The convention of Jan. 26, 1898, was addressed by J. M. Robertson of England. At the May Festival in Hotel Brunswick, the Hon. Hugh H. Lusk of New Zealand gave an address, and the occasion was made noteworthy by bright speeches from young women—Mrs. Helen Adelaide Shaw, Miss Maud Wood (Park) of Radcliffe and Miss Hanscom of Boston University and Smith College. Several members of the Legislature spoke and reports were received from all the New England States.
Woman's Day was celebrated at the Mechanics' Fair in Boston. This year the association began to issue a monthly letter to the local leagues. As an addition to the literature, Secretary-of-the-Navy John D. Long's suffrage address with his portrait was issued as a handsome pamphlet. In response to an appeal from the president, Mrs. Livermore (so well known through the Sanitary Commission during the Civil War), $500 and many boxes of supplies were sent to the soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and the secretary of the State association, Mrs. Ellie A. Hilt, literally worked herself to death in this service.
The usual meetings were held in 1899 and 1900 and the same great amount of work was done. To increase the school vote of women in 1899 thirty-eight public meetings were held by the association, with the result that in Boston 3,000 new names were added to the registration list. In 1900 the association contributed liberally to the suffrage campaign in Oregon. A large and brilliant reception was given at the Hotel Vendome in honor of Mrs. Livermore's 80th birthday.
Presidents of the State association since 1883 have been the Hon. William I. Bowditch (1878) to 1891; Mrs. Julia Ward Howe to 1893; Mrs. Lucy Stone elected that year but died in October; Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, 1893 and still in office. Henry B. Blackwell has been corresponding secretary over thirty years.[313]
The first president of the New England association was Mrs. Howe. In 1877 Mrs. Lucy Stone was elected, and at her death in 1893 Mrs. Howe was again chosen and is still serving.[314]
Legislative Action:[315] The first petition for the rights of women was presented to the Legislature by William Lloyd Garrison in 1849. In 1853 Lucy Stone, Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips and Thomas Wentworth Higginson went before the constitutional convention held in the State House, with a petition signed by 2,000 names, and pleaded for an amendment conferring suffrage on women.
The first appearance of a woman in this State before a legislative committee was made in 1857, when Lucy Stone, with the Rev. James Freeman Clarke and Mr. Phillips, addressed the House Judiciary asking suffrage for women and equal property rights for wives. The next year Samuel E. Sewall and Dr. Harriot K. Hunt were granted a similar hearing. In 1869, through the efforts of the New England Suffrage Association, two hearings were secured to present the claims of 8,000 women who had petitioned for the franchise on the same terms as men. This was the beginning of annual hearings on this question, which have been continued without intermission for over thirty years. Henry B. Blackwell has spoken at every hearing and Lucy Stone at every one until her death.
1884—Petitions were presented for Municipal Suffrage, for the appointment of police matrons; also for laws permitting husbands and wives to contract with each other and make gifts directly to each other; allowing a woman to hold any office to which she might be elected or appointed; and requiring that a certain number of women should be appointed on Boards of Overseers of the Poor, on State Boards of Charities and as physicians in the women's wards of insane asylums. Hearings were given on most of these petitions. At that of January 25 for Municipal Suffrage the speakers were William I. Bowditch, Mrs. Stone, Mr. Blackwell, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, the Rev. J. W. and Mrs. Jennie F. Bashford, Mary F. Eastman, Mrs. H. H. Robinson, Mrs. Harriette Robinson Shattuck and Miss Nancy Covell.
On January 29 a hearing was given to the remonstrants conducted by Thornton K. Lothrop. The speakers were Francis Parkman (whose paper was read for him by Mr. Lothrop) Louis B. Brandeis, Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells, William H. Sayward, Mrs. Lydia Warner and George C. Crocker. A letter was read from Mrs. Clara T. Leonard. Mr. Parkman asserted that the suffragists "have thrown to the wind every political, not to say every moral principle;" that "three-fourths of the agitators are in mutiny against Providence because it made them women;" and that "if the ballot were granted to women it would be a burden so crushing that life would be a misery."
This year 315 petitions for suffrage with 21,608 signatures were presented. The remonstrants who set out with the avowed intention of getting more secured about 3,000. A number of persons who signed the anti-suffrage petition in Boston published letters afterwards over their own names and addresses saying that they had signed without reading, upon the assurance of the canvasser employed by the remonstrants that it was a petition to permit women to vote on the question of liquor license.