The forward movement of either sex is possible only when the other moves also and the obstacles to progress exist in the attitude of both sexes to it, not in that of one alone. So in this woman suffrage movement we have learned that the apathy of women to their own political freedom is as great an obstacle to our success as the unwillingness of men to grant our claims. It is of the same importance to us to educate women out of their indifference as it is to educate men out of their unwillingness. If it should happen that this education shall come to women first, they will never need the argument of force to induce men to remove the legal obstacles, for men and women cannot long think unlike on any subject.
One of the most interesting reports was that of the Press Committee, made by its efficient chairman, Mrs. Elnora Monroe Babcock (N. Y.). Illustrating its work she said: "About 50,000 suffrage articles have been sent out from the press headquarters since our last annual convention; 2,400 of these were specials; 5,155 articles and items advertising the Bazaar; many articles on prominent women were furnished to illustrated papers and newspaper syndicates; a page of plate matter was issued every six weeks and seven large press associations were supplied with occasional articles." The names of State chairmen were given and the number of papers they supplied—New York, 500; Pennsylvania, 336; Iowa, 237; Massachusetts, 97; Indiana, 91; Illinois, 85; Ohio, 63, etc. Mrs. Babcock asked for a vote of thanks, which was unanimous, to Paul Dana, proprietor and editor of the New York Sun, for having given during the past two and a half years and for still giving two columns of its Sunday issue to an article by Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, an unprecedented concession by a great metropolitan paper. Miss Anthony added her words of praise to Mr. Dana and to the department which she herself had been largely instrumental in securing.[10]
One of the most popular addresses of the convention was made by Mrs. Ellis Meredith of Denver—The Menace of Podunk—a clever satire showing that narrow partisanship and dishonest politics were to be found alike in New York and Podunk, Indiana.
Podunk is the place where the country is nothing, the caucus everything; where patriotism languishes and party spirit runs riot. It is the centre of intelligence where they hold back the returns until advices are received from headquarters as to how many votes are needed. The Podunkians believe it is a good thing to have a strong man at the head of the ticket, not because they care about electing strong men but because by putting a good nominee at the head of the ballot it is possible they may be able to pull through the seven saloon keepers and three professional politicians who go to make up the rest of the ticket.... But there lives in Podunk another class that is a greater menace to the life of the nation, the noble army of Pharisees. They have read Bryce's American Commonwealth and have an intellectual understanding of the theory and form of our government but they do not know what ward they live in, they are vague as to the district, have never met their Congressman and do not know a primary from a kettle drum....
The politician and the shirk of Podunk are the creatures who are doing their noble best to blot out the words of Lincoln and make it possible for the government he died to save to perish from the earth. And between these two evils the least apparent is the most real. The man who votes more than once is nearer right than the man who refuses to vote at all. The activity of the repeater in the pool of politics may be wholly pernicious but is no worse than the stagnation caused by the inertia of his self-righteous brother. The republic has less to fear from her illiterate and venal voters than from those who, knowing her peril, refuse to come to the rescue.
The resolutions were presented by Mr. Blackwell, who, at conventions almost without number, served as chairman of this important committee, and the first ones set forth the political status of the women in the year 1901 as follows:
"We congratulate the women of America upon the measure of success already attained—school suffrage in twenty-two States and Territories; municipal suffrage in Kansas; suffrage on questions of taxation in Iowa, Montana, Louisiana and New York; full suffrage in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho—States containing more than a million inhabitants, with eight Senators and nine Representatives in Congress elected in part by the votes of women.
"We rejoice in important gains during the past year; the extension of suffrage upon questions of taxation to 200,000 women in the towns and villages of New York and to the tax-paying women of Norway; the voting of women for the first time for members of Parliament in West Australia; the almost unanimous refusal of the Kansas Legislature to repeal municipal woman suffrage and the acquittal in Denver of the only woman ever charged with fraudulent voting."
A tribute was paid to the tried and true friends of woman suffrage who had died during the year, many of them veterans in the cause: Sarah Anthony Burtis, aged 90, secretary of the first Woman's Rights Convention in 1848 when adjourned to Rochester, N.Y.; Charles K. Whipple, aged 91, for many years secretary of the Massachusetts and New England Woman Suffrage Associations; Zerelda G. Wallace of Indiana, the "mother" of "Ben Hur"; Paulina Gerry, the Rev. Cyrus Bartol, Carrie Anders, Dr. Salome Merritt, Matilda Goddard and Mary Shannon of Massachusetts; Mary J. Clay of Kentucky; Eliza J. Patrick of Missouri; Fanny C. Wooley and Nettie Laub Romans of Iowa; Eliza Scudder Fenton, the widow of New York's war governor; Charlotte A. Cleveland and Henry Villard of New York; John Hooker of Connecticut; Giles F. Stebbins and George Willard of Michigan; Ruth C. Dennison, D. C., Theron Nye of Nebraska; Elizabeth Coit of Ohio; Major Niles Meriwether of Tennessee; M. B. Castle of Illinois; John Bidwell of California; Wendell Phillips Garrison of New Jersey.
On the evening when Miss Anthony presided she introduced to the audience with tender words Mrs. Charlotte Pierce of Philadelphia, as one of the few left who attended the first Woman's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, N. Y., in 1848; Mrs. Eliza Wright Osborne of Auburn, N. Y., niece of Lucretia Mott and daughter of Martha Wright, two of the four women who called that convention; Miss Emily Howland, a devoted pioneer of Sherwood, N. Y.; the Rev. Olympia Brown of Racine, second woman to be ordained as minister; Mrs. Ellen Sulley Fray, a pioneer of Toledo, O., and Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick, wife of a Chief Justice of Louisiana, who organized the first suffrage club in New Orleans.