CHAPTER XLIV.
THE SOUTHERN TRIP—THE ATLANTA CONVENTION.
1895
The day following the Kansas election, November 7, 1894, Miss Anthony started at 10 o'clock in the morning for Beatrice, Neb., to make the opening speech at the State Suffrage Convention; arrived at 6 p. m., took a cup of tea, dressed and, without having had one moment's rest, found herself at the opera house in the presence of a splendid audience. After she was seated on the platform a telegram was handed her saying the suffrage amendment had been lost in Kansas by an immense majority. Yet, in spite of the terrible physical strain of the past weeks and in the face of this stunning news, it is said she never made a stronger, more logical and comprehensive speech than on this occasion. She reviewed the amendment campaigns of the last twenty-five years, describing the causes of defeat or success, and pointing out the necessity of educational effort beginning with the primaries and continuing through all the conventions and political meetings up to the very day of election.
Although she received urgent invitations to speak at various points in the State, she declined all and left the next morning early for Leavenworth; and the day following, November 9, was on her way eastward. After a day in Chicago she went directly to Philadelphia, where she attended a reception given by the New Century Club to Mary Mapes Dodge; had several business meetings regarding the affairs of the national association; then hastened by night train to the New York convention at Ithaca. Here again, without a day's rest, she made a stirring address to an audience which packed the opera house to the top row of the upper gallery, sat on the steps and filled the aisles. The convention was welcomed by the mayor of Ithaca and President Schurmann, of Cornell. The latter invited the officers and delegates to visit the university and accompanied them on their tour of inspection. Miss Anthony spoke to the girls of Sage College after dinner, gave them many new ideas long to be remembered, and was received with enthusiasm and affection.
The next evening, November 15, she returned to Rochester. She had just concluded two of the hardest campaigns ever made for woman suffrage; for almost one year she had found no rest for the sole of her foot, not an hour's respite for the tired brain, and yet the letters and the entries in the journal show her to be as cheerful, as philosophical, as full of hopeful plans, as ever she had been in all her long and busy life. After just one day at home she started for Cleveland. The W. C. T. U. were holding a national convention in that city and were to have a great "gospel suffrage" meeting in Music Hall, Sunday afternoon, which she was invited to address. The Cleveland Leader, in describing the occasion, said:
Miss Willard, the chieftain of the white ribbon army, introduced Miss Anthony, the chieftain of the yellow ribbon army, saying: "Once we would not have allowed the yellow ribbon to be so generously displayed here. Had its wearers asked us to admit it with the white we might have voted it down; but the yellow badge of the suffragists looks natural now. The golden rule has done it. Well do I remember that in the hard struggle mother and I had in paying the taxes on our little home, no man appeared to pay them for us. Had I been condemned to death I would not have expected a man to startup and take my place. Susan B. Anthony—she of the senatorial mind—will be remembered when the politicians of today have long been doomed to 'innocuous desuetude.'" Miss Willard then quoted a few familiar lines ending with the sentence, "And Susan B. Anthony has been ordained of God to lead us on."
Miss Anthony was greeted with a rousing Chautauqua salute. "I am delighted beyond measure," she said, "that at last the women of this great national body have found there is only one way by which they can reach their desired end, and that is by the ballot. What is 'gospel suffrage?' It is a system by which truth and justice might be made the uppermost principles of government. Every election is the solution of a mathematical problem, the figuring out of what the majority desire. We have in this country mercantile, mining, manufacturing and all kinds of business by which money can be made. The interests of every one of these are put into the political scale, but when the moral issues are put in the other side the material pull them down. Why? Because the moral issues are not weighted with votes. The men who are associated with women in movements of reform get no more in the way of legislation than do women themselves, because when they go to the legislatures or to Congress they have back of them only a disfranchised class.
"If you would have your requests granted your legislators must know that you are a part of a body of constituents who stand with ballots in their hands. Women, we might as well be dogs baying the moon as petitioners without the power to vote! If you have no care for yourselves, you should at least take pity on the men associated with you in your good works. So long as State constitutions say that all may vote when twenty-one, save idiots, lunatics, convicts and women, you are brought down politically to the level of those others disfranchised. This discrimination is a relic of the dark ages. The most ignorant and degraded man who walks to the polls feels himself superior to the most intelligent woman. We should demand the wiping out of all legislation which keeps us disfranchised.
Almost every sentence of this brief address was punctuated with applause from the immense audience.
Always when in Cleveland Miss Anthony was a guest at the palatial home of Mrs. Louisa Southworth, At this time, with her hostess' permission, she had summoned the entire National-American Board to a business meeting, and all were entertained under this hospitable roof. For thirty years Mrs. Southworth had been among the leading representatives of the suffrage movement in northern Ohio, and during all that time had been Miss Anthony's staunch and unfailing friend. She had given thousands of dollars to the suffrage cause, and hundreds to Miss Anthony for her personal use. On this occasion she presented her with $1,000 to open the much desired national headquarters. One such supporter in every State would win many battles which are lost because of insufficient funds to do the necessary work.