The History of Woman Suffrage Volume V Part 16

In order to have the usual hearings before committees of Congress on the submission of a woman suffrage amendment to the Federal Const.i.tution a large delegation went to Was.h.i.+ngton 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 Senorita Huidobro of Chili; Mrs. Elizabeth D. Bacon, president of the Connecticut Suffrage a.s.sociation; 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 a.s.sociation. 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 pet.i.tion from 32,000 of the representative women of Ma.s.sachusetts and stayed there six weeks working for it only to have it refused. She told how the women of the State pet.i.tioned fifty-five years for a law giving mothers equal guardians.h.i.+p of their children and pointed out the helpless position of women without political power.

Miss Kate M. Gordon of New Orleans, corresponding secretary of the a.s.sociation, began: "My message this morning was particularly for the southern members of the committee but I shall have to ask others present to carry it to them, as I do not believe any of them are here although seven are members." She protested against the att.i.tude of southern members of Congress toward woman suffrage and expressed the deep resentment of southern women at their cla.s.sification with the disfranchised, saying that their men more than all others should feel the responsibility of lifting them from their present humiliating position. Mrs. Ella S. Stewart, president of the Illinois Suffrage a.s.sociation, based her argument on simple justice, and said in conclusion: "Your power is absolute and your responsibility correspondingly great. Humiliating as it is for me to beg for what is mine from strangers, I would a thousand times rather be a defrauded mendicant than to hold in my hand the rights, the destiny and the happiness of millions of human beings and have the heart to deny their just claims."

Mrs. Mary Kenney O'Sullivan (Ma.s.s.) spoke "as one representing 3,000,000 women who have been forced out of the home through necessity," and said in the course of her strong speech: "I know that the working women of this country are not receiving the highest wages because they have not a vote. Right here in Was.h.i.+ngton, in your big bindery of the Government, a trade to which I gave the larger part of my life, the women who do equal work with the men do not receive equal pay. The Government more than any other employer has taken advantage of women of my cla.s.s because they have not a vote.... The workmen, more than any other men, even more than those who are supposed to be statesmen, have seen the necessity for women to have a vote. Ever since 1890 the convention of the American Federation of Labor has unanimously adopted a resolution favoring woman suffrage. I do not believe that any one will deny that the workingmen are the thinking men of the country. I am asking you, in the name of the women I represent at least, to do for us what our working brothers are trying to do--give us our rights."

Mrs. Lucia Ames Mead said in the course of a long address: "The man who talks about home today as if it still gave ample opportunity for woman's productive activity as it once did, is talking about a condition which is as obsolete as the conditions before we had railroads and telegraphs. Woman's educational opportunities and productive capacity are so altered as to require her political status to be altered.... There is a cla.s.s of women who do not need to earn their living and have a large leisure. They are not idle, they are as active as fireflies, but they are not obliged to be productive as every human being should be.... They have more time than men to study and to apply the principles of justice and mercy and to do that preventive, educational work which is a better defense of country than a squadron of battles.h.i.+ps. The suffrage has done much to develop man; the woman of leisure needs it to develop her; the working woman needs it to obtain salutary conditions under which to earn her living; the woman working for reforms needs it so as to accomplish in a year what otherwise she may wait for twenty-five years of pleading and 'influence' to obtain."

Miss Alice Stone Blackwell began her address: "We are not here to ask you to extend suffrage to women but to give to the State Legislatures an opportunity to vote on it, and probably some practical considerations should be offered to show that public sentiment has arrived at a point where it seems to be timely and worth while that this question should be submitted to them. We would like to convince you that this is only right. If three-fourths of them are not prepared to give us suffrage, we shall not get it. If three-fourths of them are prepared, then public sentiment has arrived at a point where we ought to have it." She reviewed the advance of the movement and said: "We could keep this committee here until next week reading to them testimony from representative men and women as to the good results of woman suffrage where it is in operation." The unimpeachable testimony which she then presented from the equal suffrage States filled several pages of the printed record.

Introducing Mrs. Kelley, Chairman Jenkins had spoken of her father, William D. Kelley, known as the Father of the House, and she said:

It is quite true that my father, Judge Kelley of Pennsylvania, came to Congress in the year in which President Lincoln was first elected and for twenty-five years he patiently introduced at every session a resolution preliminary to a hearing for the woman suffragists. Through all that period of ridicule, when the hearings were not conducted so respectfully or in so friendly a manner as this one has been, he continued to introduce that resolution. In 1890 death removed him from the House of Representatives and I come here as the second generation. I a.s.sure you that I and the rest of the women throughout the country will come from generation to generation, just so long as it is necessary. Next year my oldest son will vote and that generation will take up the task on behalf of the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the women of this country.... Every time we come there is some gain to record, but, between the times, at least 1,000,000 new immigrants have come into this country who will have to be brought to the American way of thinking about women before they will vote to give the ballot to those who are born here and whose forefathers have asked that we be enfranchised.

It is an ignominious way to treat us, to send us to the Chinaman in San Francisco, to the enfranchised Indians of other western States, to the negroes, Italians, Hungarians, Poles, Bohemians and innumerable Slavic immigrants in Pennsylvania and other mining States to obtain our right of suffrage. There yet remain forty-three States in which women are not enfranchised and it looks as if it might take us a hundred years, at the present rate of progress, before we can relieve you and your successors from these annual hearings. What we are asking today is that you shall take a short cut and not oblige our great-grandchildren to come here and ask for a Federal Amendment.

Although the women received courteous treatment and a respectful hearing from both committees no report was made by either, and the only advantage gained was that as usual thousands of franked copies of the hearings were sent to the national suffrage headquarters to be distributed throughout the States.

For some time arrangements had been under way to celebrate the birthday of Miss Anthony in the city where this had been so often done and which she loved above all others. By carefully conserving her strength she was able to attend the evening ceremonies in the Church of Our Father (Universalist) where many suffrage conventions had been held and where six years before, at the age of 80, she had resigned the presidency and laid down the gavel for the last time. Letters of congratulation were read from President Roosevelt, Vice-President Fairbanks, members of Congress and other prominent men; from Mrs.

Russell Sage, Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick and other eminent women, and from organizations in this and other countries. Well known men and women brought their greetings in person.

To quote again from her Biography:

"On account of her extreme weakness it was not expected that Miss Anthony would speak but at the close of the evening she seemed to feel that she must say one last word, and rising, with a tender, spiritual expression on her dear face, she stood beside Miss Shaw and explained in a few touching words how the great work of the National a.s.sociation had been placed in her charge; turning to the other national officers on the stage she reached out her hand to them and expressed her appreciation of their loyal support, and then, realizing that her strength was almost gone, she said: 'There have been others also just as true and devoted to the cause--I wish I could name every one--but with such women consecrating their lives'--here she paused for an instant and seemed to be gazing into the future, then dropping her arms to her side she finished her sentence--'failure is impossible!' These were the last words Miss Anthony ever spoke in public and from that moment they became the watchword of those who accepted as their trust the work she laid down." One month later to the day she was laid to rest with her loved ones.

FOOTNOTES:

[44] Part of Call: Never have we had so much cause to issue a thanksgiving proclamation. Never has it been so easy to love our enemies, for they have combined to fight for us in their courses.

The inevitable logic of events is with us. All over the world intelligent women are interested in securing better protection for their homes and their children.... They are called upon to take part in civic affairs, and social and economic conditions force them into the world's broad field of battle where there is no place for non-combatants. The time has gone by for subterfuge and indirection.... The American Republic settles its questions in the light of day at the ballot box. No one, man or woman, has ever lost influence by the possession of power. We do not ask the ballot simply as a right, though if it be a right it cannot be rightfully denied us; we do not ask it as a privilege, though if it be a privilege it must be ours unless we admit the existence of a privileged cla.s.s. We demand it because it is a duty and one which no good citizen has a right to s.h.i.+rk.

If you are indifferent come and be convinced. What we ask is not revolutionary but is the reasonable and just demand of every being living under a democratic form of government. If you are opposed, come and let us reason together, consider our points of agreement and waive for a moment those of difference.... Let us have the truth for authority and we shall not need authority for truth....

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, Honorary President.

ANNA HOWARD SHAW, President.

FLORENCE KELLEY, Vice-President-at-Large.

KATE M. GORDON, Corresponding Secretary.

ALICE STONE BLACKWELL, Recording Secretary.

HARRIET TAYLOR UPTON, Treasurer.

LAURA CLAY, } Auditors.

ANNICE JEFFREYS MYERS, }

[45] Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, by Ida Husted Harper, Volume III, page 1383.

[46] The clergymen of the city gave cordial a.s.sistance to the convention and among those who opened different sessions with prayer were the Reverends Dr. Van Meter of the Woman's College; George Scholl, D.D., Lutheran Church; Lloyd Coblentz, St. Paul's Reformed Church; John Y. Dobbins, Grace M. E. Church; E. L. Watson, Harlem Park M. E. Church; Alfred R. Hussey, First Independent Church; Peter Ainslee, Christian Temple; Oliver Huckel, a.s.sociate Congregational Church; Rabbi Adolf Guttmacher, Madison Avenue Temple; Marshall V.

McDuffie, North Avenue Baptist Church; Ezra K. Bell, First English Lutheran Church; Edward W. Wroth, All Saints' Episcopal Church.

[47] Although Miss Anthony lived only one month longer every day was made happy by the thought that those who would carry on the work would have the great a.s.sistance of this fund. A committee was formed the following summer with Miss Garrett as chairman and Dr. Thomas as treasurer and the work of securing subscriptions was begun on Miss Anthony's birthday the next year, 1907. By May 1 the $60,000 had been subscribed and put at the disposal of the national board of officers.

The sum was completed by a subscription of $20,000 from "a friend" and not until after the death of Mrs. Russell Sage, who had headed the list with $5,000, was it known that she was the donor. Mrs. Sage had made generous subscriptions at other times. The full list of donors will be found in Miss Anthony's Biography, page 1401.

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 a.s.sociation 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 a.s.sociation; 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 a.s.sociation, 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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 enfranchis.e.m.e.nt. 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 G.o.d-speed to your efforts until every State shall recognize the equality of woman before the great law of civic redemption, as G.o.d has recognized her right before the great law of human redemption."

The appointment of the usual committees was followed by a symposium on Munic.i.p.al 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 Munic.i.p.al 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 a.s.sume every right necessary to carry out that responsibility. It is inc.u.mbent 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 Munic.i.p.al 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 Munic.i.p.al, 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 Munic.i.p.al 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 Munic.i.p.al enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, 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-b.u.t.ter 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.

It was quite as much for the industrial opportunity as for maintaining personal liberty that Lincoln insisted on the necessity of enfranchising the negroes. Such prominent economists as the Webbs of England, Carroll D. Wright and Richard T. Ely of our own country state that woman's lack of the ballot is one of the determining causes in placing her in the ranks of the cheap laborer with all its attending evils. So placed she becomes a menace in industry and drags down the wages of the men. At the last convention of the American Federation of Labor this necessity of the ballot for the working woman was recognized when the resolution was adopted stating that woman would never come into the full wage scale until she came into her full rights of citizens.h.i.+p.... To the large body of women in our city who have to s.h.i.+ft for themselves as completely as men do Munic.i.p.al suffrage would mean a higher rating industrially, a fairer compensation for their labor and more possible living conditions.

Mrs. Kelley, who, as executive secretary of the National Consumers'

League for years and before that as State Factory Inspector of Illinois, had an unsurpa.s.sed knowledge of the conditions that affect women and children, gave a scathing review of the failure of Congress to enact protective laws and of the reactionary decisions of Supreme Courts. "Do we ask what this has to do with Munic.i.p.al suffrage?" she inquired and answered:

If we are not to be given power to help determine our own laws by electing men to Congress in the larger field of the republic; and if, one by one, the States are to repeal or annul the legislation that once gave some slender protection to women and youth, there remains at least the city. It should be our immediate demand that in all matters of the life of a city we shall have a word. The greatest numbers of working people are in the cities. If our boards of health, our school boards, our street-cleaning departments, our water boards--if all these local bodies which have most to do with the health of working people, as with the health of other people, in the great centers of population--can be given the additional stimulus which comes from the lively interest of women, (both those who support themselves and those who have more leisure), then a very large proportion of the working women can have more adequate care for life and health and the children will have education beyond that which we have as yet achieved.

Does any one here believe that if the women had power to make themselves felt in the administration of school affairs we should have 80,000 children on half-time in New York City? Truly, if the mothers of these school children, as well as their fathers, spoke in the elections, the interest in the schools would be quite a different one. Does any one believe that if the women of this community could make themselves felt more effectively than by "persuasion," if they could make their will felt, we should have such a smoky sky as characterizes Chicago? Does any one believe that we should have to boil all the water before we dared to drink it? It would make a vast difference if women in American cities could enforce their will and conscience by the ballot instead of by the indefinitely slow work of persuasion.

The first evening was devoted to a more extended welcome and to the president's address. On behalf of the city Dr. Howard S. Taylor represented Mayor Edward F. Dunne and in an eloquent speech he reviewed the various epochs in the country's history. "Take, for instance," he said, "the first chapter, when the old Liberty Bell clanged out to the world the doctrine that 'all men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and to secure these rights governments are established among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.' There is no casuistry, however dextrous, that can take woman out of that charter." He referred to pioneer days and the heavy part borne by women and said: "But when the foundations had been established and the pioneer fathers got down to writing the const.i.tutions they left the pioneer mothers out." He spoke of the time in the '50's when "the Government invited the people from all over the world to come and help us settle our political, social and commercial questions but did not invite American mothers, sisters, wives and daughters." "Then came the Civil War," he said, "and the large part taken in it by women and when the war was over the Government made the great army of emanc.i.p.ated slaves citizens and gave the men the ballot but forgot the patriotic white women of the country." "I know," he said in conclusion, "that if the women of Chicago and Illinois were enfranchised the corruption of the city council and the Legislature would be much less than it is. We should have a higher state of morals among public men and better laws on the statute books."

When the speaker finished Dr. Shaw observed: "We ought to thank Mayor Dunne for subst.i.tuting a man like Dr. Taylor for himself." This brought Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch to her feet to say: "Mayor Dunne would have made just as good a suffrage speech as Dr. Taylor."

"I did not intend any reflection on the Mayor," answered Dr. Shaw with a quiet smile, "but I think he showed excellent judgment."