History of Woman Suffrage/Volume 5/Chapter 11

 

CHAPTER XI.

NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1911.

The national convention which met in Louisville, Ky., Oct. 19-25, 1911, might well be called a "jubilee" meeting, for it celebrated two of the most important victories yet won for woman suffrage in the United States — the adoption of State amendments by a majority of the voters in Washington in November, 1910, and in California in October, 1911, giving the same franchise rights to women as possessed by men.^[1] The sessions were held in the large De Molay Commandery Hall but it was far too small for the evening audiences. This was a new experience for Louisville but it rose finely to the occasion. A message to the Woman's Journal said: "Enthusiasm for equal suffrage runs high in Louisville this week as women from all parts of the country throng its spacious streets morning, afternoon and evening for the annual convention.... Altogether it is a most inspiring and encouraging convention and we are daily excited with news of the good prospects of more campaign States and more victories in the very near future.... We all have votes-for-women tags on our baggage, yellow badges and pins, California poppies and six-star buttons on our dresses and coats and dainty votes for women butterflies on our shoulders, and as we go about in dozens or scores or hundreds the onlookers receive the fitting psychological impression and we find them thinking of us as victors and conquerors."

The opening of this convention, with Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, the national president, in the chair, was a proud moment for Miss Laura Clay, who was one of the organizers of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association in 1888 and had been continually its president. In her address of greeting she said:

We welcome you with hearts tender with the remembrance of the past, when two of the great historic figures which have made this convention possible gave their labors to Kentucky. In the early fifties, Lucy Stone, in the vigor and freshness of her lovely youth and enthusiasm for high ideals, spoke in the cities and towns on both sides of the Ohio River; and in 1881 she held in Louisville a convention of the American Woman Suffrage Association. She established the Woman's Journal, which is now edited, with all the noble moral principles and polished literary ability which have characterized it throughout, by her daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell, who is with us today. In 1879 that other heroic woman, Susan B. Anthony, made a tour through central Kentucky and left an enduring monument of her visit in the Equal Rights Association of Richmond, Madison County, which has had the longest continuous existence of any woman suffrage society in the State....

We welcome you with hearts strong with hope for the future. The glorious victories that we have had inspire us and in all the harbingers of hope we see none greater than the Men's Leagues for Woman Suffrage. These prove to us that the men of our country are preparing to extend equal political rights to women, who, since the time when this vast continent was a wilderness, have stood side by side with them in the heroic labors which have made it blossom like the rose with the fairest civilization the world has ever known. In the great International Alliance Congress at Stockholm men of many nations formed themselves into a Suffrage League, and the Men's League of California did grand service in the glorious victory in their State. This noble land extends from California across the continent to Virginia where the latest league of men has just been formed. We see in this generous cooperation of the men of our nation a better exposition of the legend on Kentucky's shield, "United we stand, divided we fall," when man and woman shall clasp hands and become a truer realization of the vision of the poet and the patriot.

Mrs. Patty Blackburn Semple, president of the Louisville Woman's Club, in offering its welcome, said: "When the Woman's Club was organized three subjects were tabooed—religion, politics and woman suffrage. We kept to the resolution for awhile but gradually we found that our efforts in behalf of civic improvements and the correcting of outrageous abuses were handicapped at every turn by politics. Last year an appeal came to the Woman's Club—to the women of Louisville—to take our schools out of politics. It was a gigantic fight but we won. As the climax of our struggle we spent the greater part of election day at the polls and I think at the close of that day every one of us had exhausted all the joys of 'indirect influence,' which is supposed to satisfy every craving of the female heart. Our club will be twenty-one years old in November, and—we want to vote! We will make you most heartily welcome and most of us will also welcome the principles for which you stand."

Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch (Ills.), first vice-president of the National Association, in responding said: "Now we know definitely that all the things we have heard about Kentucky are true; we have met her brave women and handsome colonels. While we remember all the tradition of the past we live in the present. Kentucky is proud of what her men named Clay have done in the past but it is a pleasure to us to know that today when Kentucky wants anything done she appeals to a woman who is either Clay by name or Clay by blood." Another chivalry is coming into the world besides that felt by a strong man for a beautiful woman. It is that felt by strong women for their weaker and less fortunate sisters. It is the chivalry foreshadowed by Spenser in The Færie Queene, in Britomart, the noble knight, herself a woman, who rescued Amoretta and devoted herself to the help of all weak and helpless women."

Assistant District Attorney Omar E. Garwood of Denver, a founder and the secretary of the Men's Defense League, to refute the misrepresentations of the practical working of woman suffrage in Colorado, was introduced and outlined its work. Mrs. Alexander Pope Humphrey was presented and gave a cordial invitation to a reception for the convention at her home, Truecastle, at the close of the afternoon session, which was as cordially accepted. Mrs. Ben Hardin Helm, a sister of Mrs. Abraham Lincoln, was greeted and expressed her sympathy with the work of the association.

After these pleasant ceremonies at the morning session the convention immediately proceeded to business and listened to the reports from the various committees. That of the new corresponding secretary, Mrs. Mary Ware Dennett, gave a graphic illustration of the rapid increase in the size and scope of the work in her department. After describing the demands from almost every State and saying that the correspondence had doubled during the past year while the output of literature had tripled, she continued:

The correspondence with Canada has been very interesting and has steadily increased and we have sent a good deal of literature to British Columbia, Ontario and Nova Scotia. Literature and letters have gone to Switzerland, Finland and even Japan, in answer to requests, the Japanese correspondent being in the midst of writing a book on the rights of women, because, as he quaintly put it, he believed there was "undoubtedly a truth in it." We have a steadily increasing stream of requests for suitable programs for study clubs, also a sudden spurt of requests for suffrage speakers from the Federation of Women's Clubs. The example of the last Biennial, when woman suffrage appeared for the first time on the official program of the Federation, has precipitated almost an epidemic of suffrage meetings in the State federations and local clubs.

 

The Official Board of the association has made a serious recommendation to the State officers to push the plan of political district organization as the best and most systematic and reliable way of preparing for the submission of a suffrage amendment. A leaflet giving the details of the plan has been published and widely distributed and it has been accepted as scheduled or in modified form in ten States, in most of which the name Woman Suffrage Party has been adopted, following the example of New York City, which was the first to adapt the enrollment work long ago established by the National Association to the needs of modern political action. .... The National office prepared reports of the work of the association for the meeting of the U. S. National Council of Women and for the congress of the International Suffrage Alliance in Stockholm. We have established an exchange of propaganda with the International Shop in London. At the suggestion of Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt we have cooperated with the Women's Enfranchisement League of Cape Colony, South Africa, by asking a large number of American women writers to send copies of their books to an exhibition and sale there of women's work.

Since our last convention there have been two annual meetings of the House of Governors, the first in Kentucky, at which Miss Laura Clay obtained a hearing and presented our cause in a most admirable address; the second in New Jersey, at which a hearing was obtained for Dr. Shaw, who was accorded every courtesy and received with heartiest enthusiasm by the Governors and afterwards by their wives. In Kentucky Governor Wilson was largely instrumental in securing the hearing; in New Jersey, although the governor is also a Wilson, he is unfortunately an "anti," but by the efforts of Governor Shafroth of Colorado, a place on the program was made for Dr. Shaw.

Two valuable compilations have been made, one showing how many times and when and what sort of suffrage bills have been introduced into Legislatures in the last ten years, and the other showing the exact procedure necessary for amending the constitutions of the various States. Under the direction of Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch, our legal adviser, a series of questions on the legal status of women has been printed and sent with letters to the various States. The returns will be published in pamphlet form. At the suggestion of Miss Clay, letters were sent to all members of Congress urging their effort to include women as electors in the bill providing for the direct election of U. S. Senators. Copies of Hampton's Magazine for April were sent to special lists of people in Wisconsin, Kansas and California, which contained Mrs. Rheta Childe Dorr's article on Colorado Women Voters.

We have published 30,000 copies of the "What to Do" leaflet, which have been sent out gratis, some States applying for 3,000 at once; California sent for 10,000 and evidently learned "What to Do" effectively. We issued 45,000 of the little convention seals and the supply has hardly held out. The drawing for the seal was the contribution of Miss Charlotte Shetter of New Jersey. Through the equally generous cooperation of Mrs. Helen Hoy Greeley of New York we have been able to give free of charge for use on letters 13,000 "suffrage stamps." Another bit of cooperation in both labor and money was that between headquarters and Mrs. Raymond Brown, president of the Woman Suffrage Study Club, who with members of her association addressed and sent to about a thousand presidents of suffrage clubs all over the country two copies of Miss Blackwell's striking editorial in answer to Richard Barry's slanderous statements about Colorado, together with a note asking each president to send one copy to the editor of the Ladies' Home Journal, in which Barry's article had appeared, with her own personal protest, and the other to the editor of some paper in her vicinity. The result was a perfect avalanche of protests to the editor of the unfortunate magazine.

The treasurer's report was divided between Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, who had resigned the office, and Miss Jessie Ashley, her successor, and it showed the receipts from all sources, January, 1910, to January, 1911, to have been $43,844; the disbursements, $34,838. Pledges were made at this convention 'to the amount of $12,251, including $1,000 from Mrs. George Howard Lewis of Buffalo; $1,000 from Mrs. Donald Hooker of Baltimore, and $3,000 by Dr. Shaw from a contributor not named.

Miss Agnes E. Ryan, business manager of the Woman's Journal, reported the many changes made in the paper during the year since it became the official organ of the association and the removal of its offices from Beacon Street to 585 Bolyston Street in the building with the Massachusetts and Boston woman suffrage associations and the New England Woman's Club. The advertising had increased from $256 a year to $852 and the circulation from 4,000 to nearly 15,000. The methods by which the increase had been obtained were described. The contract with the association was renewed.

Miss Caroline I. Reilly gave her first report as chairman of the Press Committee in the course of which she said:

The annual reports of the National Press Bureau formerly made by Miss Elizabeth J. Hauser, who so long and ably conducted this department, had reached so high a standard and the foundation laid by her was so substantial and solid that it was possible for us to meet the new conditions and increased volume of work with systematic and business-like methods. Then came Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, with her literary ability and historical knowledge, to open a new field for suffrage propaganda through the magazines, the great syndicates and Sunday papers in the large cities. Thus you will see that when the present chairman took charge of the bureau it had been so splendidly developed by her predecessors that she found only hard work and plenty of it.

 

During the eighteen months since the last convention the records show that we have written 5,584 letters. We are in constant receipt of letters from all over the world written in various languages, the majority containing inquiries regarding suffrage methods in this country and what has been accomplished by our enfranchised women..... We have furnished material for one hundred magazine articles, which have appeared in various periodicals. is. Ol list of newspaper syndicates has increased to nine, some of which are international, and since the last convention we have furnished them 1,314 articles, many by special request. Every one of these syndicates asked for detailed accounts of this convention, together with personal sketches of the officers and speakers. The Associated Press has sent out suffrage news as occasion warranted and has solicited our cooperation.... Last December we resumed the weekly press bulletin and since then we have mailed 31,200. These weekly items are regularly mailed to press chairmen and newspapers in forty-one States, also to Canada, Alaska and Cuba, and every day brings requests for more. A number of monthly pamphlets issued by women's clubs use them. Papers devoted to the labor movement publish them regularly and very often give helpful suggestions. The bureau is impressed with the fact that in future the farm papers should receive serious consideration. . .. One of these, with a circulation of nearly 400,000 has offered us space for suffrage articles to be supplied regularly and this work should be carefully looked after, especially in agricultural States like Kansas and Wisconsin, where campaigns are now in progress.

 

We have responded to fifty requests from schools and colleges for information to be utilized in debates, lectures and school magazines.... The records show that we have replied to 1,214 adverse editorials and letters in papers from Maine to California and secured space in New York City papers for 2,163 notices and articles without any charge to us. We have received and read 62,519 clippings gathered for us by the press clipping bureau, 9,163 of them cut from New York papers alone. Representatives of newspapers and magazines from the following countries have come to us for material: Australia, Finland, Alaska, France, Germany, England, Sweden, Norway, Japan, Wales, Denmark, Russia, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Holland, Hawaii, South America and Canada, as well as from nearly every State in the Union. A number of Sunday papers in the large cities are devoting weekly space to suffrage departments, beginning by publishing the press items and gradually expanding.... Some of the more serious magazines have recently solicited our cooperation, notably the Literary Digest and the American Review of Reviews, whose political editor called personally a few days ago and requested that we send him regularly such suffrage news as we may have at hand, that the items may be embodied in reports of the world's political news. Another important feature of the work of the bureau consists in furnishing material to press chairmen and others to be used in answering attacks on suffrage in their local papers.

Miss Reilly complimented the work of the press chairmen in the States, speaking especially of Mrs. D. D. Terry of Little Rock, who furnished material to seventy-five papers in Arkansas and to a syndicate reaching the weekly papers of the southwest.

A conference was held in the afternoon on the Proper Function of the National Association, led by Dr. M. Carey Thomas of Bryn Mawr and Dr. Anna E. Blount of Chicago. The first evening of the convention was designated as Jubilee Night and Dr. Shaw said in beginning her president's address: "The eighteen months which have elapsed since our last convention have been permeated with suffrage activity. Never in an equal length of time has there been such rapid progress in the enlistment of recruits and the development of active service. By an aggressive out-of-door campaign the message has been carried to a not unwilling people. Never was there a more signal example of manly loyalty to womanhood than in the three-to-one vote for woman suffrage in Washington in 1910. Following close upon it comes the signal victory of California, where as never before were the friends and foes of woman's freedom so equally lined up. Wherever vice, corruption and cupidity held sway, there the vote for woman suffrage was weak. Wherever refinement, education, industry and self-respecting manhood and womanhood dwelt, there the vote in favor of women was strong. These are the battles in this war for justice which have been victorious. Others have been and are being fought at the present time with equal courage."

Graphic accounts were given of the successful campaign in Washington, where the amendment was carried in every county, by Mrs. Caroline M. Smith of Seattle, Mrs. E. A. Shores of Tacoma and Mrs. May Arkwright Hutton of Spokane; and of the one in California by Mrs. Elizabeth Lowe Watson, president of the State Suffrage Association, and J. H. Braly, president of the Political Equality League. Later Miss Frances Wills of Los Angeles; Miss Florence Dwight of Pasadena; Mrs. Mary E. Ringrose, Mrs. Mary S. Sperry of San Francisco, former State president, and Mrs. Rose French were introduced. Mrs. Watson in an eloquent address showed how their success was the culmination of the campaign of 1896 and the result of the years of hard and constant work between that time and the present.

When Mr. Braly began speaking he presented the association with the State flag of California, saying: "The grizzly bear is the king of all American beasts. On the flag, you see, he has a beautiful golden star above his head—the star of hope that brought our Pilgrim fathers across the sea finally coming to rest 318 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE

over the Golden State. There that star of hope and progress and freedom hung for more than sixty years, until Oct. 10, 1911, when it flamed forth with a wondrous brilliancy and started all the bells of heaven ringing." He predicted that Oregon, Arizona and Nevada would soon follow the example of California and said: "Then the star will cross the Rocky Mountains and in will come the States of the Middle West!' Continuing the story the speaker said:

In January, 1910, the last meeting of the last suffrage society in Southern California was held in the parlor of the Angeles Hotel in the city of Los Angeles. The women were discouraged and dispirited. JI rode home alone in my car, my heart weeping and praying a prayer ten miles long, that being the distance to my home in Pasadena. That night I had a vision. I saw in panorama a future glory of my beloved State. I saw well-kept cities and churches filled with devout worshippers; I saw thousands of bright-faced, happy children going to clean schoolhouses and romping and laughing in their playgrounds. I saw, oh, so many sweet and happy homes! I saw no saloons, no drunken men, no places of vice. I saw men and women, husbands and wives, going up to the ballot booths, laughing and chatting as they went and placing their ballots in the boxes. Everything seemed beautiful. The vision passed and I said to myself, "There it is—the women of California will have the ballot and the blessings and glory will follow." Now we come to the beginning of the movement that has had much to do in the enfranchisement of the women of California. I trust you will entirely lose sight of the speaker and see only the great cause away out in the West. A man sat in his room one night with pencil and paper before him. He began to write names of big men who ought to take an interest in the pending suffrage campaign. He wrote down about one hundred names and the next day started out alone to see them. Then followed two months of patient, personal work and about seventy good men and true had signed the league membership form, which read as follows: "The undersigned hereby associate themselves together under the name and style of the Political Equality League of California for the purpose of securing political equality and suffrage without distinction on account of sex." On April 5, 1910, they met around a banquet table and organized the league. Then followed earnest, enthusiastic, impromptu speaking by many of the members....

Mr. Braly told of going to Washington to the national convention, visiting suffrage headquarters in New York and returning home in June, when "immediately the league's Board of Governors, consisting of nine men, met and proceeded to add to it nine splendid women. Headquarters were fitted up and business began." He described the vigorous work of their Legislative Committee with the result that every member from the nine southern counties went to the Legislature pledged to vote for submitting a suffrage amendment.

Saturday morning was partly occupied by a conference on How to Reach the Uninterested, in which fifteen members from as many States took an animated part; and by one on Propaganda, led by Mrs. Grace Gallatin Seton (Conn.) and Miss Mary Winsor (Penn.). Throughout all the daytime sessions valuable and interesting reports on the work in the different States were read. The proposed new constitution was vigorously discussed whenever the time permitted. The delegation from Illinois came with a request that the national headquarters be removed to Chicago but the convention decided to have them remain in New York.

The College Equal Suffrage League held a business meeting in the Seelbach Hotel at ten o'clock followed by a luncheon for college and professional women. The president of the League, Dr. M. Carey Thomas, president of Bryn Mawr College, was toast mistress and Dr. Shaw and Miss Jane Addams were guests of honor. One especially enjoyable feature was Miss Anita C. Whitney's account of the excellent work done by the College League of California in the recent campaign. [For all the above California reports see chapter for that State in Volume VI.]

The report of the National Congressional Committee by its chairman, Miss Emma M. Gillett, a lawyer of Washington, D. C., showed a decided advance in political work over all preceding years. She had placed on her committee Mrs. Upton, Mrs. Elizabeth King Ellicott (Md.), Miss Mary Gray Peck (N. Y.), Mrs. Katharine Reed Balentine (Me. and Cal.) and Miss Belle Kearney (Miss.). State presidents were invited to cooperate and lists of the nominees for Congress in their States were sent to them. The Democratic National Committee furnished the names of its nominees; the Republican National Committee practically refused to do so. Letters asking their opinion on woman suffrage were sent to 378 Democratic and 293 Republican candidates; 135 of the former and 88 of the latter answered; 93 Democrats and 65 Republicans were in favor of full or partial suffrage for women; 13 of the former and one of the latter were opposed; 29 and 23 non-committal. The letters received were almost without exception of a pleasant nature. The District Suffrage Association paid a stenographer and rent of headquarters for the work of sixteen months. Contributions of only $214 were received for it, $100 from U. S. Senator Isaac Stevenson of Wisconsin.

The report on official endorsements of conventions showed the usual large number, political, religious, agricultural, labor, etc. Mrs. Dennett estimated that such endorsements had now been given by organizations representing 26,000,000 members.

Mrs. Pauline Steinem, chairman of the Committee on Education, reported sub-committees in sixteen States working for suitable text books, encouraging the placing of women on school boards, organizing mothers’ and parents’ clubs, offering prizes for essays on woman suffrage, encouraging methods of selfgovernment in schools, etc. The chairman for New Jersey announced that Governor Woodrow Wilson approved of School suffrage and that State Senator Joseph S. Frelinghuysen, president of the State Board of Education, recommended it in his last report.

College Women’s Evening, as always, attracted one of the largest audiences of the week. In the course of an address on What Women Might Accomplish with the Franchise, Miss Jane Addams said:

Sydney Webb points out that while the wages of British working men have increased from 50 to 100 per cent. during the past sixty years the wages of working women have remained stationary. The exclusion from all political rights of five million working women in England is not only a source of industrial weakness and poverty to themselves but a danger to English industry. Working women can not hope to hold their own in industrial matters where their interests may clash with those of their enfranchised fellow workers or employers. They must force an entrance into the ranks of responsible citizens, in whose hands lies the solution to the problems which are at present convulsing the industrial world.

Much of the new demand for political enfranchisement arises from a passionate desire to reform the unsatisfactory and degrading social conditions which are responsible for so much wrong doing. The fate of all the unfortunate, the suffering, the criminal, is daily forced upon woman’s attention in painful and intimate ways. It is inevitable that humanitarian women should wish to vote concerning all the regulations of public charities which have to do with the care of dependent children and the Juvenile Courts, pensions to mothers in distress, care of the aged poor, care of the homeless, conditions of jails and penitentiaries, gradual elimination of the social evil, extended care of young girls, suppression of gambling, regulation of billboard advertising and other things.

Perhaps the woman who leads the domestic life is more in need of the franchise than any other. One could easily name the regulations of the State that define her status in the community. Among them are laws regulating marriage and divorce, defining the legitimacy of children, defining married women's property rights, exemption and homestead laws which protect her when her husband is bankrupt. Then there are the laws regulating her functions as mother to her children.

Dr. Thomas, who presided, spoke on What Woman Suffrage Means to College Women. Only fragmentary newspaper reports are available but she said in beginning: 'We are entering an age of social reconstruction and general betterment and no class today are spending more of their strength and energy to eradicate the wrongs which have resulted from a defective system that denies woman her rights, than the class of women who have received a college education. These efforts, however, amount to little as long as the franchise is denied compared to what is in the reach of possibility. Our efforts have been rewarded to a great extent but until woman has come into her own and is recognized and treated as a citizen of the State on an equal footing with man, our work will continue to be a mere scratching on the surface. Between 30 and 40 per cent. of the college women today are supporting themselves. It is the educated woman who is making the fight for equality and our hope lies in education, the education of both men and women."

Dr. Shaw presided over the Sunday afternoon meeting at which four notable addresses were made. Miss Mary Johnston's subject was Wanted, an Architect, and in eloquent words she showed how woman might be developed physically, mentally and spiritually, with the conclusion: "She can do what she wills and now the thing above all others to be desired is that she wills to act. The time has passed when indifference on her part will be tolerated. Women must rouse themselves to action, the crying needs of the hour demand it. With the ballot in our hands and with the will to produce better conditions our achievements will be unsurpassed." Professor Sophonisba Breckinridge, dean of the Junior College of Women in Chicago University, considered with keen analysis woman suffrage in its relation to the interests of the wage-earning woman. The Rev. Caroline Bartlett Crane (Mich.) presented A New Phase of Home Rule for Cities, saying in conclusion: "Politics at its best is a noble profession in which we earnestly desire to engage. Woman's age-long experience in home-making and mothering of children has fitted her for politics just as well as have man's activities in trade fitted him."

Dr. Shaw introduced Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, Chief of the Government Bureau of Chemistry, as "the man who is trying to get us women a fair chance to live," and he jokingly answered that in view of the swift advance of the woman suffrage movement it was a question whether men would continue to have a chance to live. His topic was Woman's Influence in Public Affairs, "which," he said, "are the summing up of private affairs." In his address he said:

I am not a newcomer myself. My first suffrage address was made in 1877. I believe it is almost useless to work on us old folks. The reforms in our politics and ethics must begin with the children. Educate them to the right and justice of woman suffrage m even before they are born. Instill the idea in them at school; see that they get the proper kind of an education. Women have done wonders in securing our splendid system of public schools.... Women have intellect enough and some to spare. What we want is more ethics. A sense of justice and right is just as important to this country as intellectual strength. Women have the instinct of right. I have never known an organized body of women to be on the wrong side of a public question, although as individuals women sometimes get the wrong point of view, just as men are prone to do. I want equal suffrage because it is right. I want it also because it would have a great effect on woman's influence in public affairs and would help powerfully to get the right thing done. The very fact that woman had the vote would be a restraining and elevating influence. The women have been a tower of strength to every official in this country who has tried to do his duty. Take the question of pure food: I could tell you by the hour of the support that I have had from women and women's organizations. I should despair if I thought that the women did not stand for pure food. We have in this country problems which I almost fear to face. Among them is the great problem of the relation between the wageearner and the capitalist; that of the distribution of the necessities of life; that of the congestion in the cities and depopulation of the country districts. These and many others will take all the wisdom and sympathetic insight of men and women together to solve them. I am glad that men are to have the help of women. They are just entering on their career of greater usefulness in public affairs. With the ballot in their hands they will be endowed with a power much stronger than they have ever had before and they will wield it, I am sure, on the side of right and justice.

Sunday evening the officers of the association were “at home” to delegates, speakers and friends in the parlors of the Hotel Seelbach.

Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, who, to the great happiness of suffragists on several continents, had entirely recovered her health, was now making a trip around the world in the interest of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, of which she was president. At one session a letter from her was read, dated at Kimberly, South Africa, which was enthusiastically received. It said in part:

At the very moment that you will be planning the work for the sixty-third year of the American suffrage campaign, the suffragists of this new-east of all nations will be sitting in their first national convention at Durban, the metropolis of Natal. The movement here is young but is wholly unlike the beginnings of the campaigns in England and America, for our revered pioneers fought their battle against the prejudice ‘and intolerance of their time for the women of the whole world. These women are beginning at the very point where we of the older movements find ourselves today.- The old-time arguments are not heard and here, as everywhere, expediency and political advantage are the causes of opposition.

No two cities could be more unlike than Louisville and Durban. The latter lies in a tropical country with its buildings buried in masses of luxuriant and brilliant flora, all unfamiliar to American eyes. The delegates will look out upon the placid waters of the Indian Ocean and will ride to and fro from their meetings in rickshas drawn by Zulus in the most fantastic dress imaginable, the chief feature being long horns bound upon the head. In Louisville it will be autumn, in Natal it will be spring. Yet, dissimilar as are the scenes of these two conventions, the women composing them will be actuated by the same motives, inspired by the same hopes and working to the same end. The rebellion fomented in that little Seneca Falls convention has overspread the wide earth and from the frigid lands above the North Polar Circle to the most southerly point of the Southern Temperate Zone, the mothers of our race are listening to the new call to duty which these new times are uttering. It is glorious to be a suffragist today, with all the hard times behind us and certain victory before.

May wisdom guide us to do the right thing; may love unite us; may charity temper our differences and may we never forget the obligations we owe the blessed pathfinders of our movement who made the present position of our cause possible!

The election resulted in several changes in the board of officers. Dr. Shaw was re-elected. Mrs. McCulloch declined to stand for re-election as first vice-president and Miss Gordon as second and Miss Addams and Professor Breckinridge were chosen. For corresponding secretary Mrs. Dennett was re-elected. Mrs. Stewart withdrew as recording secretary and Mrs. Susan W. Fitzgerald (Mass.) was elected. Miss Ashley was re-elected treasurer. Mrs. Robert M. LaFollette was elected first auditor and Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw (N. Y.) second. Later Mrs. LaFollette declined to serve and Mrs. Katharine Dexter McCormick was appointed by the board.

In all preceding conventions there had been such unanimity in the choice of officers that the secretary had been able to cast the informal ballot for the election. This new division of sentiment was frequently illustrated during the meetings and indicated that an element had come into the movement, which, as usual with newcomers, wanted a change to accord with its ideas. This was particularly noticeable in the discussion of the proposed new constitution but the differences of opinion were peaceably adjusted by compromise.

After the election Mrs. McCormick, who had recently come into close touch with the National Association, spoke on the Effect of Suffrage Work on Women Themselves, saying in part: "So much attention has been given to the growth and development of the movement for woman suffrage that the effect on the women themselves has been lost sight of or has been little considered but today it is becoming clear that the cause of suffrage is more valuable to the individual woman than she is to the cause. The reason is that this movement has the great though silent force of evolution behind it, impelling it slowly forward; whereas the individual is largely dependent for her development on her own powers and especially on those expressions of life with which she brings herself into contact. The woman suffrage movement offers the broadest field for contact with life. It offers cooperation of the most effective kind with others; it offers responsibility in the life of the community and the nation; it offers opportunity for the most varied and far-reaching service. To come into contact with this movement means to some individuals to enter a larger world of thought than they had known before; to others it means approaching the same world in a more real and effective way. To all it gives a wider horizon in the recognition of one fact—that the broadest human aims and the highest human ideals are an integral part of the lives of women."

The report of the Committee on Church Work by its chairman, Mrs. Mary E. Craigie, (N. Y.) began: "It is estimated: that there is in the United States a total church membership of 34,517,317 persons. It would mean a great deal to the woman suffrage cause if this great organized force, representing the most thoughtful and influential men and women of every community, could be brought to endorse it and work for it. The experiences of this committee seem to prove that in the transition taking place in the world of religious thought this is the most propitious time to obtain such support." She gave a résumé of the splendid work that had been done by the branch committees in the various States, the religious gatherings that had been addressed, often resulting in the adoption of a resolution for woman suffrage, and the hundreds of letters sent to ministers asking for sermons favorable to the cause, which were many times complied with. She closed by saying: "It needs neither figures nor argument to establish the fact that church attendance and church worship are in a condition of decline. It is a critical period in the history of the church, which is changing from the exercise of power to the employment of influence, and the appeals that are coming to the churches are for service from the men and women who are their real strength. The church is not appreciating the resources that are lying dormant, when two-thirds of its membership—the women—are left powerless to carry on the moral and social reform work, because, as a disfranchised class having no political status, they are not counted as a potential force."

Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates (R. I.), chairman, made the report on Presidential suffrage. The report of the Committee on Peace and Arbitration, Mrs. Lucia Ames Mead (Mass.), chairman, spoke of the Ginn Endowment of a million dollars for the World's Peace Foundation and of Mr. Carnegie's great gift of ten million dollars, creating a fund to secure the peace of the world. It told of the vast work that was being done for peace by the women in the various States and said: 'The world for the first time has seen the head of a great government declare that all questions between nations can be peacefully settled. President Taft's noble effort to secure treaties with other nations, to ensure arbitration between them of every justiciable question, should command the gratitude of every patriotic woman. I had hoped to felicitate you on the ratification of these treaties by the necessary two-thirds of the Senate, but in chagrin and disappointment I must instead appeal to you to endeavor instantly to create such public sentiment as shall result in December in the acceptance of the treaties without amendment. If they are thus ratified they will be secured not only with Great Britain and France but certainly Germany, and I have no doubt Japan and most other nations will agree to identical treaties."

Miss Florence H. Luscomb (Mass.) gave an interesting report of the Sixth Congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance held in Stockholm in June, 1911. [See chapter on the Alliance.] Mrs. Agnes M. Jenks, proxy for the president of the New Hampshire association, asked assistance in getting a clause for woman suffrage in the new constitution to be made for that State. Conferences were held throughout the week on legislative work, district organization, publicity, raising money and other branches of the vast activities of the association. The convention Monday afternoon adjourned early in order that the members might enjoy the hospitality of the Woman's Club of Louisville at a "tea" in their attractive rooms, and at another time take the beautiful Riverside Drive. One evening was devoted to light entertainment with two suffrage monologues by Miss Marjorie Benton Cooke; a suffrage slide talk by Mrs. Fitzgerald; a clever speech portraying the results if women voted, by Miss Inez Milholland (N. Y.) and the sparkling play, How the Vote Was Won, read by Miss Fola La Folette. A striking address was given one afternoon by Mrs. T. P. O'Connor, an American woman but long a resident of England and Ireland, who took for her subject, Let Our Watchword be Unity.

One of the most valuable contributions to the convention was Mrs. McCulloch's report as Legal Adviser. This was the result of a list of forty-four questions sent to presidents of State suffrage associations, Woman's Christian Temperance Unions, Federations of Clubs and leading lawyers, followed up by many letters. One of these questions related to the guardianship of children, of which she said:

The subject of the guardianship of children could have been treated a century ago in a few words. The father of the legitimate child was his sole guardian and the mother had no authority or right concerning their child except such as the husband gratuitously allowed her. She had, however, all the duties which the husband might put upon her. This meant that the husband decided about the children's food, clothing, medicine, school, church, home, associates, punishments, pleasures and tasks and that he alone could apprentice a child, could give him for adoption and control his wages. Many mothers were kept in happy ignorance of such unjust laws because their husbands voluntarily yielded to them much of the authority over the children but this was not so in all families and many mothers took cases to Supreme Courts, protesting against the absolute paternal power. When mothers learned what this sole guardianship meant they urged legal changes. Our present guardianship laws, very few alike, show how women, each group alone in their own States, have struggled to mitigate the severest evils of sole fatherly guardianship, especially of the child's person. This to mothers was more important than the guardianship of the child's property. Perhaps the greatest suffering came from the father's power to deed or to bequeath the guardianship to a stranger and away from the mother. Most of the States now allow a surviving mother the sole guardianship of the child's person with certain conditions. Six States have not yet thus limited the father's power and in those where the guardianship is not specifically granted to the surviving mother, the father's sole power of guardianship covers his child even if yet unborn.

The report gave a thorough digest of these guardianship laws filling eight printed pages and this and Mrs. McCulloch's digest of other laws were printed in the "Woman's Journal" and the Handbook of the convention.

Miss Alice Henry presented greetings from the National Womens' Trade Union League; Miss Caroline Lowe from the Women's National Committee of the Socialist Party; Mrs. A. M. Harrison from the State Federation of Woman's Clubs; Mrs. Charles Campbell of Toronto from the Canadian Woman Suffrage Association; Mrs. W. S. Stubbs, wife of the Governor, and Mrs. William A. Johnston, wife of the Chief Justice and president of the State Suffrage Association, from Kansas. A letter of love and good wishes with regrets for her absence was ordered sent to Mrs. Catt and one of affectionate sympathy to Mrs, Susan Look Avery (Ky.) for the death of her son, which prevented her attendance. During the convention Mrs. Lida Calvert Obenchain, author of Aunt Jane of Kentucky, and Miss Eleanor Breckenridge, president of the Texas Suffrage Association, were introduced and said a few words. A telegram of greeting was read from Mrs. Caroline Meriwether Goodlett, a founder of the Daughters of the Confederacy.

The resolutions were presented by the chairman, Miss Bertha Coover, corresponding secretary of the Ohio Suffrage Association, the committee as usual consisting of one member from each State delegation. They urged the ratification of the Arbitration Treaties in the form desired by President Taft; expressed sympathy with Finland in its struggle for liberty; endorsed the proposed Federal Amendment for the election of U. S. Senators by popular vote and demanded that women should have part in this vote; endorsed the campaign for pure food and drugs; called for the same moral standard for men and women and the same legal penalties, for those who transgress the moral law; asked the Government to erect a colossal statue of Peace at the entrance to the Panama Canal, and there were others on minor points. Greetings and appreciation were sent to "the justice-loving men of Washington and California, whose example will be an inspiration to the men of other States." Memorial resolutions were adopted for prominent suffragists who had died during the year, among them Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Dr. Emily Blackwell, Ellen C. Sargent, William A. Keith, the artist; Samuel Walter Foss, the poet; Lillian M. Hollister, Elizabeth Smith Miller, Eliza Wright Osborne and Dr. Annice Jeffreys Myers.

There was a long resolution of thanks for the courtesy and hospitality received in Louisville, which included the clergymen who opened the sessions with prayer, the musicians, who gave their services, the press committees, the hostesses and others.^[2]

On the last evening with a large audience present Mrs. Desha Breckinridge spoke on The Prospect for Woman Suffrage in the South. "Although Kentuckians are wont to boast that within these borders is the purest Anglo-Saxon blood now existing, the spirit of their ancestors has departed," she said, and continued:

Since 1838 Kentucky has retrograded. An effort to obtain School suffrage for a larger class of women has brought about a reactionary measure. Kentucky women at present have no greater political rights than the women of Turkey—for we have none at all—but the action of certain male politicians in defeating the School suffrage measure in the last two Legislatures has really been of advantage to the movement. It has put not only women but the progressive men of the State into fighting trim.... The opposition of the non-progressive element has made of this "scrap of suffrage" a live, political issue. It is likely to be carried in the next Legislature by the determination of the better men of the State even more than of the women, and the fight made against it has gone far to convince both that the full franchise should be granted to women. The action of the Democratic party, when leadership in it is resumed by the best element, shows a realization that the wishes of the women of the State are to be reckoned with and that the friendship of the women, which may be gained by so simple an act of justice in their favor, is a political asset of no small importance. It is quite possible that the party in Kentucky and throughout the South may eventually realize that by advocating and securing suffrage for women it may bind to itself for many years to come, through a sense of gratitude and loyalty, a large number of women voters, just as the Republican party since the emancipation of the negro has had without effort the unquestioning loyalty of thousands of negro voters; although the women would never vote so solidly as do the negroes, because they would represent a much more thoughtful and independent body....

After showing what had been the results in the South from admitting a great body of illiterate voters she said:

A conference of southern women suffragists at Memphis a few years ago, in asking for woman suffrage with an educational qualification, pointed out that there were over 600,000 more white women in the southern States than there were negroes, men and women combined. If the literate women of the South were enfranchised it would insure an immense preponderance of the Anglo-Saxon over the African, of the literate over the illiterate, and would make legitimate limitation of the male suffrage to the literate easily possible....

Conditions of life in the South have made and kept Southerners individualists. The southern man believes that he should personally protect his women folk and he does it. He is only now slowly realizing that, with the coming of the cotton mills and other manufactories and with the growth of the cities, there has developed a great body of women, young girls and children who either have no men folk to protect them or whose men folk, because of ignorance and economic weakness, are not able to protect them against the greed and rapacity of employers or of vicious men. It is a shock to the pride of southern chivalry to find that women are less protected by the laws in their most sacred possessions in the southern States than in any other section of the Union; that the States which protect their women most effectively are those in which women have been longest a part of the electorate....

In the community business of caring for the sick, the incurable, the aged, the orphaned, the deficient and the helpless, women of the South bear already so important a part that to withdraw them from public affairs would mean sudden and widespread calamity. Women in the South are in politics, in the higher conception of the word. "Politics," says Bernard Shaw, "is not something apart from the home and the babies—it is home and the babies."" Women have long since gotten into politics in the South in the sense that they have labored for the passage and enforcement of legislation in the interest of public health, the betterment of schools and the protection of womanhood and childhood—for the preservation, in short, "of home and the babies."

Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst of England, received an ovation when she rose to speak and soon disarmed prejudice by her dignified and womanly manner. She began by pointing out the fallacy that the women of the United States had so many rights and privileges that they did not need the suffrage and in proof she quoted existing laws and conditions that called loudly for a change. She then took up the situation in Great Britain and explained how many years the women had tried to get the franchise by constitutional methods only to be deceived and spurned by the Government. She told how at last a small handful of them started a revolution; how they had grown into an army; how they had suffered imprisonment and brutality; how the suffrage bill had again and again passed the second reading by immense majorities and the Government had refused to let it come to a final vote. "We asked Prime Minister Asquith to give us a time for this," she said. "For eight long hours in a heavy frost some of the finest women in England stood at the entrance to the House of Commons and waited humbly with petitions in their hands for their rulers and masters to condescend to receive them but the House adjourned while they stood there. The next day, while they waited again, there was an assault by the police, acting under instructions, that I do not like to dwell upon outside of my own country."

Dr. Shaw made the closing address, eloquent with hope and courage for the future and, as always, the final blessing at the convention as the benediction is at church.

In summing up the week the Woman's Journal said: "Only those who attended our national convention at Louisville can understand how really wonderful it was. For hospitality, for good management, for beautiful cooperation and self-effacement, the Kentucky women set a standard that will long be remembered and will be very hard to equal in the future. It made hard work easy and all work a joy. The gratitude of the National Association is theirs forever. They gave much to us, did we give anything to them? Here we can only say we trust that we did and accept with confidence what one of the State's great women said many times: 'This convention has done wonders for Kentucky; it has surpassed my hopes.'"

 

1. Part of Call: Within the year the State of Washington has completed its work of fully enfranchising its adult citizens. Before the convention assembles, California will no doubt have accepted the idea of true democracy. We also rejoice because the Legislatures of Kansas, Wisconsin, Oregon and Nevada have voted to submit the question to their electors. Many States, however, still refuse to allow the voters to pass upon the question of giving political independence to women. Since the purpose of the National American Woman Suffrage Association is "to secure the right to vote to women citizens of the United States," we have called this national convention of suffragists. From every State will come delegates, who will bring with them the growing spirit of rebellion against injustice....
    

   We call upon every public-spirited woman to come and help devise methods of carry. ing on the fight, to strengthen the fire of revolt, to show by overwhelming numbers and determined earnestness that women will no longer be satisfied to be treated with political contempt by the legislators who are supposed to represent them.... Do your part to inspire our workers with courage, determination, fervor and consecration; to arouse them to put forth their full strength, even to the utmost sacrifice, to obtain universal recognition of the truth that every adult citizen should have a voice in the government of a free country.

    

   	Anna Howard Shaw,	President.
   	Catharine Waugh McCulloch,	First Vice-President.
   	Kate M. Gordon,	Second Vice-President.
   	Mary Ware Dennett,	Corresponding Secretary.
   	Ella S. Stewart,	Recording Secretary.
   	Jessey Ashley,	Treasurer.
   	Laura Clay,	$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$ Auditors.
   	Alice Stone Blackwell,

2. Of the press the Woman's Journal said: "The Louisville papers gave the convention full and fair reports and the Herald and Times had editorials declaring woman suffrage to be inevitable. Colonel Henry Watterson in the Courier-Journal struggled between a sincere desire to be courteous and hospitable to a convention of distinguished women meeting in his city and an equally sincere belief that woman suffrage would be a bad thing. A rousing editorial in favor of it appeared in Desha Breckinridge's paper, the "Lexington Leader".