There was Julia Ward Howe, the author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who so largely helped in the freeing of the slaves; and Lucy Stone, that staunch Abolitionist and Suffragist—all closely linked with Massachusetts’ great history. It was Lucy Stone who, when protest was made that she injected “too much suffrage” into her Abolitionist speeches, declared, “I was a woman before I was an Abolitionist.”
Later, at a mass-meeting of the Congressional Union, Maud Younger, who, in Washington, was to become so steadfast a worker for the Congressional Union, spoke. Maud Younger is one of the most picturesque of the many picturesque figures among the native daughters of California: a student of economic conditions; a feminist; much traveled; an ex-president of the Waitresses’ Union; her life is as inextricably mixed with the Labor and Suffrage history of California as later it was bound with the Woman’s Party. On this occasion, she said:
The burden of the women of the unenfranchised States, their struggles, is ours more than it ever was; our freedom is not our own while they are unenfranchised. I realized in the East that we women can spend a lifetime for Suffrage, if we continue to work State by State only. Do you realize that, since we won our vote in California, Ohio has been twice defeated, and Michigan twice defeated?... I heard Frank P. Walsh, Chairman of the Industrial Railways Commission, say in Washington: “The ballot for women will only come through the persistent and unremitting effort of the women in the free States.”
Maud Younger was followed by Andrew Gallagher, equally important, and equally as picturesque a figure among the Native Sons of California. Mr. Gallagher is an ex-champion amateur heavyweight of the Pacific Coast; a labor leader; a power in California politics. He said in part:
In those days when Suffrage hopes were dark in California, Labor stood by women; as we stood for State Suffrage, so now we stand for National Suffrage. If Labor can help to bring about the passage of the National Woman Suffrage Amendment, then Labor will put its shoulder to the wheel, and do all in its power to force its adoption.
The Political Convention of Woman Voters held in San Francisco in September at the Panama-Pacific Exposition, carried out all these traditions of picturesqueness. Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont opened the Convention. Mrs. Fremont Older, the novelist, spoke. Dr. Yami Kin, the first woman physician in China—bringing to the event a picturesque touch of internationalism by wearing a pale blue brocaded mandarin coat—spoke in excellent English. Mme. Ali Kuli Khan, the wife of the Persian Minister, and Mme. Maria Montessori, the famous Italian physician and educator, also spoke.
Mrs. Belmont said:
We women of the North, of the South and of the East, branded on account of sex, disfranchised as criminals and imbeciles, come to the glorious West, where the broad vision of its men has seen justice.
Mrs. Older said:
I thought that Woman Suffrage was like Utopia; when women were good enough to vote, the men would give it to them; but I have learned that Utopias are not given away; they must be fought for.