The lessons of the past year have brought home to many of us more forcibly than any other recent events the injustice and cruelty of denying to women their proper share in deciding questions for the public good. We have seen the republic plunged into war in which women have borne a heavy share of the burdens. It should be the rule of all nations that no contest of arms should be entered into without the consent of the women....
Another significant object lesson grew out of the war. When the time of election approached, the governmental authorities became much exercised over the means of providing for the voting of the soldiers. It is astonishing how much men think of their own right to vote. Extra sessions of the Legislatures were called to provide means of meeting this emergency. In this dilemma I ventured to write to the Governor of my State and suggest that he recommend the passing of a law empowering each soldier and sailor to send to some woman at home a proxy permitting her to vote for him. You can see how simple a plan this would be. Every man would have a beloved mother, a dear sister or some adored damsel whom he would be proud to have represent him at the polls, and the amount of money which this scheme would have saved to the State is enormous. The counting of the soldiers' votes when at last they were sent to New York cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. In one instance, in a certain county where the board of supervisors had to be called together in two special sessions and the county officials summoned as if at a regular election, to count six votes, the amount reached $100 per vote!
Miss Frances A. Griffin (Ala.), a new speaker on the national platform, captured the audience with her rich voice and southern intonation as she discussed The Effects of Our Teaching:
The thanksgiving of the old Jew, "Lord, I thank Thee that Thou didst not make me a woman," doubtless came from a careful review of the situation. Like all of us, he had fortitude enough to bear his neighbors' afflictions....
Miss Anthony deals recklessly with years, apportioning them to her friends as liberally as Napoleon dealt out kingdoms and duchies to his brothers and other relations. Her example has strengthened me; you never would have had this next remark but for Miss Anthony: Thirty-five years ago I read a graduating essay. I knew I was doing an unwomanly thing, and in order to preserve what little womanliness I might have left, when I got up to read it I whispered the whole essay. I've quit that. Since I made up my mind to be heard, I have been heard.... A great progress of women has gone on and is going on. Men for the most part are manageable; women are the converts needed. When women have their minds made up to vote, it will be with them as it was with me about being heard....
This is a new era for woman. If the larger sphere now open to her is not a new discovery, it is at least a new testament. The day will come that people will look back with shame on the time when brains and virtue were shut away from the ballot-box, if they belonged to a woman....
Miss Anna Caulfield (Mich.) pointed out The Achievements of Woman in Art. Mrs. May Wright Sewall (Ind.) spoke eloquently on The True Civilization of the World, saying in part:
In the new civilization the sense of personal responsibility is strong; it respects the child's individuality and also recognizes the unity of all educational agencies—kindergarten, school, college and university.
There is also a new theology, in which individual conscience is substituted for the dictates of authority, and which distinguishes between metaphysical doctrine and practical principle. It seeks the higher unity, all embracing.
The new political economy recognizes the right of the individual, and the body politic as composed of units, each one of which must be respected. Its whole effort is to preserve the rights of employers and to give equal recognition to the employed; to unify all those classes that have heretofore been kept divided.
The new civilization results from all these. The difficulties in realizing this perfect unit arise from selfishness. We have long recognized that individual selfishness is a defect, but national selfishness has been for a long time extolled under the name of patriotism, and has gone on cleaving great chasms between different peoples. In the new civilization the individual will recognize himself at his best in his relation to the whole. The different professions will recognize that what each contributes bears but a small ratio to what each receives from the rest. The different nationalities will recognize their respective dignities in just the proportion in which the whole must transcend any part. Then humanity will exceed national feeling and the unity of the race will exalt the dignity of the individual.
The resolution presented by Mrs. Sewall, member for the United States of the International Peace Union, rejoicing over the approaching Peace Conference at The Hague and assuring the commissioners from the United States of the sympathy of the women of this country, was unanimously adopted.
The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, national vice-president, whose childhood and early girlhood had been spent in Michigan, closed the Saturday evening meeting with a tender address on Working Partners, a graphic description of the pioneer days of this State and the hardships of its women, during which she said: "Women have been faithful partners and have done their full share of the work. A gentleman opposed to their enfranchisement once said to me, 'Women have never produced anything of any value to the world.' I told him the chief product of the women had been the men, and left it to him to decide whether the product was of any value. Is it said that women must not vote because they can not bear arms? Why, women's arms have borne all the arm-bearers of the world. We have no antique art in America, but we have antique laws. We do not look back to the antiquity of the world, but to the babyhood of the world. Who would think of calling a new-born infant antique? Yet laws made in the babyhood of the world are in this day of its manhood quoted for our guidance. Much has been said lately about 'the white man's burden', but the white man will never have a heavier burden to take up than himself."
Twelve churches offered their pulpits, which were filled by the women speakers Sunday morning.[117] The regular convention services were held Sunday afternoon in the St. Cecilia building, a large audience being present. The Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell led the devotional exercises, and the Rev. Florence Kollock Crooker gave the sermon from the text: "Whether one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it." Afterwards Mrs. Sewall spoke on the coming Peace Congress at The Hague and, on motion of Melvin A. Root, a resolution was adopted that on May 15, the opening day of the congress, the women of our country assemble in public and send to it the voice of women in favor of peace.
A touching letter from Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was read by Miss Anthony during the convention, in which she said: "We seem to be pariahs alike in the visible and the invisible world, with no foothold anywhere, though by every principle of government and religion we should have an equal place on this planet. We do not hold the ignorant class of men responsible for these outrages against women, but rather the published opinions of men in high positions, judges, bishops, presidents of colleges, editors, novelists and poets—all taught by the common and civil law. It is a sad reflection that the chains of woman's bondage have been forged by her own sires and sons. Every man who is not for us in this prolonged struggle for liberty is responsible for the present degradation of the mothers of the race. It is pitiful to see how few men ever have made our cause their own, but while leaving us to fight our battle alone, they have been unsparing in their criticism of every failure. Of all the battles for liberty in the long past, woman only has been left to fight her own, without help and with all the powers of earth and heaven, human and divine, arrayed against her."
Monday evening Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, national treasurer, told of An Ohio Woman's Experience as Member of a School Board. She gave a lively account of her own nomination and election in Warren, and said in concluding: "It was not a war of women against men, but of liberalism against conservatism, of principle against prejudice, of the new against the old. It does not take any more time to clean up a schoolhouse and keep out scarlet fever than it does to nurse the children through the scarlet fever."