There was a moment of silence, while each woman looked around as if waiting for another to answer. At last one of them said, slowly:
"In my case, I alone was to blame. For years I could not force myself to consent to my husband's taking another wife, though I tried hard. By the time I had overcome my objection the law was passed prohibiting polygamy."
A second member of the group hastened to tell her story. She had had a similar spiritual struggle, and just as she reached the point where she was willing to have her husband take another wife, he died. And now the room was filled with eager voices. Four or five women were telling at once that they, too, had been reluctant in the beginning, and that when they had reached the point of consent this, that, or another cause had kept the husbands from marrying again. They were all so passionately in earnest that they stared at me in puzzled wonder when I broke into the sudden laughter I could not restrain.
"What fortunate women you all were!" I exclaimed, teasingly. "Not one of you arrived at the point of consenting to the presence of a second wife in your home until it was impossible for your husband to take her."
They flushed a little at that, and then laughed with me; but they did not defend themselves against the tacit charge, and I turned the conversation into less personal channels. I learned that many of the Mormon young men were marrying girls outside of the Church, and that two sons of a leading Mormon elder had married and were living very happily with Catholic girls.
At this time the Mormon candidate for Congress (a man named Roberts) was a bitter opponent of woman suffrage. The Mormon women begged me to challenge him to a debate on the subject, which I did, but Mr. Roberts declined the challenge. The ground of his refusal, which he made public through the newspapers, was chastening to my spirit. He explained that he would not debate with me because he was not willing to lower himself to the intellectual plane of a woman.
XIII. PRESIDENT OF "THE NATIONAL"
In 1900 Miss Anthony, then over eighty, decided that she must resign the presidency of our National Association, and the question of the successor she would choose became an important one. It was conceded that there were only two candidates in her mind—Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt and myself—and for several months we gave the suffrage world the unusual spectacle of rivals vigorously pushing each other's claims. Miss Anthony was devoted to us both, and I think the choice was a hard one for her to make. On the one hand, I had been vice-president at large and her almost constant companion for twelve years, and she had grown accustomed to think of me as her successor. On the other hand, Mrs. Catt had been chairman of the organization committee, and through her splendid executive ability had built up our organization in many states. From Miss Anthony down, we all recognized her steadily growing powers; she had, moreover, abundant means, which I had not.
In my mind there was no question of her superior qualification for the presidency. She seemed to me the logical and indeed the only possible successor to Miss Anthony; and I told "Aunt Susan" so with all the eloquence I could command, while simultaneously Mrs. Catt was pouring into Miss Anthony's other ear a series of impassioned tributes to me. It was an unusual situation and a very pleasant one, and it had two excellent results: it simplified "Aunt Susan's" problem by eliminating the element of personal ambition, and it led to her eventual choice of Mrs. Catt as her successor.