History of Woman Suffrage/Volume 4/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII.
INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF WOMEN — HEARING OF 1888.
The year 1888 is distinguished for the largest and most representative woman's convention held up to that time the International Council of Women, which met in Washington, D. C, March 25, continuing until April i. The origin of this great body is briefly stated in the official report as follows: "Visiting England and France in 1882, Mrs. Stanton conceived the idea of an International Council of Women interested in the movement for suffrage, and pressed its consideration on the leading reformers in those countries. A few accepted the idea, and when Miss Anthony arrived in England early the following year, they discussed the question fully with each other, and seeing that such a convention was both advisable and practicable, they resolved to call it in the near future. On the eve of their departure, at a reception given them in Liverpool, the subject was presented and favorably received. Among the guests were Priscilla Bright McLaren, Margaret Bright Lucas, Alice Scatcherd and Margaret E. Parker. The initiative steps for an International Council were then taken and a committee of correspondence appointed.[1]
"When Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony returned to America it was decided, in consultation with friends, to celebrate the fourth decade of the woman suffrage movement by calling an International Council. At its nineteenth annual convention, January, 1887, the National Suffrage Association had resolved to assume the entire responsibility and to extend the invitation to all associations of women in the trades, professions and reforms, as well as those advocating political rights. The herculean task of making all the necessary arrangements fell chiefly on Miss Anthony, Miss Rachel G. Foster (Avery) and Mrs. May Wright Sewall, as Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Spofford were in Europe. To say nothing of the thought, anxiety, time and force expended, we can appreciate in some measure the magnitude of the undertaking by its financial cost of nearly $12,000.
"This was the first attempt to convene an international body of women and its conception would have been possible only with those to whom the whole cause of woman is indebted for its most daring and important innovations. The call for this meeting was issued in June, 1887:
To celebrate the Fortieth Anniversary of this event, an International Council of Women will be convened under the auspices of the National Woman Suffrage Association, in Albaugh's opera house, Washington, D. C., on March 25, 1888.
It is impossible to overestimate the far-reaching influence of such a Council. An interchange of opinions on the great questions now agitating the world will rouse women to new thought, will intensify their love of liberty and will give them a realizing sense of the power of combination.
However the governments, religions, laws and customs of nations may differ, all are agreed on one point, namely: man's sovereignty in the State, in the Church and in the Home. In an International Council women may hope to devise new and more effective methods for securing in these three institutions the equality and justice which they have so long and so earnestly sought. Such a Council will impress the important lesson that the position of women anywhere affects their position everywhere. Much is said of universal brotherhood, but for weal or woe, more subtle and more 'binding is universal sisterhood.
Women recognizing the disparity between their achievements and their labors, will no doubt agree that they have been trammeled by their political subordination. Those active in great philanthropic enterprises sooner or later realize that, so long as women are not acknowledged to be the political equals of men, their judgment on political questions will have but little weight.
It is, however, neither intended nor desired that discussions in the International Council shall be limited to questions touching the political rights of women. Formal invitations requesting the appointment of delegates will be issued to representative organizations in every department of woman's work. Literary Clubs, Art Unions, Temperance Unions, Labor Leagues, Missionary, Peace and Moral Purity Societies, Charitable, Professional, Educational and Industrial Associations will thus be offered equal opportunity with Suffrage Societies to be represented in what should be the ablest and most imposing body of women ever assembled.
The Council will continue eight days, and its sixteen public sessions will afford ample opportunity for reporting the various phases of woman's work and progress in all parts of the world, during the past forty years. It is hoped that all friends of the advancement of women will lend their support to this undertaking.
On behalf of the National Woman Suffrage Association:
| Elizabeth Cady Stanton, President. | |
| Susan B. Anthony, First Vice-Pres. | |
| Matilda Joslyn Gage, Second Vice-Pres. | |
| Rachel G. Foster, Corresponding Sec'y. | |
| Ellen H. Sheldon, Recording Sec'y. | |
| Jane H. Spofford, Treasurer. | |
| May Wright Sewall, Chairman Ex. Com. |
"All of the intervening months from June until the next March were spent in the extensive preparations necessary to the success of a convention which proposed to assemble delegates and speakers from many parts of the world. As the funds had to be raised wholly by private subscription, no bureau with an expensive pay-roll was established but the entire burden was carried by a few individuals, who contributed their services."[2]
Fifty-three organizations of women, national in character, of a religious, patriotic, charitable, reform, literary and political nature, were represented on the platform by eighty speakers and forty-nine delegates, from England, Ireland, France, Norway, Denmark, Finland, India, Canada and the United States. Among the subjects discussed were Education, Philanthropies, Temperance, Industries, Professions, Organizations, Social Purity, Legal, Political and Religious Conditions. While no restriction was placed upon the fullest expression of the most widely divergent views upon these vital questions of the age, the sessions, both executive and public, were absolutely without friction.
A complete stenographic report of these fifty-three meetings was transcribed and furnished to the press by a thoroughly organized corps of women under the direction of Miss Mary F. Seymour of New York City, an unexcelled if not an unparalleled feat.[3] The management of the Council by the different committees was perfect in every detail, and the eight days' proceedings passed without a break, a jar or an unpleasant circumstance.
Saturday evening, March 23, Mr. and Mrs. Spofford, of the Riggs House, gave a reception to enable the people of Washington to meet the distinguished speakers and delegates. The large parlors were thrown open and finally the big dining-room, but the throng was so dense that it was almost impossible to move from one room to another.
President and Mrs. Grover Cleveland received the Council Friday afternoon. Monday evening a reception was given by Senator and Mrs. Thomas W. Palmer of Michigan, for which eight hundred invitations were sent to foreign legations, prominent officials and the members of the Council. Senator and Mrs. Leland Stanford opened their elegant home on Tuesday after
noon in honor of the pioneers in the woman suffrage movement. In addition to these many special entertainments were given for the women lawyers, physicians, ministers, collegiate alumnae, etc., and those of a semi-private nature were far too numerous for mention.
Albaugh's Opera House was crowded to its capacity at all of the sixteen sessions. Religious services were held on both Sundays, conducted entirely by women representing many different creeds. Some of the old-time hymns were sung, but many were from modern writers—Whittier, Samuel Longfellow, John W. Chadwick, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Julia Mills Dunn, etc. The assisting ministers for the first Sunday were the Reverends Phebe A. Hanaford, Ada C. Bowles, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Amanda Deyo. The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw gave the sermon, a matchless discourse on The Heavenly Vision.
"Whereupon, O, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision." Acts, xxvi:19.
In the beauty of his Oriental home the Psalmist caught the vision of the events in the midst of which you and I are living to-day. And though he wrought the vision into the wonderful prophecy of the 68th Psalm, yet so new and strange were the thoughts to men, that for thousands of years they failed to catch its spirit and understand its power.
The vision which appeared to David was a world lost in sin. He heard its cry for deliverance, he saw its uplifted hands. Everywhere the eyes of good men were turned toward the skies for help. For ages had they striven against the forces of evil; they had sought by every device to turn back the flood-tide of base passion and avarice, but to no purpose. It seemed as if all men were engulfed in one common ruin. Patient, sphinx-like, sat woman, limited by sin, limited by social custom, limited by false theories, limited by bigotry and by creeds, listening to the tramp of the weary millions as they passed on through the centuries, patiently toiling and waiting, humbly bearing the pain and weariness which fell to her lot.
Century after century came forth from the divine life only to pass into the great eternity—and still she toiled and still she waited. At last, in the mute agony of despair, she lifted her eyes above the earth to heaven and away from the jarring strifes which surrounded her, and that which dawned upon her gaze was so full of wonder that her soul burst its prison-house of bondage as she beheld the vision of true womanhood. She knew then it was not the purpose of the Divine that she should crouch beneath the bonds of custom and ignorance. She learned that she was created not from the side of man, but rather by the side of man. The world had suffered be
Vice-President-at-Large of National-American Woman Suffrage Association.
To-day the vision is a reality. From every land the voice of woman is heard proclaiming the word which is given her, and the wondering world, which for a moment stopped its busy wheel of life that it might smite and jeer her, has learned at last that wherever the intuitions of the human mind are called into special exercise, wherever the art of persuasive eloquence is demanded, wherever heroic conduct 1s based upon duty rather than impulse, wherever her efforts in opening the sacred doors for the benefit of truth can avail—in one and all these respects woman greatly excels man. Now. the wisest and best people everywhere feel that if woman enters upon her tasks wielding her own effective armor, if her inspirations are pure and holy, the Spirit Omnipotent, whose influence has held sway in all movements and reforms, whose voice has called into its service the great workmen of every age, shall, in these last days, fall especially upon woman. If she venture to obey, what is man that he should attempt to abrogate her sacred and divine mission? In the presence of what woman has already accomplished, who shall say that a true woman—noble in her humility, strong in her gentleness, rising above all selfishness, gathering up her varied gifts and accomplishments to consecrate them to God and humanity —who shall say that such an one is not in a position to do that for which the world will no longer rank her other than among the first in the work of human redemption? Then, influenced by lofty motives, stimulated by the wail of humanity and the glory of God, woman may go forth and enter into any field of usefulness which opens up before her. ....
In the Scripture from which the text is taken we recognize a universal law which has been the experience of every one of us. Paul is telling the story of a vision he saw, which became the inspiration of his life, the turning point where his whole existence was changed, when, in obedience to that vision, he put himself in relation with the power to which he belonged, and recognizing in that One which appeared to him on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus his Divine Master, he also recognized that the purpose of his life could be fulfilled only when, in obedience to that Master, he caught and assimilated to himself the nature of Him, whose servant he was. ....
Every reformer the world has ever seen has had a similar experience. Every truth which has been taught to humanity has passed through a like channel. No one of God's children has ever gone forth to the world who has not first had revealed to him his mission, in a vision. ifestations of power, but it will shrink from you as soon as power and greatness are no longer on your side. This is the penalty paid by good people who sacrifice themselves for others. They must live without sympathy; their feelings will be misunderstood; their efforts will be uncomprehended. Like Paul, they will be betrayed by friends; like Christ in the agony of Gethsemane, they must bear their struggle alone.
Our reverence for the reformers of the past is posterity's judgment of them. But to them, what is that now? They have passed into the shadows where neither our voice of praise or of blame disturbs their repose.
This is the hardest lesson the reformer has to learn. When, with soul aglow with the light of a great truth, she, in obedience to the vision, turns to take it to the needy one, instead of finding a world ready to rise up and receive her, she finds it wrapped in the swaddling clothes of error, eagerly seeking to win others to its conditions of slavery. She longs to make humanity free; she listens to their conflicting creeds, and yearns to save them from the misery they endure. She knows that there is no form of slavery more bitter or arrogant than error, that truth alone can make man free, and she longs to bring the heart of the world and the heart of truth together, that the truth may exercise its transforming power over the life of the world. The greatest test of the reformer's courage comes when, with a warm, earnest longing for humanity, she breaks for it the bread of truth and the world turns from this life-giving power and asks instead of bread a stone.
It is just here that so many of God's workmen fail, and themselves need to turn back to the vision as it appeared to them, and to gather fresh courage and new inspiration for the future. This, my sisters, we all must do if we would succeed. The reformer may be inconsistent, she may be stern or even impatient, but if the world feels that she is in earnest she can not fail. Let the truth which she desires to teach first take possession of herself. Every woman who to-day goes out into the world with a truth, who has not herself become possessed of that truth, had far better stay at home.
Who would have dreamed, when at that great anti-slavery meeting in London, some years ago, the arrogance and pride of men excluded the women whom God had moved to lift up their voices in behalf of the baby that was sold by the pound—who would have dreamed that that very exclusion would be the keynote of woman's freedom? That out of the prejudice of that hour God should be able to flash upon the crushed hearts of those excluded the grand vision which we see manifested here to-day? That out of a longing for the liberty of a portion of the race, God should be able to show to women the still larger vision of the freedom of all human kind?
Grand as is this vision which meets us here, it is but the dawning of a new day; and as the first beams of morning light give promise of the radiance which shall envelop the earth when the sun shall have arisen in all its splendor, so there comes to us a prophecy of that glorious day when the vision which we are now beholding, which is beaming in the soul of one, shall enter the hearts and transfigure the lives of all.The formal opening of the Council, Monday morning, March 25, was thus described: "The vast auditorium, perfect in its proportions and arrangements, was richly decorated with the flags of all nations and of every State in the Union. The platform was fragrant with evergreens and flowers, brilliant with rich furniture, crowded with distinguished women, while soft music with its universal language attuned all hearts to harmony. The beautiful portrait of the sainted Lucretia Mott, surrounded with smilax and lilies of the valley, seemed to sanctify the whole scene and to give a touch of pathos to all the proceedings."
This great meeting, like so many before and since that time, was opened by Miss Anthony. After the invocation and the hymn, she said in part:
Men have granted us, in the civil rights which we have been demanding, everything almost but the pivotal right, the one that underlies all other rights, the one with which citizens of this republic may protect themselves—the right to vote.
I have the pleasure of introducing to you this morning the woman who not only joined with Lucretia Mott in calling the first convention, but who for the greater part of twenty years has been president of the National Suffrage Association—Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton.The entire audience arose with clapping of hands and waving of handkerchiefs to greet this leader, who had come from England to attend the Council. In the course of a long and dignified address of welcome, she said:
I think most of us have come to feel that a voice in the laws is indispensable to achieve success; that these great moral struggles for higher education, temperance, peace, the rights of labor, international arbitration, religious freedom, are all questions to be finally adjusted by the action of government and thus, without a direct voice in legislation, woman's influence will be entirely lost.
Experience has fully proved that sympathy as a civil agent is vague and powerless until caught and chained in logical propositions and coined into law. When every prayer and tear represents a ballot, the mothers of the race will no longer weep in vain over the miseries of their children. The active interest women are taking inall the great questions of the day is in strong contrast with the apathy and indifference in which we found them half a century ago, and the contrast in their condition between now and then is equally marked. Those who inaugurated the movement for woman's enfranchisement, who for long years endured the merciless storm of ridicule and persecution, mourned over by friends, ostracized in social life, scandalized by enemies, denounced by the pulpit, scarified and caricatured by the press, may well congratulate themselves on the marked change in public sentiment which this magnificent gathering of educated women from both hemispheres so triumphantly illustrates. ....
We, who like the children of Israel, have been wandering in the wilderness of prejudice and ridicule for forty years feel a peculiar tenderness for the young women on whose shoulders we are about to leave our burdens. Although we have opened a pathway to the promised land and cleared up much of the underbrush of false sentiment, logic and rhetoric intertwisted with law and custom, which blocked all avenues in starting, yet there are still many obstacles to be encountered before the rough journey is ended. The younger women are starting with great advantages over us. They have the results of our experience; they have superior opportunities for education; they will find a more enlightened public sentiment for discussion; they will have more courage to take the rights which belong to them. Hence we may look to them for speedy conquests. When we think of the vantage-ground woman holds to-day, in spite of all the artificial obstacles placed in her way, we are filled with wonder as to what the future mothers of the race will be when free to have complete development.
Thus far women have been the mere echoes of men. Our laws and constitutions, our creeds and codes, and the customs of social life are all of masculine origin. The true woman is as yet a dream of the future. A just government, a humane religion, a pure social life await her coming. ....At the close of this address Miss Anthony presented greetings from the Woman's Liberal Association of Bristol, England, signed by many distinguished names; from the Woman Suffrage Association of Norway, and from a number of prominent women in Dublin.[4] There were also individual letters from Mrs. Priscilla Bright McLaren and many other foreigners.[5]
Dr. Elizabeth C. Sargent and eight other women physicians of San Francisco sent cordial good wishes. Congratulations were received from many Americans,[6] and a cablegram from Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch, of England.—
Miss Anthony then presented the foreign delegates: England, Mrs. Laura Ormiston Chant, Mrs. Alice Scatcherd, Mrs. Ashton Dilke, Madame Zadel B. Gustafson; Ireland, Mrs. Margaret Moore; France, Madame Isabella Bogelot; Finland, Baroness Alexandra Gripenberg; Denmark, Madame Ada M. Frederiksen; Norway, Madame Sophie Magelsson Groth; Italy, Madame Fanny Zampini Salazar; India, Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati; Canada, Mrs. Bessie Starr Keefer.
After all had acknowledged the introduction with brief remarks, Miss Anthony presented, amid much applause, Lucy . Stone, Frances E. Willard, Julia Ward Howe, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Clara Barton—the most eminent galaxy of women ever assembled upon one platform. Frederick Douglass and Robert Purvis were introduced as pioneers in the movement for woman suffrage.
It would be impossible within the limits of one chapter to give even the briefest synopsis of the addresses which swept through the week like a grand procession. The program only could convey an idea of the value of this intellectual entertainment which called together, day after day and night after night, audiences that taxed the capacity of the largest opera house in Washington.[7]
On the second Sunday afternoon, Easter Day, the services consisted of a symposium conducted by sixteen women, of all religious faiths and of none. In the evening, when as in the morning a vast and interested audience was present, brief farewells were spoken by a number of the foreign delegates. The leading address was by Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace on the Moral Power of the Ballot. Mrs. Stanton closed the meeting with a great speech, and the following resolution was adopted:
During the month of preparation for this International Council, the idea came many times to Mrs. Sewall that it should result in a permanent organization. The other members gave a cordial assent to this proposition, and the necessary committees were appointed. Before the delegates left Washington both a National and International Council of Women were formed.[8]
Immediately following the Council the National Woman Suffrage Association held its Twentieth annual convention in the Church of Our Father, April 3, 4, 1888. As there had been eight days of continuous speech-making this meeting was devoted principally to the presenting of State reports and transacting of necessary business. There were, however, a number of addresses from the distinguished women who remained after the Council to attend this convention.
The Committee on National Enrollment, Mrs. Louisa Southworth of Ohio, chairman, reported 40,000 names of adult citizens who favored equal suffrage; 9,000 of these were from Ohio and 9,000 from Nebraska. Women were urged to send petitions to members of Congress from their respective States. Mrs. Stanton was requested to prepare a memorial to be presented to each of the national political conventions to be held during the year, and committees were appointed to visit each for the purpose, of securing in their platforms a recognition of woman suffrage.
The most interesting feature was the hearing before the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage, which took place April 2.[9] Mrs. Stanton made the opening address, in which she took up the provisions of the Federal Constitution, one by one, and showed how they had been violated in their application to women, saying:
"No bill of attainder shall be passed." "No title of nobility granted." So says the Constitution; and yet you have passed bills of attainder in every State of the Union making sex a disqualification for the franchise. You have granted titles of nobility to every male voter, making all men rulers, governors, sovereigns over all women.
"The United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government." And yet you have not a republican form of government in a single State. One-half the people have never consented to one law under which they live. They have rulers placed over them in whom they have no choice. They are taxed without representation, tried in our courts by men for the violation of laws made by men, with no appeal except to men, and for some crimes over which men should have no jurisdiction. .
Landing in New York one week ago, I saw 400 steerage passengers leave the vessel. Dull-eyed, heavy-visaged, stooping with huge burdens and the oppressions endured in the Old World, they stood in painful contrast with the group of brilliant women on their way to the International Council here in Washington. I thought, as this long line passed by, of the speedy transformation the genial influences of equality would effect in the appearance of these men, of the new dignity they would acquire with a voice in the laws under which they live, and I rejoiced for them; but bitter reflections filled my mind when I thought that these men are the future rulers of our daughters; these will interpret the civil and criminal codes by which they will be governed; these will be our future judges and jurors to try young girls in our courts, for trial by a jury of her peers has never yet been vouchsafed to woman. Here is a right so ancient that it is difficult to trace its origin in history, a right so sacred that the humblest criminal may choose his juror. But alas for the daughters of the people, their judges, advocates, jurors, must be men, and for them there is no appeal. But this is only one wrong among many inevitable for a disfranchised class. It is impossible
for you, gentlemen, to appreciate the humiliations women suffer at every turn. ....
You have now the power to settle this question by wise legislation. But if you can not be aroused to its serious consideration, like every other step in progress, it will eventually be settled by violence. The wild enthusiasm of woman can be used for evil as well as good. To-day you have the power to guide and direct it into channels of true patriotism, but in the future, with all the elements of discontent now gathering from foreign countries, you will have the scenes of the French Commune repeated in our land. What women, exasperated with a sense of injustice, have done in dire extremities in the nations of the Old World, they will do here. ....
I will leave it to your imagination to picture to yourselves how you would feel if you had had a case in court, a bill before some legislative body or a political aspiration for nearly half a century, with a continual succession of adverse decisions, while law and common justice were whet: on your side. Such, honorable gentlemen, is our case. ....
In the history of the race there has been no struggle for liberty like this. Whenever the interest of the ruling classes has induced them to confer new rights on a subject class it has been done with no effort on the part of the latter. Neither the American slave nor the English laborer demanded the right of suffrage. It was given in both cases to strengthen the Liberal party. The philanthropy of the few may have entered into those reforms, but political expediency carried both measures. Women, on the contrary, have fought their own battles and in their rebellion against existing conditions have inaugurated the most fundamental revolution the world has ever witnessed. The magnitude and multiplicity of the changes involved make the obstacles in the way of success seem almost insurmountable. ....
Society is based on this fourfold bondage of woman—Church, State, Capital and Society—making liberty and equality for her antagonistic to every organized institution. Where, then, can we rest the lever with which to lift one-half of humanity from these depths of degradation, but on "that columbiad of our political life— the ballot—-which makes every citizen who holds it a full armed monitor?"Miss Anthony then introduced a number of the foreign delegates who had been in attendance at the National Council. Mrs. Laura Ormiston Chant of England, in an eloquent address, said:
Mrs. Alice Scatcherd, delegate from the Liberal and the Suffrage Associations of Leeds and neighboring cities, gave an interesting account of the manner in which Englishwomen exercise the franchise and the influence they wield in politics.
Miss Anthony then said, "I have the pleasure of introducing to you the woman who, twenty-five years ago, wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe." Mrs. Howe spoke briefly, saying: "My heart has been full with the words of others which have been here uttered; but a single word will enable me to cast in my voice with theirs with all the emphasis that my life and such power as I have will enable me to add. Gentlemen, what a voice you have here to-day for universal suffrage. Think that not only we American women, your own kindred, appear here—and you.know what we represent—but these foremost women from other countries, representing not alone the native intelligence and character of those countries, but deep and careful study and precious experience, and think that between them and us who ask for suffrage, there is entire unanimity. We all say the same words; we are all for the same thing. ....
Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick, wife of the former Chief Justice of Louisiana, addressed the committee with that deep and touching earnestness so characteristic of Southern women.
After saying that women were present from every State and Territory who would add their pleadings if there were time, Miss Anthony introduced Mrs. Bessie Starr Keefer of Canada, who told of the good effects of woman suffrage in that country. Miss Anthony then said: "Gentlemen of the committee, here stands before you one who is commander-in-chief of an army of 250,000 women. It is said women do not want to vote, but this woman has led this vast army to the ballot-box, or to a wish to get there. I present to you Miss Frances E. Willard."
This was the only time Miss Willard ever appeared before a Suffrage Committee in the Capitol, and she was heard with much interest. Beginning with the playful manner which rendered her speeches so attractive, she closed with great seriousness:
I know it is a sentiment of chivalry in some good men which hinders them from giving us the ballot. They think we might not be what they admire so much; they think we should be lacking in womanliness of character. I ask you to notice if the women who have been in this International Council, if the women who are school teachers all over this nation, if these hundreds of thousands are not a womanly set of women, and yet they have gone outside of the old sphere. We believe that in the time of peace women can come forward and with peaceful plans can use weapons which are grand and womanly, and that their thoughts, winged with hope and the force of the heart given to them, will have an effect far mightier than physical power. For that reason we ask you that they shall be allowed to stand at the ballot-box, because we believe that there every person expresses his individuality. The majesty or the meanness of a person comes out at the ballot-box more than anywhere else. The ballot is the compendium of all there is in civilization, and of all that civilization has done for us. We believe that the mothers who had the good sense to train noble men, like you who have achieved high positions, had the good sense to train your sisters in the same way, and that it is a pity the State has lost that other half of the conservative power which comes from a Christian rearing and a Christian character.
I have spoken thus on the principles which have made me, a conservative woman, devoted to the idea of the ballot, and one in heart with all these good and true suffrage women, though not one in organic community. I represent before you the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and not a suffrage society, but I bring these principles to your sight, and I ask you, my brothers, to be grand and chivalrous towards us in this new departure which we now wish to make.
I ask you to remember that it is women who have given the costliest hostages to fortune, and out into the battle of life they have sent their best beloved into snares that have been legalized on every hand. From the arms which held him long, the boy has gone forever, for he will not come back again to the home. Then let the world in the person of its womanhood go forth and make a home in the State and in society. By all the pains and dangers the mother has shared, by the hours of patient watching over beds where little children tossed in fever and pain, by the incense of ten thousand prayers wafted to God from earnest lips, I charge you, gentlemen, give woman power to go forth, so that when her son undertakes life's treacherous battle, his mother will still walk beside him clad in the garments of power.Miss Anthony, who knew better than anyone else when not another word. was needed, said at the close of Miss Willard's touching address: "Now, gentlemen, we are greatly obliged to you. I feel very proud of all my 'girls' who have come before you this morning, and you may consider the meeting adjourned."
- ↑ The following report was prepared by Mrs. Parker: At a large and influential gathering of the friends of woman suffrage, at Parliament Terrace, Liverpool, November 16, 1883, convened by E. Whittle, M. D., to meet Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony prior to their return to America, a resolution was proposed by Mrs. Parker of Penketh, seconded by Mrs. McLaren of Edinburgh, and unanimously passed: "Recognizing that union is strength and that the time has come when women all over the world should unite in the just demand for their political enfranchisement; therefore "Resolved, That we do here appoint a committee of correspondence, preparatory to forming an International Woman Suffrage Association. "Resolved, That the committee consist of the following friends, with power to add to their number. "For the American Center — Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Miss Susan B. Anthony, Miss Rachel G. Foster. For Foreign Centers — (An extended committee was named of prominent persons in Great Britain, Ireland and France)."
- ↑ There were printed and distributed by mail 10,000 Calls (four pages each); 10,000 Appeals (two pages each); sketches were prepared of the lives and work of a number of the delegates and circulated by means of a Press Committee of over ninety persons in various cities of many States. On March 10, the first edition (5,000) of the sixteen page program was issued; this was followed by five other editions of 5,000 each and a final seventh edition of 7,000 copies. Each edition required revision and the introduction of alterations made necessary by changing conditions. There were written in connection with the preparations about 4,000 letters. Including those concerning railroad rates, there were not less than 10,000 more circulars of various kinds printed and distributed. A low estimate of the number of pages thus issued (circulars, calls, programs, etc.) gives 672,000. During the week of the Council and the following convention of the N. W. S. A., the Woman's Tribune was published by Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby eight times (four days sixteen pages, four days twelve pages), the daily edition averaging 12,500 copies. The receipts from contributions and memberships were in round numbers $5,000; from sale of seats and boxes at opera-house $5,000, and from sale of daily Woman's Tribune, photographs and badges, collections, advertisements, etc., $1,500, making a total of nearly $12,000. The largest sums were from Julia T. Foster, $400; Elizabeth Thompson, $250; Mrs. Leland Stanford, $200; Rachel G. Foster, $200; and $100 each from Adeline Thomson, Ellen Clark Sargent, Emma J. Bartol, Margaret Caine, Sarah Knox Goodrich, Mary Hamilton Williams, Lucy Winslow Curtis, Mary Gray Dow, Jane S. Richards, George W. Childs and Henry C. Parsons. The cost of the Tribune (printing, stenographic report, mailing, etc.) was over $3,600; hall rent, $1,800. When one considers the entertainment of so many officers, speakers and delegates, printing, postage, the salary of one clerk for a year (whose board was a contribution from Miss Adeline Thomson and Miss Julia Foster of Philadelphia), and the thousand et ceteras of such a meeting, the total cost of about $12,000 is not surprising. An international convention of men, held in Washington within the year, cost in round numbers $50,000.
- ↑ After the Council Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony and Miss Foster remained in Washington for six weeks preparing a complete report of the addresses and proceedings which filled nearly 500 pages. Five thousand copies of these were printed, a large number of which were placed in the public libraries of the United States and foreign countries.
- ↑ Anna Maria Haslam, Honorable Secretary Woman's Suffrage Association; Mary Edmundson, Honorable Secretary Dublin Prison Gate Mission; Hannah Maria Wigham, President Women's Temperance Association, Dublin, and Member of Peace Committee; Wilhelmina Webb, Member of Ladies' Sanitary Committee, Women's: Suffrage, etc.; Rose McDowell, Honorable Secretary Women's Suffrage Committee; Isabella Mulvany, Head Mistress Alexandra School, Dublin; Harriet W. Russell, Member of Women's Temperance Association; Deborah Webb, late Honorable Secretary Ladies' Dublin Contagious Diseases Act Repeal Association; Lucy Smithson, Member of the Sanitary Committee and Women's Suffrage Association; Emily Webb, Member of Women's Suffrage Association; Agnes Mason, Medical Student and Member of the Women's Suffrage Committee; Ellen Allen, Member of Women's Temperance and Peace Associations.
- ↑ Among these were Elizabeth Pease Nichol, Eliza Wigham, Edinburgh; Mrs. Jacob Bright, Catherine Lucas Thomasson, Margaret E. Parker, Jane Cobden, Margaret Bright Lucas, Caroline Ashurst Biggs, Frances Lord, F. Henrietta Miller, England; Isabella M. S. Tod, Belfast; Caroline de Barrau, Theodore Stanton, Hubertine Auclert, editor of Lea Citoyenne, Maria Deraismes, Eugénie Potonié, M. Dupuis Vincent, France; Johanna Frederika Wecket, Germany; Prince Kropotkin, Russia.
- ↑ John G. Whittier, T. W. Higginson, Oliver Johnson, George W. Julian, Samuel E. Sewall, Amelia Bloomer, Dr. James C. Jackson, Theodore D. Weld, Elizabeth Buffam Chace, Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, Abigail Scott Duniway, Mrs. Frank Leslie, Dr. Laura Ross Wolcott, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Dr. Agnes Kemp, Augusta Cooper Bristol, Dr. Seth and Mrs. Hannah Rogers, Dr. Alida C. Avery, Harriet S. Brooks, Sarah Burger Stearns, Helen M. Gougar, Caroline B. Buell, Lucy N. Colman.
- ↑ Among those not mentioned above who gave addresses were E. Florence Barker, Susan H. Barney, Leonora M. Barry, Isabel C. Barrows, Cora A. Benneson, Ada M. Bittenbender, Henry B. Blackwell, Lillie Devereux Blake, Martha McClellan Brown, Dr. Mary Weeks Burnett, Helen Campbell, Matilda B. Carse, Ednah D. Cheney, Sarah B. Cooper, "Jennie June" Croly, Caroline H. Dall, Abby Morton Diaz, Mary F. Eastman, Martha A. Everett, Martha R. Field, Alice Fletcher, J. Ellen Foster, Caroline M. S. Frazer, Helen H. Gardiner, Anna Gordon, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Frances E. W. Harper, Marilla M. Hills, Clara C. Hoffman, Laura C. Holloway, John W. Hutchinson, Mary H. Hunt, Laura M. Johns, Mary A. Livermore, Huldah B. Loud, Ella M. S. Marble, Marion McBride, Laura McNeir, Prof. Rena A. Michaels, Harriet N. Morris, Amelia Hadley Mohl, Mrs. John P. Newman, Clara Neymann, ex-U. S. Senator S. C. Pomeroy, Anna Rice Powell, Amelia S. Quinton, Emily S. Richards, Victoria Richardson, Harriet H. Robinson, Elizabeth Lisle Saxon, Lita Barney Sayles, Harriette R. Shattuck, Hannah Whitall Smith, Elizabeth G. Stuart, Prof. Louisa Reed Stowell, Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson, M. Louise Thomas, Esther M. Warner, Dr. Caroline B. Winslow, Jennie Fowler Willing, Dr. Ruth M. Wood, Anna M. Worden. On Pioneers' Evening about forty of the most prominent of the old workers were on the platform.
- ↑ The officers of the National Council were: President, Frances E. Willard, Ill.; vice-president-at-large, Susan B. Anthony, N. Y.; cor. sec., May Wright Sewall, Ind.; rec. sec., Mary F. Eastman, Mass.; treas., M. Louise Thomas, N. Y. Officers of the International Council: President, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, England; vice-president-at-large, Clara Barton, United States; cor. sec. Rachel G. Foster, United States; rec. sec., Kirstine Frederiksen, Denmark.
- ↑ This committee consisted of Senator Francis M. Cockrell, Mo.; Joseph E. Brown. Ga.; Samuel Pasco, Fla.; Henry W. Blair, N. H.; Thomas W. Palmer, Mich.; Jonathan Chace, R. I.; Thomas M. Bowen, Colo. No hearing was held before the Judiciary Committee of the House, but on April 24 Mrs. Sallie Clay Bennett of Kentucky obtained an audience and made an extended and unanswerable argument from two points of view, the Scriptural and the Constitutional. Her address is printed in full in the Woman's Tribune of April 28, 1888.