Mrs. Catt reviewed the movement for woman suffrage, declaring that the most ambitious should be satisfied with the general progress, and said in conclusion:
We have been like an army climbing slowly and laboriously up a steep and rocky mountain. We have looked upward and have seen uncertain stretches of time and effort between us and the longed for summit. We have not been discouraged for behind us lay fifty years of marvelous achievement. We have known that we should reach that goal but we have also known that there was no way to do it but to plod on patiently, step by step. Yet suddenly, almost without warning, we see upon that summit another army. How came it there? It has neither descended from heaven nor made the long, hard journey, yet there above us all the women of Finland stand today. Each wears the royal crown of the sovereignty of the self-governing citizen. Two years ago these women would not have been permitted by the law to organize a woman suffrage association. A year later they did organize a woman suffrage committee and before it is yet a year old its work is done! The act giving full suffrage and eligibility to all offices has been bestowed upon them by the four Chambers of Parliament and the Czar has approved the measure! Metaphorically a glad shout of joy has gone up from the whole body of suffragists the world over.
Mrs. Catt presided at every public and every business meeting and hers was the guiding spirit and the controlling hand. By her ability and fairness she won the entire confidence of the delegates from twelve countries and launched successfully this organization which many had believed impossible because of the differences in language, temperament and methods.
Throughout the meetings twenty-minute addresses were made by prominent women of the different countries, some of them reports of the organized work, others on subjects of special interest to women, among them The Ideal Woman, Miss Eline Hansen; What Woman Suffrage Is Not, Dr. Schirmacher; Women Jurors of Norway, Miss Mörck; Woman's Horizon, Mrs. Flora MacDonald Denison, Canada; The Silent Foe, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw; What Are Women to Do?, Dr. Jacobs; Our Victory, Miss Annie Furuhjelm, Finland; Why the Working Woman Needs the Ballot, Mrs. Andrea Brachmann, Denmark; Why the Women of Australia Asked for and Received the Suffrage, sent by Miss Vida Goldstein and read by Mrs. Madge Donohoe.
Others besides the officers and those above mentioned who spoke during the convention were Cand. phil. Helena Berg, Elizabeth Grundtvig, Stampe Fedderson, Denmark: Briet Asmundsson, Iceland; Mrs. F. M. Qvam, Cand. phil. Mathilde Eriksen, Gina Krog and Mrs. L. Keilhau, Norway; Dr. Ellen Sandelin, Anna Whitlock, Gertrud Adelborg, Huldah Lundin, Ann Margret Holmgren, Frigga Carlberg, Anna B. Wicksell, and Jenny Wallerstedt, Sweden; Baroness Gripenberg, Dr. Meikki Friberg, Finland; Zeniede Mirovitch, Elizabeth Goncharow, Olga Wolkenstein, Anne Kalmanovitch, Russia; Rosika Schwimmer, Vilma Glücklich, Bertha Engel, Hungary; Lida Gustave Heymann, Adelheid von Welczeck, Regina Ruben, Germany; Mrs. Rutgers Hoitsema, Mrs. van Loenen de Bordes, Netherlands; Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Lady Steel, Dora Montefiore, Mrs. Broadley Reid, Great Britain; Miss Lucy E. Anthony, United States; Mrs. Henry Dobson, Australia.
One afternoon session was devoted to memorial services for Miss Anthony, with the principal address by Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, her biographer, and beautiful tributes by delegates of seven European countries and Canada expressing the debt of gratitude which all women owed to the great pioneer. Mrs. Harper briefly sketched the subordinate position of women when Miss Anthony began her great work for their emancipation in 1851; told of her efforts for temperance and the abolition of slavery; her part in forming the International Council of Women; her publication of the History of Woman Suffrage and the many other activities of her long life. She described the advanced position of women at present and closed by saying:
No one who makes a careful study of the great movement for the emancipation of woman can fail to recognize in Miss Anthony its supreme leader. After her death last March more than a thousand editorials appeared in the principal newspapers of the country and practically every one of them accorded her this distinction. She was the only one who gave to this cause her whole life, consecrating to its service every hour of her time and every power of her being. Other women did what they could; came into the work for awhile and dropped out; had the divided interests of family and social relations; turned their attention to reforms which promised speedier rewards; surrendered to the forces of persecution. With Miss Anthony the cause of woman took the place of husband, children, society; it was her work and her relaxation, her politics and her religion. "I know only woman and her disfranchised," was her creed.... May we, her daughters, receive as a blessed inheritance something of her indomitable will, splendid courage, limitless patience, perseverance, optimism, faith!
Dr. Shaw closed the meeting with an eloquent unwritten peroration which told of her last hours with Miss Anthony as the great soul was about to take its flight and ended: "The object of her life was to awaken in women the consciousness of the need of freedom and the courage to demand it, not as an end but as a means of creating higher ideals for humanity."
A resolution was adopted rejoicing in the granting of full suffrage and eligibility to sit in the Parliament to the women of Finland the preceding May. The delegates from Norway received a message from the Prime Minister that it was the intention of the Parliament to enlarge the Municipal franchise which women had possessed since 1901.
Designs for a permanent badge were submitted by several countries and the majority vote was in favor of the one designed by Mrs. Pedersen-Dan of Denmark, the figure of a woman holding the scales of justice with a rising sun in the background and the Latin words Jus Suffragii. It was decided to publish a monthly paper under the name of Jus Suffragii and in the English language. Afterwards Miss Martina G. Kramers was appointed editor and the paper was issued from Rotterdam. The invitation was accepted to hold an executive meeting and conference in Amsterdam in 1908, as a new constitution was about to be made for The Netherlands and there would be a strong effort to have it include woman suffrage.