I can well recall the years in which I felt myself averse to the participation of women in political life. The feminine type appeared to me so precious, so indispensable to humanity, that I dreaded any enlargement of its functions lest something of its charm and real power should therein be lost. I have often felt as if some sudden and unlooked for revelation had been vouchsafed to me, for at my first real contact with the suffragists of, say, forty years ago, I was made to feel that womanhood is not only static but also much more dynamic, a power to move as well as a power to stay. True womanliness must grow and not diminish, in its larger and freer exercise. Whom did I see at that first suffrage meeting, first in my experience? Lucy Stone, sweet faced and silver voiced, the very embodiment of Goethe's "eternal feminine"; William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, noble advocates of human freedom; Lucretia Mott, eloquent and beautiful in her holy old age. What did I hear? Doctrine which harmonized with my dearest aspirations, extending as it did the hope which I had supposed was for an elect and superior few to all the motherhood of the human race. The new teaching seemed to me to throw the door open for all women to come up higher, to live upon a higher plane of thought and to exercise in larger and more varied fields the talents, wonderful indeed, to which such limited scope had hitherto been allowed. I felt, too, that the new freedom brought with it an identity of interest which formed a bond of sisterhood and that the great force of cooperation would wonderfully aid the promotion of objects dear to all true women alike....
I have sat in the little chapel in Bethlehem in which tradition places the birth of the Saviour. It seems fitting that it should be adorned with offerings of beautiful things but while I mused there a voice seemed to say to me, "Look abroad! This divine child is no more, he has grown to be a man and a deliverer. Go out into the world. Find his footsteps and follow them. Work, as he did, for the redemption of mankind. Suffer as he did, if need be, derision and obloquy. Make your protest against tyranny, meanness and injustice!"
The weapon of Christian warfare is the ballot, which represents the peaceable assertion of conviction and will. Society everywhere is becoming converted to its use. Adopt it, oh, you women, with clean hands and a pure heart! Verify the best word written by the apostle; "In Christ Jesus there is neither bond nor free, neither male nor female, but a new creature," the harbinger of a new creation!
On the last evening Señorita Carolina Holman Huidobro told of The Women of Chili and Argentina in the Peace Movement. Mrs. Mead spoke on The World's Crisis, and, with an unsurpassed knowledge of her subject, pointed out the vast responsibility of the United States in the cause of Peace and Arbitration, saying in part: "Protected by two oceans, with not a nation on the hemisphere that dares to attack her; with not a nation in the world that is her enemy, rich and with endless resources, this most fortunate nation is the one of all others to lead the world out of the increasing intolerable bondage of armaments. If the United States will take a strong position on gradual, proportional disarmament the first step may be made toward it at the second Hague conference soon to be held.... Of all women the suffragists should be alert and well informed upon these momentous questions. Our battle cry today must be 'Organize the world!' War will cease when concerted action has removed the causes of war and not before."
Mrs. Pauline Steinem, an elected member of the Toledo (O.) school board, showed convincingly the need for Women's Work on Boards of Education. Miss Harriet May Mills (N. Y.) made a clear, logical address on The Right of Way, and Mr. Blackwell (Mass.) discussed from his knowledge of politics The Wooing of Electors.
In closing the convention Dr. Shaw expressed the hope that if it had brought no other truth to the people of Baltimore it had shown that women want the ballot as a means for accomplishing the things that good men and women wish to accomplish. She made an earnest appeal for a deeper interest in the highest things of life and more consecrated work for all that contributes to the progress of humanity.
In order to have the usual hearings before committees of Congress on the submission of a woman suffrage amendment to the Federal Constitution a large delegation went to Washington on February 14, the next day after the convention closed, and the hearing was held the morning of the 15th, Miss Anthony's birthday. She was not able to attend, greatly to her own disappointment and that of the older speakers, whose inspiration she had been for so long on these occasions. She had arranged the first one ever held in 1869 and had missed but two in thirty-seven years.
The hearing before the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage took place in the Marble Room, as usual, Senator Augustus O. Bacon of Georgia in the chair and Dr. Shaw presiding. The speakers were Señorita Huidobro of Chili; Mrs. Elizabeth D. Bacon, president of the Connecticut Suffrage Association; Mrs. Mary Bentley Thomas (Md.); the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell (N. J.); Miss Anne Fitzhugh Miller (N. Y.); Mrs. Upton, Mrs. Steinem and Mrs. Fessenden.
The hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, the Hon. John J. Jenkins (Wis.), chairman, was in charge of Mrs. Florence Kelley, first vice-president of the association. Mrs. Blankenburg told of the herculean efforts of over 2,000 women at the last November election of Philadelphia. Mrs. Harriet A. Eager spoke of the work of a woman's Committee of Moral Education in Boston where there was no law prohibiting the circulation of any kind of literature. They went to the Legislature for such a law with a petition from 32,000 of the representative women of Massachusetts and stayed there six weeks working for it only to have it refused. She told how the women of the State petitioned fifty-five years for a law giving mothers equal guardianship of their children and pointed out the helpless position of women without political power.