I hope your State association won't do the foolish thing of wasting your time in asking the legislature to pass a law granting "presidential" suffrage to women. Our chances in your State have been postponed, if not absolutely killed, because of municipal suffrage, and now if you should induce your legislature to give "presidential" suffrage and the women should thwart the men's wishes in their votes for President, as they already have done with their limited franchise, you would be doomed never to get the right to vote for congressmen, governor and legislators. I wish women never would ask for any but full suffrage; and also that they would stop asking the legislatures to submit an amendment to the voters, until they have created public sentiment enough to get at least one of the leading parties to stand for it from year to year. We have been working at the top with the members of legislatures, delegates to conventions, etc., too long; it is now time to begin at the bottom with the voting precincts. Nothing short of this should be considered organization.
Miss Anthony received many poems every year from admiring friends of both sexes. This acknowledgment of one raises the suspicion that she was not so appreciative as she might have been: "I find in a very handsome lavender envelope a poem inscribed on lavender paper, addressed to Susan B. Anthony. Since I know nothing of the merits of poetry, I am not able to pass any opinion upon this, but I can see that 'reap' and 'deep,' 'prayers' and 'bears,' 'ark' and 'dark,' 'true' and 'grew' do rhyme, and so I suppose it is a splendid effort, but if you had written it in plain prose, I could have understood it a great deal better and read it a great deal more easily. Nevertheless, I am thankful to you for poetizing over me—although the fact is that I am the most prosaic, matter-of-fact creature that ever drew the breath of life."
A relative in California wrote that "God would punish the people in that State who worked against the woman suffrage amendment," and Miss Anthony replied:
It is hardly worth while for you or anybody to talk about "God's punishing people." If He does, He has been a long time about it in a good many cases and not succeeded in doing it very thoroughly. He certainly didn't punish the liquor dealers of San Francisco; instead of that, He let them rejoice over us women because of their power to cheat us out of right and justice. I think it is quite time, at least for anybody who has Anthony blood in her, to see that God allows the wheat and the tares to grow up together, and that the tares frequently get the start of the wheat and kill it out. The only difference between the wheat and human beings is that the latter have intellect and ought to combine and pull out the tares, root and branch. Instead of that, good men stay away from the ballot-box or else form third, fourth and forty-'leventh parties, thus leaving the liquor men and vicious elements, who always know enough to stand together, a balance of power on the side of the candidate or the party that will do most for their interests. If the good men were as bright as the bad men, they would pull together instead of separately.
To the Jewish Woman's Council: "From day to day I read the press reports of your meetings, and was pleased to see how successful they were; especially was I glad at the answer one of your women made to the criticism of your holding a meeting on Sunday. It is time to teach some of our Protestant women that it is just as worthy to do a good thing on Sunday as on Monday or any other day in the week, and no worse to do a bad one. They should learn also that they have no more right to ask you to hold their Sunday sacred than you have to demand that they shall observe your Jewish Sabbath."
Some California women wrote her that the politicians were advising them to ask for "educated and property suffrage," and she replied:
I should answer them that it is quite difficult enough for women to push their demand for enfranchisement on an equal basis with men. They all know there is not a man who has any political aspirations or a party which hopes for success, that would take a public stand in favor of such a measure as they wish us to adopt. I do not agree with them that we have too many voters now. Instead of that, I say we have just half enough, for a majority of the opinions of all the people combined is sure to be better than the opinions of any one class. They call it a "mistake" giving to poor and uneducated men the right to vote; whereas, the greatest wrongs in our government are perpetrated by rich men, the wire-pulling agents of the corporations and monopolies, in which the poor and the ignorant have no part.
No, they can not persuade me that it would be a right or even a politic thing to ask that only educated, tax-paying women be enfranchised. It would antagonize not only every man who had neither property nor education but also every one whose wife had neither, and all such would vote against the enfranchisement of the rich and educated women. You can not start a demand for any sort of restrictive qualification for women which will not lose more votes for the measure in one direction than it can possibly gain in another.
The habit of many women of continually intruding their religious beliefs into their public work was a great annoyance to Miss Anthony. To a prominent speaker on the Prohibition platform with whom she was well acquainted, she wrote: "It seems to me that by your using constantly the words 'God' and 'Jesus' as if they were material beings, when to you they are no longer such, you impress upon your audience, grounded as the vast majority yet are in the old beliefs, that you still hold to the idea of their personality. The world, especially women, love to cling to a personal, material help—God a strong man, Jesus a loving man." And then a little further on, referring to the common habit of regarding physical misfortunes as the punishment of God, she said: "God is not responsible for our human ills and we should not believe or disbelieve in Him on account of our aches and pains. It surely is not the good people who escape bodily ailments. Certain fixed laws govern all, and those who come nearest to obeying these laws will suffer least; but even then we must suffer for the failures of our ancestors."
One of the leading women in a State where a suffrage amendment was pending, wrote her that she felt sure the Lord would interpose in its behalf and she should try to influence the voters by prayer. In response Miss Anthony said:
I think you do not fully realize that the vast majority of the men whom you have to convert to suffrage, neither know nor care whether you and the rest of the women who want to vote, are especially inspired by God to make the demand. Those who are good Methodists like yourself ought to believe in suffrage already, and therefore your appeals are to be made to the men who are not Methodists, possibly not even Christians, and would be repelled by your presenting any of the religious motives which are so powerful with you and other church members. To prevail with the rank and file of voters, you must appeal to their sense of justice. I am glad to have you tell me personally about your communings with the Lord, but for you to give that talk of "miraculous intervention" to the common run of voters would be, as the Good Book says, "casting pearls before swine."