A new charter for the city of Rochester had been prepared and a mass meeting of citizens was announced for December 12, to hear an exposition of its points. The morning paper said: "By far the most largely attended meeting the Chamber of Commerce has ever held was that of last evening. The large attendance was due to the announcement that the new charter would be discussed by Miss Susan B. Anthony, and the interest of the meeting was largely due to the fact that, true to her colors, she kept her engagement...." Miss Anthony's commission had been received from the governor that day, which fact was announced by President Brickner as he introduced her, and she was greeted with cheers. In the course of her speech she said:
Since promising to address this body, I have tried in vain to find some word which would settle the question with every member present in favor of so amending the charter as to give our women equal voice in conducting the affairs of the city. It seems such a self-evident thing that the mother's opinion should be weighed and measured in the political scales as well as that of her son. It is so simple and just that the wife's judgment should be respected and counted as well as the husband's. And who can give the reason why the sister's opinion should be ignored and the brother's honored?... Over 5,000 women of this city pay taxes on real estate, and who shall say they are not as much interested in every question of financial expenditure as any 5,000 men; in the public parks, street railways, grade crossings, pavements, bridges, etc.? And not only the 5,000 tax-paying women, but all the women of the city are equally interested in the sanitary condition of our streets, alleys, schools, police stations, jails and asylums....
To repair the damages of society seems to be the mission assigned to women, and we ask that the necessary implements shall be placed in their hands. But, you say, women can be appointed to see to these matters without voting. Yes, but they are not; and if they were, without the ballot they would be powerless to effect the improvements they might find necessary. If the women of this city had the right to vote, those on the board of charities, for instance, would not be compelled year after year to beg each member of every new council for the appointment of some women as city physicians, as scores of them have done for the past six or eight years. Had we the right to vote, do you suppose we should have to plead in vain before the two parties to place women in nomination for the school board?
I want this amendment of the charter first, because it is right and just to women; second, that women may have a political fulcrum on which to plant their lever for everything they wish to secure through government; third, that the opinions of the women of this city may be respected, and there is no other way to secure respect but to have them counted with those of men in the ballot-box on every possible question which is carried to that tribunal; and fourth, to free the mothers from the cruel taunt of being responsible for the character of their grown-up sons while denied all power to control the conditions surrounding them after they pass beyond the dooryards of their homes.
She continued by showing the good effects of woman's municipal suffrage in England, Canada and also in Kansas, and full suffrage in Wyoming; and closed with an earnest appeal for an amendment to the new charter which should confer the municipal franchise upon women. A few days later the board of trustees took final action on the charter, of which the Democrat and Chronicle said: "The amendment proposed by Miss Susan B. Anthony extending the suffrage to women was defeated, although by a close vote. Had there been a full meeting of the board it is a question whether it would not have been adopted, as several of the members who were not present last evening had expressed themselves as favorable."[78]
Miss Anthony addressed the Monroe County Teachers' Institute at Brighton, December 16. The diary records many visits to the Industrial School, conferences with the other fourteen trustees and much correspondence with the boards of similar institutions elsewhere. In her mail this year were letters from most of the civilized countries on the globe, among them several from the leaders of the movement in New Zealand, saying that her name was more familiar than all others there, and asking for advice and encouragement in their work of securing the ballot for women.[79] The following was received from Mrs. Kate Beckwith Lee, Dowagiac, Mich.: "Mr. Bonet, our sculptor, obtained your photograph, and we now have your grand face looking down in stone from the front of our theater, which was erected as an educator to our people and a memorial to my father, P. D. Beckwith, who was liberal toward all mankind and a believer in woman's equality, and I sincerely hope you may some time see the building." The other women sculptured on this handsome edifice are George Eliot, George Sand, Rachel, Mary Anderson and Sarah Bernhardt. Among the great mass of correspondence, this is selected:
An incident which is of no particular consequence to this inquiry, constrains me to write in the hope that you may find time to place upon paper your recollection of the connection that my father (the late George H. Thacher, then mayor of the city of Albany) had with your anti-slavery meeting in this city just before the war. I was too young to have it make a vivid impression upon me, but it has sometimes been said that was the first opportunity your organization had to freely express its views within the State of New York. I will be very grateful if you will permit your memory to go back some thirty years and recall that incident.[80] Yours,
John Boyd Thacher.
This illustrates the pride which the children of the future will have in showing that their parents or grandparents rendered some assistance to the cause of woman and of freedom. Yet Mr. Thacher, who, as a member of the New York Board of General Managers of the Columbian Exposition, had the selection of those who should compose the Woman's Board of the State, did not name one who had been identified with the great movement for equal rights during the past forty years, and had made it possible for women to participate in this celebration.
A case which had been commenced in the courts of New York in 1891 and had run along through several years, may as well be described here as elsewhere. Miss Anthony had but an indirect connection with it and it is mentioned more for its utter ridiculousness than for any other reason. A woman's art association in New York City, Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson, president, Miss Alice Donlevy, secretary, had the promise of a legacy to build an academy, and they decided to place a statue or bust at each side of the entrance, representing Reform and Philanthropy. Miss Anthony was selected for the one and Mrs. Mary Hamilton Schuyler for the other. The latter, in 1852, founded the New York School of Design for Women, had been the friend and patron of art, and for many years before her death had been noted for her philanthropic work.
A serious difficulty at once arose in the opposition of Mrs. Schuyler's nephew and stepson, Philip Schuyler, who objected to the "disagreeable notoriety." He carried the matter into the courts, which of course attracted the comment of all the newspapers of the country, pro and con, and caused more "disagreeable notoriety" than a dozen statues would have done. He obtained a preliminary injunction against the art association and then took the case to the supreme court for a permanent injunction, on the ground that the "right of privacy" had been violated. The real secret of his objections, however, was exposed in his complaint before the supreme court. Among the twenty-eight grievances alleged were the following:
Twenty-second.—The said Mary M. Hamilton Schuyler took no part whatever in any of the various so-called woman's rights agitations, with which the aforesaid Susan B. Anthony was, and is, prominently identified; and that she took no interest in such agitations or movements, and had no sympathy whatever with them; and that, as the plaintiff believes, she would have resented any attempt such as is made by the defendants to couple her name with that of the said Susan B. Anthony.
Twenty-third.—The acts of the defendants in attempting to raise money by public subscription for a statue of the said Mary M. Hamilton Schuyler; in associating her name with the name of Susan B. Anthony, and in announcing that the projected statue of her is to be placed on public exhibition at the Columbian Exposition as a companion piece to a statue of the said Susan B. Anthony, constitute, and are an unlawful interference with the right of privacy, and a gross and unwarranted outrage upon the memory of the said Mary M. Hamilton Schuyler, under the specious pretense of doing honor to her memory; and that the surviving members of her family have been, and are, greatly distressed and injured thereby.
The supreme court continued the injunction, and the art association then carried the case up to the court of appeals. Here the decision of the lower court was reversed. The opinion was rendered by Justice Rufus W. Peckham, afterwards appointed by President Cleveland to the Supreme Bench of the United States. It is not often that a judge of the highest court in the State incorporates in a legal decision a compliment to a woman, and for this reason the tribute of Justice Peckham is the more highly appreciated. After holding that "persons attempting to erect a statue or bust of a woman no longer living, if their motive is to do honor to her, and if the work is to be done in an appropriate manner, can not be restrained by her surviving relatives," he continued: