a queen sat on the throne of England, this in itself was important to her and she wanted to express her gratitude, although she was well aware that the Queen had never used her influence for the improvement of laws relating to women. She had hoped to convince her of the need of votes for women, but Queen Victoria never gave her the opportunity. All that influential Englishwomen were able to arrange was the admission of the delegates to the courtyard of Windsor Castle to watch the Queen start on her drive and to tea in the banquet room without the Queen.
