We protest against women being counted in the basis of representation of State and nation so long as they are not permitted to vote for their representatives.
We appreciate the friendly attitude of the American Federation of Labor, the National Grange and other public bodies of voters, as shown by their resolutions indorsing the legal, political and economic equality of women.
We rejoice in the Peace Congress about to meet at The Hague, and hope it may be preliminary to the establishment of international arbitration.
[119] See also [Chap. XXIII] for further efforts to protect the women of Hawaii.
CHAPTER XX.
THE NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1900.
The Thirty-second annual convention of the suffrage association, held in Washington, D. C., Feb. 8-14, 1900, possessed two features of unusual interest—it closed the century and it marked the end of Miss Susan B. Anthony's presidency of the organization. The latter event attracted wide attention. Sketches of her career and of the movement whose history was almost synonymous with her own, appeared in most of the leading newspapers and magazines of the country; special reporters were sent to Washington, and the celebration of her eightieth birthday at the close of the convention was in the nature of a national event. On the opening morning the Post said in a leading editorial:
Washington entertains the National Woman Suffrage Association from year to year with entire complacency, apart from any political prejudice, without any sense of partisanship and in a spirit of keen interest in the great propaganda which is being thus conducted. There was a time, not so very long ago, when the plea for suffrage was ridiculed far and wide; but the women have worked ahead undaunted by the scoffings of the world, until they have actually won the battle in such a marked degree as to give them unbounded assurance for the future....
The world is beginning to take a new view of this suffrage question. The advent of women into the professions and even the trades, their appearance as wage-earners in virtually every branch of modern activity, and their success in these various enterprises which they have entered, have worked a reform even more significant than the absolute and universal grant of the suffrage would have been. It can not be denied by men to-day that the women have become economic factors of marked importance, and this appreciation has had a great influence in softening the sentiments of the male population toward the suffragists.
One of the foremost arguments formerly urged against the extension of the suffrage to women was that it would be harmful to woman's moral nature to thrust her into contact with the rough conditions of campaigning. The women answered that their entrance would perhaps redeem the immoral character of the politics of many communities. In the minds of impartial observers the argument was a stand-off. But this economic, professional tendency of the women has done much to destroy the force of the men's plea to preserve the women from contaminating contact with harsh conditions. The security of the average woman worker in the various lines of honest activity which the sex has fearlessly entered has worked a revelation. The close of the century is witnessing a great change in public sentiment in this regard. The demand of the suffragists can not but be strengthened by the demonstrated fact that women can become workers in competition with men without becoming demoralized.
Just where this new tendency will lead in an economic direction is a serious question, to be answered by facts rather than by theories. Some students of the science believe that it is working a revolution and is affecting the whole business fabric. There may be a reaction against it, affecting in turn the now moderate attitude of most men toward the suffrage question; but in any event it is clear that this great agitation, carried on by the association now in session, has been of serious importance and not without palpable fruits.