Miss Mary Garrett Hay, the champion money raiser, then made the appeal to the audience, who quickly responded with over $5,000 and she received an appreciative vote of thanks from the convention. Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, the treasurer, reported the receipts of the preceding year as $13,581, with a carefully itemized and audited statement.
Among the most interesting and valuable features of all national conventions are the reports of the work in the various States and yet because of the large number it is impossible to give specific mention or quotations. They were varied on this occasion by the reports from foreign countries—Venezuela, Chili, Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Porto Rico, Canada, Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Turkey, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium and France. These had been obtained at the request of Mrs. Catt from ambassadors, consuls or persons appointed by them and represented months of labor. Several evenings were largely devoted to addresses by delegates from other countries; one by Public School Inspector James L. Hughes, Toronto; the English Woman in Politics, Florence Fenwick Miller; the Australian Woman in Politics, Vida Goldstein; Women in South American Republics, Carolina Huidobro; Women in Porto Rico, Resident Commissioner Federico Degetau; Women in the Philippines, Harriet Potter Nourse; Deborah, Emmy Evald, Sweden; Women in Egypt and Jerusalem, Lydia von Finkelstein Mountford; Women in Turkey, Florence Fensham, Dean of American College for Girls in Constantinople; Women in Germany, Antoine Stolle.
When the report for Porto Rico was made Miss Shaw supplemented it with a graphic account of a trip to the West Indies with Mrs. Lydia Avery Coonley Ward of Chicago, which she had just finished, telling of the position of women, the marriage laws, etc. The work of the National Council of Women was presented by the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer (R. I.); the report of the affiliated Friends' Equal Rights Association by Mrs. Mariana W. Chapman (N. Y.), its president.
The Sunday afternoon services in the church were conducted by the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer, assisted by the Rev. Olympia Brown and the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw.[21] Mrs. Spencer first defined the ideal of womanly character held by the older poets and philosophers, quoting Milton's line describing Adam and Eve: "He for God only; she for God in him," and the expression used by the hard, old father of Tennyson's "Princess": "Man to command and woman to obey." She then expressed the modern ideal as that of devotion to the same essentials but different in expression. "Woman is not called to a new kingdom but to a larger occupancy of that which has been hers from the beginning. The woman with the child in her arms was the beginning of the family; the hearth fire and the altar fire grew from this; the elder child teaching the younger was the beginning of the school. We are making over all these inherited traditions and inherited tendencies and socializing them.... The ideal woman is no longer a far-away Madonna with her feet on the clouds; she is as divine but she is human. What means the humanizing of religion and the passing of harsh, old creeds but that a greater, more human, more womanly influence is felt in all the relations of life."
Mr. Blackwell, chairman of the committee on Presidential suffrage, said in his report: "This is the open door for woman suffrage in every State in the Union. Any Legislature at any session by a majority vote of both Houses, either separately or in joint session, without any change of State constitution, can empower women to help select the presidential electors on the same terms as male citizens. The power is absolute and unqualified. Let women in every State petition their Legislature to enable women to take part in this most important form of suffrage known to the American people. It is objected to our demand for woman suffrage that women do not want it and will not exercise it if granted. This is now the only method of testing women's wish to take part in their government. If by a general exercise of the right they show their public spirit, the Legislature by submitting an amendment to the State constitution can afterwards extend suffrage to its citizens in State and local elections. This step will be the most conservative way of procedure. The control will remain, as now, in the hands of a Legislature elected by men alone. If it prove unsatisfactory to the men of the State any subsequent Legislature can repeal the law."
A report of the International Suffrage Conference, which had been in progress during the convention, and the forming of a committee to further permanent organization, was made by its secretary, Miss Goldstein, and the convention voted that the National American Woman Suffrage Association should cooperate with this committee. The nominations for office were made as usual by secret ballot and as usual were so nearly unanimous that the secretary was instructed to cast the vote. The only change in the present board was the election of Mrs. Mary J. Coggeshall, for many years prominent in the work in Iowa, as second auditor in place of Dr. Eaton, whose professional duties required all her time. Invitations for the next convention were received from Niagara Falls, Detroit, St. Louis, Denver, Baltimore and New Orleans. The Board of Trade, the Era Club and the Progressive Union united in the one from New Orleans, which was accepted and cordial thanks returned for the others.
The resolutions presented by Mr. Blackwell, chairman of the committee, rejoiced in the suffrage already gained and the securing in the past year of laws in various States giving equal guardianship of their children to mothers and increased property rights to wives. They called the attention of the Civil Service Commission to discriminations made against women and emphasized the protest of the preceding year against government regulation of vice in the Philippines. Later at an executive meeting of the board a vigorous set of resolutions was prepared, stating that the reports of Governor William H. Taft and General McArthur admitted and defended "certified examinations of women" in the new possessions of the United States. It showed at length the results of government regulation in other countries which had caused it to be abandoned and declared that "such things ought not to be permitted under the American flag."[22]
Mrs. Colby's report on Industrial Problems Relating to Women cited as one example of discrimination: "An effort is now being made in Congress to do away with the annual sick leave of employees, because, it is claimed, women take so much advantage of it. Investigation shows, however, that the per cent. of sick leave is highest in the Inter-State Commerce Commission, where not a woman is employed—twelve per cent.—and only seven per cent. in the Agricultural Department, where a very large number are employed." She gave numerous instances of unfairness against women on the civil service lists, said that women wage earners must find a forum on the suffrage platform where they can plead their cause and carefully analyze the industrial problems especially affecting women. Mrs. Elnora M. Babcock, chairman of the Press Committee, gave a comprehensive report stating that while 50,000 news stories and articles had been sent to the papers in 1900 the number had increased to 175,000 during the last year and there was reason to believe that three-fourths of them had been used. The largest city papers freely accepted the articles.
Former U. S. Senator Henry W. Blair of New Hampshire came in for one session and was called to the platform for a speech. He was much loved by the suffragists, as he had been one of the strongest champions of woman suffrage during his many years in the Senate and had brought the Federal Amendment to a vote on Jan. 25, 1887. ([History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV, chapter VI].) Letters of affectionate greeting were sent to the pioneers and veteran workers, Mrs. Stanton, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Mary S. Anthony, Jane H. Spofford, Sallie Clay Bennett, Caroline Hallowell Miller and Abigail S. Duniway. The deaths among the older and more prominent members during the year had been many and fifty were mentioned in the memorial resolutions.
The notable social features of the week were the afternoon receptions given by Mrs. Julia Langdon Barber at her beautiful home, Belmont, and by Mrs. John B. Henderson at Boundary Castle, the latter followed the next day by a dinner for the officers of the association and the delegates from abroad. Both of these well-known Washington hostesses were early suffragists and had often extended the hospitality of their spacious homes to the individual leaders and to the conventions.