The convention proper closed on Saturday night, but the exercises Sunday afternoon may be said to have been a continuation of it. The official report said:
The services began at 3 o'clock and more than half an hour before this time the theatre was filled almost to its fullest capacity. When the opening hour arrived there was not an empty chair in the house, every aisle was crowded, and people anxious to hear the sermon of the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw had invaded the stage. So dense became the crowd that the doors were ordered closed and people were refused admission even before the services began. After the doors were closed the disappointed ones stood on the stairs and many of them remained in the streets. The vast congregation was made up of all classes of citizens. Every chair that could be found in the theatre had been either placed in the aisles or on the stage, and then boxes and benches were pressed into service. Many of the most prominent professional and business men were standing on the stage and in different parts of the house.
Miss Shaw gave her great sermon The Heavenly Vision. She told of the visions of the man which it depended upon himself to make reality; of the visions of the woman which were forever placed beyond her reach by the church, by society and by the laws, and closed with these words: "We ask for nothing which God can not give us. God created nature, and if our demands are contrary to nature, trust nature to take care of itself without the aid of man. It is better to be true to what you believe, though that be wrong, than to be false to what you believe, even if that belief is correct."
Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby (D. C.) preached to more than a thousand people at the Bethel (colored) Church; Mrs. Meriwether at the Unitarian Church; Miss Yates and Miss Emily Howland (N. Y.) also occupied pulpits.
The evening programs with their formal addresses naturally attracted the largest audiences and occupied the most space in the newspapers, but the morning and afternoon sessions, devoted to State and committee reports and the business of the association, were really the life and soul of this as of all the conventions. Among the most interesting of the excellent State reports presented to the Atlanta meeting were those of New York and Kansas, because during the previous year suffrage campaigns had been carried on in those States. The former, presented by Mrs. Jean Brooks Greenleaf, State president, said in part:
The New York Constitutional Convention before whom we hopefully carried our cause—"so old, so new, so ever true"—is a thing of the past. We presented our petition, asking that the word "male" be eliminated from the organic law, with the endorsement of over half a million citizens of the State. We laid before the convention statistics showing that outside the city of New York the property on which women pay taxes is assessed at $348,177,107; the number of women taxed, 146,806 in 571 cities and towns; not reported, 389.
We had the satisfaction of knowing that the delegates assembled were kept upon a strong equal suffrage diet for days and nights together. At the public hearings, graciously granted us, we saw the great jury listen not only with patience but with evident pleasure and enthusiasm, while women representing twenty-six districts gave reasons for wanting to be enfranchised; and we also saw the creative body itself turned into a woman suffrage meeting for three evenings. At the close of the last we learned that there were in this convention ninety-eight men who dared to say that the freemen of the State should not be allowed to decide whether their wives, mothers and daughters should be enfranchised or not. We learned also, that there were fifty-eight men, constituting a noble minority, who loved justice better than party power, and were willing to risk the latter to sustain the former.[102]
The report of the Press Committee Chairman, Mrs. Ellen Battelle Dietrick (Mass.), called especial attention to the flood of matter relating to the woman question which was now appearing in the newspapers and magazines of the country, to the activity of the enemy and to the necessity for suffragists to "publish an antidote wherever the poison appears." The Legislative Committee, Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Henry and Mrs. Diggs, closed their report as follows:
In a State where there is hope of support from the political parties, where there has been long agitation and everything points to a favorable result, it is wise to urge a constitutional amendment striking out the word "male" as a qualification for voters. This must pass both Houses in the form of concurrent resolution; in some States it must pass two successive Legislatures; and it must be ratified at the polls by a majority of the voters.
When the conditions are not yet ripe for a constitutional amendment, there are many measures which are valuable in arousing public interest and preparing the way for final triumph, as well as important in ameliorating the condition of women. Among these are laws to secure school suffrage for women; women on boards of education and as school trustees; equality of property rights for husbands and wives; equal guardianship of children for mother and father; women factory inspectors; women physicians in hospitals and insane asylums; women trustees in all State institutions; police matrons; seats for saleswomen; the raising of "the age of consent."
The report of the Plan of Work Committee, Mrs. Chapman Catt, chairman, began by saying: