Some one whispered to Miss Anthony that the convention had not been opened with prayer, and she answered without the slightest confusion: "Now, friends, you all know I am a Quaker. We give thanks in silence. I do not think the heart of any one here has been fuller of silent thankfulness than mine, but I should not have remembered to have the meeting formally opened with prayer if somebody had not reminded me. The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw will offer prayer."
Miss Shaw's report as vice-president-at-large was full of the little touches of humor for which she was noted:
The report of my specific work would not take long; but the work that really did count for our association began last May, when your president and I were invited to California. On the way we stopped first at St. Louis, where Miss Anthony spoke before the Women's Federation, the Woman's Council, and the State W. S. A. From there we went to Denver, where we had a remarkable meeting, and a warm greeting was given to Miss Anthony by the newly enfranchised women of Colorado. It was pleasant to find them so grateful to the pioneers. The large opera house was packed, and a reception, in which the newspapers estimated that 1,500 persons took part, was afterwards given at the Palace Hotel.
From Denver we went to Cheyenne, where we addressed the citizens, men and women. For once there were present at our meeting quite as many men as women, and not only ordinary but extraordinary men. After introducing us to the audience, Mrs. Theresa A. Jenkins introduced the audience to us. It included the Governor, Senators, Representatives, Judges of the Supreme Court, city officials, and never so many majors and colonels, and it showed that where women have a vote, men think their meetings are worth going to. We were the guests of the Governor during our stay in Colorado, and guests of a U. S. Senator in Wyoming. At Salt Lake all the city turned out, and I spoke in the Tabernacle to the largest audience I ever had. It was sympathetic too, for Utah people are accustomed to go to church and listen. At Ogden they had to take two buildings for the meeting. At Reno, Nevada, there was a large audience.
The Woman's Congress at San Francisco was the most marvelous gathering I ever saw. The newspapers said the men were all hypnotized, or they would not stand on the sidewalk two hours to get into a church. Every subject considered during the whole week, whether it was the care of children or the decoration of the home, turned on the ballot for women, and Susan B. Anthony was the belle of the ball. The superintendent of San Francisco closed the schools that Miss Anthony might address the 900 teachers. The Ministers' Association passed resolutions favoring the amendment. We went the whole length of the State and the meetings were just as enthusiastic.
The Citizens' Committee asked women to take part in the Fourth of July celebration. The women accepted more than the men meant they should, for they insisted that a woman should be on the program. The Program Committee refused, and the Executive Committee said if they did not put a woman on they should be discharged. Instead of this they proposed that Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper should provide sandwiches for over 5,000 kindergarten children. That was the kind of work they invited such women to do.
The Program Committee discussed the matter, and their discussion could be heard four blocks away, but they finally yielded and invited me to speak. So Miss Anthony and I rode for three miles in a highly-decorated carriage, just behind the mayor and followed by a brass band and the fire brigade, and I wore a big badge that almost covered me, just like the badge worn by the masculine orator. The dispute between the Executive and the Program Committees had excited so much interest that there were more cheers for your president and vice-president as we passed along than there were for the mayor....
They wanted us both to come back in the fall. I went and spoke thirty-four times in thirty-seven evenings.
As the vice-president finished, Miss Anthony observed in her characteristic manner: "Miss Shaw said she only went to California to hold Miss Anthony's bonnet, but, when we left, everybody thought that I had come to hold her bonnet. It is my delight to see these girls develop and outdo their elders. There is another little woman that I want to come up here to the platform, Mrs. Chapman Catt. While she is blushing and getting ready, there is a delegation here from the Woman's National Press Association." Mesdames Lockwood, Gates, Cromwell and Emerson were introduced, and Miss Anthony remarked: "Our movement depends greatly on the press. The worst mistake any woman can make is to get crosswise with the newspapers."[105]
By this time Mrs. Chapman Catt had reached the platform, and Miss Anthony continued: "Mrs. Catt went down South with me last year to hold my bonnet; and wherever we were, at Memphis or New Orleans or elsewhere, when she had spoken, Miss Anthony was nowhere. It is she who has done the splendid organization work which has brought into the association nearly every State in the Union, and every Territory except the Indian and Alaska and we shall have them next year."
An able address was given by Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby (D. C.) on The Philosophy of Woman Suffrage, in which she said:
Woman suffrage is in harmony with the evolution of the race. The progress of civilization has developed the finer forces of mankind and made ready for the entrance of woman into government. As long as man was merely a slayer of men and animals he did not feel the need of the co-partnership of woman, but as his fatherhood was developed he felt his inadequacy and the necessity of the maternal element by his side. Woman suffrage is in harmony with the growth of the idea of the worth of the individual, which has its best expression in our republic. Our nation is heir of all the struggles for freedom which have been made....
The Magna Charta belongs to us as much as does the Declaration of Independence. In all these achievements for liberty women have borne their share. Not only have they inspired men but the record of the past is illumined with the story of their own brave deeds. Women love liberty as well as men do. The love of liberty is the corollary of the right of consent to government. All the progress of our nation has been along the line of extending the application of this basic idea....
Woman suffrage is in harmony with the evolution in the status of women. They always have done their share in the development of the race. There always has been a "new woman," some one stepping out in advance of the rest and gaining a place for others to stand upon.... We have no cause to blush for our ancestors. We may save our blushes for the women of to-day who do not live up to their privileges.
Now that woman has made such advance in personal and property rights, educational and industrial opportunities, to deny her the ballot is to force her to occupy a much more degrading position than did the women of the past. We think the savage woman degraded because she walks behind her husband bearing the burden to leave his hands free for the weapon which is his sign of sovereignty; what shall we say of the woman of to-day who may not follow her husband and brother as he goes forth to wield the weapon of civilization, the ballot? If the evolution in the status of woman does not point to the franchise it is meaningless.
Mrs. Colby was followed by Miss Julie R. Jenney, a member of the bar in Syracuse, N. Y., with a thoughtful address on Law and the Ballot. She showed that woman's present legal rights are in the nature of a license, and therefore revocable at the will of the bodies granting them, and that until women elect the lawmakers they can not be entirely sure of any rights whatever. Between Daybreak and Sunrise was the title of the address of Mrs. May Stocking Knaggs (Mich.), who pleaded for the opportunity of complete co-operation between men and women, declaring that "each human being is a whole, single and responsible; each human unit is concerned in the social compact which is formed to protect individual and mutual rights."
This was the first appearance of Mrs. Stetson on this national platform. She came as representative of the Pacific Coast Woman's Congress and California Suffrage Association. The Woman's Journal said: "Those of us who have for years admired Mrs. Stetson's remarkably bright poems were delighted to meet her, and to find her even more interesting than her writings. She is still a young woman, tall, lithe and graceful, with fine dark eyes, and spirit and originality flashing from her at every turn like light from a diamond. She read several poems to the convention, made an address one evening and preached twice on Sunday; and the delegates followed her around, as iron filings follow a magnet."
Mrs. Catharine E. Hirst, president of the Ladies of the G. A. R.; Mrs. Lillian M. Hollister, representing the Supreme Hive Ladies of the Maccabees; Miss Harriette A. Keyser, from the Political Study Club of New York; Mrs. Rose E. Lumpkin, president Virginia King's Daughters, were presented as fraternal delegates. Grace Greenwood and Mrs. Caroline B. Buell were introduced to the convention.