My opinion about "bloomers" and dress generally for both men and women is that people should dress to accommodate whatever business or pastime they pursue. It would be quite out of good taste as well as good sense, for a woman to go to her daily work with trailing skirts, flowing sleeves, fringes and laces; and certainly, if women ride the bicycle or climb mountains, they should don a costume which will permit them the use of their legs. It is very funny that it is ever and always the men who are troubled about the propriety of the women's costume. My one word about the "bloomers" or any other sort of dress, is that every woman, like every man, should be permitted to wear exactly what she chooses.
When women have equal chances in the world they will cease to live merely to please the conventional fancy of men. As long as there was no alternative for women but to marry, it was about as much as any woman's life was worth to be an old maid, and her one idea was to dress and behave so as to escape this fate. She now has other objects in life, and her new liberty has brought with it a freedom in matters of dress which is cause for rejoicing.
These opinions might be multiplied almost to infinity and all would emphasize two points: 1st, the broad views entertained by Miss Anthony on all questions, based on her idea of individual freedom, the same for both sexes; 2d, her fundamental belief that, until women cease to be a subject class, and until they stand upon the plane of perfect equality of rights and privileges, there can be no such thing as a fair solution or adjustment of the issues of the day, either great or small; in other words, that these can not be satisfactorily and permanently settled through the judgment and decision of only one-half the people.
On October 18 she celebrated her complete recovery by accepting an invitation to "come and take a cup of tea with Aunt Maria Porter," in honor of her ninetieth birthday. She was obliged to cancel her engagement to speak at the Atlanta Exposition, but during this month made a trial of her strength by an hour's speech at the annual meeting of the Monroe County Suffrage Club at Brockport, "attempting it," she says, "with fear and trembling, but going through as if I never had had a scare." Assured by this that she had herself well in hand once more, she went to Ashtabula, Ohio, for a three days' convention of the State association, attending every business meeting and public session. This fact being duly heralded in the newspapers, they put the obituary notices back into their pigeonholes.
She started for New York November 6 to be present at an event to which she had looked forward with more pleasure than to anything of that nature in all her life—the celebration of the eightieth birthday of Mrs. Stanton. At the convention in February it had been unanimously decided that the National-American Association should have charge of this, but at the Woman's Council in Washington it was agreed that it would have greater significance if held under the auspices of that body, which cheerfully accepted the charge. Its new president, Mary Lowe Dickinson, urged Miss Anthony to take the chairmanship of the committee of arrangements, insisting that no one else could make so great a success of it, but Miss Anthony assured her of what afterwards proved to be true, that no one could manage the affair more perfectly than Mrs. Dickinson herself.
Naturally many of the suffrage women resented having any one outside their own association as the leader on this great occasion, and Lillie Devereux Blake wrote: "Mrs. Stanton stands for suffrage above all else and she should be honored by our societies. To have the celebration under the charge of the secretary of the King's Daughters, an orthodox organization, seems very much out of taste, greatly as I honor Mrs. Dickinson. I do not think any one else will make the celebration such a success as you would; you, the long-time companion and co-worker with our dear leader, are the person who should be at the head and, with your admirable manner as a presiding officer, you would give a tone to it that no one else could." To this Miss Anthony replied:
All of you fail to see the higher honor to Mrs. Stanton in having the celebration mothered by a great body composed of twenty national societies, instead of by only our one. Surely, for all classes of women—liberal, orthodox, Jewish, Mormon, suffrage and anti-suffrage, native and foreign, black and white—to unite in paying a tribute of respect to the greatest woman reformer, philosopher and statesman of the century, will be the realization of Mrs. Stanton's most optimistic dream. I am surprised and delighted at the action of the council. It shows a breadth and comprehensiveness on the part of the leaders of its twenty-in-one organization of which I am very proud. Of course Mrs. Stanton stands for suffrage first, last and all the time, and the conservative women who join in this celebration do so knowing that she stands thus for a free and enfranchised womanhood.
Don't you see that for Anthony to head the fray, preside and be general master of ceremonies, would reduce it to a mere mutual admiration affair? The celebration is not taken away from us. We, the suffrage women, will have our modicum of time to set forth what Mrs. Stanton has done for our specific cause, and the other women will have theirs. O, no, my dear, it is not possible that the greater can be less than one of the parts which compose it.
Her own "girls," Mrs. Sewall and Mrs. Avery, could not help being a little jealous for their general, and insisted that her name should head the invitations, but to them she wrote:
Do you not see that for Susan B. Anthony's name to stand at the top, will frighten the conservatives? Everybody will conclude that the big suffrage elephant has possessed the council, body and soul—all thrust into the suffrage hopper and the wheel turned by S. B. A. To make me chairman will wholly spoil the intention of the council, which is and should be to bring the fruits of Mrs. Stanton's first demand, fifty years ago, and lay them at her feet; not only the suffrage children, but those of education, literature, science, reform, religion, all as one. If Mrs. Dickinson single out the hoofed and horned head of suffrage as the commander-in-chief, not only the nineteen other societies but all the world outside will say it is suffrage after all; which it will be, because the others won't train under our leadership. No, no; Mrs. Dickinson herself must be the chief cook of this broth and appoint her own lieutenants, one of whom, with name far down in the middle of the list, I shall be most happy to be, and do all I possibly can to help, but always in the name of the president of the council.
She was true to her word, and in every way assisted Mrs. Dickinson in the immense amount of preparation necessary for what was the largest and most perfect affair of this nature ever given in America. At her request Miss Anthony wrote over a hundred letters to collect funds, secure the presence of the pioneer workers among women, etc., but still insisted on keeping herself so much in the background as even to refuse to make one of the principal speeches of the occasion. When she reached New York, she went for the night to her cousin, Mrs. Lapham, and early the next morning to Mrs. Stanton's to read over the birthday speech, of which she writes: "My only criticism was that she did not rest her case after describing the wonderful advance made in state, church, society and home, instead of going on to single out the church and declare it to be especially slow in accepting the doctrine of equality to women. I tried to make her see that it had advanced as rapidly as the other departments but I did not succeed, and it is right that she should express her own ideas, not mine."