Mary F. Gist, Anna S. Hamilton and Emma Southwick Brinton were introduced as fraternal delegates from the Woman's National Press Association; Mrs. William Scott, from the Universal Peace Union; Dr. Agnes Kemp, from the Peace Society of Philadelphia; Elizabeth B. Passmore from the Baltimore Yearly Meeting of Friends. Letters of greeting were received from Mrs. Priscilla Bright McLaren of Scotland, Mrs. Mary Foote Henderson, of Washington, D. C., and many others.
Among the memorial resolutions were the following:
In reviewing the gains and losses of the past year, we recall with profound regret the loss of those tried and true workers for woman's enfranchisement, George W. and Mrs. Henrietta M. Banker of New York, who died within a few days of each other. "Lovely in life, in death they were not divided." Although we shall sorely miss their genial and inspiring presence, they will continue by the munificent provisions of their wills to aid the cause.
We are also saddened by the news just received of the decease of Dr. Elizabeth C. Sargent of San Francisco, our valued co-worker in the recent California Suffrage Campaign, and daughter of our lifelong friends, U. S. Senator Aaron A. and Mrs. Ellen Clark Sargent. All advocates of equal suffrage unite in offering to the bereaved mother their heartfelt sympathy in her loss.
A vote of thanks was passed to Bishop Spaulding of Peoria, Ills., Bishop McQuaid of Rochester, N. Y. (Catholics), and the Rev. Frank M. Bristol of the M. E. Metropolitan Church, Washington (the one attended by President McKinley), for their recent sermons referring favorably to woman suffrage. These were the more noticeable as during this convention Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore devoted his Sunday discourse to a terrific arraignment of society women and those asking for the suffrage, denouncing them alike as destroyers of the home, etc.
The National Association requested the appointment by President McKinley of Mrs. Bertha Honoré Palmer as National Commissioner from the United States to the Paris Exposition, and of Mrs. May Wright Sewall as delegate to represent the organized work of women in the United States. Both of these appointments were afterwards made.
The corresponding secretary read invitations for the next annual convention from the Citizens' Business League of Milwaukee; the Business Men's League and the Mayor of Cincinnati; the Chamber of Commerce of Detroit; the Business Men's League of San Antonio; the Cleveland Business Men's Convention League; the Suffrage Society of Buffalo and the following: "The Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association takes great pride in being able to invite you most cordially to hold your annual meeting for 1901 in the city of Minneapolis. We guarantee $600 towards expenses and more if necessary. Enclosed are invitations from the Board of Trade, the Mayor and our three daily newspapers, all assuring us of financial backing." This was signed by Mrs. Martha J. Thompson, president, and Dr. Ethel E. Hurd, corresponding secretary. The invitation was accepted.
The usual hearings were held Tuesday morning, February 13, in the Marble Room of the Senate and the committee room of the House Judiciary, both of which were crowded to the doors, the seats being filled with women while members of Congress stood about the sides of the room. That before the Senate Committee—John W. Daniel (Va.), chairman; James H. Berry (Tenn.); George P. Wetmore (R. I.); Addison G. Foster (Wash.)—was confined to a historical résumé of the movement for woman suffrage, the speakers being presented by Miss Anthony. The Work with Congress was carefully delineated by Mrs. Colby, who concluded: "Everything that a disfranchised class could do has been done by women, and never in the long ages in which the love of freedom has been evolving in the human heart has there been such an effort by any other class of people. Surely it ought to win the respect and support of every man in this republic who has a brain to understand the blessings of liberty and a heart to beat in sympathy with a struggle to obtain it."[127]
Municipal Suffrage in Kansas was described by Mrs. Laura M. Johns. Woman Suffrage in Colorado was presented by Mrs. Bradford. Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch told of Woman Suffrage in England, closing as follows:
We have heard about the suffrage in the Western States of America, and the reply always is: "Oh, that is all very well for thinly populated countries." Now I am going to tell you a little of the suffrage question in England, not a thinly populated country, with its 20,000,000 of people crowded in that small space.
Gentlemen of the committee, I would like to draw your attention to one thing, which is true in America as well as in England—that nothing has been given to women gratuitously. They have had at each step to prove their ability before you gave them anything else. In 1870 England passed the Education Act, which gave women the right to sit on the school boards and to vote for them. It was the first time they had had elective school boards in England; before that all the education had been controlled by church organizations, who had appointed boards of managers. Women had been appointed to those boards and so admirable had been their work that when the law was passed in 1870 many women stood for election and were elected, and in three cases they came in at the head of the polls. Five years after that a verdict was passed upon the work of those women as school officials, for in 1875, women were allowed to go on the poor-law boards. In 1894 the law was further modified so that it contemplated the possibility of a larger circle of poor-law guardians. Before that there had been a high qualification—occupation of a house of a certain rental, etc., but now that was all pushed aside. What was the result? Nearly 1,000 women are now sitting on the poor-law boards of England; 94 on the great board of London itself.
These local boards deal with the great asylums, with the great pauper schools, with the immense poorhouses and, more than that, they deal with one of the largest funds in England, the outdoor and indoor relief. What has been the verdict upon the work of those women on the poor-law board? In 1896 there was the question, when this law was extended to Ireland, whether women should be put on those boards. The vote in Parliament was 272 in favor of the women and only 8 against. Eight men only, so unwise, so foolish, left in the great English Parliament, who said it was not for women to deal with those immense bodies of pauper children, not for women to deal with this outdoor relief fund, not for women to deal with the unfortunate mothers of illegitimate children....
Women in England, qualified women, have every local vote, everything which would correspond with your State and municipal vote here, they have all except the Parliamentary vote.
In England we have opponents, just as you have here. I do not know whether they are more illogical or less so, but they certainly do one extraordinary thing—they are in favor of everything that has been won and take advantage of it. A large number of the 2,000 women who are sitting on the various local bodies in England are opposed to the Parliamentary vote for their sex, and yet they are really in political life. Now, gentlemen, if you want to have the women stop coming here, give us the vote and then we won't come; give the "antis" the vote, and then they will have the political life that they are really longing for.
Almost always, if you analyze the anti-suffrage idea in either a man or a woman you find it is anti-democratic. I have begun to think that I am the only good democrat left in America. I believe in the very widest possible suffrage. Why do I believe it? Because I have lived and seen the other thing in England, and I have seen that as democracy broadened politics was purified. That has been the history from the beginning. No politics in the world was more corrupt than the English at the beginning of this century, but as democracy has come farther and farther into the field, England has become politically one of the purest nations in the world.
The paper on Woman Suffrage in the British Isles and Colonies was prepared by Miss Helen Blackburn, editor of the Englishwoman's Review; and Woman Suffrage in Foreign Countries was described by Mrs. Jessie Cassidy Saunders. The last address was given by Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt (N. Y.), Why We Ask for the Submission of an Amendment: