The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV

by Unknown

Most of the letters were sent to Miss Anthony personally. Among these were the following:

We, the members of the National Association of Woman Stenographers, take great pleasure in extending congratulations to you on the occasion of your seventy-eighth birthday, and hope that the days of your years may still be many and happy. We also desire to express our appreciation of and gratitude for the work you have done in securing freedom and justice for women. As business women we are better able to comprehend what you have accomplished, especially for those who are bread-winners, and we trust the time may soon come when we shall not be limited to understanding what freedom is, but be able to act in accordance with its principles.

The Nevada Equal Suffrage Association: Although we are young in the ranks and few in number compared with the older States, yet we are none the less loyal to the principles advocated and established by the National Association. We are brave because we draw inspiration from the thoughts and acts of that Spartan band of suffragists of fifty years ago, who devoted the sunshine of their lives and the energies of their philosophic minds to the effort to obtain for womankind their inherent right to have a voice in the Government which derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.

Alfred H. Love, president of the Universal Peace Union: From our rooms in the east wing of Independence Hall, I send greetings to you and your cause. Your cause is ours, and has been one of our essential principles since our organization. Your success is a triumph for peace.

Mary Lowe Dickinson, secretary of the International Order of the King's Daughters and Sons: I hope you will live to see the full day for the cause whose dawn owed so much to your labors, and I can ask nothing better for you than that you have "the desire of your heart," which I am sure will be the ballot for us all.

Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman physician: Although I can not respond in person to your very friendly invitation to be a representative of "the pioneers," yet I gladly send my hearty greeting to you and to the other brave workers for the progress of the race—a progress slow but inevitable. Amongst all its steps I consider the admission of women to the medical profession as the most important. Whilst thankfully recognizing the wonderful accumulations of knowledge which generations of our brethren have gathered together, our future women physicians will rejoice to help in the construction of that noble temple of medicine, whose foundation stone must be sympathetic justice. Pray allow me to send my warm greeting to the Congress through you.

There were messages and grateful recognition from so many societies and individuals in the United States that it would be impossible even to call them by name; also from the Dominion of Canada Suffrage Club, through Dr. Augusta Stowe Gullen; the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in Great Britain, with individual letters from Lady Aberdeen, Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Mrs. Priscilla Bright McLaren and others; on behalf of the Swedish Frederika Bremer Förbundet, by Carl Lindhagen; on behalf of Finnish women by Baroness Alexandra Gripenberg; on behalf of German women by Frau Hanna Bieber-Bohm, president of the National Council of Women; on behalf of the Woman Suffrage Society of Holland by its secretary, Margarethe Gallé; from the Norwegian Woman Suffrage Club; from the Verein Jugendschutz of Berlin, and from the Union to Promote Woman's Rights in Finland.

The remarkable scenes of the closing evening made a deep impression upon the large audience. After fifty years of effort to overcome the most stubborn and deeply-rooted prejudices of the ages, the results were beginning to appear. Among the speakers were a woman State senator from Utah, Mrs. Martha Hughes Cannon; a woman member of the Colorado Legislature, Mrs. Martha A. B. Conine; a woman State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Miss Estelle Reel of Wyoming; U. S. Senators Henry M. Teller of Colorado, and Frank J. Cannon of Utah, States where women have full suffrage; Representative John F. Shafroth of Colorado—and in the center of this distinguished group, Susan B. Anthony, receiving the fruits of her half century of toil and hardship.

Miss Reel: I want to tell you a little about our work in Wyoming, where women have been voting and holding office for nearly thirty years, and where our people are convinced that it has been of great benefit. Our home life there is as sacred and sweet as anywhere else on the globe. Equal suffrage has been tried and not found wanting. You may ask, What reforms has Wyoming to show? We were the first State to adopt the Australian ballot, and to accept a majority verdict of juries in civil cases. We are noted for our humane treatment of criminals, our care of the deserving poor and the education of our young. Child labor is prohibited. The Supreme Court has just decided that every voter must be able to read the Constitution in English. We have night schools all over the State for those who can not attend school by day. Equal suffrage was given to help protect the home element, and the home vote is a great conservative force. Woman suffrage means stable government, anchored in the steadfast rock of American homes.

Mrs. Conine was commissioned as a delegate to the convention by Gov. Alva Adams of Colorado. She read the statement recently put forth, testifying to the good results of equal suffrage and signed by the Governor, three ex-Governors, all the State Senators and the Representatives in Congress, the Chief Justice and the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court, the Judges of the Court of Appeals, the Judges of the District Court, the Secretary of State, the State treasurer, auditor, attorney-general, the mayor of Denver, the presidents of the State University and of Colorado College, the president of the General Federation of Women's Clubs and the presidents of thirteen women's clubs, and said:

During the session of the Legislature last winter, there were three women in the House. We met the other members upon terms of absolute equality. No thought of incongruity or unfitness seems to have arisen, and at the same time those little courtesies which gentlemen instinctively pay to ladies were never omitted. Each of the ladies was given a chairmanship, one of them that of the Printing Committee, and the printing bill was lower by thousands of dollars than for any previous session. The women were as frequently called to the chair in Committee of the Whole as were the men. One of them was placed upon the Judiciary Committee at the request of its chairman. Every honorary committee appointed during the session included one or more of the ladies.

Our State Federation of Women's Clubs now numbers about 100, representing a united membership of 4,000. They are largely occupied in studying social and economic questions, earnestly seeking for the best methods of educating their children, reforming criminals, alleviating poverty and purifying the ballot; in short, striving to make their city and their State a cleaner, better home for their families. Their work receives added encouragement from the knowledge that by their ballots they may determine who shall make and administer the laws under which their children must be reared. The home has always been conceded to be the woman's kingdom. In the free States she has but expanded the walls of that home, that she may afford to the inmates, and also to those who unfortunately have no other home, the same protection and loving care which was formerly limited to the few short years of childhood passed beneath the parental roof.

Senator Teller: I want to indorse what has been said by the two members from Colorado and Wyoming. The former is rather young as a suffrage State, but we are living side by side with the latter, where they have had equal suffrage for nearly thirty years. The results of woman suffrage have proved entirely satisfactory—not to every individual, but to the great mass of the people: I hear it said in this city every day that if women are allowed to vote the best women will not take part. I want to say to you that this is a mistake. To my certain knowledge, the best women do take part. When I went back to Colorado, after the granting of equal suffrage, a prominent society woman, whom I had known for years, telephoned me to come up and speak to the ladies at her house. I found her big parlors full of representative women—the wives of bankers, lawyers, preachers—society women. If you put any duty upon women they are not going to shirk it. Those who feared the responsibility are now as enthusiastic as those who had been "clamoring" for it. In the past, women have had no object in studying political questions; now they have, and they are taking them up in their clubs. We find that women are less partisan than men. Why? Because they generally have more conscience than men. They will not vote for a dissolute and disreputable man who may happen to force himself on a party ticket....

We are an intelligent community; we have long had a challenge to our fellow-citizens to show any other city that has as large a proportion of college graduates as Denver. Colorado people are proud of equal suffrage. The area where it prevails spread last year and took in Utah and Idaho. It will take in more neighboring States. I predict that in ten years, instead of four suffrage States, we shall have twice as many—perhaps three or four times that number.

Representative Shafroth: I want to say this, as coming from Colorado: The experience we have had ought to demonstrate to every one that woman suffrage is not only right but practical. It tends to elevate. There is not a caucus now but is better attended and by better people, and held in a better place. I have seen the time when a political convention without a disturbance and the drawing of weapons was rare. That time is past in Colorado, and it is due to the presence of women. Every man now shows that civility which makes him take off his hat and not swear, and deport himself decently when ladies are present. Instead of women's going to the polls corrupting them it has purified the polls. Husband and wife go there together. No one insults them. There are no drunken men there, nothing but what is pleasant and decorous.

Woman is an independent element in politics. She has no allegiance to any party. When a ticket is presented to her, she asks, "Are these good men?" A man is apt to say, "Well, this is a bad ticket, but I must stand by my party." He wants to keep his party record straight. She votes for the best man on the ticket. That element is bound to result in good in any State.

People say they don't know how it will work; they are afraid of it. Can it be that we distrust our mothers and sisters? We shall never have the best possible government till women participate in it.

Senator Cannon: No nation can exist half slave and half free. Ten years before I was old enough to vote, my mother was a voter. I learned at her knee to vote according to my conscience, and not according to the dictation of the bosses. The strongest argument for the suffrage of any class exists in behalf of womankind, because women will not be bound by mere partisanship. If the world is to be redeemed, it must be by the conscience of the individual voter. The woman goes to the truth by instinct. Men have to confer together and go down street and look through glasses darkly. The woman stays at home and rocks the cradle, and God tells her what to do. The suffrage never was abused by women in Utah. During the seventeen years that they voted in the Territory there was not a defalcation in any public office.

I believe in the republic. I believe that its destiny is to shed light not only here, but all over the world. If we can trust woman in the house to keep all pure and holy there, so that the little ones may grow up right, surely we can trust her at the ballot-box. When children learn political wisdom and truth from their mother's lips, they will remember it and live up to it; for those lessons are the longest remembered. When Senator Teller withdrew from a political convention for conscience's sake, a man said, commenting on his action: "It is generally safe to stay with your party." His wife said: "And it is always safe to stay with your principles."

In the midst of the convention came the sad news on February 17 of the death of Miss Frances E. Willard, president of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Affectionate tributes were offered by Miss Anthony, Miss Shaw and other members; a telegram of sympathy was sent to her secretary and close companion, Miss Anna Gordon, by a rising vote, and the audience remained standing for a few moments in silent prayer. A large wreath of violets and Southern ivy, adorned with miniatures of Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony and other pioneer suffrage workers was sent by the delegates to be laid on her coffin.

The congressional hearings on the morning of February 15, Miss Anthony's birthday, attracted crowds of people to the Capitol. The hearing before the Senate Committee was conducted by the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, and considered The Philosophy of the Movement for Woman Suffrage. Only two members of the committee were present—James H. Berry of Arkansas, and George P. Wetmore of Rhode Island—but a number of other senators were interested listeners, and the large Marble Room was crowded with delegates and spectators. The first paper, by Wm. Lloyd Garrison (Mass.) considered The Nature of a Republican Form of Government:

The advocates of complete enfranchisement of women base their demand upon the principles underlying all suffrage, rather than upon the question of sex. If manhood suffrage is a mistake; if voting is a privilege and not a right; if government does not derive its just powers from the consent of the governed; if Lincoln's aphorism that ours is a "government of the people, for the people and by the people" is only a rhetorical generality, then women have no case. If not, they see no reason why, as they are governed, they should not have a voice in choosing their rulers; why, as people, they are not covered by Lincoln's definition. They feel naturally that their exclusion is unjust.

Woman suffragists are not unconscious of the glaring contrast between declared principles and actual practice, and they venture to believe that a professed self-government which deliberately ignores its own axioms is tending to decadence. They are not unmindful of the slow evolution of human government from earliest history, beginning in force and greed, reaching through struggles of blood, in the course of time, to the legislative stage where differences are adjudicated by reason, and the sword reserved as the last resort. This vantage ground has been gained only by a recognition of the primal right of the people to be consulted in regard to public affairs; and in proportion as this right has been respected and the franchise extended has government grown more stable and society more safe. It has come through a succession of steps, invariably opposed by the dominant classes, and only permitted after long contest and a changed public opinion.

In England, where the progress of constitutional government can be most accurately traced, there was a time when the landowning aristocracy controlled the franchise and elected the members of Parliament. The dawn of a sense of injustice in the minds of the mercantile classes brought with it a demand for the extension of the suffrage, which was of course vigorously combated. It was an illogical resistance, which ended in the admission of the tradesmen. Later the workingmen awakened to their political disability and asserted their rights, only to be promptly antagonized by both classes in power. Eventually logic and justice won in this issue. In the light of history none of the objections urged against the extension of the right of voting have been sustained by subsequent facts. On the contrary, the broadening of the suffrage base has been found to add stability to the superstructure of British government and to have been in the interest of true conservatism.

In the course of time the woman's hour has struck. Her cause is now going through the same ordeal suffered by the classes referred to. Her triumph is as sure as theirs. The social and industrial changes of constitutional government in all countries have revolutionized her condition. Fifty years ago the avenues of employment open to women were few and restricted. To-day, in every branch of manufacture and trade, and in the professions formerly monopolized by men, they are actively and successfully engaged. Every law put upon the statute books affects their interests directly and indirectly—undreamed of in a social order where household drudgery and motherhood limited a woman's horizon.

It is inevitable, therefore, that, feeling the pressure of legislation under which they suffer, a new intelligence should stir the minds of women such as stirred the once disfranchised classes of men in Great Britain. It leads to an examination of the principles of self-government and to their application on lines of equality and not of sex. In them is found no justification for the present enforced political disability. Therefore all legislative bodies vested with the power to change the laws are petitioned to consider the justice and expediency of allowing women to register their opinions, on the same terms with men, at the ballot-box.

The principles at stake are rarely alluded to by the opponents of woman suffrage. The battle rages chiefly upon the ground of expediency. Every argument formerly used by the English Tories is to-day heard in the mouths of men who profess a belief in a democratic form of government....

In the discussion of the rights of labor, the inadequacy of wages, the abuses of the factory system, the management of schools, of reformatory and penal institutions, the sanitary arrangements of a city, the betterment of public highways, the encroachment of privileged corporations, the supervision of the poor, the improvement of hospitals, and the many branches of collective housekeeping included in a municipality—women are by nature and education adapted to participate. In many States, certainly in Massachusetts, it is a common practice to appoint women to responsible positions demanding large organizing and directing power. If thus fitted to rule, are women unfitted to have a voice in choosing rulers?

The true advancement of common interest waits for the active and responsible participation of women in political matters. Indirect and irresponsible influence they have now, but indirection and irresponsibility are dangerous elements in governments which assume to be representative, and are a constant menace. If this whole question of equal political rights of women is considered in the light of common sense and common justice, the sooner will the present intolerable wrong be wiped out and self-government be put upon a broader and safer basis.