She then made her plea. It was cordially received, but the platform entirely ignored the question of woman suffrage. This was true also of the press and party speakers during the campaign, with one exception. Hon. J. A. Pickler was renominated for Congress, and in his speech of acceptance declared his belief in woman suffrage and his regret that the Republicans did not adopt it in their platform. He was warned by the party leaders, but replied that he would advocate it even if he imperilled his chances for election. He spoke in favor of the amendment throughout his campaign and was elected without difficulty. His wife, Alice M. Pickler, was one of the most effective speakers and workers among the Dakota women and, although Mr. Pickler was a candidate, she did not once speak upon Republican issues but confined herself wholly to the question of woman suffrage. She was as true and courageous as her husband. Although fair reports of the suffrage meetings were published, scarcely a newspaper in the State gave editorial endorsement to the amendment.
The adverse action of the party conventions virtually destroyed all chance for success, but the suffrage speakers usually found enthusiastic audiences, and the friends still hoped against hope that they might secure a popular vote. Miss Anthony never lost courage, and her letters were full of good cheer. "Tell everybody," she wrote, "that I am perfectly well in body and mind, never better, and never doing more work.... Anna Shaw and I are on our way to the Black Hills, and shall rush into Sioux City for a pay lecture and turn the proceeds over to the Dakota fund.... O, the lack of the modern comforts and conveniences! But I can put up with it better than any of the young folks.... All of us must strain every nerve to move the hearts of men as they never before were moved. I shall push ahead and do my level best to carry this State, come weal or woe to me personally.... I never felt so buoyed up with the love and sympathy and confidence of the good people everywhere.... The friends here are very sanguine and if I had not had my hopes dashed to the earth in seven State campaigns before this, I, too, would dare believe. But I shall not be cast down, even if voted down."
The eastern friends sent appreciative letters. "The thought of you and your fellow-workers in South Dakota in this hot weather and with insufficient funds, has lain like lead upon my heart," wrote John Hooker. "How I wish I could accept your invitation to come to you and talk to the old soldiers," said Clara Barton; "but alas, I have not the strength. My heart, my hopes, are with you and if there is a spoke I can get hold of, I will help turn that wheel before the campaign is over. My love is always with you and your glorious cause, my dear, dear Susan Anthony."
Anna Shaw wrote from Ohio in August: "I am trying to follow your magnificent example, in quietly passing over every personal matter for the sake of the greatest good for the work. Whenever I find myself giving way, I think of you and all you have borne and get fresh courage to try once more. Dear Aunt Susan, my heart is reaching out with such a great longing for my mother, now eighty years old, that I must go to her for a few days before I enter upon that long canvass, but I will come to you soon."
It was a hard campaign, the summer the hottest ever known, the distances long, the entertainment the best which could be offered, good in the towns but in the rural districts sometimes very poor, and the speakers slept more than once in sod houses where the only fuel for preparing the meals consisted of "buffalo chips." The people were in severe financial straits. A two years' drouth had destroyed the crops, and prairie fires had swept away the little which was left. "Starvation stares them in the face," Miss Anthony wrote. "Why could not Congress have appropriated the money for artesian wells and helped these earnest, honest people, instead of voting $40,000 for a commission to come out here and investigate?"
Frequently the speakers had to drive twenty miles between the afternoon and evening meetings, in the heat of summer and the chill of late autumn; at one time forty miles on a wagon seat without a back. On the Fourth of July, a roasting day, Miss Anthony spoke in the morning, drove fifteen miles to speak again in the afternoon, and then left at night in a pouring rain for a long ride in a freight-car. At one town the school house was the only place for speaking purposes, but the Russian trustees announced that "they did not want to hear any women preach," so after the long trip, the meeting had to be given up. Several times in the midst of their speeches, the audience was stampeded by cyclones, not a soul left in the house.[63] The people came twenty and thirty miles to these meetings, bringing their dinners. Miss Anthony speaks always in the highest terms of the fine character of the Dakota men and women, and of their large families of bright, healthy children.
The speakers never tire of telling their experiences during that campaign. Mary Seymour Howell relates in her own interesting way that once she and Miss Anthony had been riding for hours in a stage which creaked and groaned at every turn of the wheels, the poor, dilapidated horses not able to travel out of a walk, the driver a prematurely-old little boy whose feet did not touch the floor, and a cold Dakota wind blowing straight into their faces. After an unbroken, homesick silence of an hour, Miss Anthony said in a subdued and solemn voice, "Mrs. Howell, humanity is at a very low ebb!" The tone, the look, the words, so in harmony with the surroundings, produced a reaction which sent her off into a fit of laughter, in which Miss Anthony soon joined.
They had been warned to keep away from a certain hotel, at one place, as it was the very worst in the whole State. At the close of the afternoon meeting there, a man came up and said he would be pleased to entertain the speakers and could make them very comfortable. This seemed to be a sure escape, so they thankfully accepted his invitation, but when they reached his home, they discovered that he was the landlord of the poor hotel! Miss Anthony charged Mrs. Howell to make the best of it without a word of complaint. They went to supper, amidst heat and flies, and found sour bread, muddy coffee and stewed green grapes. Miss Anthony ate and drank and talked and smiled, and every little while touched Mrs. Howell's foot with her own in a reassuring manner. After supper Mrs. Howell went to her little, bare room, which she soon learned by the clatter of the dishes was next to the kitchen, and through the thin partition she heard the landlady say: "Well, I never supposed I could entertain big-bugs, and I thought I couldn't live through having Susan B. Anthony here, but I'm getting along all right. You ought to hear her laugh; why, she laughs just like other people!" Mrs. Howell gives this graphic description of the meetings at Madison, July 10: