The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V

by Unknown

In an eloquent response Mrs. Villard reminded the Mayor that if a cause is just the consequences following in its path need not be feared and said: "I was early taught by my father that moral principle in vigorous exercise is irresistible. It has an immortal essence. It may disappear for a time but it can no more be trod out of existence by the iron foot of time or the ponderous march of iniquity than matter can be annihilated. It lives somewhere, somehow, and rises again in renovated strength. The women of this country who are advocating the cause of woman suffrage are animated by a great moral principle. They are armed with a spiritual weapon of finest caliber and one that is sure to win." She told of the great reception given in 1883 to her husband and his guests when they reached Seattle for the opening of the railroad after its completion; of his response and that of the Hon. Carl Schurz. She described an address made by a young girl, the daughter of Professor Powell of the university, the entire expenses of which Mr. Villard had paid for several years, in which she said he would be remembered more for what he had done for education than for the building of the railroad. "In the retrospect of time," said Mrs. Villard, "I can see her, sweetly modest and gracious, standing as it were with outstretched arms inviting the women who are gathered here today to come and help make the State of Washington free." Then in an appeal for the pending suffrage amendment she said: "Many tributes of respect and admiration have been paid to my noble companion in the great northwest, which are carefully cherished by me and my children, but I crave one more and it is this—that Mr. Villard's keen sense of justice and fair play for women shall find echo in the hearts of the men of Washington, to whose extraordinary development he gave such powerful impetus, so that in November, 1910, they will proclaim with loud accord that the women of Washington are no longer bond but free, no longer disfranchised but regenerated and disenthralled, equal partners in the unending struggle of the human race for nobler laws and higher moral standards."

The evening session closed with the president's address of Dr. Shaw, which the Woman's Journal described as "inimitable" but not a paragraph of it can be found after the lapse of years. Her speeches always were inspired by the occasion and only a stenographic report could give an adequate idea of them. Miss Anthony mourned because this was not made and others often spoke of it but Dr. Shaw herself was indifferent. There were pressing demands for money and the endless details of these meetings absorbed the time and strength of those who might otherwise have attended to it.

Mrs. Upton in her report as treasurer made a stirring appeal in which she said: "The most important question before this convention is that of money. A grave responsibility rests upon the shoulders of each delegate. She should know how much money we have had in the last year, where it went and why. More than this, she should decide for herself how money for the coming year shall be disbursed and suggest ways of raising the same. No delegate ought to quiet her conscience with the thought that the judgment of the general officers is the best judgment. Each State has entrusted into the hands of its delegates precious business and the responsibility is great and cannot honestly be disregarded. In the long ago we worked until our money gave out. Now, as the beginning of the end of our work is in sight, demands for money are many and if business rules are followed they must be met. The small self-sacrifices must be continued and larger ways of obtaining money created. We are all shouting for a fifth star on our suffrage flag but we must remember that no star was ever placed upon any flag without cost, without sacrifice. Our fifth star will find its place because we explain to voters what a fifth star really means. These voters will not come to us; we must go to them. To go anywhere costs money. To go to the voters of a large and thinly populated State means much money. Shall we be content with four stars or shall we provide the means to get a fifth?"

The total receipts of the past year were $15,420; disbursements, $14,480. She told of the many ways in which the money was being used—over $2,000 added to several other thousands spent in field work in Oklahoma for the next year's amendment campaign; $3,000 to the College League; headquarters' expenses, literature, posters, etc. Part of the money came from the Anthony Memorial Fund, part from the fund raised by Dr. Thomas and Miss Garrett, the rest from individual subscriptions. The convention, which was not a large one, subscribed over $3,000. The following recommendations of the Business Committee were adopted by the convention: Appropriations shall be made for educational, church and petition work; financial aid shall not be given to States having campaigns on hand unless there be perfect harmony within the ranks of the workers of those States; an organizer shall be sent to Arizona to prepare the Territory for constitutional or legislative work and a campaign organizer to South Dakota.

There was much interest in the question of returning the national headquarters to New York City. It was long the desire of Miss Anthony to do this on a scale befitting so large a city and so important a cause and the funds had never been available. Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont, who had lately come into the suffrage movement, had taken the entire twentieth floor of a new office building for two years and invited the New York State Suffrage Association to occupy a part of it. She now extended an invitation to the National Association to use for this period as many rooms as it needed and she would pay the difference in the rent between these and the headquarters at Warren, O. In addition she would maintain the press bureau. The advantages of this great newspaper and magazine center were recognized by the general officers, executive committee and delegates, the offer was gladly accepted and a rising vote of thanks was sent to Mrs. Belmont.

Miss Perle Penfield (Texas) read the report of Mrs. Lucia Ames Mead, chairman of the Committee on Peace and Arbitration. She told of the tenth anniversary this year of The Hague Conference, which was attended by representatives of forty-six instead of twenty-six nations and had made various international agreements that would lessen the likelihood of war. She spoke of attending the second National Peace Congress in Chicago in May, at which all the women who took part were suffragists. Mrs. Mead referred to having spoken eighty-six times during the year. In pointing out the work that should be done in the United States for peace she said:

A great campaign of education is needed in the schools and colleges, in the press and pulpit and in every organization of men and women that stands for progress. Pre-eminently among women's organizations, the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which opposes the injustice of refusing the ballot to women, should stand against the grossest of all injustices which leaves innocent women widowed and children orphaned by war, and which in time of peace diverts nearly two-thirds of the federal revenue from constructive work to payment for past wars and preparation for future wars. Thus far this association has been so absorbed in its direct methods of advancing suffrage that it has not perhaps sufficiently realized the power of many agencies that are furthering its cause by indirect means. I firmly believe that substituting statesmanship for battleship will do more to remove the electoral injustices that still prevent our being a democracy than any direct means used to obtain woman suffrage, important and necessary as these are. Women, though hating war, quite as frequently as men are deluded by the plea that peace can be ensured only by huge armaments. It is a question whether woman suffrage would greatly lessen the vote for these supposed preventives of war, but there is no question that more reliance on reason and less on force would exalt respect for woman and would remove the objection that woman's physical inferiority has anything to do with suffrage.

Several delegates expressed the need and the right of mothers to strive to prevent war. Mrs. Duniway, Mrs. Philena Everett Johnson and Mrs. DeVoe spoke on the pending amendment campaigns in their respective States of Oregon, South Dakota and Washington. Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby's subject was the American Situation vs. the English Situation and she described the conditions in England which caused the "suffragette" or "militant" movement. Mrs. Florence Kelley, chairman of the Industrial Committee, spoke on the Wage Earning Woman and the Ballot. "Because of the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the Oregon case," she said, "fourteen State Legislatures in the past year have considered bills for shortening the workday for women and six have enacted laws for it. South Carolina has taken a step backward by changing the hours from ten to twelve. Child labor is constantly increasing in spite of our efforts. I have seen the evolution of modern industry and it has meant the sacrifice of thousands of young lives." At the close of the afternoon session the delegates enjoyed an automobile ride of many miles amidst scenery which many who had travelled widely declared was unsurpassed in the whole world.

The most brilliant session of the convention probably was that of the College Women's Evening, with Dr. Shaw presiding. Miss Caroline Lexow (N. Y.), secretary of the College Women's League, spoke of its remarkable growth since its organization the preceding year and said that it now had twenty-four branches in as many States and twenty-five chapters in as many colleges. She called attention to the fact that no College Anti-Suffrage Association had ever been formed and said that college women remembered the words of one of the pioneers: "Make the best use you can of your freedom for we have bought it at a great price." Mrs. Eva Emery Dye (Ore.) gave an able address on College Women in Civic Life. The Law and the Woman was the subject considered by Miss Adella M. Parker, a popular lawyer, president of the Washington College League. "I have been looking for years," she said, "to find any legislation that does not affect women, from a tariff on gloves to a declaration of war. The great problems which face the human race demand the genius of both men and women to solve them. The law needs women quite as much as women need the law." The closing address on College Women and Democracy by Frances Squire Potter, professor of English at the University of Minnesota, was a masterly review of the relation of college women to the life of the present, and later it was printed by the College League as a part of its literature. In the course of it she said:

The admission of women began with Oberlin, Ohio, in 1833, then a provincial institution, religious in its purpose and one where the boys and girls did the work. From that time on the West was committed to the co-educational State university. The influence set back eastward and women demanded admittance successively in this college and that college. It is to be remembered that they did not go in naturally and pleasantly but at the point of the sword and to the sound of the trumpet. And to-day the segregated college life of the East illustrates the "last entrenchments of the middle ages." Those monasteries and nunneries of learning crown the hilltops from Boston to Washington and "watch the star of intellectual empire westward take its way." ... Following upon the democratization of the university we now see rising a tide which is as inevitable as was that first movement, which will bear the college woman, as it bears the college man, out of the fostering shelter of the college hall into the great welter of life, of full citizenship.... Since the colleges of America opened to women, nothing so vital to the nourishment of this spirit has happened as the formation of the College Equal Suffrage League.... There are certain definite things for which a college woman registers herself in joining this league. First, a direct return to the country of the energy which it has trained. A woman's whole education to-day is toward direct results. She has been educated away from the old indirect ideal of the boarding-school. There she was taught to be a persuasive ornament, now she is taught to be an individual mind, will and conscience and to use these in acting herself. I hold that there is no more graphic illustration of inconsistent waste than the spectacle of a college-trained woman falsifying her entire education by shying away from suffrage.... The time has gone by when a college woman can be allowed to be noncommittal on this subject. If she has not thought about equal suffrage she must do so now, exactly as persons of intelligence were compelled to think about slavery in the time of Garrison, or about the reformation in the time of Martin Luther. To those who try to get out of it it is not unfitting to quote Thomas Huxley's famous sentence: "He who will not reason is a bigot; he who dare not reason is a coward; he who can not reason is a fool." ...