The Civil War distracted attention from all social and political issues but one. The Equal Rights Association turned its attention mainly to the rights of negroes; and in 1869 the National Woman's Suffrage Association was organized to work exclusively for woman's rights. Backed by such women as Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe, and aided by men like Henry Ward Beecher, the association became a national power. In 1890, the two organizations were united under the name of The National American Woman's Suffrage Association. This organization still leads the movement in America.[45]
[45] The History of Woman Suffrage, by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Ida Husted Harper, 4 vols. Rochester, N.Y.
In 1902, an international meeting was called in Washington; and in 1904 the International Suffrage Alliance was formed in Berlin with Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt as president. Thirteen nations are now affiliated with the Alliance; and the women of the world are highly organized to further equal suffrage.
Two generations of women have given themselves to this movement, and a third still faces it. To the first group belong those leaders we have already named: Emma Willard, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Julia Ward Howe, Susan B. Anthony and their associates. It was their problem to secure woman's control of her own body and property, some share in the direction of her children, and some opportunity to train her own mind and earn an independent living. These women bore the heat and burden of a conflict in which all the blind prejudices of a fixed régime were strongly massed, presenting few promising points of attack. It is small wonder that some of these leaders gained a reputation for being hard, dogmatic, aggressive, and sometimes careless of popular sensibilities. The first generation of reformers in any field must be made of stern stuff; and their beneficiaries are apt to forget the conditions that justified means no longer necessary.
The lives of these women could not be expected to fully illustrate the type of life they hoped to see their sisters living when opportunity was finally won. Only women who participated in this struggle could fully appreciate the splendid devotion of these lives to the service of a group many of whom, being personally comfortable, were insensible to the needs of less fortunate women; and were sometimes even willing to fight back any advanced ideas which might disturb their own comfort. The feeling within this group of leaders, and the failure of oncoming generations of American women to recognize the debt of obligation they owe to its efforts, was illustrated by an incident that came up in connection with the Third International Congress of Women which met in London in 1899. The session was opened in Westminster Town Hall, with seven hundred delegates present, representing the most thoughtful women of the world. Lady Aberdeen was in the chair, and Mrs. Creighton, wife of the late Bishop of London, was reading a paper. In the midst of deep attention, a door at the rear of the platform was gently opened, and Miss Susan B. Anthony stepped onto the stage. She had just arrived from America. Her strong figure was bent with the weight of years; her face was squared by the conflict and partial ostracism she had met; but her glance had lost none of its stern kindliness, and her bearing none of its indomitable courage. As she appeared, this most representative audience of women in the world sprang to its feet and burst into wild cheering. In vain did Lady Aberdeen rap for order and beg the audience to let Mrs. Creighton proceed. Not until Miss Anthony came to the front and urged the women to sit down was quiet restored. These women knew the price of a life which their champion had paid for their opportunities.
A few months after this the school children of the prosperous city of Rochester, N.Y., where Miss Anthony had been a leading citizen for many years, were asked to write school compositions in which they named the person they would most wish to be like. Over three thousand girls, in the elementary grades, wrote these papers, but not one chose Miss Anthony. This first generation of women reformers could not establish the type of womanhood for the modern world; they had not the leisure, nor the freedom, nor could they see all that lay in the future. But all the more, because their lives were hard, should they be held in grateful remembrance.
To the second generation of leaders belong women like Alice Freeman Palmer, Mary Sheldon Barnes and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. They came on the scene when the first campaign had been won; they could command their own bodies and property; college doors were swinging open where they could secure the training that should fit them for the struggle to win educational, industrial, social and political opportunity for all their sisters. They were still looked upon as blue-stockings and queer; they had often to serve as the butt of ridicule; but they had education, income, a certain degree of leisure, and a social recognition which, if grudging in some quarters, was all the more generous in others.
With the rapid development of higher education, these women found themselves associated with large groups of independent women who could create a society of their own in advanced centers of population. There was still much to be done in securing opportunity for women; but they could go on establishing the type of life that free women were to live. Their problems were, however, even more complex than those which confronted their predecessors. What line of education should women pursue? What lines of work could they best undertake? How could they combine an independent professional or industrial career with the life of a home and the responsibilities of a mother? How far must older social restraints be modified in the interest of intellectual and industrial freedom? It was a time for constructive statesmanship, rather than for revolution; and each woman knew she was under criticism, and that her success or failure was vastly more than her own personal concern. In her all free women were being judged.
To the third generation belongs the host of women who are to-day filling our college halls, managing the women's clubs, teaching the state schools, and competing with men in every industrial calling. Theirs is the task of completing woman's social and political emancipation, and of educating them to meet their newfound liberties. It is possible that this present generation has a keener sense of rights than of duties; and the young women of to-day must be led to realize that the delicate adjustments still to be worked out require devotion equal to that of the earlier generations, if the toll of wasted life is not to be excessive.
What now is the relation of women to the range of political activity described in the last chapter? Have they need of the protection which government gives? Are they able to form political judgments? Have they knowledge of the working of political machinery; or, lacking it, are they prepared to obtain it? Are they able to make a wise selection of people to represent them in political action? Have they need of the training which participation in political life gives? Have they the preliminary preparation to take up that training to advantage, and can they undertake these duties without serious loss of qualities desirable in women?