At the opening of the evening session Miss Anthony read a letter from Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett of England, and an extract from a recent speech by her husband, Henry Fawcett, member of Parliament and Postmaster General, strongly advocating the removal of all political disabilities of women. Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert (Ills.) spoke on The Statesmanship of Women, citing illustrious examples in all parts of the world. Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.) gave a trenchant and humorous speech on The Unknown Quantity in Politics, showing the indirect influence of women which unfortunately is not accompanied with responsibility. She took up leading candidates and their records, criticising or commending; illustrated how in every department women are neglected and forgotten, and closed as follows:
It is better to have the power of self-protection than to depend on any man, whether he be the Governor in his chair of State, or the hunted outlaw wandering through the night, hungry and cold and with murder in his heart. We are tired of the pretense that we have special privileges and the reality that we have none; of the fiction that we are queens, and the fact that we are subjects; of the symbolism which exalts our sex but is only a meaningless mockery. We demand that these shadows shall take substance. The coat of arms of the State of New York represents Liberty and Justice supporting a shield on which is seen the sun rising over the hills that guard the Hudson. How are justice and liberty depicted? As a police judge and an independent voter? Oh, no; as two noble and lovely women! What an absurdity in a State where there is neither liberty nor justice for any woman! We ask that this symbolism shall assume reality, for a redeemed and enfranchised womanhood will be the best safeguard of justice.
Mrs. Blake was followed by Mrs. Martha McClellan Brown, of Cincinnati Wesleyan College, who spoke on Disabilities of Woman. Miss Anthony read the report from Missouri by Mrs. Virginia L. Minor, who strongly supported her belief in the constitutional right of women to the franchise. A letter of greeting was read from Miss Fannie M. Bagby, managing editor St. Louis Chronicle; Miss Phoebe W. Couzins (Mo.) gave a brilliant address entitled What Answer?
At the evening session the hall was crowded. The speech of Mrs. Belva A. Lockwood (D. C.), the first woman admitted to practice before the Supreme Court, was a severe criticism on the disfranchising of the women in Utah as proposed by bills now before Congress. It was a clear and strong legal argument which would be marred by an attempt at quotation.
In an address on Women Before the Law, the report says:
Mrs. Helen M. Gougar of Indiana traced the development of human liberty as shown in the history of the ballot, which was at first given to a certain class of believers in orthodox religions, then to property holders, then to all white men. She showed how class legislation had been gradually done away with by allowing believer and unbeliever, rich and poor, white and black, to vote unquestioned and unhindered, and as a result of this onward march of justice, the last remaining form of class legislation, now shown by the sex ballot, must pass away. She declared the sex-line to be the lowest standard upon which to base a privilege and unworthy the civilization of the present time. She answered many of the popular objections to woman suffrage by showing that if education were to be made the test of the ballot, women would not be the disfranchised class in America, as three-fifths of all graduates from the public schools in the last ten years have been women. If morality were to be made a test, women would do more voting than men. The ratio of law-abiding women to men is as one to every 103; of drunken women to drunken men, one to every 1,000. Reasoning from these facts, if sobriety, virtue and intelligence were necessary qualifications, women enfranchised would largely reflect these elements in the Government.
At noon on March 6 the delegates were courteously received at the White House by President Chester A. Arthur.
During the afternoon session the Pennsylvania report was presented by Edward M. Davis, son-in-law of Lucretia Mott, and an exhaustive account of Woman's Work in Philadelphia by Mrs. Lucretia L. Blankenburg. A letter from Mrs. Anna C. Wait (Kas.) was read by Mrs. Bertha H. Ellsworth, who closed with a tribute to Mrs. Wait and a poem dedicated to Kansas.
The guest of the convention, Mrs. Jessie M. Wellstood of Edinburgh, presented a report made by Miss Eliza Wigham, secretary of the Scotland Suffrage Association, prefaced with some earnest remarks in which she said:
To those who are sitting at ease, folding their hands and sweetly saying: "I have all the rights I want, why should I trouble about these matters?" let me quote the burning words of the grand old prophet Isaiah, which entered into my soul and stirred it to action: "Rise up, ye women that are at ease; hear my voice, ye careless daughters, give ear unto my speech; many days shall ye be troubled, ye careless women, etc." It is just because we fold our hands and sit at ease that so many of our less fortunate fellow creatures are leading lives of misery, want, sin and shame.