Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/352

Federal Suffrage;^[1] Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake, chairman, on Legislation; and Miss Laura Clay on the Suffrage Convocation at the Tennessee Exposition the preceding year. The Plan of Work, offered by the chairman, Mrs. Mariana W. Chapman, and adopted, represented the best result of many years' experience and exemplified the aims and methods of the association. The old board of officers was almost unanimously re-elected.

The afternoon Work Conferences, to exchange ideas as to methods for organizing, raising funds, etc., which met in a small hall, aroused so much interest and attracted so many people that it was necessary to transfer them to the large auditorium. The Resolutions Committee presented by its chairman, Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, a brief summary of the results already accomplished and the rights yet to be secured, in part as follows:

The National-American Woman Suffrage Association, at this its thirtieth annual meeting, celebrates the semi-centennial anniversary of the first Woman's Rights Convention, held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, N. Y., and reaffirms every principle then and there enunciated. We count the gains of fifty years: Woman's position revolutionized in the home, in society, in the church and in the State; public sentiment changed, customs modified, industries opened, co-education established, laws amended, economic independence partially secured, and equal suffrage a recognized subject of legislation. Fifty years ago women voted nowhere in the world; to-day Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho have established equal suffrage for women, and have already in the Congress of the United States eight Senators and seven Representatives with women constituents. Kansas . has granted women Municipal Suffrage, and twenty-three other States have made women voters in school elections. This movement is not confined to the United States; in Great Britain and her colonies women now have Municipal and County Suffrage, while New Zealand and South Australia have abolished all political distinctions of sex. Therefore,

Resolved, That we hereby express our profound appreciation of the prophetic vision, advanced thought and moral courage of the pioneers in this movement for equality of rights, and our sincere gratitude for their half century of toil and endurance to secure for women the privileges they now enjoy, and to make the way easier for those who are to complete the work. We, their successors, a thousandfold multiplied, stand pledged to unceasing effort until women have all the rights and privileges which belong equally to every citizen of a republic.

That in every State we demand for women citizens equality with male citizens in the exercise of the elective franchise, upon such terms and conditions as the men impose upon themselves.

1. Federal Suffrage is considered in Chapter I.