History of Woman Suffrage/Volume 4/Chapter 11

 

CHAPTER XI.

THE NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1891.

Immediately preceeding the Twenty-third annual suffrage convention in 1891, the first triennial meeting took place of the National Council of Women, which had been formed in 1888. It was held in Albaugh's Opera House, Washington, beginning Sunday, February 22, and continuing four days, an-assemblage of the most distinguished women of the nation in many lines of work. Miss Frances E. Willard presided and the other officers contributed to the success of the Council — Miss Susan B. Anthony, vice-president; Mrs. May Wright Sewall, corresponding secretary; Miss Mary F. Eastman, recording secretary; Mrs. M. Louise Thomas, treasurer. Ten national organizations were represented by official delegates and forty sent fraternal delegates.

The Sunday services were conducted entirely by women, the Rev. Ida C. Hultin giving the sermon from the text, "For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth." The program of the week included Charities, Education, Temperance, Religion, Organized Work, Political Status of Women, etc.^[1] On Saturday evening Mrs. Jane H. Spofford gave a large reception at the Riggs House to the Council and the Suffrage Association. The latter held its sessions February 26-March 1, occupying the same beautifully decorated opera house which had been filled for four days by audiences in attendance at the Council, who kept on coming, scarcely knowing the difference.

The Call for this convention expressed the great joy over the action of Congress during the past year in admitting Wyoming as a State with woman suffrage in its constitution:

The admission of Wyoming into the Union as a State with equal rights for women guaranteed in its organic law, not only sets a seal of approval upon woman suffrage after a practical experience of twenty-one years, but it makes woman a recognized factor in national politics. Hereafter the Chief Executive and both Houses of Congress will owe their election partly to the votes of women. The injustice and absurdity of allowing women in one State to be sovereign rulers, and across the line in every direction obliging them to occupy the position of a subject class, taxed without representation and governed without consent—and this in a nation which by its Constitution guarantees equal rights to all the States and equal protection to all their citizens—must soon be manifest even to the most conservative and prejudiced. We therefore congratulate the friends of woman suffrage everywhere that at last there is one spot under the American flag where equal justice is done to women. Wyoming, all hail; the first true republic the world has ever seen!

The program attracted considerable attention from a design on the cover showing a woman yoked with an ox to the plow, and, looking down upon them a girl in a college cap and gown with the inscription, "Above the Senior Wrangler," referring to the recent victory at Cambridge University, England, by Philippa Fawcett, in outranking the male student who stood highest in mathematics. The first session was opened by the singing of Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert's inspiring hymn, The New America. After a welcome by Mrs. Ella M. S. Marble, president of the District W. S. A., Miss Anthony read the address of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was in England, entitled, The Degradation of Disfranchisement, which said in part:

Disfranchisement is the last lingering shadow of the old spirit of caste which always has divided humanity into classes of greater or less inferiority, some even below certain animals that were considered special favorites with Heaven. One can not contemplate these revolting distinctions among mankind without amazement and disgust. This spirit of caste which has darkened the lives of millions through the centuries still lives. The discriminations against color and sex in the United States are but other forms of this same hateful spirit, still sustained by our religion as in the past. It is the outgrowth of the false ideas of favoritism ascribed to Deity in regard to races and individuals, but which have their origin in the mind of man. Banish the idea of divine authority for these machinations of the human mind, and the power of the throne and the church, of a royal family and an apostolic order of succession, of kings and queens, of popes and bishops, and man's headship in the State, the Church, and the Home will be heard of no more forever. ....

All men of intelligence appreciate the power of holding the ballot in their own hands; of having a voice in the laws under which they live; of enjoying the liberty of self-government. Those who have known the satisfaction of wielding political influence would not willingly accept the degradation of disfranchisement. Yet men can not understand why women should feel aggrieved at being deprived of this same protection, dignity and power. This is the Gibraltar of our difficulties to-day. We can not make men see that women feel the humiliation of their petty distinctions of sex precisely as the black man feels those of color. It is no palliation of our wrongs to say that we are not socially ostracized as he is, so long as we are politically ostracized as he is not. That all orders of foreigners also rank politically above the most intelligent, highly-educated women—native-born Americans—is indeed the most bitter drop in the cup of our grief which we are compelled to swallow. ....

Again, the degradation of woman in the world of work is another result of her disfranchisement. Some deny that, and say the laboring classes of men have the ballot yet they are still helpless victims of capitalists. They have the power and hold the weapon of defense but have not yet learned how to use it. The bayonet, the sword, the gun, are of no value to the soldier until he knows how to wield them. Yet without the weapons of defense what could individuals and nations do in time of war for their own protection? The first step in learning to use a gun or a ballot is to possess one. ....

Man has the prestige of centuries in his favor, with the force to maintain it, and he has possession of the throne, which is nine-tenths of the law. He has statutes and Scriptures and the universal usages of society all on his side. What have women? The settled dissatisfaction of half the race, the unorganized protests of the few, and the open resistance of still fewer. But we have truth and justice on our side and the natural love of freedom and, step by step, we shall undermine the present, form of civilization and inaugurate the mightiest revolution the world has ever witnessed. But its far-reaching consequences themselves increase the obstacles in the way of success, for the selfish interests of all classes are against us. The rulers in the State are not willing to share their power with a class over whom as equals they could never obtain absolute control, whose votes they could not manipulate to maintain the present conditions of injustice and oppression. ....

Again, the rulers in the church are hostile to liberty for a sex supposed for wise purposes to have been subordinated to man by divine decree. The equality of woman as a factor in religious organizations would compel an entire change in church canons, discipline, authority, and many doctrines of the Christian faith. As a matter of self-preservation, the church has no interest in the emancipation of woman, as its very existence depends on her blind faith. ....

Society at large, based on the principle that might makes right, has in a measure excluded women from the profitable industries of the world, and where she has gained a foothold her labor is at a discount. Man occupies the ground and holds the key to the situation. As employer, he plays the cheap labor of a disfranchised class against the employe, thus in a measure undermining his independence, making wife and daughter in the world of work the rivals of husband and father.

The family, too, is based on the idea of woman's subordination, and man has no interest, as far as he sees, in emancipating her from that despotism by which his narrow, selfish interests are maintained under the law and religion of the country.

Here, then, is a fourfold bondage, so many cords tightly twisted together, strong for one purpose. To attempt to undo one is to loosen all. .... To my mind, if we had at first bravely untwisted all the strands of this fourfold cord which bound us, and demanded equality in the whole round of the circle, while perhaps, we should have had a harder battle to fight, it would have been more effective and far shorter. Let us henceforth meet conservatives on their own ground and admit that suffrage for woman does mean political, religious, industrial and social freedom—a new and a higher civilization. ....

Woman's happiness and development are of more importance than all man's institutions. If constitutions and statute laws stand in the way of woman's emancipation, they must be amended to meet her wants and needs, of which she is a better judge than man possibly can be. If church canons and scriptures do not admit of woman's equal recognition in all the sacred offices, then they must be revised in harmony with that idea. If the present family life is necessarily based on man's headship, then we must build a new domestic altar, at which the mother shall have equal dignity, honor and power; and we do not propose to wait another century to secure all this; the time has come. ....

Miss Anthony, with an allusion to pioneer days, then introduced Lucy Stone, who, amid much applause, said that, while this was the first time she had stood beside Susan B. Anthony in a Washington suffrage convention, she had stood beside her on more than one hard-fought battle-field before many of those present were born. After sketching briefly the progress of the last forty years and giving some trying personal experiences, she said in conclusion: "The vote will not make a man of a woman, but it will enable her to demand and receive many things which are hers by right; to do the things which ought to be done, to prevent what ought not to be done. Women and men can help each other in making the world better. This is not an anti-man movement, but an effort toward the highest good of the race. We can congratulate ourselves upon what we have gained, but the root of the evil still remains—the root of disfranchisement. All organizations of women should join with us in pulling steadily at this deeply-planted and obstinate root."

Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker (Conn.) read an able paper on Woman in Politics and Jurisprudence, in which she showed the necessity in politics and in law of a combination of the man's and the woman's nature, point of view and distinguishing characteristics.

The second evening Mrs. Julia Ward Howe gave an address on The Possibilities of the American Salon, and the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer considered The Democratic Principle. Mrs. Spencer pointed out that the reason why the advance' in the specific line of woman suffrage had not been so great as in some other directions was because its advocates had to contend with a reaction of disbelief in the democratic principle. In expressing her own faith in this principle she said: "There are wisdom enough and virtue enough in this country to take care of all its ignorance and wickedness. The difficulty is that the average American citizen does not know that he wears a crown. And oh, the pity of it, and the shame of it, when some of us women, who do feel the importance of the duty of suffrage and who need no man to teach us patriotism, wish to help in this work that any man should say us nay!'

Miss Florence Balgarnie, who brought the greetings of a number of great English associations,^[2] gave a comprehensive sketch of The Status of Women in England. The Rev. Ida C. Hultin (Ills.) followed in an eloquent appeal that there should be no headship of either man or woman alone, but that both should represent humanity; government is a development of humanity and if woman is human she has an equal right in that development. Mrs. Ellen Battelle Dietrick (Mass.) showed that the present supremacy of men was a reaction from the former undue supremacy of women, and brought out many historical points of deep interest. Mrs. Josephine K. Henry spoke on The Kentucky Constitutional Convention, illustrating the terrible injustice of the laws of that State in regard to women and the vain efforts of the latter to have them changed. The Rev. Frederick A. Hinckley (R. I.) lifted the audience to the delectable heights, taking as a text, “Husband and Wife are One.” After illustrat- ing the tendency of all nature and all science toward unity and harmony, he said:

Humanity is the whole. Men alone are half a sphere; women alone half a sphere; men and women together the whole of truth, the whole of love, the whole of aspiration. We have come to recog- nize this thought in nearly all the walks of life. We want to ac- knowledge it in the unity of mankind. The central thought we need in our creeds and in our lives is that of the solidarity and brother- hood of the race. This movement derives its greatest significance not because it opens a place here and there for women; not because it enables women to help men; but because in all the concerns of life it places man and woman side by side, hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, putting their best thought, their finest feeling, their high- est aspiration, into the work of the world. This reflection gives us a lasting and sublime satisfaction amid defeat and derision. What- ever of fortune or misfortune befalls the Suffrage Association in the carrying on of its work, this belief is the root which is calculated to sustain and inspire us—that this movement is the next step in the progress of the race towards the unification of humanity.

I look forward to the time when men and women, labor and cap- ital, all classes and all sections, shall work side by side with one great co-operative spirit, the denizens of the world and the keepers of human progress. When that time comes we may not have reached the millennium but we shall be nearer to it. We shall then together establish justice, temperance, purity of life, as never has been done before. Earth’s aspirations then shall grow to events. The indescribable—that shall then be done.

U. S. Senator Joseph M. Carey was introduced by Miss An- thony as “the man who on the floor of Congress fought Wyom- ing’s battle for Statehood.”” His address on Wyoming, the True Republic, was a leading feature of the convention. He said in part:

On the tenth day of July last, the State of Wyoming was born and the forty-fourth star took its place on the old flag. Never was first-born more warmly welcomed, for not only had a commonwealth been created, but the principle of equality of citizenship without regard to sex had been fully recognized and incorporated as a part of the constitution of the new State.

The adoption of a woman suffrage bill by the first Territorial Legislature was graphically described, and after relating the subsequent efforts for its repeal, and its incorporation finally into the State constitution, he told of the struggle in Congress and said:

While I would not make invidious distinctions by giving the names of those in both branches of Congress who favored Wyoming's admission, I wish to say that I was agreeably surprised to have many of the ablest members, both in public and private, disclose the fact that they firmly believed the time would come when women would be permitted to exercise full political rights throughout the United States. They rejoiced that an opportunity had presented itself by which they could show they had no prejudice or opposition in their hearts to women's exercising the rights of citizenship.

He closed with the following strong argument for the enfranchisement of women:

Suffrage should be granted to women for two reasons: first, because it will help women; and second, because it will promote the interests of the State. Whatever doubt I may have entertained in the past concerning either the first or second proposition, has entirely disappeared. From the experiment made under my own eyes I can state in all candor that suffrage has been a real benefit to women. It gives them a character and standing which they would not otherwise possess. It does not lower a woman to be consulted about public affairs, but is calculated to make her more intelligent and thoughtful in matters that concern her own household, especially in bringing up her sons and daughters. It increases her interest in those things which concern the great body of the people. Men in office and out of office, particularly those who expect to serve the public, are compelled to be more considerate of her wishes, and more desirous of doing those things which will secure her approval. The greater the number of persons living under a government who are interested in the administration of its affairs, its well-being and the perpetuity of its institutions, the stronger the government and the more difficult it will be to compass its overthrow. ....

We frequently hear it said that women will not vote if they have the opportunity; or, if permitted to vote, such an inconsiderable number will exercise the privilege that it will not be worth while ta encumber the electoral system by granting it. In all matters in which women have an interest, as large a percentage vote as of the other sex. They have the same interest in all which pertains to good government. They have exercised the privilege of voting not in a careless and indifferent manner but in a way reflecting credit on their good sense and judgment.

I know women who have exercised the fullest political rights for a period of more than twenty years. They have taken the deepest interest in the political affairs of the Territory and young State. Neither in their homes nor in public places have they lost one womanly quality; but their minds have broadened and they have become more influential in the community in which they live. During these years I have never heard of any unhappiness brought into the home on account of women's exercising their political rights. A fair and unbiased test of this question has been made by the people of Wyoming, and no unprejudiced man or woman who has seen its workings, can now raise a single honest objection. Where women have voted, the family relation has not been destroyed, men have loved them none the less, the mountains have not been shaken from their foundations, nor have social earthquakes or political convulsions taken place. ....

In order that women shall be more influential citizens of the State and better qualified to raise noble men and women to fight the battles of life, and to carry out the true purpose of this republic, they must possess the full rights of citizenship.

At the close of his speech the Senator was presented with a large basket of roses from the delegates.

Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake (N.Y.) spoke on The Right of a Citizen to a Trial by a Jury of His Peers, showing that women -never have possessed this right; that in many criminal cases, such as seduction and infanticide, women could better understand the temptations than could men; that the feminine heart, the maternal influence, are needed in the court-room as well as in the home. Mrs. Lida A. Meriwether (Tenn.) spoke in a keen, sarcastic but humorous manner of The Silent Seven, "the legally mute'— minors, aliens, paupers, criminals, lunatics, idiots and women.

The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw took for her subject Women vs. Indians, and reviewed the suffrage amendment campaign in South Dakota the previous year. In an address brimming and bubbling over with wit, satire and pathos, she showed how much greater consideration the Indians received from the men of that State than did women. She told how 45 per cent. of the votes cast the preceding year were for male Indian suffrage and only 37 per cent. for woman suffrage; how Indians in blankets and moccasins were received in the State convention with the greatest courtesy, and Susan B. Anthony and other eminent women were barely tolerated; how, while these Indians were engaged in their ghost dances, the white women were going up and down the State pleading for the rights of citizens; how the law in that State gives not only the property but the children to the husband, in the face of all the hardships endured by those pioneer wives and mothers. She suggested that the solution of the Indian question should be left to a commission of women with Alice Fletcher at its head, and said in closing: "Let all of us who love liberty solve these problems in justice; and let us mete out to the Indian, to the negro, to the foreigner, and to the woman, the justice which we demand for ourselves, the liberty which we love for ourselves. Let us recognize in each of them that One above, the Father of us all, and that all are brothers, all are one."

The Moral and Political Emergency was presented by Mrs. Emma Smith DeVoe (S. D.). Henry B. Blackwell and Mrs. Alice M. A. Pickler described the South Dakota Campaign. Representative J. A: Pickler was introduced by Miss Anthony as the candidate who, when told that if he expressed his views on woman suffrage he would lose votes, expressed them more freely than ever and ran ahead of his ticket; and his wife as the woman who bade her husband to speak even if it lost him the office, and who was herself the only Congressman's wife that ever took the platform for the enfranchisement of women.

Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby took for her subject Ibsen's drama, A Doll's House, and discussed its ethical problems, closing with the sentence: "As long as the fighting qualities of woman remain, there is a chance for the nation to make a robust, steady progress; but if these die out and woman willingly surrenders herself for the sake of selfish ease to the dominance of man, civilization is arrested and true manhood becomes impossible." The convention ended with a scholarly address by Wm. Lloyd Garrison (Mass.) on The Social Aspect of the Woman Question.

The present officers were re-elected. Mrs. Lucia E. Blount (D. C.), chairman of the committee appointed to push the claim of Anna Fila Carroll, reported that a great deal of work had been done by Mr. and Mrs. Melvin A. Root of Michigan, Mrs. Colby and herself. Every possible effort had been made but the prospect was that Congress would do nothing for Miss Carroll. Miss Frances E. Willard brought an invitation from Mrs. Harrison to the National Council of Women and the members of all its auxiliary societies to attend a reception at the White House, which was accepted by the convention. Mrs. Ellen M. Henrotin presented in the name of Mrs. Bertha Honoré Palmer an official invitation to the association to meet in Chicago during the Columbian Exposition, promising a hall which would seat five thousand.

Miss Anthony announced that she had engaged permanent headquarters for the association in the Wimodaughsis club building, which action was ratified. It was decided to give especial attention to suffrage work in the Southern States during the year. The wives of the two senators from Wyoming, Mrs. Warren and Mrs. Carey, occupied seats on the platform.

Mrs. Blake reported the work done by the Platform Committee in having suffrage resolutions endorsed by a large number of Labor Unions. Miss Sara Winthrop Smith had been equally successful in Granges and branches of the Knights of Labor. Dr. Frances Dickinson, Dr. Lucy Waite, Mrs. Corinne S. Brown and Mrs. Colby had visited the National Convention of Locomotive Engineers and secured the endorsement of a suffrage petition. They obtained also the cordial approval of T. V. Powderly and the Knights of Labor, and of Samuel Gompers and the Federation of Labor. The Illinois Trade and Labor Assembly endorsed their petition. All of these bodies circulated suffrage petitions among their members, as also did the Illinois Farmers' Mutual Benefit Association and the Grand Army Posts, a number of which were reported as heartily recommending the enfranchisement of women. Signatures representing millions of voters were thus obtained.^[3]

In addition to the resolutions adopted by the convention bearing directly on suffrage, there was a demand for women on school boards and as physicians, matrons and managers in all public institutions containing women and children; and for a revision of the laws on marriage and property.

On Sunday afternoon a great audience assembled for the closing exercises. The sermon was given by the Rev. Caroline J. Bartlett from the text, "The night is far spent, the day is at hand." It had been said on the preceding Sunday that the sermon of Miss Hultin could not be equalled. The verdict now was that the honors must be evenly divided.

 

1. A complete report of the able addresses made by specialists in these subjects was prepared by the new corresponding secretary, Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery, and placed by Miss Anthony in the large libraries of the country.
2. The Central National Society for Women's Suffrage; the Women's Franchise Leagues of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bedford, Bridgeport, Leicester, Nottingham and York; the Bristol Woman's Temperance Association; the International Arbitration and Peace Society; the Woman Councillors' Society; the Women's Federal Association of Great Britain.
3. The funds necessary for this work were furnished by J. W. Hedenberg of Chicago, who also made a personal appeal to many of these bodies; but he claimed possession of the petitions, and for some reason never permitted them to be presented to Congress.