The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V

by Unknown

CHAPTER VII.

NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1907.

The six preceding chapters have described at length and in detail the annual conventions of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in order to show that those who took part in them were the representative women and men of the day. Their addresses, reports of committees, resolutions adopted and other proceedings demonstrate the wide scope of the activities of this organization, which from 1869 was the foundation and the bulwark of the vast movement to obtain equality of rights for women. The Thirty-ninth convention met in Music Hall, Fine Arts Building, Chicago, Feb. 14-19, 1907, and received a cordial welcome to the State of Lincoln, who in 1836 was almost the first public man in the United States to declare in favor of suffrage for women.[48] Lorado Taft's bust of Susan B. Anthony, its pedestal draped in the Stars and Stripes, adorned the platform and a portrait of Lucy Stone looked down on the speakers in serene benediction. The national president, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, was in the chair and addresses of welcome were made for Illinois by Mrs. Ella S. Stewart, president of the State Equal Suffrage Association; for the churches by the Right Rev. Samuel E. Fallows, Presiding Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church; for the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union by Mrs. Susanna M. D. Fry, its corresponding secretary. Mrs. Fannie J. Fernald, president of the Maine Suffrage Association, and Mrs. Mary S. Sperry, president of that of California, responded and in introducing them Dr. Shaw said: "These responses from the Atlantic and the Pacific Coasts represent greetings from all the women between them." The presidents of the Chicago North Side, the South Side and the Evanston Political Equality Clubs were presented and received with applause. Bishop Fallows expressed the wish that what he should say could be voiced by the ministers of all the churches in the land and said: "I am proud that from the period of the Civil War and a little before, when the cause of the emancipation of the slave was the foremost question of the time and was only settled by the horrors of a long struggle—from that time I espoused the cause of woman suffrage. I hope there will be no need to fight for it as we fought during those long years but at least there should be a war of words until women have the power to deposit a ballot, until they have complete enfranchisement. Your case is just; yours is a righteous cause. I cannot help believing that the exercise of the suffrage by women is necessary to the welfare and growth of the nation. Your cause stands for the home; it stands for political purity, for civic righteousness, for everything that is for the betterment of the State, and I should be guilty of high treason to my deepest convictions if I did not bid a hearty God-speed to your efforts until every State shall recognize the equality of woman before the great law of civic redemption, as God has recognized her right before the great law of human redemption."

The appointment of the usual committees was followed by a symposium on Municipal Suffrage, at this time a vital issue in Chicago, as a spirited campaign was in progress to secure a clause giving it to women in the new city charter which a convention was preparing.[49] Mrs. Ellen M. Henrotin was to preside but she yielded to Mrs. Florence Kelley, who had to leave the city, and later took Mrs. Kelley's place in presiding over the symposium on Industrial Conditions. Professor Sophonisba Breckinridge (Ky.), of Chicago University, gave an able address on Municipal Housekeeping, saying in the course of it:

In all the things that make the city a good place in which to work, the woman is as much concerned as any one. When it comes to the questions which affect women, she has of course a peculiar ability to speak, a peculiar responsibility and an obligation to assume every right necessary to carry out that responsibility. It is incumbent upon her to secure the power to move in the most direct way upon the obstacles which lie in her path in the controlling of conditions.... It is to the housekeeper that I want to call your attention, rather than to the working woman. She has to decide how she will use her time, energy and money to promote the life, health, comfort and welfare of her family. The little group must live in a house. If she resides in a city, it is a matter of concern what shall be the structure of it, whether made of material endangering the household or not; if in an apartment house, she is concerned in the regulations under which such houses are built and controlled, in the fire escapes, the sort of gas, the dimensions of the apartments, the order of the rooms, the plumbing, etc.

It is obvious that today no woman can be a competent housekeeper unless she has an intelligent knowledge of these subjects. She must exercise a control over the ordinances and have something to say about the men who make these ordinances and who enforce them. She has not the power she needs as a housekeeper unless she feels that the officials of the city are as much responsible to her, although they are not chosen by her alone, as are the domestic servants whom she does select. Her collective responsibility is just as great as her individual responsibility.... Women cannot stop either at the bottom or the top by asking for Municipal suffrage. If woman is going to be a complete housekeeper she must be a member of a political group and that leads to the demand for Municipal, State and Federal suffrage.

Miss Kate M. Gordon (La.) told of the remarkable work the women of New Orleans had been able to do with their taxpayers' right to vote on matters of special taxation. "If the women of one part of the country more than another need the suffrage," she declared, "it is those of the South." The Chicago Tribune commented: "As Miss Gordon sat down all the women clapped, many waved handkerchiefs and the applause continued several minutes." Mrs. Lilla Day Monroe described the excellent effects of the Municipal suffrage enjoyed by all women in Kansas, the only State where it existed in full. She called attention to the fact that the next day, February 15, would be the 20th anniversary of its granting by the Legislature. Miss Anna E. Nicholes of Chicago spoke on The Ballot for Working Women, saying in part:

The women who work in our city have a special claim to Municipal enfranchisement, inasmuch as they not only help create Chicago's wealth but are subject to the industrial conditions regulated by the city voters....

Legislation is becoming more and more industrial in its aspect. Abating sweating and its evils, inspection of toilets, hygienic conditions in shops are now matters frequently controlled by our city fathers. Women are more and more coming into the industrial field. The 5,000,000 now gainfully employed in the United States represent one-fifth of the total number of wage-earners and this number are non-voters. This is a serious handicap to labor in its efforts to secure humane industrial legislation.... To these working women this matter of suffrage is an economic question—a bread-and-butter necessity. It is a fact, acknowledged by many large employers of labor and stated also by Carroll D. Wright in Government bulletins, that one of the leading reasons for the preference of women wage-earners to men is that they can be secured more cheaply. Employers are frank in acknowledging that the women work for less, that they are more reliable, more temperate, less inclined to strike and more faithful.