The chairman of the House Committee asked Mrs. A. J. George of Massachusetts, who conducted the hearing for the "antis," a number of questions that she could not answer, and Thomas Russell of that State had to prompt her repeatedly. The chairman would ask a question; Mrs. George would look nonplussed; Mr. Russell would lean over and whisper, "Say yes," and she would answer aloud "Yes." The chairman would ask another question; Mr. Russell would whisper, "Say no," and Mrs. George would answer "No." This happened so often that both the audience and the committee were visibly amused, and several persons said it was Mr. Russell who was really conducting the hearing. He is a Boston lawyer who has conducted the legislative hearings for the "antis" in Massachusetts for some years.
Mrs. Dodge, in her speech, begged the committee not to allow the "purely sentimental reasons of the petitioners" to have any weight, and said: "The mere fact that this amendment is asked as a compliment to the leading advocate of woman suffrage on the attainment of her eightieth birthday, is evidence of the emotional frame of mind which influences the advocates of the measure, and which is scarcely favorable to the calm consideration that should be given to fundamental political principles." Miss Anthony's birthday had not been mentioned by any speaker before either committee, and the suffragists under her leadership had been making their pleas and arguments for a Sixteenth Amendment for over thirty years.
As the suffrage speakers were not permitted to answer the misstatements and prevarications of the "remonstrants" at the time of the hearings and these were widely circulated through the press, the convention passed the following resolutions on motion of Miss Alice Stone Blackwell:
Whereas, At this morning's Congressional hearing letters were read by the anti-suffragists from two men and one woman in Colorado, asserting equal suffrage in that State to be a failure; therefore,
Resolved, That we call attention to a published statement declaring that the results are wholesome and that none of the predicted evils have followed. This statement is signed by the Governor and three ex-Governors of Colorado, the Chief Justice, all the Judges of the State Supreme Court, the Denver District Court and the Court of Appeals; all the Colorado Senators and Representatives in Congress; President Slocum of Colorado College, the president of the State University, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Attorney-General, the mayor of Denver, prominent clergymen of different denominations, and the presidents of thirteen of the principal women's associations of Denver. The social science department of the Denver Woman's Club has just voted unanimously to the same effect, and the Colorado Legislature lately passed a similar resolution by a vote of 45 to 3 in the House and 30 to 1 in the Senate. On the other hand, during the six years that equal suffrage has prevailed in Colorado the opponents have not yet found six respectable men who assert over their own names and addresses that it has had any bad results.
Whereas, At the Congressional hearing it was asserted that equal suffrage had led to no improvements in the laws of Colorado; therefore,
Resolved, That we call attention to the fact that Colorado owes to equal suffrage the laws raising the age of protection for girls to eighteen years; establishing a State Home for Dependent Children and a State Industrial School for Girls; making fathers and mothers joint guardians of their children; removing the emblems from the Australian ballot; prohibiting child labor; also city ordinances in Denver providing drinking fountains in the streets; forbidding expectoration in public places, and requiring the use of smoke-consuming chimneys on all public and business buildings.
This anecdote was related the next day: "Miss Anthony's love of the beautiful leads her always to clothe herself in good style and fine materials, and she has an eye for the fitness of things as well as for the funny side. 'Girls,' she said yesterday, after returning from the Capitol, 'those statesmen eyed us very closely, but I will wager that it was impossible after we got mixed together to tell an anti from a suffragist by her clothes. There might have been a difference, though, in the expression of the faces and the shape of the heads,' she added drily."
On Tuesday afternoon about two hundred members of the convention were received by President McKinley in the East Room of the White House. Miss Anthony stood at his right hand and, after the President had greeted the last guest, he invited her to accompany him upstairs to meet Mrs. McKinley, who was not well enough to receive all of the ladies. Giving her his arm he led her up the old historic staircase, "as tenderly as if he had been my own son," she said afterward. When she was leaving, after a pleasant call, Mrs. McKinley expressed a wish to send some message to the convention and she and the President together filled Miss Anthony's arms with white lilies, which graced the platform during the remainder of the meetings.
FOOTNOTES:
[120] The statistics used in this paper were taken from the report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education for 1899.