The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV

by Unknown

After sketching the situation in California, and relating the part taken by the National Association in these two campaigns, she concluded:

In every county which was properly organized, with a committee in every precinct, who visited every voter and distributed leaflets in every family, the amendment received a majority vote. This ought to be sufficient to teach the women of all the States that what we need is house-to-house educational work throughout every voting precinct. We may possibly carry amendments with education short of this, but we are not likely to. I believe if the slums of San Francisco and Oakland had been thus organized, even the men there could have been made to see that it was for their interest and that of their wives and daughters to vote for the amendment. But, while the suffragists had no committees whatever in those districts, the "liquor men" had an active committee in every saloon, "dive" and gambling house. I am, therefore, more and more convinced that it is educational work which needs to be done. It is of little use for us to make our appeals to political party conventions, State Legislatures or Congress for resolutions in favor of woman's enfranchisement, while no appeal comes up to them from the rank and file of the voters.

Until we do this kind of house-to-house work we can never expect to carry any of the States in which there are large cities. If Idaho had had San Francisco, with all its liquor interests and foreigners banded together, she would probably have been defeated as was California.

So, friends, I am not in any sense disheartened, and while I rejoice exceedingly over Idaho, I also rejoice exceedingly over the grand work done in California, and over the 110,000 votes given for woman suffrage in that State. It was vastly more than was ever done in any other amendment campaign. Study then the methods of California and Idaho and improve on them as much as you possibly can.

The Des Moines Leader thus finished its report:

It was not difficult for one who saw Miss Anthony for the first time to understand why she is so well beloved by her associates. Seventy-seven years old, she is the most earnest worker of them all; she is not only their leader but their counsellor and friend. While she occupied the platform the utmost solicitude was manifested for her on the part of everybody. Once a glass of water was sent for but did not come as soon as it should, and everyone on the stage was visibly concerned except Miss Anthony herself, who calmly observed, by way of apology for a trifling difficulty with her voice, that she was not accustomed to speak in public, at which a laugh went round.... Her silvery hair was parted in the middle and brushed down over her ears. Her eyes have the deep-set appearance which is characteristic of elderly people who have been hard mental laborers, but on the whole she did not look all her years, though older than most of her hearers had expected to see her. But those beaming, earnest eyes, taking in her whole audience as she talked, told of a nature tenacious of purpose and not to be daunted by any obstacle—the qualities which in her many years' work in the cause Miss Anthony has so many times manifested.

The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw devoted the most of her report as vice-president-at-large to the California campaign, as she had spent the greater part of the past year in that State. She closed by saying: "Our reception by the Californians was such as to make them forever dear to us. I wish you could have seen Miss Anthony for once walking ankle-deep in roses. It showed that the sentiment for suffrage had reached the point where its advocates not only were tolerated but honored. I used to like to see her sitting in a chair all adorned with flowers and with a laurel crown suspended over her head, and to feel that it was woman suffrage that was crowned. The work was hard, but we all came back from California better in health and stronger in hope."

On Wednesday evening the crowd was so great it became necessary to hold an overflow meeting, which was attended by five hundred persons. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, who was introduced as "one of Iowa's own daughters," was received with great applause. She said in part:

I have a deep and tender love for Iowa. When I cross her boundary, I always feel that I am coming home. In my travels through the West I meet many men and women who give me a warmer hand-shake because they too are from Iowa. But this State no longer occupies the first place in my heart. There are four that I love better, and every woman here feels the same. The first is Wyoming. Many pass through that State and see only a barren plain covered with sage brush, but when I cross her border, I feel a thrill as sacred as ever the crusaders felt in visiting the Holy Land. The second State is Colorado, the third Utah, and the fourth Idaho. All of us Iowa women will love these States better than our own until it shall arouse and place its laws and institutions on an equality for women and men....

We ask suffrage in order to make womanhood broader and motherhood nobler. Men and women are inextricably bound together. If we are to have a great race, we must have a great motherhood. Do you ask why people can not see this? In all history no class has been enfranchised without some selfish motive underlying. If to-day we could prove to Republicans or Democrats that every woman would vote for their party, we should be enfranchised.

Do you say that whenever all women wish the ballot they will have it? That time will never come. Not all of any class of men ever wanted to vote till the ballot was put into their hands. When the first woman desired to study medicine, not one school would admit her. Since that time, only half a century ago, 25,000 women have been admitted to the practice of medicine. If a popular vote had been necessary, not one of them would yet have her diploma. We have gained these advantages because we did not have to ask society for them. If woman suffrage were granted in Iowa, women would soon wish to vote, and every home would become a forum of education....

There never had been so many deaths in the ranks as during the past year. The following were among the names presented by Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby as those whom the association would ever hold in reverent memory:

Hannah Tracy Cutler of Illinois, former president of the American Association and one of the earliest and most self-sacrificing of woman suffrage lecturers; Sarah B. Cooper of California, auditor of this association, whose labors for the enfranchisement of the women of the Pacific coast will be remembered and honored equally with her beneficent work in founding and sustaining free kindergartens, and in whatever promoted justice, truth and mercy, so that on the day of her funeral all the flags in San Francisco were placed at half-mast; Mary Grew, who began her work for freedom as corresponding secretary of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1834, one of the founders of the New Century Club of Philadelphia, and of the Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association, of which she was president for twenty-three years; Elizabeth McClintock Phillips, who in 1848 signed the call for the first convention which demanded the ballot for women; J. Elizabeth Jones of New York, a pioneer in anti-slavery and woman suffrage; Judge E. T. Merrick of New Orleans, whose home was ever open to the woman suffrage lecturers in that section, and who by his eminent position as Chief Justice of Louisiana for many years, sustained his wife in work which in earlier days but for him would have been impossible; Eliza Murphy of New Jersey, who bequeathed five hundred dollars to this association; Harriet Beecher Stowe of Connecticut, who, although the apostle of freedom in another field, yet held as firmly and expressed as steadfastly her allegiance to the cause of woman suffrage; Dr. Caroline B. Winslow, the earliest woman physician in the District of Columbia, intrepid as a journalist, successful in practice, a leader in many lines of reform; Maria G. Porter of Rochester, N. Y.; Sarah Hussey Southwick of Massachusetts, a worker in the cause of liberty for more than sixty years; Kate Field of Washington, D. C.; Gov. Frederick T. Greenhalge of Massachusetts; Dr. Hiram Corson of Pennsylvania, who stood for the full opportunities of women in medicine, and secured the opening to them of the conservative medical societies of Philadelphia.

The names of over thirty other tried and true friends who had passed away during the months since the last meeting were given. Mrs. Colby closed the memorial service by saying: