Susan B. Anthony at the age of thirty-five
(From a daguerrotype, courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, N.Y.)		[Frontispiece]
Daniel Anthony, father of Susan B. Anthony
(From The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony by Ida Husted Harper)		[2]
Lucy Read Anthony, mother of Susan B. Anthony
(From The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony by Ida Husted Harper)		[3]
Susan B. Anthony Homestead, Adams, Massachusetts
(The Smith Studio, Adams, Massachusetts)		[5]
Frederick Douglass[22]
Elizabeth Cady Stanton in her "Bloomer costume"
(From The Lily)		[27]
Lucy Stone
(From Lucy Stone by Alice Stone Blackwell. Courtesy Little, Brown and Company)		[29]
Susan B. Anthony at the age of thirty-four
(Courtesy Susan B. Anthony Memorial, Inc., Rochester, New York)		[31]
James and Lucretia Mott
(From James and Lucretia Mott by Anna D. Hallowell.
Courtesy Houghton Mifflin Company)		[33]
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her son, Henry[40]
Ernestine Rose
(From History of Woman Suffrage by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony,
and Matilda Joslyn Gage)		[42]
Parker Pillsbury
(From William Lloyd Garrison by His Children)		[49]
Merritt Anthony
(Courtesy Mrs. Ann Anthony Bacon)		[57]
Susan B. Anthony, 1856
(Courtesy Mrs. Ann Anthony Bacon)		[68]
Lucy Stone and her daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell
(Courtesy Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California)		[72]
William Lloyd Garrison
(From William Lloyd Garrison and His Times by Oliver Johnson)		[86]
Susan B. Anthony[97]
Daniel Anthony, brother of Susan B. Anthony
(Courtesy Mrs. Ann Anthony Bacon)		[110]
Wendell Phillips
(From William Lloyd Garrison by His Children)		[114]
George Francis Train
(Courtesy New York Public Library)		[132]
Anna E. Dickinson
(From History of Woman Suffrage by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony,
and Matilda Joslyn Gage)		[144]
Paulina Wright Davis[165]
Isabella Beecher Hooker[167]
Victoria C. Woodhull[181]
Susan B. Anthony, 1871
(Courtesy Mrs. Ann Anthony Bacon)		[187]
Judge Henry R. Selden
(Courtesy Henry R. Selden II)		[203]
"The Woman Who Dared"
(New York Daily Graphic, June 5, 1873)		[206]
Aaron A. Sargent
(Courtesy Library of Congress)		[229]
Clara Bewick Colby
(From History of Woman Suffrage by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony,
and Matilda Joslyn Gage)		[232]
Matilda Joslyn Gage
(From History of Woman Suffrage by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony,
and Matilda Joslyn Gage)		[236]
Anna Howard Shaw
(From a photograph by Mary Carnel)		[248]
Harriot Stanton Blatch
(Courtesy Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California)		[250]
The Anthony home, Rochester, New York
(Courtesy Susan B. Anthony Memorial, Inc., Rochester, New York)		[255]
Susan B. Anthony at her desk
(Courtesy Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts)		[257]
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton[259]
Elizabeth Smith Miller, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony[262]
Ida Husted Harper
(Courtesy Library of Congress)		[271]
Rachel Foster Avery
(Courtesy Library of Congress)		[275]
Harriet Taylor Upton
(Courtesy Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California)		[276]
Carrie Chapman Catt
(Courtesy Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts)		[289]
Quotation in the handwriting of Susan B. Anthony[297]
Susan B. Anthony at the age of eighty-five
(From a photograph by J. E. Hale)		[301]
Susan B. Anthony, 1905
(From a photograph by Ellis)		[309]

QUAKER HERITAGE

"If Sally Ann knows more about weaving than Elijah," reasoned eleven-year-old Susan with her father, "then why don't you make her overseer?"

"It would never do," replied Daniel Anthony as a matter of course. "It would never do to have a woman overseer in the mill."

This answer did not satisfy Susan and she often thought about it. To enter the mill, to stand quietly and look about, was the best kind of entertainment, for she was fascinated by the whir of the looms, by the nimble fingers of the weavers, and by the general air of efficiency. Admiringly she watched Sally Ann Hyatt, the tall capable weaver from Vermont. When the yarn on the beam was tangled or there was something wrong with the machinery, Elijah, the overseer, always called out to Sally Ann, "I'll tend your loom, if you'll look after this." Sally Ann never failed to locate the trouble or to untangle the yarn. Yet she was never made overseer, and this continued to puzzle Susan.[1]

The manufacture of cotton was a new industry, developing with great promise in the United States, when Susan B. Anthony was born on February 15, 1820, in the wide valley at the foot of Mt. Greylock, near Adams, Massachusetts. Enterprising young men like her father, Daniel Anthony, saw a potential cotton mill by the side of every rushing brook, and young women, eager to earn the first money they could call their own, were leaving the farms, for a few months at least, to work in the mills. Cotton cloth was the new sensation and the demand for it was steadily growing. Brides were proud to display a few cotton sheets instead of commonplace homespun linen.

When Susan was two years old, her father built a cotton factory of twenty-six looms beside the brook which ran through Grandfather Read's meadow, hauling the cotton forty miles by wagon from Troy, New York. The millworkers, most of them young girls from Vermont, boarded, as was the custom, in the home of the millowner; Susan's mother, Lucy Read Anthony, although she had three small daughters to care for, Guelma, Susan, and Hannah, boarded eleven of the millworkers with only the help of a thirteen-year-old girl who worked for her after school hours. Lucy Anthony cooked their meals on the hearth of the big kitchen fireplace, and in the large brick oven beside it baked crisp brown loaves of bread. In addition, washing, ironing, mending, and spinning filled her days. But she was capable and strong and was doing only what all women in this new country were expected to do. She taught her young daughters to help her, and Susan, even before she was six, was very useful; by the time she was ten she could cook a good meal and pack a dinner pail.