Susan B. Anthony Part 31

Presiding over all sixteen sessions, Susan rejoiced over a record attendance. Her thoughts went back to the winter of 1854 when she and Ernestine Rose had held their first woman's rights meetings in Was.h.i.+ngton, finding only a handful ready to listen. The intervening thirty-four years had worked wonders. Now women were willing to travel not only across the continent but from Europe and Asia to discuss and demand equal educational advantages, equal opportunities for training in the professions and in business, equal pay for equal work, equal suffrage, and the same standard of morals for all. Aware of their responsibility to their countries, they asked for the tools, education and the franchise, to help solve the world's problems. They were listened to with interest and respect, and were received at the White House by President and Mrs. Cleveland.

Through it all, a dynamic, gray-haired woman in a black silk dress with a red shawl about her shoulders was without question the heroine of the occasion. "This lady," observed the Baltimore _Sun_, "daily grows upon all present; the woman suffragists love her for her good works, the audience for her brightness and wit, and the mult.i.tude of press representatives for her frank, plain, open, business-like way of doing everything connected with the council.... Her word is the parliamentary law of the meeting. Whatever she says is done without murmur or dissent."[363]

A permanent International Council of Women to meet once every five years was organized with Millicent Garrett Fawcett of England as president, and a National Council to meet every three years was formed as an affiliate with Frances Willard as president and Susan as vice-president at large. Emphasizing education and social and moral reform, the International Council did not rank suffrage first as Susan had hoped. Nevertheless, she was happy that an international movement of enterprising women was well on its way. They would learn by experience.

Of all the favorable results of the International Council of Women, two were of special importance to Susan, meeting Anna Howard Shaw and overtures from Lucy Stone for a union of the National and American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociations.

Prejudiced against Anna Howard Shaw, who had aligned herself with Mary Livermore and Lucy Stone, and who she a.s.sumed, was a narrow Methodist minister, Susan was unprepared to find that the pleasing young woman in the pulpit on the first day of the conference, holding her audience spellbound with her oratory, was Anna Howard Shaw. Here was a warm personality, a crusader eager to right human wrongs, and above all a matchless public speaker. Anna too had heard much criticism of Susan and had formed a distorted opinion of her which was quickly dispelled as she watched her preside. They liked each other the moment they met.

Anna Howard Shaw had grown up on the Michigan frontier, her indomitable spirit and her eagerness for learning conquering the hards.h.i.+ps and the limitations of her surroundings. Encouraged by Mary Livermore, who by chance lectured in her little town, she worked her way through Albion College and Boston University Theological School, from which she graduated in 1878. She then served as the pastor of two Cape Cod churches, but was refused ordination by the Methodist Episcopal church because of her s.e.x. Eventually she was ordained by the Methodist Protestant church. During her pastorate, she studied medicine at Boston University, and because of her ability as a speaker was in demand as a lecturer for temperance and woman suffrage groups.

Through the Ma.s.sachusetts Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation, she met an inspiring group of reformers, and their influence and that of Frances Willard, in whose work she was intensely interested, led her to leave the ministry for active work in the temperance and woman suffrage movements. After several years as a lecturer and organizer for the Ma.s.sachusetts Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation, she was placed at the head of the franchise department of the W.C.T.U. This was her work when she met Susan B. Anthony.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Anna Howard Shaw]

The more Susan talked with Anna, the better she liked her, and the feeling was mutual. This wholesome woman of forty-one, with abundant vitality, unmarried and without pressing family ties to divert her, seemed particularly well fitted to a.s.sist Susan in the arduous campaigns which lay ahead. A natural orator, she could in a measure take the place of Mrs. Stanton, who could no longer undertake western tours. Before the International Council adjourned, Susan had Anna's promise that she would lecture for the National a.s.sociation.

One of Susan's nieces, Lucy E. Anthony, also felt drawn to Anna after meeting her at the International Council. A warm friends.h.i.+p quickly developed and continued throughout their lives. Within a few years they were living together, Lucy serving as Anna's secretary and planning her lecture tours and campaign trips. Educated in Rochester through the help of her aunts, Susan and Mary, living in their home and loving them both, Lucy readily made their interests her own and devoted her life to the suffrage movement. Neither a public speaker nor a campaigner, she put her executive ability to work, and her tasks, though less spectacular, were important and freed both Susan and Anna from many details.

Just as the International Council of Women had broken down Anna Howard Shaw's prejudice regarding Susan B. Anthony and her National Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation, just so it clarified the opinions of other young women, now aligning themselves with the cause. Admiring the leaders of both factions, these young women saw no reason why the two groups should not work together in one large strong organization, and this seemed increasingly important as they welcomed women from other countries to this first international conference. Unfamiliar with the personal antagonisms and the sincere differences in policy which had caused the separation after the Civil War, they did not understand the difficulties still in the way of union. So strongly, however, did they press for a united front that the leaders of both groups felt themselves swept along toward that goal. Susan herself had long looked forward to the time when all suffragists would again work together, but since the unsuccessful overtures of her group in 1870, she had made no further efforts in that direction. She was completely taken by surprise when in the fall of 1887 the American a.s.sociation proposed that she and Lucy Stone confer regarding union.

The negotiations revived old arguments in the minds of zealous partisans, and in the _Woman's Journal_, the _Woman's Tribune_, and elsewhere, attempts were made to fasten the blame for the twenty-year-old rift upon this one and that one; but so strong ran the tide for union among the younger women that this excursion into the past aroused little interest.

The election of the president of the merged organizations was the most difficult hurdle. Lucy Stone suggested that neither she, Mrs. Stanton, nor Susan allow their names to be proposed, since they had been blamed for the division, but this was easier said than done. The clamor for Susan and Mrs. Stanton was so strong and continuous among the younger members that it soon became apparent that unless one or the other were chosen, there would be no hope of union. The odds were in Susan's favor. Her popularity in the National a.s.sociation was tremendous.

Although Mrs. Stanton was revered as the mother of woman suffrage and admired for her brilliant mind and her poise as presiding officer, she now spent so much time in Europe with her daughter Harriot that many who might otherwise have voted for her felt that the office should go to Susan, who was always on the job.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Harriot Stanton Blatch]

Most of the American a.s.sociation regarded Susan as safer and less radical than Mrs. Stanton, less likely to stray from the straight path of woman suffrage, and Henry Blackwell recommended her election.

Susan did not want the presidency. She wanted it for Mrs. Stanton, who had headed the National a.s.sociation so ably for so many years. She pleaded earnestly with the delegates of the National a.s.sociation: "I will say to every woman who is a National and who has any love for the old a.s.sociation, or for Susan B. Anthony, that I hope you will not vote for her for president.... Don't you vote for any human being but Mrs. Stanton.... When the division was made 22 years ago it was because our platform was too broad, because Mrs. Stanton was too radical.... And now ... if Mrs. Stanton shall be deposed ... you virtually degrade her.... I want our platform to be kept broad enough for the infidel, the atheist, the Mohammedan, or the Christian....

These are the broad principles I want you to stand upon."[364]

When the two organizations met in February 1890 to effect formal union as the National American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation, Elizabeth Cady Stanton was elected president by a majority of 41 votes, while Susan was the almost unanimous choice for vice-president at large. With Lucy Stone chosen chairman of the executive committee, Jane Spofford treasurer, and Rachel Foster and Alice Stone Blackwell secretaries,[365] the new organization was well equipped with able leaders for the work ahead. It was dedicated to work for both state and federal woman suffrage amendments and its official organ would be the _Woman's Journal_.

Susan now faced the future with grat.i.tude that a strong unified organization could be handed down to the younger women who would gradually take over the work she had started, and her confidence in these young women grew day by day. Working closely with Rachel Foster and May Wright Sewall, she knew their caliber. Anna Howard Shaw and Alice Stone Blackwell showed great promise, and Harriot Stanton Blatch was living up to her expectations. In England where Harriot had made her home since her marriage in 1882, she was active in the cause, and on her visits to her mother in New York, she kept in touch with the suffrage movement in the United States. She took part in the union meeting, and in her diary, Susan recorded these words of commendation, "Harriot said but a few words, yet showed herself worthy of her mother and her mother's lifelong friend and co-worker. It was a proud moment for me."[366]

To such she could entrust her beloved cause.

FOOTNOTES:

[356] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 592.

[357] _Ibid._, p. 658.

[358] Miss Anthony first met Frances Willard in 1875 when she lectured in Rochester. Invited to sit on the platform, by her side, she thoughtfully refused, adding "You have a heavy enough load to carry without me." Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 472. When Frances Willard took her stand for woman suffrage in the W.C.T.U. in 1876, Miss Anthony wrote her, "Now you are to go forward. I wish I could see you and make you feel my gladness." Mary Earhart, _Frances Willard_ (Chicago, 1944), p. 153.

[359] During the debate, Frances Willard rendered valuable aid with a pet.i.tion for woman suffrage, signed by 200,000 women. This counteracted in a measure the protests against woman suffrage by President Eliot of Harvard and 200 New England clergymen.

[360] Harper, _Anthony_, II, pp. 622-623.

[361] _Ibid._, p. 612.

[362] So successful was Mrs. Colby's Was.h.i.+ngton venture that she continued to publish her _Woman's Tribune_ there for the next 16 years

[363] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 637.

[364] _Woman's Tribune_, Feb. 22, 1890.

[365] The credit for achieving union after two years of patient negotiation goes to Rachel Foster Avery, secretary of the National a.s.sociation, and to Lucy Stone's daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell, secretary of the American a.s.sociation.

[366] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 675.

VICTORIES IN THE WEST

New western states were coming into the Union, North and South Dakota, Montana, Was.h.i.+ngton, Idaho, and Wyoming, and in Susan's opinion it was highly important that they be admitted as woman suffrage states, for she had not forgotten that disturbing line of the Supreme Court decision in the Virginia Minor case which read, "No new State has ever been admitted to the Union which has conferred the right of suffrage on women, and this has never been considered a valid objection to her admission."[367] Susan wanted to start a new trend.

Opposition to Wyoming's woman suffrage provision was strong in Congress in spite of the fact that it had the unanimous approval of Wyoming's const.i.tutional convention. To Susan in the gallery of the House of Representatives, listening anxiously to the debate on the admission of Wyoming, defeat was unthinkable after women had voted in the Territory of Wyoming for twenty years; but Democrats, wis.h.i.+ng to block the admission of a preponderantly Republican state, used woman suffrage as an excuse. With a sinking heart, she heard an amendment offered, limiting suffrage in Wyoming to males. At the crucial moment, however, the tide was turned by a telegram from the Wyoming legislature, the words of which rejoiced Susan, "We will remain out of the Union a hundred years rather than come in without woman suffrage."[368] After this, the House voted to admit Wyoming, 139 to 127, but the Senate delayed, renewing the attack on the woman suffrage provision. Not until July 1890, while she was speaking to a large audience in the opera house at Madison, South Dakota, did the good news of the admission of Wyoming reach her. Jubilant as she commented on this great victory, she spoke as one inspired, for she saw this as the turning point in her forty long years of uphill work.

Neither North Dakota nor South Dakota had wanted to risk their chances of statehood by incorporating woman suffrage in their const.i.tutions.[369] Yet public opinion in both states was friendly, South Dakota directing its first legislature to submit the question to the voters. It was this that brought Susan to South Dakota in 1890.

Sentiment for woman suffrage in South Dakota had previously been created almost entirely by the W.C.T.U., and this had linked woman suffrage and prohibition together. Now, the liquor interests made prohibition an issue in this woman suffrage campaign, as they rallied their forces for the repeal of prohibition which had been adopted when South Dakota was admitted to statehood. Through the propaganda of the liquor interests the 30,000 foreign-born voters became formidable opponents, and newly naturalized Russians, Scandinavians, and Poles, given the vote before American women, wore badges carrying the slogan, "Against Woman Suffrage and Susan B. Anthony."[370] Both Republicans and Democrats cultivated these foreign-born voters, turning a cold shoulder to the woman suffrage amendment and refusing to endorse it in their state conventions. Even the Farmers' Alliance and the Knights of Labor, previously friendly to woman suffrage, now joined with the Prohibitionists to form a third political party which also failed to endorse the woman suffrage amendment. On top of all this, anti-suffragists from Ma.s.sachusetts, calling themselves Remonstrants, flooded South Dakota with their leaflets.

It now seemed to Susan as if every clever politician had lined up against women. During these trying days, Anna Howard Shaw joined her, and together they covered the state, hoping by the truth and sincerity of their statements to quash the propaganda against woman suffrage.

Often they traveled in freight cars, as transportation was limited, or drove long distances in wagons over the sun-baked prairie. The heat was intense and the hot winds, blowing incessantly, seared everything they touched. After two years of drouth, the farmers were desperately poor, and Susan, concerned over their plight, wondered why Congress could not have appropriated the money for artesian wells to help these honest earnest people, instead of voting $40,000 for an investigating commission.[371]

Occasionally Susan and Anna spent the night in isolated sod houses where ingenious pioneer women cooked their scant meals over burning chips of buffalo bones gathered on the prairie. Glorying in the valiant spirit of these women, who in loneliness and hards.h.i.+p played an important but unheralded role in the conquest of this new country, Susan was generous with her praise. To them her words of commendation were like a benediction, and few of them ever forgot a visit from Susan B. Anthony.

By this time life on the frontier was an old story to her, for she had campaigned under similar conditions in Kansas and in the far West.

Nonetheless, the hards.h.i.+ps were trying. Yet this plucky woman of seventy wrote friends in the East, "Tell everybody that I am perfectly well in body and in mind, never better, and never doing more work....

O, the lack of modern comforts and conveniences! But I can put up with it better than any of the young folks.... I shall push ahead and do my level best to carry this State, come weal or woe to me personally....

I never felt so buoyed up with the love and sympathy and confidence of the good people everywhere...."[372]

Young vigorous Anna Howard Shaw proved to be a campaigner after Susan's own heart, tireless, uncomplaining, and good-tempered, an exceptional speaker, witty and quick to say the right word at the right time. It was a joy to find in Anna the same devotion to the cause that she herself felt, the same crusading fervor and reliability. During the long drives over the prairie, she talked to Anna of the work that must be done, of what it would mean to the women of the future, and she fired Anna's soul "with the flame that burned in her own."[373]

Another young western woman, Carrie Chapman Catt, also attracted Susan's attention at this time. She had volunteered for the South Dakota campaign, after attending her first national woman suffrage convention; and Susan, meeting her in Huron, South Dakota, to map out a speaking tour for her, found a tall handsome confident young woman ready to attack the work and see it through, in spite of the hards.h.i.+ps which confronted her.

Carrie Lane, a graduate of Iowa State College, had briefly studied law and taught school before her marriage to Lee Chapman. Now, four years after his death, she had married George W. Catt of Seattle, a promising young engineer and a former fellow-student at Iowa State College. What particularly impressed Susan was that Carrie, in spite of her marriage in June, had kept her pledge to come to South Dakota.

She was pleased with the way Carrie not only heroically filled every difficult engagement, but sized up the campaign for herself and planned for the future. In Carrie's report of her work there was a ruthless practicality which was rare and which instantly won Susan's approval. Here was a young woman to watch and to keep in the work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Anthony home, Rochester, New York]

The visible result of six months of campaigning was defeat, with the vote 22,972 for woman suffrage and 45,632 opposed, and as Susan remembered the maneuvers of the politicians, the trading of votes for the location of the state capital, and the scheming of the liquor interests, she felt she was championing a lonely cause.