Notwithstanding the utmost care and tact on the part of those who had the convention in charge the "color question" kept cropping out. Finally Dr. Shaw said: "Here is a query that has been dropped in the box again and again and now I am asked if I am afraid to answer it: 'Will not woman suffrage make the black woman the political equal of the white woman and does not political equality mean social equality?' If it does then the men by keeping both white and black women disfranchised have already established social equality!" The question was not asked again.
One of the able addresses during the convention was that of Mrs. Hala Hammond Butt, president of the Mississippi Suffrage Association, entitled, Restricted Suffrage from a Southern Point of View. After referring to the man's all-mastering desire for liberty from the early history of the race the speaker said: "Did women not share with men this craving for freedom, then would they justly be reckoned as unnatural and unworthy members of the human family, but the same red blood pulses in our veins as in yours, fathers, sons, brothers; we are alive to the same impulses, our souls are kindled by the same aspirations as are yours. Why should this, our ambition, be held in leash by the same bond that holds the ignorant, the illiterate, the vicious, the irresponsible in the human economy? What does the idea of government imply? The crystallized sentiments of an intelligent people? Then do we meet it with but half a truth."
The speaker denounced with much severity the 14th and 15th Amendments and said that by the restrictive educational qualifications now so generally adopted in the southern States the spirit of the amendments had been practically set at naught. "It was born of the instinct of self-preservation," she said, but she deplored the political crimes it made possible and continued: "There is an undercurrent of thought that recognizes in its true proportions the value of an educated suffrage to the South, a restriction based not upon color, race or previous condition of servitude, not upon sex, not upon the question of taxable property, but its sole requirement is the ability to perform worthily the functions of citizenship. This is the only honorable solution of those questions that are vexing not only the body political but the body social of this Southern country."
Mrs. Butt's speech was one of a symposium on the question: Would an educational qualification for all voters tend to the growth of civilization and facilitate good government? Mrs. Hackstaff discussed The Relation which Government Bears to Civilization, saying: "The government which will increase social and individual development most is the best. Progress depends on whether the government will give the opportunity for such development. The one that serves the people best is the one that strengthens them by letting them take part in it." Mrs. Eleanor C. Stockman (Iowa) spoke strongly on Suffrage a Human Right, not a Privilege; Mrs. Clara B. Arthur (Mich.) on A Disfranchised Class a Menace to Self Government; Mrs. Mary Wood Swift (Calif.) on Abolishment of Illiteracy, Its Ultimate Influence. After calling attention to "the mass of ignorant immigrants who almost go from the steerage to the polls"; to the enfranchisement of the half-civilized Indian; to that of paupers, delinquents and defectives, she said:
All this great mass of ignorance goes into the electoral hopper and the marvel is that no worse quality of grist is turned out. It is true that the chief political schemers are by no means illiterate but it is upon illiteracy in the mass that they must depend to carry out their plans. An ignorant voter may be an honest one but unless he is intelligent enough to study public questions for himself he is an easy prey for the political sharper. It is beyond the power of the pen to portray what a magnificent government would be possible with an educated electorate. The idea can be approximated only when we consider how much we have been able to accomplish even with all the inefficiency, vice and ignorance which are permitted to express their will at the polls.
It is because we have a noble ideal for the future of our government that we make our demand for woman suffrage. We point to the official statistics for proof that there are more white women in the United States than colored men and women together; that there are more American-born women than foreign-born men and women combined; that women form only one-eleventh of the criminals in the jails and penitentiaries; that they compose more than two-thirds of the church membership, and that the percentage of illiteracy is very much less among women than among men. Therefore we urge that this large proportion of patriotism, temperance, morality, religion and intelligence may be allowed to impress itself upon the government through the medium of the ballot-box.
Mrs. Ida Porter Boyer substituted for her own address on Universal Suffrage a Pretence a paper sent by Rudolph Blankenburg, one of Philadelphia's most distinguished citizens, entitled: Not Sex but Intelligence, in which he said:
That universal suffrage—an arrant misnomer—has fallen short of its well-meant original purpose is beyond dispute. We see its baneful effect in municipal, State and national government. The unparalleled political corruption in most of our large cities, the narrowness of public men in State and nation, whose horizon is bounded by the limits of their home districts or their own sordid purposes, regardless of public interests, find their culmination in the highest legislative body of our land. They crowd seats of mental giants and honored statesmen of former days with golden pigmies or political highwaymen of recent growth and can be directly traced to our defective franchise system. It permits the vote of the intelligent, law-abiding, industrious and public-spirited to be overcome by that of the ignorant, vicious, purchasable, lazy and indifferent. The ranks of the latter are largely reinforced by the "stay-at-homes," who are a permanent menace to good government.... Thinking people agree that some qualification should be exacted from all voters. The absurdity of the intelligent, tax paying but disfranchised woman being governed by the vote of the illiterate, shiftless loafer or pauper would be laughable were it not so serious. An educational qualification should be a paramount requisite....
Mr. Blankenburg gave statistics of the illiterates in the United States and said: "An educational qualification, wisely considered, would within a few years entirely obliterate the whole mass of this species of undesirable voters. The right of suffrage can not and should not be taken from those who at present legally enjoy it. All women of legal age with the proposed educational requirements should be enfranchised without delay but laws should be enacted demanding that all citizens, men and women alike, presenting themselves to cast their ballot after 1910 must be able to read and write. If the women suffragists will base their claim to vote upon the broad ground of good government and not demand suffrage for the ignorant woman because it is exercised by the ignorant man, they will make ten friends where they now have one."
The audience had the northern and the southern point of view on Educated Suffrage. Mrs. Gilman, who spoke on whether it would serve the best interests of the laboring classes, was alone in objecting to it. "Will exclusion from the suffrage educate and improve the illiterate masses more quickly than the use of it?" she asked. "We shall educate them sooner if we dread their votes and this is our work in common." A great deal of sentiment was developed in favor of an educational requirement for the suffrage and an informal rising vote showed only five opposed, but most of the officers were absent. This vote was due largely to the southern delegates and to the arguments which had been made for its necessity in this section of the country. The policy of the association had always been and continued to be to ask and work only for the removal of the sex qualification.