The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V

by Unknown

It seems almost inexplicable that changes surely as radical as giving to women the opportunity to vote should be accepted today as perfectly natural while the political right is still viewed somewhat askance.... The time will come when some of us will look back upon the arguments against the granting of the suffrage to women with as much incredulity as that with which we now read those against their education. Then shall it be said of the woman, who with gentleness and strength, courage and patience, has been unswerving in her allegiance to the aim which she had set before her, "Give her of the fruit of her hands and let her own works praise her in the gates."

Professor Salmon: The personal experience will perhaps be pardoned if it is considered representative of the possibly changing attitude of other college women toward the subject. The natural stages in the development seem to have been, opposition, due to ignorance; rejection, due to conscientious disapproval; indifference, due to preoccupation in other lines of work; acceptance, due to appreciation of what the work for equal suffrage has accomplished. It has been a work positive rather than negative, active rather than destructive, and thus it is coming to appeal to the judgment and reason of college women. They are coming to realize that they have been taught by these pioneers, both by precept and example, to look at the essential things of life and to ignore the unessential and for this they are grateful....

The college woman is beginning to wonder whether it is worth while to reckon the mint, anise and cummin while the weightier matters of the law are forgotten. For a larger outlook on life we are all indebted to Miss Anthony, to Mrs. Howe and to their colleagues. We are indebted to them in large measure for the educational opportunities of today. We are indebted to them for the theory, and in some places for the reality, of equal pay for men and women when the work performed is the same. We are indebted to them for making it possible for us to spend our lives in fruitful work rather than in idle tears. We are indebted to these pioneer women for the substitution of a positive creed for inertia and indifference. From them we also inherit the weighty responsibility of passing on to others, in degree if not in kind, all that we have received from them.

Professor Jordan, after considering the woman's college, said: "The suffragists lent us Maria Mitchell and they felt severely the loss they sustained in her increasing absorption in the class room and in the requirements of modern scientific work. When we had taken Maria Mitchell they turned to us in friendship, Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Miss Anthony, Miss Elizabeth Peabody, Mrs. Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Mrs. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Lois Anna Green, Mary Dame—and never failed to stir our minds with their urgent appeals for our thoughtful consideration of the causes they presented and the interest they took for granted. The last was their strong point. They simply implicated us in whatever was good and true. Their enthusiasm was infectious and we 'caught' it—to our own lasting spiritual benefit.... I do not believe that I was over-fanciful when I used to feel that Lucy Stone and you, Miss Anthony, looked at us as if you would say, 'Make the best of your freedom for we have bought it with a great price.'"

Professor Calkins: I wish to indicate this evening the definite form in which I think the gratitude of all college women might be expressed to Miss Anthony and to the other leaders of the equal suffrage movement for their service to the cause of women's education. In other words, I wish to ask what have these veteran equal suffrage leaders a right to expect from university and college students, and in particular from the students and graduates of our women's colleges?... Equal suffragists, if I may serve as interpreter, demand just this, that women trained to scientific method shall make equal suffrage an object of scientific analysis and logic and ask of college women that they cease being ignorant or indifferent on the question; that they adopt, if not an attitude of active leadership or of loyal support, at least a position of reasoned opposition or of intelligent hesitation between opposing arguments. To ask less than this really is an insult to a thinking person, man or woman.... The student trained to reach decisions in the light of logic and of history will be disposed to recognize that, in a democratic country governed as this is by the suffrage of its citizens and given over as this is to the principle and practice of educating women, a distinction based on difference of sex is artificial and illogical, and thus suspicious.... For myself, I believe that the probabilities favor woman suffrage.

Mrs. Moore: The women of today may well feel that it is Miss Anthony who has made life possible to them; she has trodden the rough paths and by unwearied devotion has opened to them the professions and higher applied industries. Through her life's work they enjoy a hundred privileges denied them fifty years ago; from her devotion has grown a new order; her hand has helped to open every line of business to women. She has spoken at times to thousands of girls on the public duties of women.... Her life story must epitomize the victorious struggle of women for larger intellectual freedom in the last century.... The world does move. Those who are aware of the great and beneficent changes made in the laws relating to the rights of property, in the civil and industrial laws pertaining to women and children, may estimate the good accomplished by these pioneers.

Mrs. Park: I suppose it is true that all through history individual women have been able, sometimes by cajolery, sometimes by personal charm, sometimes by force of character, to get for themselves privileges far greater than any that the most radical advocates of woman's rights have yet demanded. But in the case of Miss Anthony and the other early suffragists all that force of character was turned not to individual ends, not to getting large things for themselves, but to getting little gains, step by step, for the great mass of other women; not for the service of themselves but for the service of the sex and so of the whole human race.... The object of the College Women's League is to bring the question of equal suffrage to college women, to help them realize their debt to the women who have worked so hard for them and to make them understand that one of the ways to pay that debt is to fight the battle in the quarter of the field in which it is still unwon; in short, to make them feel the obligation of opportunity.

President Thomas: In the year 1903 there were in the United States 6,474 women studying in women's colleges and 24,863 women studying in co-educational colleges. If the annual rate of increase has continued the same, as it undoubtedly has, during the past three years, there are in college at the present time 38,268 women students. Although there are in the United States nearly 1,800,000 less women than men, women already constitute considerably over one-third of the entire student body and are steadily gaining on men. This means that in another generation or two one-half of all the people who have been to college in the United States will be women; and, just as surely as the seasons of the year succeed one another or the law of gravitation works, just so surely will this great body of educated women wish to use their trained intelligence in making the towns, cities and States of their country better places for themselves and their children to live in; just so surely will the men with whom they have worked side by side in college classes claim and receive their aid in political as well as home life. The logic of events does not lie. It is unthinkable that women who have learned to act for themselves in college and have become awakened there to civic duties should not care for the ballot to enforce their wishes.

PIONEERS OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON. Born, 1815.		LUCY STONE. Born, 1818.
	SUSAN B. ANTHONY. Born, 1820.
LUCRETIA MOTT. Born, 1793.		MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT. Born, 1846.