Many of you know that the last few months I have spent in editing the papers presented at the World's Congress of Representative Women, held in Chicago last May. It is a remarkable and to me quite an unexpected fact that the papers upon the subject of Civil and Political Reform are hardly more earnest appeals for political equality than are the addresses to be found in every other chapter. Hereafter if one asserts that the interest in the woman suffrage movement is not growing, let him be cited to this galaxy of witnesses, whose testimony is all the more valuable because in the large majority of instances it proceeds from women who never have identified themselves with it, and are not at all known as advocates of political equality. The meaning of the entire report is equality, co-operation, organization; that is, the demand made by the National Suffrage Association is the demand borne to us by the echoes of that great congress.
Among the committee reports that of Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery, Chairman of Columbian Exposition Work, attracted especial attention and was in part as follows:
There is a most valuable and interesting bit of unpublished history which seems to me to form an integral part of your committee's report. It concerns the origin of the Board of Lady Managers, and this association should be proud to be able to feel that to our president is largely due the recognition of women in official capacity at the World's Fair. The fact that women were not officially recognized during the Centennial Exposition in 1876 was a great disappointment to all interested in the advancement of womankind, and while it was suggested on every side that women must have a voice in the management of the World's Fair in 1893, it remained for Susan B. Anthony to take the initiatory step which led to the creation of the Board of Lady Managers. She had invitations sent to women of official and social position to meet in the Riggs House parlors to consider this matter, in December, 1889. At this meeting Mrs. Conger, wife of Senator Omar D. Conger of Michigan, was made chairman, and Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, secretary. Miss Anthony was not present, fearing lest her well-known radical views might hinder the progress of affairs in the direction she wished them to take, but she restlessly walked about her room in the hotel anxiously awaiting the result.
Several meetings followed this and a committee was appointed to wait upon Congress, asking that the commission should consist of both men and women. Meanwhile the World's Fair Bill had been brought before the House and Miss Anthony soon saw that there would not be time for this committee to act. She therefore prepared petitions, sent them to women in official life and asked them to obtain signatures of official people.[100] On the strength of these petitions there was added to the bill, in March, 1890, an amendment providing for the appointment of women on the Board.
Miss Anthony's self-effacement was perhaps the wisest thing under the circumstances, for the Board, as appointed, being unconnected with woman suffrage, proved an immense source of education to the conservative women of the whole world—an education not needed by the radical women of our own ranks. I think the time has surely come when the truth of this history should be known to all.
The election of officers resulted in Miss Anthony's receiving for president 139 out of 140 possible votes; Miss Shaw for vice-president-at-large, 130; Rachel Foster Avery for corresponding secretary, unanimous; Alice Stone Blackwell for recording secretary, 136; Harriet Taylor Upton for treasurer, unanimous.
During the convention the death of Miss Anna Ella Carroll was announced. A resolution of sympathy with her sister was adopted and a collection was taken up, as had been done for Miss Carroll a number of times during the past twenty-five years, which resulted in over forty dollars.
Mrs. Sallie Clay Bennett (Ky.), the faithful champion of Federal Suffrage, insisted that, instead of asking for an amendment to confer suffrage, we should demand protection in the right already guaranteed by the U. S. Constitution: "Even when asking for Municipal Suffrage, we never should fail to assert that it is already ours under the Constitution, and that there is strength enough in our national government to protect every woman in the Union provided the men had interpreted the laws right." Miss Sara Winthrop Smith (Conn.) supported Mrs. Bennett, saying: "It is useless labor to petition for a Sixteenth Amendment—we do not need it. Our fundamental institutions most adequately protect the rights of all citizens of the United States, irrespective of sex. In the twenty-four years since the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, 300 amendments to the Constitution have been introduced into Congress which never met with any approval from either House. I think it is wasted time for us to continue in this work, and therefore I feel that it concerns our dignity as a part of the people of this great United States that we declare and ask only for that which recognizes the dignity of such citizens." Mrs. Diggs, Mrs. Dietrick, Mrs. Colby and others supported this view.
In expressing his dissent Mr. Blackwell said: "I do not believe in Federal Suffrage. I agree with the State's Rights party in their views." Miss Blackwell and others took the same position, and Miss Anthony closed the debate by saying: "There is no doubt that the spirit of the Constitution guarantees full equality of rights and the protection of citizens of the United States in the exercise of these rights, but the powers that be have decided against us, and until we can get a broader Supreme Court—which will not be until after the women of every State in the Union are enfranchised—we never will get the needed liberal interpretation of that document." The majority concurred in this view.
The most spirited discussion of the convention was in regard to the place of holding the next annual meeting. Urgent invitations were received from Detroit and Cincinnati, but the persuasive Southern advocates, Claudia Howard Maxwell, Miriam Howard DuBose and H. Augusta Howard, three Georgia delegates, carried off the prize for Atlanta.
This was the first and last appearance on the suffrage platform of Miss Kate Field, who was introduced by Miss Anthony with her characteristic abruptness: "Now, friends, here is Kate Field, who has been talking all these years against woman suffrage. She wants to tell you of the faith that is in her." Miss Field responded quickly:
I take exception to what Miss Anthony has said, because I think she has misconstrued my position entirely. I never have been against woman suffrage. I have been against universal suffrage of any kind, regardless of sex. I think that morally woman has exactly as much right to the suffrage as man. It is a disgrace that such women as you and I have not the suffrage, but I do think that all suffrage should be regarded as a privilege and should not be demanded as a right. It should be the privilege of education and, if you please—I will not quarrel about that—of a certain property qualification. I have not changed my opinion, but I did say that I was tired of waiting for men to have common sense, that there evidently never would be any restriction in suffrage and that I should come in for the whole thing, woman included. Now, that is my position.... I withdraw my former attitude and take my stand on this platform.