The sole object, it seems to me, of this national organization is to bring the combined influence of all the States upon Congress to secure national legislation. The very moment you change the purpose of this great body from National to State work you have defeated its object. It is the business of the States to do the district work; to create public sentiment; to make a national organization possible, and then to bring their united power to the capital and focus it on Congress. Our younger women naturally can not appreciate the vast amount of work done here in Washington by the National Association in the last twenty-five years. The delegates do not come here as individuals but as representatives of their entire States. We have had these national conventions here for a quarter of a century, and every Congress has given hearings to the ablest women we could bring from every section. In the olden times the States were not fully organized—they had not money enough to pay their delegates' expenses. We begged and worked and saved the money, and the National Association paid the expenses of delegates from Oregon and California in order that they might come and bring the influence of their States to bear upon Congress.
Last winter we had twenty-three States represented by delegates. Think of those twenty-three women going before the Senate committee, each making her speech, and convincing those senators of the interest in all these States. We have educated at least a part of three or four hundred men and their wives and daughters every two years to return as missionaries to their respective localities. I shall feel it a grave mistake if you vote in favor of a movable convention. It will lessen our influence and our power; but come what may, I shall abide by the decision of the majority.
Miss Anthony was warmly supported by a number of delegates but the final vote resulted: in favor, 37; opposed, 28.
Among the notable letters received by the convention was the following from Lucy Stone: "Wherever woman suffragists are gathered together in the name of equal rights, there am I always in spirit with them. Although absent, my personal glad greeting goes to every one; to those who have borne the heat and burden of the day, and to the strong, brave, younger workers who have come to lighten the load and complete the victory. We may surely rejoice now when there are so many gains won and conceded, and when favorable indications are on every hand. The way before us is shorter than that behind; but the work still calls for patient perseverance and ceaseless endeavor. The end is not yet in sight, but it can not be far away." Those who listened little thought that this would be the last message ever received from that earnest worker of fifty long years. Letters of greeting were sent to her and to Mrs. Stanton. Miss Anthony was unanimously re-elected president.
She lingered for a few days' visit with Mrs. Greenleaf, who gave a reception for her, at which Grace Greenwood was one of the receiving party. She had a luncheon at Mrs. Waite's, wife of the Chief-Justice, and after several other pleasant social functions, left Washington February 1.[81] There was now a magnet in New York City and henceforth she always arranged her hurried eastern trips so that she might spend a few hours or days with Mrs. Stanton, when as in the old time, they wrote calls, resolutions and memorials and made plans to storm the strongholds.
On February 8, Miss Anthony spoke at Warsaw, the guest of Mrs. Maud Humphrey; and for the next week the journal says: "Trying all these days to get to the bottom of my piles of accumulated letters." On her seventy-third birthday the Political Equality Club gave a reception at the pleasant home of Rev. and Mrs. W. C. Gannett, and presented her with a handsome silver teapot, spirit lamp and tray. Mrs. George Hollister gave her a set of point lace which had belonged to her mother, the daughter of Thurlow Weed; and there were numerous other gifts. She wrote to Mrs. Avery on the 23d: "It is just ten years ago this morning, dear Rachel, since we two went gypsying into the old world. Well, it was a happy acquaintance we made then and it has been a blessed decade which has intervened. Ten years of constant work and thought, but ten years nearer the golden day of jubilee!"
She arranged a meeting at the Rochester Chamber of Commerce, March 1, for May Wright Sewall, president National Council of Women, to speak on the approaching Woman's Congress at the World's Fair. On March 6 she began a brief lecture tour, speaking in Hillsdale, Detroit, Saginaw, Bay City, Grand Rapids, Lansing, Battle Creek, Charlotte and in Toledo. Nine evening addresses, several receptions, and over a thousand miles of travel in twelve days, was not a bad record for a woman past seventy-three.[82]
Among the pleasant letters received through the winter were several from the South. Miss Anthony was especially appreciative of the friendship of southern women, as her part in the "abolition" movement in early times had created a prejudice against her, and in later days the sentiment for suffrage had not been sufficient to call her into that part of the country, where she might form personal acquaintances and friendships. She had, during these months, earnest letters from the women of Italy asking for encouragement and co-operation in their struggles. Many letters came also from teachers, stenographers and other wage-earning women, full of grateful acknowledgment of their indebtedness to her. There were invitations enough for lectures to fill every month in the year, ranging from the Christian Association at Cornell to the Free-thinkers' Club in New York, and covering all the grades of belief or non-belief between the two. She was asked to contribute to a symposium on "The Ideal Man," to write an account of "The Underground Railroad," and to give so many written opinions on current topics of discussion that to have complied would have kept her at her desk from early morning until the midnight hour.
In a letter to a friend she said: "The other day a millionaire who wrote me, 'wondered why I didn't have my letters typewritten.' Why, bless him, I never, in all my fifty years of hard work with the pen, had a writing desk with pigeonholes and drawers until my seventieth birthday brought me the present of one, and never had I even a dream of money enough for a stenographer and typewriter. How little those who have realize the limitations of those who have not."
She wrote to Robert Purvis at this time: "What a magnificent opening speech Gladstone made, and how splendid his final remarks: 'It would be misery for me if I had foregone or omitted in these closing years of my life any measure it was possible for me to take towards upholding and promoting the cause—not of one party or one nation, but of all parties and all nations.' So can you and I say with Gladstone, we should be miserable but for the consciousness that we have done all in our power to help forward every measure for the freedom and equality of the races and the sexes."
In April she lectured at a number of places in New York to add to the limited fund which kept the pot boiling at home.[83] She also went to Buffalo to talk over Industrial School matters with Mrs. Harriet A. Townsend, president of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union, which had proved so great a success in that city. On the 28th she spoke before the Woman's Columbian Exposition Committee of Cincinnati, "to a very fashionable and representative audience," the Enquirer said. For this lecture she received $125. During the spring she wrote the Woman's Tribune: