A conference of southern women suffragists at Memphis a few years ago, in asking for woman suffrage with an educational qualification, pointed out that there were over 600,000 more white women in the southern States than there were negroes, men and women combined. If the literate women of the South were enfranchised it would insure an immense preponderance of the Anglo-Saxon over the African, of the literate over the illiterate, and would make legitimate limitation of the male suffrage to the literate easily possible....

Conditions of life in the South have made and kept Southerners individualists. The southern man believes that he should personally protect his women folk and he does it. He is only now slowly realizing that, with the coming of the cotton mills and other manufactories and with the growth of the cities, there has developed a great body of women, young girls and children who either have no men folk to protect them or whose men folk, because of ignorance and economic weakness, are not able to protect them against the greed and rapacity of employers or of vicious men. It is a shock to the pride of southern chivalry to find that women are less protected by the laws in their most sacred possessions in the southern States than in any other section of the Union; that the States which protect their women most effectively are those in which women have been longest a part of the electorate....

In the community business of caring for the sick, the incurable, the aged, the orphaned, the deficient and the helpless, women of the South bear already so important a part that to withdraw them from public affairs would mean sudden and widespread calamity. Women in the South are in politics, in the higher conception of the word. "Politics," says Bernard Shaw, "is not something apart from the home and the babies—it is home and the babies." Women have long since gotten into politics in the South in the sense that they have labored for the passage and enforcement of legislation in the interest of public health, the betterment of schools and the protection of womanhood and childhood—for the preservation, in short, "of home and the babies."

Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst of England, received an ovation when she rose to speak and soon disarmed prejudice by her dignified and womanly manner. She began by pointing out the fallacy that the women of the United States had so many rights and privileges that they did not need the suffrage and in proof she quoted existing laws and conditions that called loudly for a change. She then took up the situation in Great Britain and explained how many years the women had tried to get the franchise by constitutional methods only to be deceived and spurned by the Government. She told how at last a small handful of them started a revolution; how they had grown into an army; how they had suffered imprisonment and brutality; how the suffrage bill had again and again passed the second reading by immense majorities and the Government had refused to let it come to a final vote. "We asked Prime Minister Asquith to give us a time for this," she said. "For eight long hours in a heavy frost some of the finest women in England stood at the entrance to the House of Commons and waited humbly with petitions in their hands for their rulers and masters to condescend to receive them but the House adjourned while they stood there. The next day, while they waited again, there was an assault by the police, acting under instructions, that I do not like to dwell upon outside of my own country."

Dr. Shaw made the closing address, eloquent with hope and courage for the future and, as always, the final blessing at the convention as the benediction is at church.

In summing up the week the Woman's Journal said: "Only those who attended our national convention at Louisville can understand how really wonderful it was. For hospitality, for good management, for beautiful cooperation and self-effacement, the Kentucky women set a standard that will long be remembered and will be very hard to equal in the future. It made hard work easy and all work a joy. The gratitude of the National Association is theirs forever. They gave much to us, did we give anything to them? Here we can only say we trust that we did and accept with confidence what one of the State's great women said many times: 'This convention has done wonders for Kentucky; it has surpassed my hopes.'"

FOOTNOTES:

[70] Part of Call: Within the year the State of Washington has completed its work of fully enfranchising its adult citizens. Before the convention assembles, California will no doubt have accepted the idea of true democracy. We also rejoice because the Legislatures of Kansas, Wisconsin, Oregon and Nevada have voted to submit the question to their electors. Many States, however, still refuse to allow the voters to pass upon the question of giving political independence to women. Since the purpose of the National American Woman Suffrage Association is "to secure the right to vote to women citizens of the United States," we have called this national convention of suffragists. From every State will come delegates, who will bring with them the growing spirit of rebellion against injustice....

We call upon every public-spirited woman to come and help devise methods of carrying on the fight, to strengthen the fire of revolt, to show by overwhelming numbers and determined earnestness that women will no longer be satisfied to be treated with political contempt by the legislators who are supposed to represent them.... Do your part to inspire our workers with courage, determination, fervor and consecration; to arouse them to put forth their full strength, even to the utmost sacrifice, to obtain universal recognition of the truth that every adult citizen should have a voice in the government of a free country.

Anna Howard Shaw, President.
Catharine Waugh McCulloch, First Vice-President.
Kate M. Gordon, Second Vice-President.
Mary Ware Dennett, Corresponding Secretary.
Ella S. Stewart, Recording Secretary.
Jessie Ashley, Treasurer.
Laura Clay, } Auditors.
Alice Stone Blackwell,