It was voted on motion of Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery to make Miss Anthony honorary president, which was done with applause and she observed informally: "You have moved me up higher. I always did stand by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and my name always was after hers, and I am glad to be there again."
The press notices said of the new officer:
Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, the newly-elected president of the National Suffrage Association, is a young and handsome woman with a charming personality, and is one of the most eloquent and logical speakers upon the public platform. or the past five years she has been lecturer and organizer for the association, where she has shown rare executive ability and earnestness of purpose.
She has traveled from east to west and from north to south many times, lectured in nearly every city in the Union and has been associated with every important victory that equal suffrage has won of late years. She was in Colorado during the amendment campaign, and the women attribute their success to her more than to any other person from outside the State. She was in Idaho, where all four political parties put suffrage planks into their platforms and the amendment carried. She went before the Louisiana constitutional | convention, by the earnest invitation of New Orleans women, and it gave tax-paying women the right to vote upon all questions submitted to the tax-payers.
It had been known for several years that Mrs. Chapman Catt was Miss Anthony's choice as her successor; she was considered the best-equipped woman in the association for the position, and the vote of the delegates showed how nearly unanimous was her election, The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, who for a number of years had been vice-president-at-large, could have had Miss Anthony's sanction and the unanimous vote of the convention if she would have consented to accept the office.
Mrs. Chapman Catt opened the next day's meeting by saying:
A surprise was promised as part of this afternoon's program and a pleasant duty now falls to me. It is to present Miss Anthony with the spirit of a gift, for the gift itself is not here. Suffrage people from all over the world go to see Miss Anthony at her home in Rochester, N. Y., and consequently the carpets of the parlor and sitting-room are getting a little worn. When she goes home she will find two beautiful Smyrna rugs fitting the floors of those two rooms—the gift of her suffrage friends. I am also commissioned to present her with an album. Some of our naughty officers have been making fun of it and saying that albums are all out of date; but this one contains the photographs of all the presidents of the
