A paper to be remembered was that of Mrs. Isabel C. Barrows (Mass.) on Woman's Work in Philanthropy. After tracing the various lines of philanthropic effort in which women had been distinguished, she said in conclusion that no woman who ever had lived had done more in the line of philanthropy than Susan B. Anthony.
Miss Harriet May Mills (N. Y.) gave a fine address on The Winning of Educational Freedom, saying in part:
Abigail Adams said of the conditions in the early part of the nineteenth century: "Female education in the best families went no farther than reading, writing and arithmetic and, in some rare instances, music and dancing." A lady living in the first quarter of the century relates that she returned from a school in Charleston, where she had been sent to be "finished off," with little besides a knowledge of sixty different lace stitches....
The majority of women were content, they asked no change; they took no part in the movement for higher education except to ridicule it. This, like every other battle for freedom which the world has seen, was led by the few brave, strong souls who saw the truth and dared proclaim it. In 1820 the world looked aghast upon "bluestockings." Because a young woman was publicly examined in geometry at one of Mrs. Emma Willard's school exhibitions, a storm of ridicule broke forth at so scandalous a proceeding. It was ten years after Holyoke was founded before Mary Lyon dared to have Latin appear in the regular course, because the views of the community would not allow it. Boston had a high school for girls in 1825, which was maintained but eighteen months, Mayor Quincy declaring that "no funds of any city could stand the expense." The difficulty was that "too many girls attended." ...
In 1877 President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard protested against the opening of the Boston Latin School to girls, saying: "I resist the proposition for the sake of the boys, the girls, the schools and the general interest of education." Nearly twenty years later, he said to the Radcliffe graduates: "It is a quarter of a century since the college doors were open to women. From that time, where boys and girls have been educated together, it has become a historical fact that women have taken a greater number of honors, in proportion to their numbers, than men." It is to be hoped that the next twenty years may work further conversion in the mind of this learned president, and lead him to see that equality in citizenship is as desirable as equality in education.
One learned man prophesied that all educated women would become somnambulists. Another declared that the perilous track to higher education would be strewn with wrecks. There are now over thirty thousand of these college-educated wrecks, the majority of them engaged in the active work of the world. It was found in 1874, when Dr. E. H. Clarke's evil prophecies as to higher education were attracting attention, that at Antioch, opened to women in 1853, thirteen and one-half per cent. of the men graduates had died, nine and three-fourths per cent. of the women. This did not include war mortality or accidental death. Three of the men then living were confirmed invalids; not one of the women was in such a condition. The Association of Collegiate Alumnae has compiled later and fuller statistics. The results show an increase during the college course of from three to six per cent. in good health, and the health after graduation to be twenty-two per cent. higher among graduates than among women who have not been in college....
Elizabeth Blackwell applied to twelve colleges before she gained admittance to the Geneva (N. Y.) Medical School in 1846, and secured the first M. D. ever given to a woman in this country. To-day 1,583 women are studying medicine. Not so full a measure of freedom has been won in law or theology. In 1897, 131 women were in the law schools, 193 in the theological schools, but women are still handicapped in these professions....
Unfortunately, educational freedom has not been followed by industrial freedom. Of the leading colleges for women but four have women presidents; but one offers a free field to women on its professional staff. In the majority of co-educational colleges which give women any place as teachers, they appear in small numbers as assistant professors and, more often, as instructors....
With educational freedom partially won has come general interest among collegiate and non-collegiate women in furthering the movement. Large gifts have been bestowed for scholarships and for colleges, both co-educational and separate. Within the last year thirty-four women have given $4,446,400 to the cause of education. Mrs. Stanford's munificent benefactions, and other lesser ones, swell the amount to more than fifty millions from women alone. As a result of the struggle for educational freedom, we have 35,782 women in the colleges of the country.[120]
Educational freedom without political freedom is but partial. Minerva sprang fully armed from the head of Jove; not only had she wisdom, but she had the spear and the helmet in her hands—every weapon of offense and defense to equip her for the world's conquest. Standing on the threshold of the new century, we behold the woman of the future thus armed; we see the fully educated woman possessed of a truer knowledge of the fundamental principles of government; we see her conscious of her responsibilities as a citizen, and doing her part in the making of laws and in the fulfilment of the ideal of democracy. Educational freedom must lead to political freedom.
Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford, a leader among Colorado women, spoke eloquently on The Social Transformation, following the stages in evolution expressed in the words, "I dare, I will, I am." Describing the effects of woman suffrage, she said:
I wish I could make you all understand that the home is not touched. Equal suffrage does not mean destruction or disintegration but the radiation of the home—carrying it out into the wider life of the community. The ideal of the family must pervade society; and that is what equal suffrage is gradually bringing about. I know you hear all sorts of things about woman suffrage in Colorado. Not very long ago certain Eastern papers gave great prominence to an interview with a "distinguished citizen of Colorado," who gave a highly unfavorable account of the workings of woman suffrage there. The "distinguished citizen" in question was a prize-fighter who had killed three men—a gambler driven out by woman suffrage; and he naturally said that woman suffrage was a failure.... The great Woman's Club of Denver is a power for good in the city; it is carrying on schools in "the bottoms," night schools, kitchen gardens, traveling libraries; it secured the establishment of the State Home for Dependent Children, the removal of the emblems from the Australian ballot, and other good things....
I would that you could all go out to Colorado and see how subtly, yes, and how swiftly, the social transformation is going on. It is the home transforming the State, not the State destroying the home. A Denver paper lately said the men had found out that in determining all questions of morality, sanitation, etc., if the women were consulted, better results were obtained. We have more intelligent homes because of equal suffrage. Where children see their father and mother go to the polls together, and hear them talk over public questions, and occasionally express different views, they learn tolerance. A party slave will not come out from such a home. The children will grow up seeing that it is un-American to say that everybody in the opposite party is either a fool or a knave. The two best features of equal suffrage are the improvement of the individual woman and the prospective abolition of the political "boss."
Introducing Henry B. Blackwell (Mass.) to report on Presidential Suffrage, Miss Anthony said: "Here is a man who has the virtue of having stood by the woman's cause for nearly fifty years. I can remember him when his hair was not white, and when he was following up our conventions assiduously because a bright, little, red-cheeked woman attracted him. She attracted him so strongly that he still works for woman suffrage, and will do so as long as he lives, not only because of her who was always so true and faithful to the cause—Lucy Stone—but also because he has a daughter, a worthy representative of the twain who were made one."
On Friday evening Mrs. Ida Husted Harper gave a portion of her paper, The Training of the Woman Journalist, which she had presented at the International Congress in London. Miss Anna Barrows (Mass.), literary editor of The American Kitchen Magazine, spoke on New Professions for Women Centering in the Home:
The main objection made by conservative people to definite occupations or professions for women has been that such callings would inevitably tend to destroy the home. Once let women prove that they can follow a trade or profession and yet make a home for themselves and others, and such objectors have no ground left.... The fear is sometimes expressed that the club movement is drawing women away from home interests; but the general attention now given to household economics by all the women's clubs proves that women are realizing that knowledge of history, art and science is needed to give the broad culture necessary for the proper conduct of the home life. Although as yet few women's colleges offer adequate courses in home economics, nevertheless after marriage the college women begin to study household problems with all the energy brought out by the college training.
A very general comment on woman's desire for a share in municipal and national government is that the servant question is yet unsolved; that, since she has not succeeded in governing her own domain, she has no rights outside of it. By going outside of her home as an employee herself she is learning to deal with this problem. It has been necessary for women to have thorough business training in other directions before they could discover how unbusinesslike were the methods pursued in the average household. The more women have gone out of their homes into new occupations, the more they have realized that the home is dependent upon the same principles as the business world. The business woman understands human nature, and therefore can deal successfully with the butcher, the baker and other tradespeople. She has a power of adapting herself to new conditions which is impossible to her sister accustomed only to the narrow treadmill of housework.
Specialization is the tendency of the age, and by wise attention to this in the household, as elsewhere, enough time should be saved to each community for the world's work to be done in fewer hours, and for men and women to have time besides to be homemakers and good citizens. Little by little one art and craft after another has been evolved into the dignity of a profession, while housework as a whole has been left to untrained workers. Needle work, cookery and cleaning are dependent on the fundamental principles of all the natural sciences.... There is need also of trained women to lead public sentiment to recognize the dignity of manual labor.
The statesmanlike paper of Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker (Conn.) on the Duty of Woman Citizens of the United States in the Present Political Crisis, was read by Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell (N. Y.), who enforced its sentiments by earnest and stirring remarks of her own. Mrs. Mary Church Terrell, A. M. of Oberlin College, president of the National Association of Colored Women and a member of the Washington School Board, considered the Justice of Woman Suffrage:
....To assign reasons in this day and time why it is unjust to deprive one-half of the human race of rights and privileges freely accorded to the other, which is neither more deserving nor more capable of exercising them, seems like a reflection upon the intelligence of the audience. As a nation we professed long ago to have abandoned the principle that might makes right. Before the world we pose to-day as a government whose citizens have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And yet, in spite of these lofty professions and noble sentiments, the present policy of this government is to hold one-half of its citizens in legal subjection to the other, without being able to assign good and sufficient reasons for such a flagrant violation of the very principles upon which it was founded.
When one observes how all the most honorable and lucrative positions in Church and State have been reserved for men, according to laws which they themselves have made so as to debar women; how, until recently, a married woman's property was under the exclusive control of her husband; how, in all transactions where husband and wife are considered one, the law makes the husband that one—man's boasted chivalry to the disfranchised sex is punctured beyond repair.
These unjust discriminations will ever remain, until the source from which they spring—the political disfranchisement of woman—shall be removed. The injustice involved in denying woman the suffrage is not confined to the disfranchised sex alone, but extends to the nation as well, in that it is deprived of the excellent service which woman might render....
The argument that it is unnatural for woman to vote is as old as the rock-ribbed and ancient hills. Whatever is unusual is called unnatural, the world over. Whenever humanity takes a step forward in progress, some old custom falls dead at our feet. Nothing could be more unnatural than that a good woman should shirk her duty to the State.
If you marvel that so few women work vigorously for political enfranchisement, let me remind you that woman's success in almost everything depends upon what men think of her. Why the majority of men oppose woman suffrage is clear even to the dullest understanding. In all great reforms it is only the few brave souls who have the courage of their convictions and who are willing to fight until victory is wrested from the very jaws of fate.