The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V

by Unknown

"The Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Tasmania sends hearty greetings and trusts that the International Suffrage Conference may be successful and that it will bring nearer that day when man and woman shall sit 'side by side, full summed in all their powers,'" was the message signed by Jessie S. Rooke, its president, which was given by Miss Anna Gordon, president of the W. C. T. U. of the United States. The response to the addresses of welcome was made by Madame Sofja Levovna Friedland of Russia, who said in beautiful English:

I am a loyal daughter of a friendly country, who thanks you for your welcome and brings greetings from her distant home. Russia and the United States have been friends for many a year and are friends today, proven friends, who have stood by each other in the hour of need. In 1863 the French ambassador at the court of St. Petersburg laid before the Czar the proposition of Napoleon III, to interfere in your civil war for the purpose of perpetuating the division between the North and the South. After listening to this bold proposal of the French Emperor, Czar Alexander, the man who had freed twenty-five million slaves in one stroke of his pen, replied: "Tell your Emperor that the United States is our friend and tell him also that it has the same right to maintain a republican form of government as we have to choose a monarchy. Tell him also that he must keep his hands off and not meddle in its affairs for I will not allow anyone to interfere on the other side of the Atlantic. He who strikes my friend, strikes me." This answer in diplomatic language went the same day to Paris and soon after Russian battleships arrived in the harbors of New York and San Francisco. There are still men and women who remember them. They used to wonder why the Russian men-of-war were lying peacefully in American waters. President Lincoln could have given the answer, for in a private message from the Czar he had been assured of the friendship of the great Eastern Empire. He knew that the commanders of the Russian ships had secret orders to act in case of necessity.

But the American people have done more, for there came a morning when the glorious winter sun of Russia greeted the Star-Spangled Banner, when American ships landed on Russian shores ready to protect us from a more cruel enemy—hunger. The cry of distress from our famine-stricken villages had found an echo in American hearts and the ships which came did not bear government orders, they bore the tokens of love from one brother to another; they brought us wheat and corn to feed our people.

Madame Friedland told of the visit of the Grand Duke Alexis to this country and of the poem read by Oliver Wendell Holmes at a banquet given in his honor, and closed: "Thus an American poet has expressed the feelings of his countrymen and women. God bless the United States! Long life to President Roosevelt and prosperity to you all! In the days to come and the years to follow may our two great nations stand side by side in harmony and peace. May the Star-Spangled Banner and the Russian Double Eagle soar aloft, not on battlefields, not against any nation, but for a brotherhood of men in the federation of the world." The opening session ended with the president's address by Mrs. Catt, in the course of which she said:

In ready response to growing intelligence and individualism the principle of self-government has been planted in every civilized nation of the world. Before the force of this onward movement the most cherished ideals of conservatism have fallen. Out of the ashes of the old, phœnix-like has arisen a new institution, vigorous and strong, yea, one which will endure as long as men occupy the earth. The little band of Americans who initiated the modern movement would never have predicted that within a century "Taxation of men without representation is tyranny" would have been written into the fundamental law of all the monarchies of Europe except Russia and Turkey and that even there self-government would obtain in the municipalities. The most optimistic seer among them would not have prophesied that Mongolian Japan, then tightly shutting her gates against the commerce of the world and jealously guarding her ancient customs, would before the century closed have welcomed Western civilization and established universal suffrage for its men. He would not have dreamed that every inch of the great continent of South America, then chiefly an unexplored region over which bands of savages roved at will, would be covered by written constitutions guaranteeing self-government to men inspired by Declarations of Independence similar to that of this country; that the settlements in Mexico and Central America and many islands of the ocean would grow into republics, and least of all that the island continent of Australia, with its associates of New Zealand and Tasmania, then unexplored wildernesses, would become great democracies where self-government would be carried on with such enthusiasm, fervor and wisdom that they would give lessons in methods and principles to all the rest of the world....

Hard upon the track of the man suffrage movement presses the movement for woman suffrage, a logical step onward. It has come as inevitably and naturally as the flower unfolds from the bud or the fruit develops from the flower. Why should woman suffrage not come? Men throughout the world hold their suffrage by the guarantee of the two principles of liberty and for these reasons only: One, "Taxation without representation is tyranny"; who dares deny it? And are not women taxed? The other, "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." How simple and unanswerable that petition of justice!... Woman suffrage must meet precisely the same objections which have been urged against man suffrage and in addition it must combat sex-prejudice, a prejudice against the rights, liberties and opportunities of women.

Mrs. Catt closed her address with these words: "Yet before the attainment of equal rights for men and women there will be years of struggle and disappointment. We of a younger generation have taken up the work where our noble and consecrated pioneers left it. We in turn are enlisted for life and generations yet unborn will take up the work where we lay it down. So through centuries if need be the education will continue, until a regenerated race of men and women who are equal before God and man shall control the destinies of the earth. It will be the proud duty of the new International Alliance, if one shall be formed, to extend its helping hand to the women of every nation and every people and its completed duty will not have been performed until the last vestige of the old obedience of one human being to another shall have been destroyed."

The presence of the foreign visitors and the greetings from abroad made an original and pleasing variation of the usual program at national conventions. The Evening with the Pioneers opened with the singing by the audience of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, written by one of them, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, led by another, John Hutchinson, a member of the famous family of singers, who the day before had celebrated his 90th birthday. Miss Anthony presided and the Washington Times said that she "was greeted with a storm of applause, the convention rising as one woman and with waving handkerchiefs cheering her to the echo for several minutes." The Loyal Legion of Women through its president gave her an armful of red roses and in accepting them she observed smilingly: "I can only say what I have often said in late years—it is much pleasanter to be pelted with roses than stones! The National Suffrage Association stands like a Mother Church with her arms wide open to those who want to come in and we are especially glad to receive loyal women."[17]

Mrs. Florence Fenwick Miller, a member of the London School Board for nine years, brought greetings from Mrs. Priscilla Bright McLaren, 87 years old, of whom Miss Anthony said: "She is an elder sister of John and Jacob Bright. John was the great champion of manhood suffrage but Jacob was still greater, for he was a champion of suffrage for women also. Mrs. McLaren sent a loving and appreciative message to "the dear American women who have so steadfastly held up the banner of woman suffrage and especially to the octogenarians, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony," and closed it with a Christmas poem. Miss Anthony recalled her last visit to Mrs. McLaren in Edinburgh three years before and said: "I wish you could see how beautiful she looked as she lay on the bed in her pretty white cap and blue dressing sack. She is an inspiration to the women of Great Britain and she has been to me."

Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby (D. C.), gave a greeting from Mrs. Stanton, in her 87th year, and read her paper on Educated Suffrage.[18] In this able and scholarly document Mrs. Stanton said: