The History of the Women's Suffrage: The Flame Ignites. Susan B. Anthony

themselves. By remonstrating they have expressed their opinion and entered into politics."

Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway gave a full report of the situation in Oregon, and a hopeful outlook for the success of the pending suffrage amendment.13 This was followed later by a strong address. A letter was read from Mrs. Sallie Clay Bennett (Ky.). Dr. Clemence S. Lozier (N. Y.) spoke briefly, saying that for eleven years her parlor had been opened each month for suffrage meetings, and that "this question is the foundation of Christianity; for Christians can look up and truly say 'Our Father' only when they can treat each other as brothers and sisters." Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell (N. Y.) gave an eloquent address on The Outlook, answering the four stock questions: Why do not more women ask for the ballot? Will not voting destroy the womanly instincts? Will not women be contaminated by going to the polls? Will they not take away employment from men?

      At the opening of the evening session Miss Anthony read a letter from Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett of England, and an extract from a recent speech by her husband, Henry Fawcett, member of Parliament and Postmaster General, strongly advocating the removal of all political disabilities of women. Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert (Ills.) spoke on The Statesmanship of Women, citing illustrious examples in all parts of the world. Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.) gave a trenchant and humorous speech on The Unknown Quantity in Politics, showing the indirect influence of women which unfortunately is not accompanied with responsibility. She took up leading candidates and their records, criticising or commending; illustrated how in every department women are neglected and forgotten, and closed as follows:

      It is better to have the power of self-protection than to depend on any man, whether he be the Governor in his chair of State, or the hunted outlaw wandering through the night, hungry and cold and with murder in his heart. We are tired of the pretense that we have special privileges and the reality that we have none; of the fiction that we are queens, and the fact that we are subjects; of the symbolism which exalts our sex but is only a meaningless mockery. We demand that these shadows shall take substance. The coat of arms of the State of New York represents Liberty and Justice supporting a shield on which is seen the sun rising over the hills that guard the Hudson. How are justice and liberty depicted? As a police judge and an independent voter? Oh, no; as two noble and lovely women! What an absurdity in a State where there is neither liberty nor justice for any woman! We ask that this symbolism shall assume reality, for a redeemed and enfranchised womanhood will be the best safeguard of justice.

      Mrs. Blake was followed by Mrs. Martha McClellan Brown, of Cincinnati Wesleyan College, who spoke on Disabilities of Woman. Miss Anthony read the report from Missouri by Mrs. Virginia L. Minor, who strongly supported her belief in the constitutional right of women to the franchise. A letter of greeting was read from Miss Fannie M. Bagby, managing editor St. Louis Chronicle; Miss Phoebe W. Couzins (Mo.) gave a brilliant address entitled What Answer?

      At the evening session the hall was crowded. The speech of Mrs. Belva A. Lockwood (D. C.), the first woman admitted to practice before the Supreme Court, was a severe criticism on the disfranchising of the women in Utah as proposed by bills now before Congress. It was a clear and strong legal argument which would be marred by an attempt at quotation.

      In an address on Women Before the Law, the report says:

      Mrs. Helen M. Gougar of Indiana traced the development of human liberty as shown in the history of the ballot, which was at first given to a certain class of believers in orthodox religions, then to property holders, then to all white men. She showed how class legislation had been gradually done away with by allowing believer and unbeliever, rich and poor, white and black, to vote unquestioned and unhindered, and as a result of this onward march of justice, the last remaining form of class legislation, now shown by the sex ballot, must pass away. She declared the sex-line to be the lowest standard upon which to base a privilege and unworthy the civilization of the present time. She answered many of the popular objections to woman suffrage by showing that if education were to be made the test of the ballot, women would not be the disfranchised class in America, as three-fifths of all graduates from the public schools in the last ten years have been women. If morality were to be made a test, women would do more voting than men. The ratio of law-abiding women to men is as one to every 103; of drunken women to drunken men, one to every 1,000. Reasoning from these facts, if sobriety, virtue and intelligence were necessary qualifications, women enfranchised would largely reflect these elements in the Government.

      At noon on March 6 the delegates were courteously received at the White House by President Chester A. Arthur.

      During the afternoon session the Pennsylvania report was presented by Edward M. Davis, son-in-law of Lucretia Mott, and an exhaustive account of Woman's Work in Philadelphia by Mrs. Lucretia L. Blankenburg. A letter from Mrs. Anna C. Wait (Kas.) was read by Mrs. Bertha H. Ellsworth, who closed with a tribute to Mrs. Wait and a poem dedicated to Kansas.

      The guest of the convention, Mrs. Jessie M. Wellstood of Edinburgh, presented a report made by Miss Eliza Wigham, secretary of the Scotland Suffrage Association, prefaced with some earnest remarks in which she said:

      To those who are sitting at ease, folding their hands and sweetly saying: "I have all the rights I want, why should I trouble about these matters?" let me quote the burning words of the grand old prophet Isaiah, which entered into my soul and stirred it to action: "Rise up, ye women that are at ease; hear my voice, ye careless daughters, give ear unto my speech; many days shall ye be troubled, ye careless women, etc." It is just because we fold our hands and sit at ease that so many of our less fortunate fellow creatures are leading lives of misery, want, sin and shame.

      In the evening Mrs. May Wright Sewall (Ind.) delivered a beautiful address on Forgotten Women, which she closed with these words: "It was not a grander thing to lead the forlorn hope in 1776, not a grander thing to strike the shackles from the black slaves in 1863, than it would be in 1884 to carry a presidential campaign on the basis of Political Equality to Women. The career, the fame, to match that of Washington, to match that of Lincoln, awaits the man who will espouse the cause of forgotten womanhood and introduce that womanhood to political influence and political freedom."

      Interesting addresses were made by Mrs. Mary E. Haggart (Ind.), Why Do Not Women Vote? and by the Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford, pastor of the Second Universalist Church, Jersey City, on New Jersey as a Leader—the first to grant suffrage to women. They voted from 1776 until the Legislature took away the right in 1807.

      At the afternoon session of the last day Mrs. Lizzie D. Fyler, a lawyer of Arkansas, gave an extended résumé of the legal and educational position of women in that State, which was shown to be in advance of many of the eastern and western States. George W. Clark, one of the old Abolition singers contemporaneous with the Hutchinsons, expressed a strong belief in woman suffrage and offered a tribute of song to Wendell Phillips. Brief addresses were made by Mrs. J. Ellen Foster (Ia.) and Mrs. Morrison (Mass.). A letter of greeting was read from the corresponding secretary, Rachel G. Foster, Julia and Mrs. Julia Foster (Penn.), written in Florence, Italy. Mrs. Caroline Gilkey Rogers described School Suffrage in Lansingburgh, N. Y.

      An eloquent address was made by Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller (Md.), in which she said:

      There are a great many excellent people in the world who are strongly prejudiced against what they designate "isms," but who are always glad of any opportunity of serving God, as they express it. I ask what can finite beings do to serve Omnipotence unless it be to exert all their powers for the good of humanity, for the uplifting of man, which, if aught of ours could do, must rejoice our Creator. When we see more than one-half of the adult human family—reasonably industrious and intelligent, if we make for them no larger claim, and certainly the raison d'etre of the other half—called to account by the laws of the land and held in strict obedience to them without the slightest voice in their making, with neither form nor shadow of representation before State or country, do we not see that there rests upon the entire race a stigma that materialist and idealist, agnostic and churchman, should each and all hasten to remove?

      "Behold, the fields are white unto harvest, but the laborers are few!" How can it be longer tolerated that the wives and mothers, the sisters and daughters, of a land claiming the highest