The first executive session of officers and members was held in Lincoln Hall, March 4th, at ten o'clock A. M., the Chairman of the Executive Committee, May Wright Sewall, presiding. The minutes of the last Executive Session were read and accepted. After the roll-call of delegates, which showed twenty-six States and Territories represented, the Committees for the work of the Convention were appointed. *

A resolution was passed that the proceedings of the Convention should be published in pamphlet form.

The business management of the Convention was then discussed, and the meeting adjourned.

The second executive session was held March 5th, at eleven o'clock, A. M., in the Riggs house parlors.

Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway of Portland, Oregon, was called upon to give the status of the work in her State.

Mrs. Duniway said: On the first Monday in June the amendment securing Suffrage to the women of Oregon is to be voted upon by the electors of the State. County officers and members of Congress are to be elected at the same time. She believed the large majority of the leading men of both political parties were in favor of Woman Suffrage. In the Legislature of Oregon, as in that of Washington Territory, the majority vote cast in one House was Republican and in the other Democratic. The Woman Suffragists of Oregon had not allied their societies with any other reforms. Many of the members are temperance women, but not active workers in the W. C. T. U., and she felt sure the favorable results of their efforts were largely due to their having kept free from affiliation with all other organizations, except the National Woman Suffrage Association, which they had always considered their alma mater , and upon which they had relied to point the way in they should walk, and they hoped in turn to be able to come up and strengthen the hands of the parent society.

The past year they had been mainly occupied in taking a political census of the State—to ascertain who were the friends of the cause in all the different counties. When nearly completed, the papers were all destroyed by a fire, so that the work had all to be done over again, and most of it, said Mrs. D., at “my own expense.” She felt sure of the vote of the best men of both parties, and they control the vote of the floating population—the men who have votes but no homes. She expected victory would be won.

Miss Anthony said: The Association had tried sending money and speakers into each of the four States that had voted upon the question, and now she would suggest that Oregon shall not be invaded by large numbers of speakers at this last moment—but that we should do all in our power to help them financially. Mrs. Duniway had persistently done the best of educational work throughout that State for the past thirteen years. She had given line upon line, over and over, school district by school district in each and every one of those years, besides sending five thousands copies of her New Northwest into every nook and corner of the State. The result of all this educational work is to be gathered up at the ballot-box on the second of June.

A resolution, presented by Edward M. Davis, of Philadelphia, that a circular letter from the officers of the Association, should be sent to every member, asking for contributions for carrying on the work in Oregon, was passed. And also one that at the close of Mrs. Duniway's speech in the Convention, Miss Anthony should call for contributions for Oregon. The following resolution was passed:

That members desiring to collect funds for the Oregon campaign under the auspices of the Association and the Vice-Presidents their respective States, shall be given an autograph letter from the proper officers authorizing them to make such collection; and that all monies collected in this way shall be reported to Jane H. Spofford, Treasurer of the Association; Mrs. Duniway, on receiving such money, to send a duplicate receipt of same to the person sending it and to Mrs. Spofford.

The Third Executive Session was held March 6th, in Riggs house parlors, at ten o'clock A. M. The report from the Committee, appointed in 1883, on the basis of State representation in the Association, Mrs. Shattuck, of Massachusetts, Chairman, proposed that all Woman Suffrage Societies throughout the country be welcomed as auxiliaries, each Society to be represented in the Association by five delegates, this proposition to take the place of Article Sixth in the Constitution. Discussion ensued relating to limitation of number of delegates having power to vote in the Association, and a resolution was passed:

That the subject be again referred to the Committee for report at the First Executive Session of 1885, with Mrs. Duniway, of Oregon, and Mrs. Brown, of Ohio, to fill the vacancies made by the Bessie Boone Cheshire, of Indiana, and Jane C. McKinney, of Iowa.

Mrs. Gougar, Chairman of Committee on Plan of Work, then read report of Committee. Action was deferred until return of officers and members from the White-house, where they were to be received by the President. On reässembling, the Committee on Nominations reported and the officer for 1884 were elected. A resolution was passed:

That all vacancies not filled at this time, on list of officers, be filled by Miss Anthony, Chairman of the Nominating Committee, and that the Nominating Committee appointed 0107at this Convention be continued for another year to consider and present names for officers at the next Annual Convention; and that the Chairman shall fill any vacancies which may occur on the Committee.

The Plan of Work was reported by the Committee, duly discussed and ordered to be presented for consideration in the public session of the Association:

1. Resolved, That we hold a Convention under the auspices of this Association in every unorganized State and Territory in the Union during the coming year, these Conventions to be held, so far as possible, at the Capitals of the States.

2. Resolved, That we consider the enfranchisement of the women citizens of the United States the paramount political question of the hour; therefore

Resolved, That we will by all honorable methods oppose the election of any Presidential candidate who is a known opponent to Woman Suffrage, and we recommend similar action on the part of our State Associations in regard to State and Congressional candidates; and further

Resolved, That the officers of this Association shall communicate with the Presidential nominees of the several political parties and ascertain their exact position upon this subject.

3. Resolved, That all Legislature shall be requested to memorialize Congress upon the submission of a Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution. This is to be the duty of the Vice-Presidents of the States.

Mrs. Blake, presenting the minority report, said: She was in favor of political action by the Association; the rest of the Committee were non-partizan. She thought if a man was nominated for President who is in favor of Woman Suffrage, the Association should favor such a candidate—no matter to what party he belonged.

Mrs. Gougar, speaking upon the recommendations, said: At this time, when there is no great political question before the country, if a man is too cowardly to say unequivocally he favors Woman Suffrage, she would not work to elect his to office. If the Republican party so far forget woman as to keep her disfranchised, she thought women should oppose that party. She believed in being aggressive, as we were for the freeing of the negroes. We have been in this non-aggressive attitude for years. Let us oppose any man who will not say he is willing to enfranchise woman. I should make no difference what party a man belongs to, who will not favor Woman Suffrage, as that is the paramount question of the hour. She asked the Association to indite a letter to the political candidates, asking where they stand on this question, and if afraid to state their position they must confess themselves moral cowards.

Mrs. Brown said: She would agree with Mrs. Gougar if there were only two political parties in the field, but she thought there were that would be glad of woman's voice. In this case we will find women divided into three wings, and she thought it most advisable that we hold ourselves in a negative position, ready to choose who we will favor after the platforms and candidates of the political parties have been announced.

Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, of Illinois, said: She thought if the officers of the various political parties were present they would prefer the passage of the declaratory resolution, so they could know what we would do. It was wisest not to let them know where we will unite. Better to hold ourselves as a reserve force as we cannot unite to elect, we can only unite to defeat.

Mrs. Blake and Mrs. Shattuck favored Mrs. Harbert's recommendation.

Mr. Davis said: The main point was concentration, and it was easier to concentrate on a negative resolution than an affirmative one, and he did not consider it wise to commit ourselves too early to any measure.

A resolution was then passed adopting Mrs. Harbert's resolution, and that Mrs. Gougar's recommendation, requesting the opinion of each Presidential candidate, on Woman Suffrage, be incorporated in the resolution, and that this resolution be incorporated in the Plan of Work.

There was some discussion in relation to another attempt to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment. Miss Anthony said it was idle to do anything about it. All effort should be concentrated on the Sixteenth Amendment. Mrs. Gougar thought otherwise. She said there might be a change of sentiment with a change of judges. The Supreme Court is reörganized and we might get another and a different decision.

Resolutions were passed:

That each speaker prepare an abstract of her speech for publication, to be limited to two hundred and forty words, and that the names of the Officers of the Association, the Constitution and Standing Committees, be printed in the report.

That the Committee on the Press, consisting of Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, of Illinois; Helen M. Gougar, of Indiana; Eveleen L. Mason, of Wisconsin, and Caroline J. Todd, of Missouri, appointed four years ago, be continued through the year, to secure the aid of the journalist of the country, and especially to get women enlisted in editing a “Woman's Column” in the local papers of their villages and counties throughout the country.

The first public session opened at 2:30 Tuesday P.M. In the absence of the President, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, First Vice-President, took the chair. In the absence of Rev. Olympia Brown, of Wisconsin, prayer was offered by the Rev. Florence Kollock, of Englewood, Ill., who thanked the Lord that the mothers, wives, sisters and daughters of the country were waking up to the holy duties which they had to perform. She asked for a blessing upon the Convention, and prayed that the world might feel the influence of the work done in that assemblage. Mrs. Shattuck, of Boston, played the accompaniment and led the audience, while singing an original hymn, copies of which had been distributed through the hall. The air was that of “Hold the Fort.” Miss Anthony spoke of the regret in the audience and on the platform at the absence of Mrs. Stanton, and eulogized 0129that lady as the leader of the Woman Suffrage movement since 1848, when she and her elder in years, but not in work for this cause—Lucretia Mott—had called the first meeting to discuss the question of Woman Suffrage. She said Mrs. Stanton was at the old family home in Johnstown, N.Y., where a dear sister was lying very ill, expecting death every hour. Miss Anthony then read the following letter:

Johnstown, Fulton Co., N. Y., March 1, 1884.

My Dear Friends in Convention Assembled:

I deeply regret that I cannot be present at this, the Sixteenth Annual Washington Convention, but family illness prevents.

After an absence of two years in the Old World, I had hoped at this time to see again the usual familiar faces I have so often greeted on this platform and to welcome with renewed pleasure the earnest young women, coming from year to year, to fill the vacant places that time is gradually making in our ranks.

Though the absent in person, I shall be with you in spirit, happy in the success of the Convention, proud in the wisdom and moderation that will no doubt, as usual guide the proceedings of the platform. Our American journals in times past were wont to point us for example to the superior manner in which the Suffrage agitation was carried on in England, but after spending a year there, and attending many of their Suffrage meetings, I return quite well satisfied with the dignity of our Convention, the appearance of our women, the eloquence of our speakers and the enthusiasm of our audiences.

There is only one great advantage they have over us, and that is in the large number of honorable gentlemen interested in the movement, who always take part in their meetings. This,no doubt, is due to the fact that they have municipal and school suffrage; belong with men to the liberal leagues; hold some municipal offices, thus having a direct influence in local politics. Hence their public men take note of this growing power. Our politicians, on the contrary, think that Woman Suffrage in this country is still too far to make it necessary for the present generation of Congressmen to take note of the interest of women.

I think some of our friends should interview the prominent Presidential candidates, learn how they stand on the franchise question,and also ascertain if there is any possibility that either of the leading parties will place a Woman Suffrage plank in its platform. If not, I trust this Convention, in numbers and influence, may be to our enemies like the hand-writing on the wall of old, warning them that they have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.

While greeting those of our friends who are with you in health and vigor, my thoughts dwell, too, on those who are absent to return to us no more forever. I would remind you of that noble co-worker, Elizabeth T. Schenk, of California, the first to demand equal rights for women on the Pacific slope. In her rare common sense, dignity and wisdom, she was a worthy representative of the grand movement she helped to inaugurate. We have been suddenly called in the past year to part with one of the youngest members of our Association, Jeannie O'Connor. Earnest, talented, conscientious, we cannot too highly estimate the loss of one so full of promise, and so deeply interested in the enfranchisement of woman.

Where shall we find again such an able, eloquent advocate of the rights of woman in our day and generation as we had in Wendell Phillips? In looking over the glowing testimonials to him as philosopher, philanthropist, scholar and gentlemen. I have been amazed to find how many liberal writers, even, have qualified their praise with 01310regrets over his recent utterances o the reforms of the day. As that form of slavery to which he devoted his early life is ended and the great victory passed into history, the most faint-hearted moralist can now with safety say: “Well done, good and faithful servant”; but for the struggle with other forms of oppression still respectable and popular, they have no words of encouragement for the living or praise for the dead.

The same hatred of injustice that made Wendell Phillips advocate emancipation for the African race, moved him also to speak out boldly for the rights of woman and the laboring masses, for prohibition and a better system of finance. What short-sighted writers have pointed out as his weakness was indeed his strength. He was conscientious throughout; ever as true to the great principles of freedom and justice as the needle to the pole. As he once said, “I was not born to be an Abolitionist merely, but to speak the truth on all the wrongs of society that I see and feel.” And he did it bravely and boldly to the end, followed by the regrets of timid friends and the deprecations of time-serving enemies. Great soul! Peerless in moral courage, self-denial and steadfastness of purpose! Though possessed of abundant wealth, while refined and artistic in his tastes, he lived economically in the humblest surroundings. In his renunciation of the elegancies and luxuries of life, of all its temptations and ambitions, he lived above the world, while faithfully fulfilling his duties in it.

Socrates before the court in Athens, or Luther before the Diet of Worms, does not afford a grander scene in human history than Wendell Phillips before the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa society in 1881. In such a conservative assemblage of presidents, professors, scholars, authors and editors, what other man would have dared to hurl such thunderbolts of indignation at the national crimes and outrages of his times?

The great Athenian and the German reformer had but their own cases to plead, to touch but a few points of Christianity and morals, but Wendell Phillips swept the whole gamut of human suffering and crime in such words of glowing eloquence as no human lips have ever surpassed. He stood there calm and earnest, though almost alone in his convictions in that vast audience; but the profound silence and fixed attention proved that while they rejected his opinions they reverenced the moral courage of the man. It was on that occasion he said: “If in this critical battle for Universal Suffrage—our fathers’ nobles legacy to us, and the greatest trust God leaves in our hands—there be any weapon which once taken from the armory will make victory certain, it will be as it has been in art, literature and society, summoning woman into the political arena. The literary class, until within a half a dozen years, has taken note of this great uprising only to fling every obstacle in its way. The first glimpse we get of Saxon blood in history is that line of Tacitus in his Germany, which reads: ‘In all grave matters they consult their women.’ Years hence, when robust Saxon sense has flung away Jewish superstition and Eastern prejudice, and put under its foot fastidious scholarship and squeamish fashion, some second Tacitus, from the valley of the Mississippi, will answer to him of the Seven Hills, In all grave questions we consult our women.’”

While we hold Wendell Phillips in grateful remembrance for the great services he has rendered our cause for nearly forty years, let us not forget to mention the noble woman, whose sympathy in his life work has been a constant inspiration.

In closing I might suggest that a resolution, expressive of the tenderness and respect we who know her best feel for her in this hour of deep affliction, be sent to Ann Green Phillips from this Convention.

Sincerely yours, Elizabeth Cady Stanton.,

Miss Anthony, in a short opening address, alluded to the progress made in the cause both in the Old World and the New. 01411While abroad she and Mrs. Stanton attended several meetings for discussion on this subject in England and Scotland, in which they reported the status of the question on this side of the water.

Miss Anthony said: The right of Suffrage was there granted in municipal and school matters. This was only given, however, to widows and spinsters. “A high premium,” said Miss Anthony, “do they offer to spinsterhood and widowhood.” Over there public men were not afraid to go to Woman Suffrage meetings and sit upon the platform. It would be so here if women had the influence of a vote. The latest victory was in Washington Territory, and that was heralded next morning by every newspaper in America, England and France. And the advocates of Woman Suffrage have come up here for the sixteenth time to urge upon Congress the necessity for submitting the Sixteenth Amendment to the several Legislatures. Miss Anthony said there had been great progress in public sentiment within the year, and as proof of it she had yesterday received a message from the New York Evening Telegram, asking for a hundred-and-fifty-word special by wire, giving the names of the noted women present. This was the first indication that a Convention of women was of as much importance as a meeting of workingmen.

Mrs. Belva A. Lockwood reported the progress of the Woman Suffrage agitation in the District of Columbia as follows:

There is no Suffrage in the District for men or women. A Committee of One Hundred was appointed by the citizens of the District to secure Suffrage through the present Congress. That Committee met in November, 1883, and organized itself for work. The women of the District, appointed a Committee * to confer with the Committee of One Hundred, addressed them in the following memorial:

We, the undersigned, citizens of the District of Columbia, believing ourselves endowed with equal privileges with the men of this District, therefore beg leave to join with them in the following resolutions asking Suffrage for them and for ourselves also:

“Taxation without representation is tyranny, Governments are instituted among “men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever a “government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter “or abolish it.”—[ Declaration of Independence

To the Honorable the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America:

The undersigned, citizens of the United States residing in the District of Columbia, respectfully represent to your honorable body that we are now by law deprived of the inestimable right to proceed by lawful election to choose our municipal rulers, and that we have no voice in municipal affairs; furthermore, that neither your petitioners nor their ancestors consented to a form of government for this District in which no cry of the people receives attention, in which the rulers are responsible only to the appointing power. We have many grievances as the outgrowth of this despotic form of government, which we shall lay before your honorable bodies and to which we earnestly invite attention. Your petitioners, therefore, as citizens of the United States having the right to petition Congress for a redress of their grievances, respectfully pray your 01512honorable body to grant them a municipal charter, restoring to the citizens their right to hold elections and to exercise the American right of self-government.

To this memorial the following reply was sent by the Committee of One Hundred:

“Washington, November 24th, 1883.

“Mesdames: I am directed by the Executive Committee on Suffrage for the District of Columbia to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of the 14th instant, in which you tender to them and the cause of Suffrage your sympathy and aid in its behalf. They welcome most heartily the coöperation of their fellow-citizens in the pending effort to secure for the people of this District the right of self-government in their municipal affairs, that they may enjoy alike the privileges of taxation and representation. In behalf of the Committee I desire to express to you their appreciation of your proffered sympathy and aid, and their thanks therefor. It is the sincere desire and hope of the Committee that they may, through the generous coöperation and united efforts of the friends of Suffrage here and throughout the country, secure the enactment of a law which will restore to this city of one hundred and eighty thousand people the right to vote and elect their own municipal rulers, thus restoring to them a sacred privilege, of which they have been bereft by an unjust and unfortunate law of Congress.

“Very respectfully, A. M. Clapp, “Chairman of Com.”

A bill for Suffrage for the District was subsequently prepared, approved by both Committees and is now pending before the Committee for the District of the House.

A Committee for the purpose of securing the appointment of women on the School Board was appointed, consisting of Jerusha F. Joy, Eliza Ward, Ellen M. O'Connor, Dr. Caroline B. Winslow and Ellen H. Sheldon. So far as I know, this Committee are not yet ready to report, the illness and some family afflictions of the Chairman having interfered to some extent with the efficient work of the Committee.

A Committee on religious services and instructions at the hospitals, jail and work-house of the District, have visited and inspected all of those places, and have established regular services at the jail with occasional visits at the workhouse hospital.

During the year five women—Marilla M. Ricker, Emma M. Gillett, Ruth G. D. Haven, Eliza H. Bryant and Mary A. F. Carey—have graduated at law in the District, and the first two have been admitted to the bar and are now active members of the profession. Emma M. Gillett and Marilla M. Ricker have been appointed Examiners in Chancery by the Supreme Court of the District. Miss Gillett has also been appointed, and for the last year has practiced, as a Notary Public for the District. She was appointed by the President.

On the occasion of the visit of Lord Chief Justice Coleridge to this city in October last, the Vice-President for this District addressed to him a letter on the subject of the admission of English women to the bar, in answer to which the following letter was received:

“Washington, 21st October, 1883.

“Madam: I thank you sincerely for your very interesting communication, the main parts of which I will take care are made known, so far as it depends on me, in my own country. I am, madam, your obedient servant, “Mrs. Lockwood.” “Coleridge.”

The Committee on Temperance Work have organized and have appeared before the Committees of House and Senate, have held public meeting in every available locality and have been instant, in season and out of season, for the suppression of the rum traffic, and much effective work has been done. The question has been mooted and discussed of allowing both the men and women of the District to vote on the temperance 01613question. Mrs. Eliza A. Chambers has enrolled eight hundred children into societies and Bands of Hope, pledged to use no intoxicating liquors or tobacco, and not to indulge in profane words. This good work is going on. We now propose to enroll in this Temperance Alliance all of the children of the public schools, and have obtained the consent of the Commissioners therefor.

The number of women admitted to the practice of medicine during the past year I do not know, but believe that we have now as many as fifteen able women practitioners in the District. Two women's dispensaries and hospitals have been established, one under the allopathic and one under the homeopathic schools.

We have secured during this year a ladies’ room at the court-house of the District, and a matron to attend it, for the first time in our history. We made a strong effort to secure, and believed we had secured, a woman deputy-warden or matron at the District jail. The appointment has been made and confirmed and the salary fixed, but hangs fire by a controversy between the warden of the jail and the attorney-general, as to who shall control the fund.

Our working force in the District nearly all work for a living, but we have done and said what we could to keep up our end of the work, and not drag too far behind our sisters in the States.

Mrs. Mary B. Clay, introduced by Miss Anthony as a daughter of Cassius M. Clay, reported as to the progress of the movement in Kentucky. She read extracts from the laws of her State, which she considered unfair toward women.

Mrs. Clay said:

Mrs. President, Members of the Convention—Ladies and Gentlemen:

Kentucky being so conservative a State, her statutes based upon and largely influenced by the common law, and her religious beliefs very rigid, presents to a reform, of whatever kind, a most formidable front. To battle with prejudice, fixed notions, and reverence for that which is, is always a most disheartening field into which to try to introduce new views on any subject, especially that of woman's right to equality with men, as it attacks all that has hitherto been regarded as fixed facts in politics and religion, and strikes at the root of the prejudice of ages. This state of society admits slowly and very cautiously any innovation of its mode of thinking or action. Hence, in talking to a Kentuckian on the subject of woman's right to qualify under the law, you have to batter down his self-conceit that he is just and generous and chivalric toward woman, and that she cannot possibly need other protection than he gives her with his own right arm,—while he forgets that ‘tis from man alone that woman needs protection, and often from the one nearest to her does she need the right to protect herself from his avarice, brutality or neglect; and the only remedy for her, as for man himself, in this Republic, is the ballot in her hand, He thinks he is generous to woman when he supplies her wants, forgetting that he has first robbed her, by law, of all her property in marriage, and then may or may not give her that which is her own by right of inheritance.

Women in slave-holding States have ever been more dependent in their lives for support, comfort and opportunities on the men around them, while in their households they are more at liberty to govern their servants and children, the men leaving them independent there to do as they please. A man interfering with woman's domain is considered a “Cot-Betty,” having alike the contempt of men and women. Yet, notwithstanding this liberty in the home, woman's purse is filled or empty only as the husband is generous or niggardly, as he sees fit to give. If he likes a handsome home 01714with the elegances of life, or his wife to dress handsomely, etc., the money is supplied; if he does not care for those things she will have to economise and make small means do an immense deal towards any show of dress or good living; and many a rich man's wife has to sell butter and eggs, etc., to supply her wants, and to give for charitable or religious purposes; thus showing that in economy, at least, women are far ahead of men. John Stuart Mills says: “The gentlemen may well leave economy to women, and learn a lesson, for their lives are for the most part spent in seeing how much they may cover with small means, while our male economists are trying to cover the smallest measures with the largest means and do the least good.”

Women having this seeming liberty of action, men giving no deep thought to the laws in regard to them, conceive women to be free as themselves. We find Kentuckians telling us to-day that our women are the finest in the country, that Kentucky laws are the most generous to women; even such journals as the Louisville Commercial, speaking of our recent visit to the Legislature at Frankfort, says: “Kentuckians, above all others, express a high regard for women, and the reason they have been excluded from politics is probably that the men have a very poor opinion of their own political methods. However the laws relating to woman's rights are about as liberal as those of any other State, although but little noise has been made over the matter here.” And this assertion is in the face of such laws on our statute-books as the following: “A mother, legally so, has no right to her child, the husband having the right to will it to whom he pleases, and even to will away from the mother the unborn child at his death. The wife does not own her own property, personal or real, unless given for her sole use and benefit.” If a husband may rent the wife's land, or use it during his life and hers, and take the increase or rental of it, and after her death still hold it and deprive her children of its use, which he does by curtesy, and if she cannot make a will and bequeath it at her death, then I say she is robbed, and insulted in the bargain, by such so-called ownership of land. “A woman fleeing from her husband and seeking refuge or protection in a neighbor's house, the man protecting her makes himself liable to the husband, who can recover damages by law.” If a husband refuse to sue for a wife who has been slandered or beaten, she cannot sue for herself.” Thus the wife is left helpless, under the laws of Kentucky. A proposition to amend this law was brought before our Legislature this winter but was defeated, the opponents arguing that these were exceptional cases. We hope they are, but none the less those poor unfortunate women need protection and should have it; all laws of this nature are based on exceptional cases, thieves and murderers are exceptional, but we have laws to punish them. Our laws of marriage and divorce are infamous. “Marriages, like debts, are good for five years only, if the parties so wish it,” and so on through the chapter. We who have looked into this matter know that the laws in Kentucky are far behind most of the States in liberality towards women. If our men could only be persuaded to look into the laws, with a view of seeing things as they are, and not as they believe them to be, I feel assured they would hasten to amend them, instead of boasting that they have no cause to do so. As none are so interested in any cause as those who are oppressed, men should take the word of women who have felt the iron in their souls, and turn their eyes and their hearts in the direction from which the cry comes for justice and liberty, the birthright of every American! Kentuckians boast of their chivalry, yet while calling women by endearing names, rob them of all that makes life dear to freemen! Let men show their chivalry by giving women their inherent rights. Give us freedom and liberty!

Walker truthfully defines our position in Kentucky to-day, as well as all over the Union. With regard to political rights, he says: “Females form a positive exception to the general law of equality. They have no part or lot in the formation of governments. They 01815cannot vote or hold office. We require them to contribute their share, by the way of taxes, to the support of government, but allow them no voice in its direction. We hold them amenable to the laws when made, but allow them no share in the making of them. This language applied to males would be the exact definition of political slavery; applied to females, custom does not so regard it.” Why are women not persons? Is justice to be confined alone to men? Again, Madison says: “Under every view of the subject, it seems indispensible the mass of the citizens (are women citizens?) should not be without a voice in making the laws which they are to obey, and in choosing the magistrates who are to administer them. Taxation without representation is abhorrent to every principle of natural and civil liberty.” Thus women are deprived of their civil and natural liberty by the laws of our State and the United States. We are civil and political slaves in truth and fact; and this accordance with the definition of all our statesmen from the formation of our government.

Our women, fulled by this seeming liberty in their homes, and their religious training that self-sacrifice—self-abnegation—is the true law of their being, tamely submit to the law that gives their property in marriage to the husband, their children to the father, their own persons to the husband, to make their home where the husband wills, merge all they have and arc, or hope to be in this life, in the husband—a hard fate they think, but their only hope is in the future, that possibly a just God will give them something better there to make amends for the blighting of their hopes and aspirations in this life. Hence women are seemingly content and fly to religion as their only solace. There are few women of the better class who are not professors of religion, therefore women must be assured that the Bible in no wise condemns them to subjection to man. Christ is the anchor of their hopes, and we who have come out of the bondage of man's false interpretation of the Bible see that he came to restore all things as they were before the fall, and woman was first, by Christ himself, given the command to go tell the Apostles that he had risen. He chose women as his friends. He commended Mary and Martha in that they chose the better part, that is, to learn the great truths of life rather than be wholly absorbed in household matters. He taught justice was as much the woman's right as man's, and that sin in woman was no more than in man, which truths are the foundation-stones of our Woman's Rights movement.

Our women are now becoming better educated. The freedom of the slave is changing our manners and customs. In the home the women are performing manual labor, the daughters have to do something, and, as the necessity comes, the field has to be extended. Here and there we see a young girl going out to teach, another to be a clerk or book-keeper; and this not only among the poor, but the daughters of the rich are turning their eyes longingly to some congenial labor, something by which they can have money to do with as they please, to be, to act, to think as free and independent human beings. We see women soliciting offices and getting them. We have women postmistresses, county clerks, deputy clerks, librarians, census takers, teachers in public schools, presidents of missionary, temperance and other societies, gradually assuming those public duties in a quiet way which if asked of men by laws as our right would not be given. Thus woman's right to work outside the home, earning an independent livelihood, is being recognized by men without, as it were, their knowing it themselves, and thus overcoming their prejudices to women doing anything outside of the home, when they have remuneration.

There has been some little agitation of the Suffrage question in a public way throughout the State. Several times there have been lecturers in Louisville, Lezington, Frankfort, Paris, Henderson City, Richmond and several other towns, and our papers are beginning to copy what women are doing and what is being done for them throughout the country. The temperance work has begun to enlist women, and 01916they who are not for Suffrage now will be when they find how little influence in this country weighs without the ballot to back it. When they have learned that they can not only talk, but devise and execute plans of work; not only pray but read the Bible, discuss and interpret for themselves the meaning of it, they will have taken a long step in their education for the ballot. So great was the prejudice that two years ago, in Richmond, when a number of ladies of all the churches met together and organized a women's prayer-meeting, to be conducted by women, they were shut out of the churches, and preachers told their members they ought not to work with them, etc., and to-day the women, not scattered by these anathemas, are treated with distrust and ill-will. Books I had loaned a woman, by her request, were returned to me by the husband, saying he “did not want his pleasant relations with his wife disturbed by her reading such books.” What greater evidence of the slavery of the wife than that a husband is not ashamed to publicly announce that she shall not read what she likes. Other husbands forbade their wives to go to hear Woman Suffrage lectures, and others told them that they would be much displeased if they went. I mention these things to show why it is that our women do not generally openly advocate Woman Suffrage, and why they say “they have all the rights they want!” Is it not too much to expect all women to have the moral courage to step over these very serious obstacles of ecclesiastical and marital authority to labor for what seems to them a far-away and almost hopeless object. You will readily see that it is not all work of roseate hue that we have to do in Kentucky.

Two years ago the American Woman Suffrage Association, of which I now have the honor to be President, held its annual convention in Louisville, and those noble women did a great deal to remove prejudice. The candid reports and manly editorials of the Journal and Commercial carried a respect for our cause all over the State.

During the sitting of our Legislature we have made two visits to Frankfort, had one respectful hearing before the Judiciary Committee, and started many to think seriously of the matter, judging from the number of bills since presented for amending the laws in regard to women. There is talk of a change in our State Constitution, but that will take seven years under the most favorable conditions. In the meantime a great deal could be done to educate our people, if we only had the money to employ lecturers and publish and circulate tracts. But our women are so poor, though their husbands are possessed of thousands, that all our efforts at organized work are crippled. If the women who can dispose of their own money would only give to aid in the emancipation of their own sex, instead of leaving it all for the “poor but pious” young men our cause would be helped on to a speedy success.

Our present plan is to visit our Legislature at every session, enlist some earnest woman residing in Frankfort to watch and secure the passage of our bills; to get women to edit Suffrage columns in the papers of their respective localities, and thus agitate and educate the people. The difficulties in the way are great, still those on the watch-towers are not disheartened, but hopeful and confident that victory will soon come.

Sally Clay Bennett, another daughter of Hon. Cassius M. Clay, member of the Executive Committee of the National Woman Suffrage Association for Kentucky, writes as follows:

Richmond, Ky., Feb. 27, 1884.

My dear Miss Anthony: I have delayed answering your letter till the last moment, because hopeful of being able to go to Washington this spring. My heart aches because I cannot go, but I hope to be with you there next winter. I take both our 02017town papers and go down this morning with Suffrage clippings for them to publish. I will do what I can. Mother writes me that sister Anne has taken a column in the principal Lexington paper.

Mr. Thomas Scott (a lawyer) says that widows, with or without children, can vote for school trustees, and for school taxes, if they pay taxes; that widows with children of school age can vote whether they pay taxes or not. We have done but little in Kentucky the past year, to report, but will try to do better this year, and will begin to-day with Mr. John Bennett's bill, to appoint women physicians in the hospitals of the State. May writes me she will be at Washington. Perhaps she will do better in reporting Kentucky. I enclose check for twenty-five dollars for the cause and will try and get others to contribute to help along.

My heart goes out in the warmest gratitude to you and the other noble women who have fought so long for justice to woman.

Most devotedly yours, Sally Clay Bennett.

Mrs. Harriette R. Shattuck gave the report for Massachusetts.

Mrs. Shattuck said: The work in our State goes steadily and hopefully onward. Besides our own organization (the National Woman Suffrage Association of Massachusetts), which is auxilliary to the National Woman Suffrage Association, there are the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, the New England Woman Suffrage Association and the Massachusetts School Suffrage Association; all four are doing more or less good work in the State. The “Massachusetts” and “New England” Societies have held their annual conventions, have circulated petitions for municipal Suffrage, and obtained a number of hearings before the Legislature on that subject. They have also held several evening meetings in different parts of the State and employed an agent to work in the city of Worcester. They are now planning the formation of local “leagues,” which may have an influence on politics. Through auxilliary clubs, local work has also been done. Occasional sociables have been held in Boston, at which there has been a supper with speeches.

The School Suffrage Association, as its name indicates, confines its labors to securing a larger vote of women for school committees, to nominating good candidates for that office in all localities possible (principally in Boston), and to obtaining favorable modifications of the School Suffrage Law. In Boston they do a good deal of practical work, and in the past years have instituted a system of “ward committees” to secure purity and efficiency in the management of the public schools.

The National Woman Suffrage Association of Massachusetts has advanced from a small organization of about fifty to two hundred. Its second annual meeting was held the 19th and 20th of last month. Since the last Washington Convention this society has held seven conventions of two sessions each; three evening meetings and three parlor meetings; also two annual conventions of three sessions each in Boston—making in all twenty-six sessions. At most of these meetings it has had the valuable assistance of Miss Phœbe W. Couzins of St. Louis. All these meetings have been fully attended and enthusiastic and have paid for themselves. There have been very few dominations; the membership and collections in most cases meeting all the expenses. All the members give their services. Through the winter seasons, fortnightly debates have been held in Boston, at which questions concerning Suffrage have been discussed pro and con. These have greatly assisted our members in facility of speaking. Our most important work has been the securing of a reliable canvass of the proportion of women in favor of, opposed to and indifferent on the question of Woman Suffrage. This work was the suggestion of Dr. Salome 02118Merritt of Boston, a new and very efficient worker. Blanks were sent our with letters and directions to a number of members, and, out of the whole number, nine thorough and representative canvasses were obtained. Four of these were in Boston, two in smaller cities, two in country towns and one was a canvass of women school teachers in all the nine schools of South Boston. We thus secured, besides an estimate of the opinions of one of our most intelligent classes of women (the teachers), an estimate also of the opinions of all the women living in the three different kinds of communities—city-life, suburban-life and country-life being represented. The result was far more favorable than the most sanguine of us had hoped. In the cities the ratio of those in favor to those opposed was smaller than in the towns, ranging from that in Springfield street, Boston, which stood two in favor to one opposed, to that in the rural town of Bedford, which stood 29 in favor to none opposed. This is one of the towns in which we held a convention. The total ratio is 9 9—44 in favor to one opposed. The canvassers were directed to see every woman in the district chosen, and were forbidden to make any attempts to proselyte. They obeyed these directions; in some cases taking oath before a justice. The canvasses are, therefore, entirely reliable. In the nine localities, the whole number of women represented is 814, and, of these, 405 are in favor, 44 opposed, 166 indifferent, 160 refused to sign and 39 were not seen after repeated calls. The claim is not made that the ratio of those in favor to all others is nine to one, but only that those unqualifiedly signing themselves in favor, to those unqualifidly signing themselves opposed, is as nine to one. The “indifferent” ones cannot be claimed by either side; neither can those “not seen.” And if we allow the opposition to count on its side the names “refusing to sign,” we still have a majority, and a ratio of two to one. An extended account of this work was given to our Legislative hearing in January, and it produced a great impression. An attempt was made to falsify it at the remonstrants’ hearing the following week, but without success, as, fortunately, the canvasser of the disputed locality was present and verified that honesty and fairness of her work. By this canvass the claim of our opponents that only an infinitesimal number of women desire the ballot, is set aside, in one State at least, forever. It is also proved that in localities where the “middle class” forms of majority, there is a very strong sentiment for us. We have also done some National work. The method of appealing to Congress for a constitutional amendment is always explained at our meetings, and both last year and this we have sent petitions to the Legislature asking that our Senators and Representatives be instructed to use all proper means to secure the passage of the resolution now pending in Congress. Last year the petitions were referred to the Woman Suffrage Committee and a hearing was granted in March, 1883, at which the arguments for National action were presented by Mrs. H. R. Shattuck, Mrs. H. H. Robinson and others. This was the first time in the history of our State that the National method was presented to the Legislature. A resolution was reported to the Senate, a discussion had and a vote taken, resulting in 11 years to 21 years. Of course the measure was lost, but its being even heard and much more discussed, was a great point gained both for the cause itself and for the method by which we “Nationals” believe we shall secure its success.

This year our petitions for National Suffrage were referred to the Committee on Federal Relations. A hearing was given February 28th, at which arguments for national protection were presented by Mrs. Shattuck, Mrs. H. H. Robinson and Mrs. Sara A. Underwood. Of the whole work in our State the past year it may be said in general that the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association has concentrated its efforts to secure municipal Suffrage, rolling up long lists of petitions; the School Suffrage Association upon enlarging the influence of women in school matters, and our National organization upon securing a reliable canvass of women in favor 02219and opposed, presenting the “National” idea to the Legislature and the public, and moulding public opinion by means of well-advertised and attractive conventions.” Much work has been done by all in many directions and the outlook in our State today is most encouraging. The dead wall of indifference is at last broken down and the women remonstrants, by their active resistance to our advancing progress, are not only turning the attention of the public in our direction and making the whole community interested, but also paving the way for future political action themselves. By remonstrating, they have expressed their opinion and entered into politics; and all that we have ever claimed is that the State and the Nation shall grant freedom to women in the expression of opinion.

Mrs. Abagail Scott Duniway of Oregon, reported for the Northwest, and told how Woman Suffrage had been obtained in Washington Territory. The battle was begun thirteen years ago by starting a newspaper devoted to freedom in all things. She laid the foundation for the paper years before, when she and her good husband worked on a farm, raising boys to set the type for it.

Officers and Members of the National Woman Suffrage Association:

Standing for the first time in this important presence, and speaking for the first time in this body, I realize the responsibility imposed upon me as the representative from that part of the Union which is at this time the chief point of importance because of its advantageous relations to our common cause.

In 1850, Oregon's first Delegate to Congress, Hon. Samuel R. Thurston, enlarging a plan proposed by Dr. Linn of Missouri, succeeded in securing the passage of an act known as the Oregon Donation Land Law. This act was chiefly remarkable because it recognized in its provisions the right of a married woman, in propria persona, to an equal share with her husband in its benefits, thus making Oregon soil the first part of the United States’ domain on which equal rights for woman found a practical footing. This Donation Land Law, though exceptional as to particulars and temporary in duration, was destined to mark the beginning of an era of momentous import to the woman of the present and the future. Under the provisions of this act, a woman, if married, was entitled to such equal portion of the public domain as might, under comparatively equal restrictions, accrue to her husband.

All of the married women who were living in Oregon at the time of the passage of the act, and all others who came to Oregon within the duration of the act, as well as many who were married while yet mere children in order to come within the provisions of the act, took advantage of its benefits and became free-holders. They resided upon and cultivated their own land, as required by law, and became its possessors de facto, although many of them in so doing had never troubled their heads about political rights. But the Members of Congress who had assisted them to the position of free-bolders builded better than they knew. They were like the Puritans, who, in planting the standard of the cross in a new country, raised also the standard of civil and political liberty, although they knew it not.

The limitations of the Donation Land Law expired in a few brief years, but the effects remained and are to be seen to-day all over Oregon and Washington, which was once known as the “whole of Oregon,” among the women who were recipients of its benefits, who yet live under their own vines and fig-trees, with none to molest or make them afraid.

But there were thousands of other married women, younger that they, or who failed to reach Oregon in time to secure the benefits of the act, who found themselves, like the women of other portion of these United States and Territories of America, in the condition of perpetual minority—classed with idiots, insane persons, criminals and Chinamen—and naturally enough they began to wonder if their right to acquire property was not inalienable. And although their general up-walking was not immediate, it was gradual and thorough; and as the years advanced and they saw more and more clearly the benefits to be derived by a few women from the possession and ownership of their homes, the query arose in their minds, “Why may we possess no lands?” And then the fact dawned upon them, although it was only the comparatively few of the sex who had been so situated that they might avail themselves of the donation act, there was no good reason why all women ought not to be recognized as persons, under the law, equally with men, now and always. And they began to think, to ask questions; and the questions always resolved themselves into the one final query, “Why are we without a country?” One question led to another, till they said at last: “Isn't taxation without representation called tyranny in the Declaration of Independence? Don't the women who own the land pay taxes? And, since governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and we are not allowed to give or withhold consent, why are women taxed at all?

Gradually, as the years rolled on, these thoughts grew more definite and tangible, and at last, in the year 1871, more than twenty years after the benefient foresight of woman's friends in Congress had set the ball in motion, the first organized attempt was made to secure those rights to women which men had for a hundred years enjoyed, and which they had declared to be inalienable when applied to themselves.

As the sequel has thus far proven, the hearts of the men of the great Pacific, Northwest were right toward women, even in the beginning. No sooner had we begun to agitate the question of equal rights than men responded to our plea; and the result was, first, the establishing, in 1871, and its maintenance ever since, of a weekly journal, the New Northwest, devoted to the promulgation of equal political and financial rights between the sexes; and secondly, to the respectful bombardment of biennial Legislatures with the pleas, plans and purposes of women, who made the paper their standard-bearer, and who had learned to recognize the ballot as the basis of all rights under any government claiming to be “of the people and by the people.”

Favorable legislation followed every attempt made by women to “secure those rights for which governments instituted amoung men, “but the final victory seemed each year afar off. Men appeared quite willing at all times to grant us favors. They were chivalrous, and, in certain indefinable way, valiant and magnanimous, but they were slow to learn that woman was in complete in her individuality, her self-hood, as themselves.

But the agitation went regularly forward, and one by one the relics of the old common law were supplanted by new enactments, until women saw their civil rights acknowledged, and their property rights better every year. And at last men decided that their wives and mothers should be classed no longer with idiots, insane persons, criminals and Chinamen. So they proposed, in 1880, to amend the State Constitution by submitting to the next succeeding session of the Legislature a resolution which says, simply and grandly, “The elective franchise shall not hereafter be prohibited in this State on account of sex.”

This proposition, which was acceded to by a large majority in both branches of the Legislature in 1880, and ratified in 1882 by an overwhelming vote, now awaits the final decision of the voters of the State at the approaching June election. It is this fact that gives us our prominence and makes Oregon the objective point of this Association's 02421consideration now and in the immediate future. The way before us is plain and our duty is clear. The old statutory laws that enforced invidious distinctions between the property rights of men and women are nearly all dead and buried, and our women are now in the exact condition of the Colonists when the Declaration of Independence awaited ratification by the British crown. We have a hard, decisive, bloodless battle to fight; and those most interested—the women themselves—are armed with no ballots or other sinews of war with which to fight it. But we have right on our side, and we await the issue with confidence.

Washington Territory, which, has from the beginning of the agitation of the great question that convenes us, shared equally with Oregon in all that has been done to enfranchise one-half of the people, no longer figures among existing powers as a suppliant. The ban of disfranchisement has fallen from the heads of her women, representatives of whom are among us to-day, clothed with the equal political power which came to their sons unasked as soon as they had reared them to the age of twenty-one years.

In struggling to secure the final recognition of political rights to the women of Washington, I found it necessary to canvass the Territory over and over for upwards of twelve years, holding meetings everywhere, traveling by stage, rail, steamer, and often afoot among the people, holding meetings in cities, precincts and villages, speaking sometimes in churches, sometimes in school-houses, sometimes in court-houses and public halls; and when, as occasionally happened, all these were closed against me because of existing prejudice against the cause, addressing the public in bar-rooms and offices of hotels, meeting discouragements often, but encountering a goodly degree of kindly assistance in all parts of the country, and in every case circulating the New Northwest and “writing up” the different localities in editorial letters, that the paper and its contents would be sought for and read and commented upon long after I had gone to other fields. To one who has not traversed these vast regions thus hurriedly alluded to, no brief outline can convey an idea of other magnitude, nor can such a person imagine the hardships connected with the work. But the cause grew and prospered, and each succeeding session of the Legislature showed marked progress among the people's representatives, until at last the work was finished by the Assembly of 1883; and the immortal act that enfranchised the women of the State that is to bear the name of Washington, and thus make her the “mother of her country,” reached its climax when Governor Newell signed the Suffrage Bill amid the mingling hallelujahs of booming guns and ringing bells. In Oregon the work has kept more than even pace with Washington, though, by virtue of her State Government, she has a longer road to travel, and we can only reach the goal of our ambition by a more circuitous rout. The same long, laborious, patient canvas has been made here as there, and the same obstacles have been met and overcome in carrying on the work. Distributing my own labors abroad equally on both sides of the Columbia River, I have traveled each year many thousands of miles, and spoken in each geographical division an average of seventy times per year, during a period of twelve and a half year's duration, making, at a low estimate, one thousand seven hundred and fifty public speeches, or nearly five years of steady speaking.

Immediately after my return to Oregon (about April 1st), the campaign will begin in earnest. We must hold meetings in every precinct, and literally snow the country over with compaign documents. The canvas will be most expensive. The distances are great between points, and we need a vast sum to defray traveling expenses. We need speakers, we need documents, but, above all, we need money. Will you help us?

We are more than gratified at the success attendant upon our work thus far. Leading politicians of all parties are in perfect accord with our movement, and are working 02522with and for us with the intent to win. The movement stands alone upon its own merit. The question with us is not one of expediency, but of right. We do not ask any man to give up his political or partisan bias, his religious or non-religious views, or his temperance or anti-temperance ideas. All we ask is that when he casts his vote next June he will vote “Yes” upon the pending Woman Suffrage Amendment. You are respectfully asked to join with us in this great campaign, to concentrate your efforts upon Oregon. Our neighbors across the Columbia are watching us from their vantage ground with mingled feelings of hope for us and exultation among themselves. We believe that our fathers, husbands, brothers and sons are quite as chivalrous and progressive as theirs; and we believe they will prove that our faith in them is well founded when the ballots are counted after election, and that we shall find ourselves invited to stand with them upon the broad platform of freedom, equality and justice, now jointly occupied by themselves and the men and women of Washington Territory.

The Territory of Idaho has also received considerable of my attention, and there is a strong and constantly growing sentiment there in favor of equal rights for women. It is among the probabilities that when next her Legislature meets she will wheel into line with all her people free.

Help us to win a victory in Oregon, and our success will lead at last to your triumph on this side of our common country.

Mrs. Helen M. Gougar, Vice-President for Indiana, gave the report from that State.

Mrs. Gougar began with the Constitutional Convention of 1850, when one hundred women asked that women might be allowed to own property after marriage. Robert Dale Owen presented the petition and two ministers spoke against it, proving from Genesis to Revelation that the result would be unrocked cradles and buttonless shuts, and that Paul did not believe that the women of Indiana should own real estate. To-day no State grants greater property rights to woman than Indiana. It is written in our Constitution that only a voters of good moral character can be admitted as a lawyer or take out a license to sell liquor. While two hundred and forty criminals are turned out of our penitentiaries every year to vote on all questions. I will not accept the paltry School Suffrage. Indianapolis has a society of two hundred and fifty members, composed of the representative people of the different classes, none being unrepresented. Mrs. Wallace was for years its president, but feeble health and old age have thrown this burden upon younger shoulders, Mrs. Charles Kregels now holds the office. Mrs. May Wright Sewall has been from the first Chairman of the Executive Committee and the efficiency of this society has been largely due to her earnest, capable watchfulness and work. Delegates have been appointed to the nominating conventions of both political parties, both county and State, whose duty is to see that delegates are elected who are favorable to our cause. Parlor and social meetings are held regularly the first Monday in each month. Distribution of literature is attended to regularly and systematically. This society did good service in converting members of the Legislature when the Suffrage amendment was pending two years ago.

The Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Indiana is thoroughly advance on the question of Woman Suffrage and was the first State Temperance Association to declare for the principle. The ministers are generally favorable—Methodist always, Baptists generally—the Presbyterians, of which denomination I am a member, slow, but marked for their staying qualities. We feel we have the best of the press, pulpit and professional men on our side and that the principle of Woman Suffrage is spreading all over like the snow and only requires rolling up to be effectually hurled at our 02623opponents. The State Association of Indiana busies itself very much with distributing Woman Suffrage tracts and in delivering parlor lectures.

The Greenback convention, held in Indiana recently, put a Woman Suffrage plank in its platform, and the Indiana society proposes to send delegates to the State conventions of the other parties to demand the same thing from them. Mrs. Gougar declared that the party which gave the women a right to vote was the one which would live.

A committee of the Pendleton Association appeared before the Madison County Republican Convention, March 1st, when Miss Florence Harding presented our claims in an earnest address, which was respectfully received, and at its close a resolution in favor of Equal Suffrage unanimously adopted.

Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, of New York, said: She had for twenty-five years been a fast friend of Woman Suffrage, and she felt she was indebted for her success in her profession to his movement which has broken down the barriers and disabilities giving the married woman the right to own property and dispose of her earnings. She loved to hear this question discussed from the stand-point of justice. For eleven years her parlors have been open every month for meetings for its discussion, as she believed we must educate the people by agitation. This questions is the foundation of all Christianity and Christians can only look up and truly say, “Our Father in Heaven” when they can treat each other as brothers and sisters.

Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell, President of the Albany, N.Y., Suffrage Society, was next introduced. The title of her address was “Our Outlook.”

Mrs. Howell said: The Suffrage movement is not so old but that its first leaders are still living, but growing gray in its service. If it were not for their labors we could not hold this meeting to-day. Beloved Mrs. Stanton, and noble, self-sacrificing Miss Anthony were first, and still are the helm. What silent suffering these brave pioneers of Suffrage for women have endured. They have seemed calm as the mountains, but they have felt every blow dealt. In their conventions held in New York city, what fun was made of them by the Newspapers. How they were lampooned by the New York dailies. A reform never cease until it is victorious. It never goes backward. It is “the truth against the world.” and the truth always wins. Arguments for Woman Suffrage have been scattered all along the past. You know them well. They are the foundation principles of this republic. These are four questions continually asked us after all that has been spoken and written on this subject:

First. “Why do not more women ask for the ballot!” Because a few always represent the masses. Many wanting, few asking, always. There are women whom life touches so softly and fashion plays with so fondly, that they tell you they need no help. There were three hundred who signed the remonstrance against Woman Suffrage in Massachusetts last year, but the capitol at Boston has the names of seventy-five thousand asking for it.

Reform work has a grand reflex influence on the individual, lifting him from the material to the spiritual. God is in a reform and legions of angels encamp around its defenders. Reformers are called strange and they are, as the manner of this world goes. How can they think of the fashions of time, when an eternal principle is filling all their thoughts. At the first governmental ball give in Washington during the war of the rebellion, Lincoln stood in the dressing room surrounded by many of his Cabinet, noted Senators and others. They were busy putting on their white kid gloves. He was pulling on his large green ones. Looking up and comprehending his mistake, he said, “Gentlemen, I could just as well have got white ones.” Months after, that hand signed the Emancipation Proclamation and broke in pieces the chains of a wronged race. He could not remember the fleeting fashions of society, but his soul could fully grasp the eternal Law of right. Beloved Lincoln, those hands are dust now, but they wrote thy name among the stars. John Brown, in going to the scafford, stopped and kissed a little black child, telling to the world what his last earthly thought was with this touching act. Reformers feel not the ropes of time or the flames of torture. What care they for prison and scaffold if freedom comes nearer earth and earth nearer heaven?

With the past full of brave endeavor and earnest work of noble women, with the inspiration that is inherent in this work, what is our outlook to-day? In our own State we find the School Suffrage Law working admirably. In every village and hamlet women are voting. In Connecticut there is a bill before the Legislature, asking for the same school rights for women. Look at the great vote in Parliament at its last session! The most encouraging outlook is the great and favorable change in public sentiment on this subject. Looking to the far West we find three territories in which women have universal Suffrage. From ocean to ocean is this great work shaking the Nation and telling Congress and Legislatures we must be heard. The seed sown on the Atlantic coast has been carried by the winds of freedom to the Pacific slope, and borne abundant fruit. Women are demanding their own in every country, and in the islands of the sea. Their hour has come, and in every language of earth they are asking for liberty. From Washington last week came a decision that thundered through this Nation and reverberated through the world, clearing up our sky and making it possible for evermore for a woman to take an observation and make an outlook. I have been honored by our Albany society with the commission of writing a letter, tendering our thanks to Judge Folger for his brave decision, given in such vigorous Anglo-Saxon, that has helped every woman, and so the world.

I said at the beginning of my lecture, our leaders were still with us, With my closing words I could not forget one great soul who loved our cause well and threw himself into the struggle at the earlist moment, who last week folded has hands over his work, well and faithfully done. Wendell Philips could never die, but he has gained for himself what he labored for other—eternal liberty. Grand, sweet words for us, poor, weary humanity, to say of him, he is forever free. Free from the tears and 02825tribulations of time, free from its odium, its arrows, its abuse; free from its oppression its chains, its mockery and farce. What was his outlook in dying? Did some Uncle Tom welcome him home? Did some Aunt Chloc rejoice that he was safe in Dixie Land? Did Eliza give thanks that he was over the river, and the hounds on the other side? Did Greeley and Chase, Summer and Lincoln, Gerrit Smith and John brown clasp his hand among the first? Was the great soul of Garfield coming to meet him?

My friends, for such a dying outlook who would not be a reformer? It is worth all the misunderstanding and persecution of an entire life. We have taken an outlook today and find that we are in the latitude and longitude of liberty. Above our heads is the star of freedom. Follow that star, and we shall find that equal rights is an eternal law.

Miss Anthony opened the evening session by reading a letter from Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett, of England, and an extract from a speech made by Mr. Fawcett to an immense gathering of his constituents in Hackney:

London, February 14, 1884.

Dear Friends in Convention Assembled:

I think we may fairly ask those who have not yet come to any conclusion on the subject of Women's Suffrage, whether on the whole they believe representative government to be preferable to despotic government; and, if so, why the reasons which lead them to this opinion lose their cogency when those who are asking for representation happen to be women?

It is appropriate that England and America, the strongholds of representative government, should be leading the way in this question of the representation of women. The demand of women for the Suffrage is but a branch of the great movement towards democracy which received its first impulse from American in 1774, and is still going on, gathering force and volume year by year in the Old World as well as in the New.

Millicent Garrett Fawcett, 51 The Lawn, S. Lambeth Road.

Mrs. Fawcett, in a private note, says:

My husband is so very much occupied just now that I thought I might send you as his contribution to your Convention at Washington the enclosed extract from his hackney speech on November 8th, the one you and Mrs. Stanton went to hear.

I am so very glad you and Mrs. Stanton have been to England and that you now know nearly all our most active workers. I wish some of us could return the visit, but English people think so much more of crossing the Atlantic than you do. However I live in the hope of seeing the United States some day. Perhaps if wait a few years I shall be able to see how Woman Suffrage is working there!

Miss Anthony said: Before reading the extract from Mr. Fawcett's speech, I want you to imagine that large, enthusiastic audience addressed by one of the most liberal and popular members of parliament. I suppose it is not known to many of you that Mr. Fawcett is blind and that his noble wife has been his amanuensis, his eyes, his willing medium of communication with the great world of politics for many years. On this occasion she sat just behind him on the platform, and it was interesting to 02926watch the expression of satisfaction on her face as his audience promptly responded to his prophecy, that the time was not far off when the church would be disestablished and when the women of England would be enfranchised. Mr. Fawcett is an able, earnest speaker, he has a good voice and one emphatic gesture, bringing his right hand down into the palm of the left hand and throwing the right foot forward at regular intervals.

[Extract of a speech delivered to his constituents in Hackney, by the Right Honorable Henry Fawcett, November 8, 1883.]

Considerations such as these induce me to rejoice in the decision which was recently arrived at by the conference of liberal electors at Leeds, that a removal of the disabilities of the rural households ought to be accompanied by the removal of the not less indefensible political disabilities of women. [Loud cheers.] There have been questions in the past, and depend upon it there will be questions in the future, which vitally concern the well-being of women, on which it is neither safe nor just that they should have no opportunity of making their wishes directly felt through the constitutional means of representation. Restrictions have been imposed, and still further restrictions may be advocated, upon the labor of adult women, and there are probably not a few of those I am now addressing who could tell by bitter experience how hard it is for a woman to earn her own living. If it is thought by women themselves that still further restrictions would add to these difficulties, how can any one who believes in the efficacy of representative institutions deny to women the right of being able to influence legislation which so vitally affects their welfare. [Hear, hear.] But I will give another illustration connected with subject which I know has a peculiar interest to many who are here assembled. Few constituencies have shown a more unswerving adherence to the principles of complete religious equality than you have. The indications are so plain that those who notice them can see that the time is not very remote when the question of disestablishment will occupy a position of prominence in English politics. I know a strong feeling in favor of disestablishment exists among many men, yet so many women are so deeply attached to the church that if they could record their opinion at the polls a majority in favor of disestablishment would not be obtained. [Laughter.] I am not now saying whether I believe this opinion is a correct one or not, but nothing can be more illiberal, nothing more unjust, than to obtain a majority in favor of disestablishment by continuing to exclude from all representation those who are at least as much concerned in religious as men are. Although I need not repeat that I am personally in favor of disestablishment, I think it would not be fair to secure it unless a majority of the National believe they would benefit by it and there could be no security that this majority existed if all women continued to be excluded from the Suffrage.

Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, of Chicago, Vice-President of the Association, President of the Illinois State Auxiliary Association, and editor of the “Woman's Kingdom” in the Chicago Inter-Ocean, was then introduced. Her subject was “The Statesmanship of Women.”

Mrs. Harbert said: As a result of the most careful research, surprising facts are given in regard to the remarkable stateswomen in every country of Europe and each ancient civilization—Rome, Greece, Briton, Lombardy, Russia, England, India, etc., 03027including John Stuart Mills’ remarkable testimony in regard to “Woman's talent for governing as evinced in Asia.” Passing from thence the statesmanship of American women was forcibly presented, from the time Isabella of Castile sacrificed her jewels, until Anna Dickinson, in the great National convention, suggested the Fifteenth Amendment, including that wonderful scene in 1861, when Anna Ella Carroll submitted to Abraham Lincoln her plans for the Tennessee campaign, and the MSS. of herr great addresses, published as official documents by the War Department.

The greatest questions submitted to this people for solution had been the Declaration of Independence, Separation of Church and State, Abolition of Slavery, Prohibition of the Liquor Traffic, Enfranchisement of Women. As proof of woman's statesmanship in connection with these questions, the work of Abagail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Anne Hutchinson, Lucretia Mott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Susan B. Anthony, Lydia Maria Child, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others was cited. In conclusion an earnest tribute was paid to Wendell Phillips and the following extract quoted from his great speech entitled, “The Scholar in the Republic.” In this speech Mr. Phillips said: “What! deny statesmanship to women! to the sisters of Elizabeth of England, Isabella of Spain, Maria Theresa of Austria, and to Elizabeth Heyrick, who when the intellect of all England was at fault and wandering in the desert of a false philosophy—when Brougham and Romilly, Clarkson and Wilberforce, and all the other great and philanthropic minds were at fault and a dead-lock with the West India question and negro slavery, wrote out the simple yet potent charm— immediate, unconditional emancipation —which solved the problem and gave freedom to a race.” And who shall say that the voice of woman should not be lifted in behalf of this movement, so well described by Mr. Phillips, as “the most magnificent reform that has yet been launched upon the world, the first organized protest against the injustice which has brooded over the character and the destiny of one-half of our race.”

Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake, of New York, spoke upon woman as “The Unknown Quantity in Politics,” giving an exceedingly humorous and spirited criticism of Governor Cleveland's last annual message, which, she said, referred to every conceivable subject in the State of New York except its women, who are numerically stronger in the State than the men, capping the climax at the close of his message by comparing the State allegorically to a woman.

Mrs. Blake said: When I was a child and was first confronted with the study of algebra I was greatly fascinated by that strange entity the unknown quantity. What was this mysterious integer whose very name had so pertentious a sound? As I advanced with my lesson I soon discovered that the unknown quantity was always a factor of such importance that no problem could by any means be solved until its value was ascertained. I think it can be demonstrated that woman has been always the unknown quantity in civilization, in progress and in politics, and that it has heretofore been impossible to calculate with certainty on the result of any great social reform or political revolution, because this mighty term, this x of the equation, has been overlooked or forgotten.

Without direct power, and therefore entirely without responsibility, woman has been a force whose potency it has been impossible to calculate, and therefore impossible either to counteract or to control. In ancient wars the influence of woman was like a minor chord in the barbarous clash of martial music, sometimes stimulating men to 03128deeds of valor, like the Roman matrons who with pale but resolute lips bade their first-born sons meet death bravely for their country's sake; or again, by their enervating seductions, destroying the valor of heroes as did the beauties of Capua, who held the Carthagenian warriors in their silken fetters till their golden opportunity was past.

The same story has been repeated in all ages. Woman, sometimes the toy, sometimes the slave of man, never his equal, has held him back in the march of progress, weakened his energies or stimulated him to greatness according to her caprice, always without responsibility, too often without intelligence, forever the unknown quantity in the social equation. That she has been the greatest sufferer is on course the inevitable result. The persecutions of all ages have numbered more woman than men among their martyrs; during the absurd and cruel prosecutions for witchcraft, a hundred women suffered where one man died. And war has reserved its worst atrocities for the members of the tenderer sex, as the stories of all sieges prove, form Jerusalem to Sinkat.

With the advance of civilization a better day has come for women, yet how much we have gained is fittingly illustrated by the fact that leap year alone is ours, one year in four—a quarter of the time—the men have all the rest! And when we come to examine these so-called leap year privileges we find they do not really exist, for, although men talk loudly of them, they laugh at us if we attempt to claim them.

It is true that woman has now passed from the position of serf to that of companion in all civilized nations, and her ability for good of for evil has consequently vastly increased, though as yet without direct responsibility. In politics her role has been often prominent, though the measure of her influence it has been impossible to ascertain. She has been always the mysterious x that cludes discovery. Who can say what part the salons of Paris have played in the history of France from the days of the Duchess de Longueville to those of Julie Lambert?

In England woman's control has been less direct, although the Countess of Waldegrave wielded more power than many a member of Parliament, while in an election, who has forgotten the fascinations and the daring of the Duchess of Devonshire? Charles James Fox found her beauty to be the unknown quantity which, plus his talents, meant success.

In our own country women have often influenced the elections, though that influence has not always been exerted publicly, and when it has been we have preferred other weapons than either gold of kisses. In aiding the success of feasts we have been always permitted an active part, like those loyal Republican ladies who buttered five hundred biscuits for a mass-meeting held to promote the election of Mrs. Hayes’ husband. It does not say much for the gallantry of men, however, to reflect that in most of those feasts women have had no portion except in cooking them!

The enthusiasm that was awakened throughout the Nation by the Clay campaigns was largely due to the fact that women everywhere greatly admired the dashing and the wit of the Kentucky statesman. Many of those present must recollect the first great free-soil canvass of 1856, when “Fremont and Jessie” was the rallying-cry, and all who do will admit that the large vote rolled up by the struggling young party was greatly the result of the efforts of the women. Indeed, we do not think it too much to claim that the women of New York are a factor of no inconsiderable power in any political problem—a mysterious x, if you please, but one that may mean exultation or execration, exaltation or exclusion, and the forgetfulness of which has brought to many a man political excommunication.

Take, for instance, the case of Lucius Robinson when, as Governor of the State, he saw fit to veto the bill giving the women of New York the right to serve as school officers, he declared in his message that the God of Nature never intended women for public office. When he asked for a reëlection, the woman conducted that the God of 03229Nature did not intend that Mr. Robinson should occupy public office, and he has adorned a private station ever since.

A still more striking proof of our influence occurred last fall in the case of the attorney-general. In 1882 Mr. Leslie W. Russell, sitting safely in his office under the shadow of a Republican Governor, was ready, at the behest of a leading Democrat, to make himself the pliant tool of a minority of the Assembly, by declaring that the Woman Suffrage bill, then pending before that body, was unconstitutional. We had seventy-eight votes pledged to the measure, many more than enough to secure success, but of course this declaration took from us so many men who, although in favor of our cause, were naturally influenced by one so high in authority, that the bill failed of a majority. Mr. Russell no doubt thought that he was safe in dealing this blow. We were weak, helpless, apparently without power, and in fact we could only bide our time, and that time came last fall. Judge Russell was nominated by the Republicans, Judge O'Brien was nominated by the Democrats, for the office of attorney-general. Now I ask you to consider the situation. Russell had all the advantages of being in office, he had a wide personal popularity and was sustained by the administration. On the other hand his opponent, though an able man, was out of office and comparatively unknown, while his very name was against him with some persons. It is true that with a certain element of the Democratic party in this city Dennis O'Brien would be a name of charm, yet there are thousands of voters throughout the State to whom there would be grave ground of objection in these suggestively Greek syllables. But the women of New York labored against the man who had opposed them, with what success you all know. Mr. Russell was defeated by a majority so small that it seems evident he would have been elected but for the votes which the women secured. If you admit that out of the one million two hundred thousand voters in the State of New York the women control only two per cent., that will be almost always sufficient to turn the scale. You see he did not realize our influence and the equation of the matter may be thus stated: Russell plus office, plus power, minus x, equals defeat.

Ah, I can assure you that shrewd politicians are beginning to realize what women can do. Last fall the Young Republican club of Brooklyn got out an appeal to the ladies of that city to try to win their influence for their candidate. Outside of our own State also woman's power at the polls has been constantly demonstrated. In special elections, as on prohibitory amendments, their energy has been the important factor in achieving a victory for the cause they espoused. Last fall, in Ohio, an enormous number of votes was rolled up by the party “Betty and the Baby.” In Iowa the temperance amendment would have failed entirely if it had not been for the labors of the maidens and matrons of that State in behalf of their pet reform.

Let us now consider the conditions of the presidential problem of this year. As this contest always occurs in leap year it is quite fitting that we women should offer our bands to the men to aid the party most friendly to us. And be assured that to us the question of a man's views on our freedom in paramount to all others. We care little for mere party lines; Mr. Robinson ws a Democrat, Mr. Russell was a Republican. But to return to the presidential campaign and illustrate it algebraically.

Here is an equation: A certain ranch man had a flock of goats and one of sheep; here were one hundred head in each flock on which he could depend; but there was a certain number fond of wandering, and when this number was substracted from the sheep and added to the goats, that flock exceeded the other by two-fifths of the total. What was the number?

Now let us apply this question practically to the presidential court. Let Uncle Sam be the ranch man, the Republican be the sheep, and the Democrats be the goats. I suppose it is only fair to call them this, since they are in that outer darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. There are in the electoral college 03330401 votes; now supposing the Republicans can secure 150, and the Democrats 150, and let x be the number of votes controlled by women—it is quite evident, that whichever party can add this number to itself, will secure the victory. Various candidates for the presidency are already in the field, for on every leap year, there are always plenty of statesman ready to offer themselves to the Nation, and more than one political go-cart has already chalked upon it “Barkis is willin.”

Now we will consider some of those prominent gentlemen and see how far they are likely to be acceptable to the Peggatics of the Nation. There is first on the Republican side the Vermont lawyer, Senator Edmonds. No, he will not do at all! No woman of the Nation will ever help to success the man who has spoken and voted against every Suffrage measure that has been introduced into the Senate since he took his seat. A man who in one breath declares that disfranchisement is an infamous and degrading penalty, and in the same moment proposes to disfranchise all the women of Utah, whether polygamous or not. No, we cannot accept Senator Edmonds. If you wonder, gentlemen, just for a moment try to think how you would feel in a similar position! Would you labor for the success of a candidate who would withhold from you the most sacred of human rights, that of liberty? What would you have thought of Frederick Douglas had he uplifted his eloquent voice for the election of Jefferson Davis? No, decidedly, we cannot accept Senator Edmonds, and should the Republicans nominate him, we predict that there will be x number of votes against him. Then there is the historian of the Kennebec. He has a better record on our question. There has always been a certain amount of chivalry in the plumed knight. Still, Mr. Blaine never openly championed our reform, and we do not like a like warm lover. As for the Stalwart dictator, when he was in the Senate he held for our demands nothing but a sneer; and as he in the days of his power did unto us, so would we now do unto him. However there is no probability of his acceptance by anybody, and there is no more chance for the Presidency for Roscoe Conkling than for a woman.

Among the favorite sons of the Democracy there is the giant from pygmy Delaware, an able man, and a brave one; but an old fogy in his notions with regard to woman's position. Oh no, this modern Bayard will never do! Any man who rides a tilt against equal rights had better be set aside among the fossils of the National Museum. A better record has the Flower of the Empire State. He stands committed to the cause of Woman Suffrage. Should he be nominated, I think the women would smile on his aspirations. But our most unequivocal and pronounced champion is the statesman of Indiana;over and over again has he spoken and voted in favor of our bills. He it was who first moved for a select committee in the Senate on Woman Suffrage. Long ago, when our cause was less popular than it is to-day, he fearlessly upheld it. There can be no doubt that the women of the Nation owe a debt of gratitude to Joseph E. McDonald.

It may seem to you, that the matter of a presidential campaign is of no moment to the women of the Nation; but in point of fact there is no class of persons in the community to whom the elections are really of so much consequence. Various sets of men have various wrongs to complain of—we have constantly the one overwhelming all-including wrong of being forgotten or overlooked, and this forgetfulness leads to the perpetration of all sorts of evils. If we were voters, of course our interests would be cared for. A distinguished English writer, Mr. Alfred V. Dicey, in a recent political essay, pointed out how greatly the working-men had been benefitted by there admission to the franchise, and said, “Classes, whose voices cannot be heard are neglected; not because they are disliked, or because anyone wishes to oppress them, but because their existence is forgotten.” We have instances of this every day. Take the case of the message of the Governor of New York, Mr. Cleveland is a very aimiable man, and I believe favorably disposed to women's enfranchisement; but in writing this 03431document, as we are not voters, he simply and totally forgot us. He talks of the soldiers, the harbor-master, the emigrants, the pilots and eyen the public buildings, the ships and the trees—but has not a word to say of the women. He discourses of the taxes, and has not a syllable on the injustice of “taxation without representation” to which women are subject; he has much advice about our schools, and nothing on the duty of giving male and female teachers equal pay for equal work; he even has the temerity to declare that “The rights of our citizens at primary elections have been protected by law,” when he must be aware that no women have any rights at any elections whatsoever. After all this, there is a touch of absurdity in the peroration in which he speaks of the State of New York as she. He says, “The State of New York largely represents within her boundaries the development of every interest which makes a nation great. Proud of her place in the community of States she fully appreciates her intimate relations to the prosperity of the country,” etc. Rather amusing to talk of the commonwealth as a woman, and ignore the women of the commonwealth. Take as another illustration the Pension Bureau in regard to woman's services. An enormous sum has been appropriated to pay soldiers—from the veteran of two wars to the boy recruit who was out for only three months—but not a dollar for the women who did duty in the hospitals during that perilous time. There was Mother Bickerdyke, who was a strong woman in her prime during the dark hour of the Nation; she gave her entire time for four years to the service of the country, laboring in hospitals, going out on the battle-field after the contest was over, and viewing those scenes of carnage that make the heart grow sick, lifting wounded soldiers in her brave arms to bear them to places of safety, at the risk of her life. Mother Bickerdyke is an old woman now, out there is no pension for her, she is earning her living at the wash-tub, a monument to the ingratitude of a republic—as touching as was Belisarius when he begged in the streets of Rome. Several times efforts have been made to secure pensions for old army nurses, but the reply at the Pension Bureau has always been: “Government has made no appropriation for the payment of the hospital services of women.”

Forgotten! overlooked! the unknown quantity, and therefore the unregarded! There are no rewards for us in life, no honors for us after we are gone. Did ever a flag float at half-mast in this Nation for a woman however distinguished? If it had pleased Divine Providence to remove the late Wm. M. Tweed when at the height of his power as Comptroller of the city of New York, the flags would have hung out at half-mast for him over all our city; but when Lucretia Mott dies, Philadelphia has no banner to wave in woe over her famous and noble daughter. The natural result of this persistent disregard of woman is to be found in the different code of morality for the two sexes, and the frightful social tragedies that grow out of it. In my own city there have been some most sad events within the last few months. In one instance a young woman, who had been outraged and deserted, made her way to the hotel where her destroyer was living with his young bride, and shot herself at his feet. At the inquest there was no one to defend the dead girl, every attempt was made to blacken her character, and when the dastardly wretch, who had killed her, was questioned at the inquest, he declared that she had thrust herself upon him, and that “he had endeavored in a graceful and gentlemanly manner to cut her acquaintance!” How does a man cut a woman's acquaintance in a graceful and gentlemanly manner, when he has broken her heart?

Another young woman, less patient and forgiving, put a bullet through her lover before she killed herself. As in the former case an attempt is at once made to blacken the dead girl's fair fame and it is hinted that when she was sixteen she was of irregular life. This was held to be sufficient excuse for his conduct. “Oh, of course he could not marry her,” men said; when similar conduct on his part would not have been even mentioned, for men stand together well on these questions. In the Pennsylvania 03532Legislature last winter when a resolution was introduced to expel Mr. Dukes, on account of his immoralities, the members made haste to vote it down. If such a rule were to be enforced, what man would be safe in his seat!

The claim that men were our natural protectors is every day disproved. Recall the scene at the wreck of the Columbus. Darkness and cold and the wild waves uniting to destroy the ill-fated vessel, the wretched passengers dashed away every moment to a cruel death. How were the women protected? There were on the doomed ship one hundred and twenty-six men and twenty-five women, more than five men to every woman, and yet not a woman was saved! The moon that looked whitely down on the scene of terror saw the captain and the crew and stout, strong men protect their lives, while the women were left to die. Yet we would not be held to blame unreasonably; men cannot be expected to risk their existence in perhaps a fruitless attempt to preserve some strange person in whom they have no interest, simply because that person is a woman; and the fact that this is so shows that women should have the power to protect themselves and not be forever depending on some vague expectation that men will take care of them. It is better to have the power of self-protection than to depend on any man, whether he be the governor in his chair of state, or the hunted outlaw wandering through the night, hungry and cold and with murder in his heart. We are tired of the pretence that we have special privileges, and the reality that we have none. Of the fiction that we are queens, and the fact that we are subjects; of the symbolism the exalts our sex but is only a meaningless mockery! We demand that these shadows shall take substance!

The coat of arms of the State of New York represents Liberty and Justice supporting a shield on which is seen the sun rising over the hills that guard the Hudson. How are justice and liberty depicted? As a police judge and an independent voter? Oh no; as two noble and lovely women! What an absurdity in a State where there is neither liberty nor justice for any woman! We ask that this symbolism shall assume reality for a redeemed and enfranchised womanhood will be the best safeguard of justice. The rising sun that sends its soft rays over the blue waters of the rippling river, may fitly typify the advancing glory of the Nation and the State. The sun of freedom, that, as it has risen higher and higher, has sent light and hope to the oppressed of all nations and melted off the chains of the slave. It can only reach the zenith of its splendor when all the sons and daughters of the Republic are equal sharers in the effulgence of its beams.

Mrs. Martha McClellan Brown of the Wesleyan College at Cincinnati, Ohio, spoke upon “Disabilities of Woman.”

She began her address by an allusion to the niches in the public buildings and the capitol, not filled with statuary—waiting the development of history. So in the temple of human progress there are niches prepared by the great architect, waiting to be filled with women—like energetic, soulful women, whose names shall honor the history of our race for ages. In the development of the liberty principles of the last generation, such a niche was occupied by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Such is the exalted niche now awaiting Susan B. Anthony, into the alembic of whose life the great alchemist poured the genesis of a revolution and sent her out a fiery apostle of its hope-inspiring truths, attracting everybody and every subject toward the one great object of her life, the emancipation of woman. We come each from our various fields of engagement, where we have been absorbed in what seems to us the all-important work of the age. We come from the pulpit, the rostrum, the press, the desk, the counter, the dispensary, the hospital, the counting-room, the college, the parlor, the nursery; we come from the east, the west, the north, the south; we come impelled by one common impulse 03633to unite our voices, our hearts, our energies in this one great life-purpose to remove disabilities of woman—we come to ask for the ballot; the key which unlocks all opportunities in this country.

There are some words which always have a disagreeable influence upon us. Our caption is one of these. Its prefix “dis” is separative in its meaning. The stem word “abilities” is strong and royal in its meaning, taking rood down deep in the institutions of society and the foundation of right. It savors of God—endowment, original, and simple. But “disabilities,” as applied to the condition of women, is a double privative, conventional and civil—a triple bar, theoretical, ethical and practical.

The conventional disabilities prevent women from attaining those places which are outside the ordinary routine work of women. If requires all the energy and skill of a male occupant to do the work in these unusual places, and in addition to this, a surplus of energy and tact to hold the position against the opposition she must encounter from the conventional devotees of society. Hence there are comparatively few women blessed with strength for both work and conflict. That development which controls the passions amid the myriad resistances of woman's progress and bears itself along with purely devoted aims for the highest of the principles of right, is a rare development. Notwithstanding there is among the masses of women an intuitional foresight and heroic moral resistance which constitutes a bed-rock for the patriotism, religion and reform of our country. Out of these masses some have been projected into positions of success, honor and trust, who have proved themselves peers of the noblest statesmen.

The duty of the State to promote the highest moral development of all classes, by equal distribution of responsibility is generally accepted. This is the true arena for the play of that majestic force—conscience. Insolent tyranny will never yield to any other force. Gradually and grandly the doctrine of intrinsic worth, intrinsic right, intrinsic liberty of all humanity, is subduing and must conquer the unequal dominion of masculinity.

At the opening of the afternoon session of the second day, the report of the movement for Woman Suffrage in Missouri, by Virginia L. Minor, was read, in the author's absence, by Miss Anthony.

In making my report as Vice-President for Missouri, it can only be in the most general manner. So far as expression of the sentiment of women has been given by active organizations, little is to be said. The isolated condition of our population makes it extremely difficult for women either to impart or obtain information distinctively relating to themselves. Since my last report Suffrage meetings have been held and fairly reported by a part of the press, and a number of organizations, both protective and beneficiary have been formed by women; but being secret, and many of them connected with trades, it is impossible to obtain accurate statistics, A medical college for women, a woman's exchange, a manual training school, and a training school for women nurses, have been organized within the year. The number and standing of women physicians has steadily appreciated. Of the whole number twelve are registered in St. Louis. Six newspapers, wholly or in part, are edited by women, exclusive of those having in charge the society and fashion departments. While in art no classification can be reported, women are surely and steadily advancing; and, as usual, the theater has been first to recognize her ability—one of our handsomest theaters having received its beautiful decorations, in part, from the hand of a woman.

And not only in the advanced guard of workers and thinkers, but in every ramification 03734of society is woman awaking to a realization of her own distinctive individuality, and the feeling is growing and deepening, that there are radical wrongs in our own social and industrial system, which can never be righted so long as the moral element is legally ignored. And as the ballot is the shield and buckler behind which man has does most grevious hurt to society, woman is beginning to see that she must claim that ballot to right those wrongs. And as in each State the elective franchise is made to depend on citizenship of the United States, and the Federal Court at Springfield, Ill., in the case of the United States vs. John Keller, Mr. Justice Harlan decided, * that Keller had received his right to vote through his mother, who had become a naturalized citizen after his birth, it logically and legally follows that women do possess this right to vote themselves as they can transmit it to others. And this decision is in conformity with the one delivered by the Supreme Court of the United States in the slaughter house cases where the Court declares that, “The negro having by the Fourteenth Amendment been declared a citizen of the United States, is thus made a voter in every State of the Union.” “And while the amendments were made to apply only to the negro, they have a far broader significance, and would apply to the Mexican peon, the Chinese cooly or any other nationality.”

Now there can be, as this decision clearly shows, no distinction in the application of a fundamental principle, and as the Supreme Court itself has declared women to be citizens, the women of this State believe that the Court must protect them in the exercise of the right. Seeing that under this decision citizenship carried with it the ballot, Congress passed a law denying citizenship to the Chinese. But that the matter may be acted on more speedily, we join you in our petition, that Congress may immediately give us relief by a Sixteenth Amendment.

Miss Anthony added, that under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States all women certainly had the right to vote; but the Supreme Court had decided against 03835that right, on the ground that the intention of the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment was only to give the right of Suffrage to male negroes. Still when this right of negroes had been violated in many of the Southern State, the Court decides, that while the intention of the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment was to protect negroes from individuals, as well as from States, yet, as it was not so written in the Amendment, it could not decide that way. “Consistency, thou art indeed a jewel,” said Miss Anthony, “especially in the minds of Supreme Court Judges.”

Miss Anthony then read a letter from Miss Bagby, editor-in-chief of the daily St. Louis Chronicle.

Dear Miss Anthony:

I think my own exertions in raising myself to the managing editorship of a metropolitan daily, the first woman in the West to hold such a position, is doing more to encourage other ambitious girls than if I had tried to lecture or simply write of Suffrage. There must be some, you know, to be used for experiments. No matter how much you may speak from the rostrum, of equality for the sexes, your arguments would be weak without reference to women who have stood beside men, may, over them in business and the professions. It has been my ambition to do that, nothing else was possible, and I feel that I am just beginning.

When I was at school in Galesburg, III., in 1870, at Knox College, Mrs. Stanton gave me my first serious thought of the future, by asking what we girls intended to make of ourselves. It was always in my head after that, and when I graduated I read an essay full of such thoughts. But my parents opposed my notions. The previous vacation I had spent learning to set type in my uncle's office, and I got a notion of proof-reading; when I was eager to learn newspaper-work, and I finally got away from Rushville on a visit to relatives in Louisville. Here, after a long visit, I managed to get proof-reading in a weekly religious newspaper office. Finally my father was elected to Congress, and I went back to Rushville, Ill., to stay in his absence. That winter you came to lecture, and converted the town to Suffrage. Your conversation and lecture made me chafe to get away and begin my newspaper-work—the only thing I had a taste for. The following year I went to Detroit, against the wishes and advice of every one. In the fall of 1877 I began proof-reading at six dollars a week. It has been a genuine struggle to work through all departments, for none of the journalists seemed to understand why I was not content with remaining a proof-reader. Some of them to this day will not refer to me except as a proof-reader, and regret that I will not go back, to what was indeed pleasant work for me, but did not satisfy. I have often wondered why only one or two of all the men with whom I have been associated in business, noticed that I was working with a purpose; the others evidently thought I was using it as a make-shift, as you know too many women do.

When you saw me at Mrs. Minor's here, I had but recently become a writer on the Post-Dispatch (virtually reporter), because a new business manager of the Chronicle had said I was getting “too much money for a woman.” He had just come down from the North, and knew nothing of my work; but the fact of my petticoats decided him, therefore I left. To-day I am managing editor of the Chronicle and have been for some six months. It might be some satisfaction to a vicious woman to have the power 03936of employing and discharging men, to know that those who have laughed at her are glad to ask her for work, to feel that she is being paid a man's full wages. But it is no satisfaction to me because the responsibilities are so heavy and grave, that I do not wish to cultivate such a feeling. I have kept on trying women, until one young girl took hold who seemed in earnest, industrious and clear headed. If she develops, as I hope she may, I will advance her as fast as she can stand it.

My real experience is but just begun. I have much to learn and to endure. This much I am doing to help the cause: trying to make one woman reach the top of her chosen profession. To do this I cannot be partisan nor feminine. I have always held, with Florence Nightingale, that the woman who works beside men, must expect no favors on account of her sex, and accept none.

Yours to serve, Fanny M. Bagby.

Miss Anthony read a telegram from Laura De Force Gordon, Vice-President for California, and Mrs. Gordon's report for that State.

Lodi, Cal., March 5, 1884.

Susan B. Anthony, Riggs House, Washington:

California bids you God speed in the good work. Unavoidably detained or I would have been with you. Laura De Force Gordon.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

I have waited until the last possible hour before writing you, to know if I could not be with you on the occasion of your Sixteenth Annual Washington Convention. Your kind and even urgent invitation to be present at the forthcoming Convention, aroused the old-time zeal and enthusiasm for Woman Suffrage, which have characterized my humble work in that cause heretofore, but which have been deadened by the tidal wave of sorrow that has swept over me during the past year, in which four members of my immediate family have been taken from me by death. I have contemplated the objects and purposes of your present meeting with mingled feelings of anxiety and hope, knowing that the work in behalf of woman's political freedom in this presidential year, should be effective and thorough, and that every voice and pen that can be raised or wielded in furtherance of this object, should not be silent or inactive. If the National capital was in a milder climate—anything like California—I would be with you this entire winter to engage in any effort to advance our cause that your superior wisdom might allot to me. As it is, at the last moment I have abandoned the plan of attending your Convention, though nearly ready to start, and will send you this hastily written greeting and God speed in the good work. I am rejoiced that the Pacific coast will be represented by at least one delegate—that brave, untiring worker, Mrs. Duniway, whose ceaseless labors through the Northwest have yielded such grand results.

In California there has been steady though quiet progress toward the political enfranchisement of women for years, and each succeeding year develops more general interest in the subject and less, much less public and personal hostility to the proposition. The great leading reforms and progressive measures of the day are either projected or controlled by capable and efficient women, and when men step forward to aid, it is usually after the pioneer work of women has rendered it popular or profitable, and sometimes both. The temperance reform is a notable instance, as is also the untiring efforts of selfsacrificing, energetic women, who have by organized and individual efforts awakened an interest in the subjected of silk culture—for which California is peculiarly adapted—that bids fair to result in the permanent establishment of this most important and peculiarly feminine industry, under State patronage and protection.

Next to obtaining for women the ballot that will secure to her the equal protection 04037of the laws, is the development of schemes by which she can accumulate property, and place herself in a position of independence socially. This is the work in which the Ladies’ Silk Culture Society of California—since changed by omitting the first title word to accommodate male applicants for membership—have been engaged for the past three years, having by the persistent efforts of one woman, appointed by that society to seek State aid, obtained the passage of a bill creating a State Board of Silk Culture, and an appropriation of $7,500 for the purpose of establishing a filature, or silk reeling school, in which gratuitous instruction in silk reeling is given to the women and children of the State.

The last Legislature of California was decidedly more favorable to the respectful consideration of the petitions and claims of women for political equality, than any of its predecessors, and a memorial presented to them, by myself, asking for the removal of political disabilities, was most respectfully considered and reported back by the committee, that it would require aa change in the State Constitution. Thereupon I drafted a bill asking for School Suffrage, and another demanding unrestricted Suffrage, and had it introduced into both houses, where they received polite attention and were duly referred to the Judiciary Committee. The question of the constitutional right of the Legislature to enfranchise woman was raised, and by request of Senator Cross, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the Senate, I prepared a brief upon the subject, concerning all the legal points involved, which document was ordered printed by a resolution offered by Mr. Cross and passed by the Senate of the State. But for the limited time—the Legislature is restricted to sixty days by the new Constitution—there is no doubt that School Suffrage at least could have been secured. The last Legislature employed thirteen women in official and clerical positions hitherto monopolized by males.

The recent organization of a “Christian” Woman Suffrage Society in San Francisco in which the leading spirits are Roman Catholics, is an augury of what the future may develope. When the church ceases her opposition, the State will cease prescription, I opine, on account of sex.

The good cause has been robbed of one of its best known, most effective, capable and gifted workers by the death of dear Mrs. Elizabeth T. Schenck, the first Vice-President for California, appointed by the National Women Suffrage Society at its organization in New York in 1869. Mrs. Schenck was a woman of rare intelectual power and force, and until declining years rendered it impossible for her to take an active part in our meetings, was a most untiring and indispensable aid to us. And always did she generously contribute to the good work, in proportion to her worldly means.

Mrs. Foltz and myself have been very successful in the practice of our chosen and honored profession, the law, since our admission to the Supreme Court four years ago, and but for press of business duties would have done more work in the direction of public meetings and lectures in behalf of Woman Suffrage. “But the law is a jealous mistress,” is one of the axioms we first learn and hear oftenest repeated, and therefore try to discharge professional duties first. With assurances that you have the sympathy of a large number of noble women and men, too, in California in the objects of your Convention, and with earnest heartfelt prayers for the success of all your efforts, I am always your friend for equal rights. Laura De Force Gordon.

Jane Amy McKinney, Vice-President for Iowa, was also absent, but sent her report:

The Western world is progressive, and reforms like all enterprises move forward faster than the slower, staid Eastern people can comprehend. The cause of equal 04138rights for women has made rapid strides in the last few years and never gained more in the same length of time than during the last year. Perhaps it is because we never made such efforts to send out missionaries with this gospel of truth, armed with tracts and papers to enlighten the people of Iowa. Miss Matilda Hindman, of Pittsburgh, has been employed by the State Association two months of the year, besides working several weeks upon her own responsibility delivering in the time seventy-two lectures, forming about forty coöperative committees and organizations and has procured many hundred names to pledges for help, doing a grand work for the State. Mrs. Helen M. Gougar has delivered fifteen addresses in the State, distributed three thousand Suffrage tracts and pamphlets and has five hundred readers of Our Herald in Iowa. Mrs. Mariana T. Folsom, the last winter and spring, did much excellent missionary work, going from town to town, arranging her own meetings, and visiting many little places where no Suffrage work had before been done. The services of Mrs. Margaret W. Campbell can hardly be estimated. For several years past she has been in almost every part of the State, giving her an acquaintance and knowledge of the situation which makes her advice and opinions invaluable. She has, during the last year, addressed one hundred and thirty-nine meetings, assisted in organizing ten counties and secured coöperative committees in almost every place where she has held meetings.

At the last annual meeting of the State Association Mrs. Folsom was made the Financial Secretary, whose duty was to secure pledges for money, also to arrange for county conventions, address meetings, etc. Mrs. Campbell was made the organizer; she followed Mrs. Folsom, attending the county conventions, organizing societies and addressing meetings where appointments had been made. They are both engaged at the present time in organizing the southeastern portion of the State.

Letters were written last winter to all our Members of Congress regarding a Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, but all except two failed to reply. Letters were sent also to the Chairman of the Republican and Greenback State Central Committees, asking their coöperation in securing a Suffrage plank in their respective platforms. Courteous answers were received, expressing their sympathy and offering their aid. No action was taken by the Republicans, but the Greenbackers adopted the following: “We demand equal political rights for all men and women.” They also nominated Miss Canfield as State Superintendent of Public Instruction, for by our laws no one is deemed ineligible to any school office on account of sex. We did not appeal to the Democrats, because they held their convention first, and as the question had been discussed and resolutions passed in several of the county conventions, we supposed it would of course receive consideration in the State convention. Letters were written to several of the most prominent politicians of all parties, asking them to mention in their addresses, during the State campaign, the pending amendment, to which many of them cordially assented and did so.

Every State educational institution in Iowa is open to both sexes, and the march of events is showing that the assertion that “The coming American scholar is a woman,” is not altogether improbable. A woman occupies the chair of English Literature in our State University, and for ten years a woman has filled with great ability the place of instructor in mathematics. The highest honors for the last two years were carried off by girls, and by invitation Miss. Gilchrist delivered the master's oration, Miss Hamilton the alumni poem, and Dr. Jenny McCowen an address to the medical graduates last June. The last named lady has had the honor of being elected the second time President of the Medical Society of Scott county, which is said to be the first instance in the medical fraternity in Iowa, the United States, or in the world, in which a woman has been chosen for the executive office of a medical society. The first instance on record where a woman has become the President of a United States National Bank 04239recently occurred in Linn county in the election of Mrs. Louisa B. Stevens as President of the First National Bank in Marion. Women are serving upon our State Boards of Charities and Reforms. Dr. Sara A. Pangburn is one of the staff of the Independence Insane Hospital. Our law now says a woman may be elected as one of the physicians, but a bill has been introduced in our present Legislature to change it, making it say a woman must be one of the physicians in our insane hospitals. And it is believed it will become a law, for we are getting civilized enough to see the propriety of having women physicians to attend their unfortunate sisters who have lost their reason.

Mrs. Mary Wright and Dr. Abbie Cleaves were again commissioned by the Governor as delegates to the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, which met at Louisville, Ky. For twelve years the office of State Librarian has been filled by women and all the work of moving and arranging the library in our beautiful new capitol has been left to Mrs. Maxwell, the librarian, as well as making the rules whereby it shall be governed. The yearly appropriation for its support is three thousand dollars, one-half of which is for the law department, the librarian using her own discretion in selecting. Under the new law three women have been elected county recorders, Miss Hayden, of Warren county, being reëlected by a majority of over nine hundred, all parties giving her their votes. Evidence that public sentiment is advancing is also shown by the fact that the Board of Supervisors of Wapello county tried to find authority in the laws of the State to enable them to appoint Mrs. Chany sheriff of that county. But finding the appointment would be illegal, they did the next best thing, by giving her a responsible and lucrative position outside the office. Thirteen women hold the office of county superintendent of schools.

For several years the Woman's Christian Temperance Union have adopted resolutions declaring their belief in the necessity of Woman Suffrage to carry forward their temperance work successfully. However little else has been done till a year ago, when a Department of Franchise was created and Mrs. Jane Amy McKinney appointed superintendent, empowered to do whatever in her judgment she thought best for the cause. At a majority of the district conventions held during last summer and fall, some one was secured to present the question and district superintendents elected. Suffrage tracts are circulated at the conventions and I believe not a single speaker now addresses an audience without touching upon this topic. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union also circulated petitions which were largely signed, asking for the submission of the question.

A Woman Suffrage Amendment to the Constitution was first introduced during the Thirteenth General Assembly in 1870, which was carried in both branches and referred to the next Legislature. At the next session the House agreed to submit the proposition to the voters of the State, but the joint resolution was defeated in the Senate. The Fifteenth General Assembly again referred an amendment to the following Legislature, and in the summer of that year (1874) the Republican party placed a Woman Suffrage plank in their platform, which was as follows: “That since the people may be entrusted with all questions of governmental reform, we favor the final submission to the people of the question of amending the Constitution so as to extend the right of Suffrage to women, pursuant to the action of the Fifteenth General Assembly.”

At the opening of the Sixteenth General Assembly, Governor C. C. Carpenter recommended Woman Suffrage in his message, and the House again agreed to submit the question, but the Senate, after asking the attorney-general's opinion concerning the matter—which was that the previous legislation was not legal—defeated its submission. In the succeeding Legislature the House again agreed to refer an amendment, but the Senate refuse to make it a special order, arguing that it would come up in a constitutional convention in 1888. During the session of the Eighteenth General Assembly 04340the Senate referred an amendment granting School Suffrage, but the joint resolution was stolen before it reached the House. The Nineteenth General Assembly passed a joint resolution to strike out the word “male” from section one (1) article two (2) of said Constitution by the following vote: House—ayes, 61, nays 31, absent and not voting 8; Senate—ayes 27, nays 18, absent and not voting 5. Thus it will be seen that the House from the first has always voted for the Woman Suffrage Amendment. The Twentieth General Assembly is now in session and within a month it will be seen whether it will ratify * the action of the last. For the first time we have reason to hope the Senate will vote for submission and we do not expect the Honse will go back on its record; but it is by no means certain, for the Republicans and Democrats are nearly a tie, and the Democrats in caucus have already said they would oppose Woman Suffrage first, last, and all the time.

Thus you will see that for fourteen years the women of Iowa have persistently asked our law-makers to give the voters an opportunity to express an opinion upon this question, carrying to them petitions with thousands and thousands of names, only to receive at their hands such childish play of fast and loose, without being guided by any principle or convictions upon the subject, as many have at one session voted for it and at the next, voted against it. Think you if women could help vote on and off their political heads they would dare treat us so?

Governor Sherman, in his recent message to the Legislature, said: “Your attention is respectfully directed to the question of impartial Suffrage, in respect to which the Nineteenth General Assembly proposed an amendment to the Constitution. Should this meet your approval, as preliminary to taking the judgment of the voters, I recommend that it be submitted at a special election in order that it be freed from the influence of partisan politics and thus receive an unprejudiced vote of our citizens. Not caring to here express an opinion upon the question itself, it is sufficient to say that now, as heretofore, I am in favor of the submission of any question which is of important and general interest.” It remains to be seen whether they will act thus honorably. This Legislature, which has convened for the first time in our beautiful new capitol, which the taxes of women have helped to build, could not do a nobler or more fitting act—one which would be an honor to them through all time—than to do justice to women after this long delay.

Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller, Vice-President for Maryland, read the report for that State:

I regret to be obliged to mark the active work done in our State during the past year, at least so far as I know or can learn, at scarcely above zero. Immediately following the National Convention held here in February last, Miss Couzins was invited to deliver an address at Sandy Spring, Md., which she did, to a large and enthusiastic audience. This being an initiatory step—the first stirring of the new life. Soon afterwards Madam Neyman, by earnest and urgent request, spoke before the same company in the same place, and was most flatteringly received. She and Mrs. Caroline H. Miller were invited about the same time to repeat their addresses at Rockville, the county-seat of Montgomery. This invitation we regarded as the entering wedge of the great idea of equal rights, such a thing never before having been suggested, much less, tolerated, in that vicinity. The ladies were courteously received and were complimented by the unconverted citizens of the town upon the admirable tact and grace with which they had handled a difficult and most delicate subject. Mrs. Miller spoke once more upon rights and wrongs of women, at the Sandy Spring Lyceum.

I cannot properly omit from this report some mention of the double duty which is 04441happily being performed at present in our State by the active and earnest agitation of the temperance question. The consideration of this great cause is arousing the minds of our best women to the necessity of their own direct action and influence; and this must, and does, as we have seen in many instances, include that of the ballot.

While we have no further active progress to report, the handfull of true believers are not discouraged, but feel satisfied that the good seed has been scattered in many intelligent minds and that it will live and grow and bear fruit.

Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake, Vice-President for New York, read the report for that State.

In order to give a clear idea of the present situation in New York, it is necessary briefly to review the history of the past few years. During the Legislative Session of 1880, by the efforts of the friends of Woman Suffrage, a bill was passed giving the women of the State the right to vote at school elections. The fall of that year was a season of great activity; the State was canvassed by speakers and the women were aroused to action, availing themselves of their new privileges in large numbers. A fresh impulse was from this moment given to the question of enfranchisement; women had voted; this removed the discussion from the region of speculation to that of fact, many of the most absurd prejudices disappeared, and women were everywhere awakened to a new interest—they had discovered what power even the school ballot placed in their hands; they began to demand with greater unanimity than ever before, the full right of Suffrage. The State was thoroughly organized. In the course of that trial year and the two following, I myself visited nearly every county in the State and with the Vice-Presidents and other leading members, speaking in all the large cities and many smaller towns. In 1881 a bill, originally presented by Mr. Andrews, giving the women of the State the right to vote, after full discussion in the Assembly, received the remarkable vote of fifty-nine in favor to fifty-four against, lacking only six votes of the requisite constitutional majority of sixty-five. In 1882 the same bill was reintroduced and became one of the leading topics of the session. Major Jas. Haggerty was the able champion of the measure which was also supported by many of the best men in the Assembly. The Albany County Woman Suffrage Society was most active in securing votes. Mrs. Mary S. Howell, the President, Miss Kate Stoneman and Miss Martha Winne displaying brilliant qualities as leaders; meetings were held every week in the old assembly chamber under the management of these ladies, while I visited and spoke at doubtful points throughout the State. We seemed on the eve of victory; the Assembly had been canvassed and seventy-eight votes were pledged to us. Our opponents became alarmed. Mr. Erastus Brooks, one of the ablest of the Democratic leaders, resolved, if possible, to prevent the success of the bill. In order to do this, he procured the passage of a resolution asking the attorney-general's opinion on the constitutionality of the measure on the eve of the day appointed for the vote. Many of the women interested had come to Albany, all anticipating action that morning. But on entering the assembly chamber we were confronted with the attorney-general's opinion, which was adverse. This man, Leslie W. Russell, had claimed to be a friend of Woman Suffrage, yet he now in a few weak and shallow sentences declared the bill to be unconstitutional. Futile as his reasoning was, it had its effect; the vote was postponed for a week, and efforts were made to rally the friends of the measure, for many of the members who were advocates of Woman Suffrage, were honestly influenced by the views of one so high in official position, but when the vote was finally taken we polled fifty-four in favor to fifty-nine against. During the Legislative Session of 1883, it was not possible again to bring in the bill, because Judge Russell still held the position of attorney-general. A constitutional 04542amendment was however introduced in both branches of the Legislature, and by the efforts of Senator John G. Boy passe in the Senate by a close vote. The record of the year cannot be closed without an allusion to the series of lectures delivered by Dr. Morgan Dix on the question of woman's position. They called forth a remarkable storm of opposition by their narrow views. The lectures which I gave in reply were listened to by crowded audiences, and were widely quote by the press in approval; indeed it was a most illustration of the progress of our cause, that the temper of the comments were everywhere in accord with the broader liberty we are claiming.

The present year, 1884, has brought us to new activities. During last summer I availed myself of every opportunity to speak on Woman Suffrage and repeatedly addressed large and interested audience. In the fall Leslie W. Russell was renominated as attorney-general by the Republicans. The Democrats nominated Denis O'Brien. The entire strength of our party was at once thrown against Judged Russell and in favor of Judge O'Brien. This gentleman, we had reason to believe, would not be in such hot haste as his predecessor had been to decide against us, and we were resolved at least to secure the defeat of Judge Russell. Mr. Hamilton Wilcox, who had drafted the original bill and ably defended its constitutionality, held a series of meetings in New York city to oppose Judge Russell. Mrs. Helen Mr. Loder in Poughkeepsie, Mrs. Caroline Gilkie Rogers in Troy, and others of our efficient Vice-Presidents organized in the various counties and made every effort to gain votes for O'Brien. The friends of the cause secured from their friends the promise of votes, one lady counting twenty, another seventeen, another ten and so on, while gentlemen made personal appeals to their employe's to cast this one ballot for the women of the State. Our energies were also directed to the election of favorable men to the Legislature. In New York city the canvass was especially active; in the different wards friends organized and did efficient work; the Central Committee sent out thousands of circulars through the State while thousands of hand-bills were distributed on election day. At some points messenger boys were hired to stand near the polling places, and distribute our protests; at others women themselves stood at the boxes distributing Republican tickets having the same of O'Brien substituted for that of Russell.

Our victory was complete. Judge Russell was defeated and sent back to private life, and Judge O'Brien is attorney-general of our State. In the election of members of the Assembly and Senate, we were also largely successful. Mr. Erastus Brooks was not sent back, other men who had opposed us will also stay at home, while Major Haggerty and many other friends were reëlected. We also have this year the advantage of having in the Assembly our long-time champion, General Jas. W. Husted. The temper of the Legislature is most favorable, our memorial has been presented and we look for a bill coming from the judiciary Committee itself.

In conclusion it should be clearly stated that we are making our claim in New York by a bill and not by constitutional amendment. The English common law underlies the civil code of our State, and by that law women had the right to vote. There is nothing in our constitution to set aside or forbid the exercise of this privilege, on the contrary that instrument especially declares that it was framed “to secure the liberties of all the people,” and that” no member of the State shall be disfranchised except by law of the laud or judgement of his peers.” As there is no law which declares, that women shall not vote, we claim that we now have the right, and it only requires the passage of a bill to secure it to us.

I cannot close without speaking of the efficient work of the noble women engaged in this reform throughout our State. Mrs. Rogers, Vice-President for Rensselaer county, will tell you of the brilliant generalship with which she has led the women of Lansingburgh to victory; the ladies of Albany county already mentioned Mrs. Gage of Onondaga and Mrs. Loder of Dutchess. Mrs. Hallock of Ulster, Mrs. 04643Dildine of Brown, Mrs. Wilson of Warren, Mrs. Cleveland of Wyoming, and our revered Dr. Clemence S. Lozier of New York city deserve special mention for their activity. With such an earnest and faithful band of workers in the State and with justice on our side, final success is certain.

Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, from the Committee on Resolutions, reported the following:

Whereas , The fundamental idea of a republic is the right of self-government, the right of every citizen to choose her own representatives, to enact the laws by which she is governed; and

Whereas , This right can be secured only by the exercise of the Suffrage; therefore

Resolved, That the ballot in the hand of every qualified citizen constitutes the true political status of the people, and to deprive one-half of the people of the use of the ballot is to deny the first principle of a republican government.

Resolved, That it is the duty of Congress to pass a Sixteenth Amendment to the National Constitution, securing to women the right of Suffrage; first, because the disfranchisement of one-half of the people deprives that half of the means of self-protection and support, limits their resources for self-development, and weakens their influence on popular thought; second, by giving all men the absolute authority to decide the social, civil and political status of women, we create a spirit of caste, unrepublican in tendency; third, in depriving the state of the united wisdom of man and woman, that important “consensus of the competent,” our form of government becomes in fact an oligarchy of males instead of a republic of the people.

Resolved, That since the women citizens of the United States have thus far failed to receive proper recognition from any of the existing political parties, we recommend the appointment by this Convention of a committee on future political action.

Resolved, That as there is a general awakening to the right of women in all European countries, the time has arrived to take the initiative steps for a grand International Woman Suffrage Convention, to be held in either England or American, and that for this purpose a committee of three be appointed at this Convention to correspond with leading persons in different countries interested in the elevation of women.

Miss Phœbe Couzins submitted the following resolution, which was agreed to without dissent:

Resolved, That the services of Anna Ella Carroll, of Maryland, who directed the armies of the republic up the Tennessee river and then southward to center of the confederate power to its base in northern Alabama, cutting the Memphis and Charleston railroad, thus breaking the back-bone of the rebellion, entitle her justly to the name of the military genius of the war; that her long struggle for recognition at the hands of our government entitles her to the sympathy of all who believe in truth and justice; and the continued refusal of this government to acknowledge this woman's service, which saved to us the Union, defeated National bankruptcy and prevented the intervention of foreign powers, merits the condemnation of all lovers of right, and we hereby not only send to her out loving recognition and sympathy, but pledge ourselves to arouse this Nation to the fact of her services.

Mrs. Gougar, Chairman of the Committee on Plan of Work, reported the following resolutions, which were adopted as read, the entire audience voting:

Resolved, That we hold a convention in every unorganized State and Territory in the Union during the present year, these conventions to be held, so far as possible, at the capital of the State or Territory.

Resolved, That we consider the enfranchisement of the women citizens of the United States the paramount issue of the hour; therefore

Resolved, That we will, by all honorable methods, oppose the election of any presidential candidate who is a known opponent to Woman Suffrage, and we recommend similar action on the part of our State associations in regard to State and congressional candidates; and further

Resolved, That the officers of this Convention shall communicate with presidential nominees of the several political parties and ascertain their positions upon this question.

Resolved, That all Legislatures shall be requested to memorialize Congress upon the submission of a Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution; this to be the duty of the Vice-Presidents of the States and Territories.

Whereas, The national government has, through Congress and the Supreme Court, persistently refused to protect the women of the several States and Territories in “the right of the citizen to vote”; therefore

Resolved, That this Association most earnestly protests against National interference to abolish the right wherever it has been secured by the Legislature—as, for example, the Edmunds bill, which proposes to disfranchise all the women of Utah, thus inflicting the most degrading penalty upon the innocent equally with the guilty, by robbing them of their most sacred right of citizenship.

At the evening session of the second day, March 5th, the hall was crowded. Miss Anthony gave the names of prominent people from whom she had received encouraging letters, commenting upon the writers, and giving interesting reminiscences of some of those she had met. The letters were from Theodore Stanton, son of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mlle. Hubertine Auclert and M. Leon Rieher, editors of Parisian papers; Mrs. Ellen Clark Sargent, wife of our Minister to Germany; Francis Power Cobbe of London; Florence Kelly, from Zurich, Miss Tod of Dublin; Wm.I. Bowditch of Boston, and Senators Blair and Anthony. In speaking of the letter form Mrs. Sargent, Miss Anthony said she spent two weeks in the Minister's family in Berlin, “and,” added, “I felt that every American might well be proud of such noble representatives in Germany, not only of the Minister, but of his wife and children.

Miss Couzins told of the many characters, virtues and natures, which men have agreed to impersonate in the form of women. The last one mentioned was the Goddess of Liberty who stands upon the dome of the capitol. “The goddess can turn her tear-stained eyes over to Carroll county in Maryland,” said Miss Couzins, “and see dying there a woman to whom the credit belongs for the plan which broke the backbone of the rebellion; a woman, who in military genius, ranks Grant and Sherman, Anna Ella Carroll. She lies dying there, paralyzed, the government owing her $6,500, which it does not pay, for pamphlets printed by her for President Lincoln. Then the Goddess of Liberty can think of herself as a lie in this government.”

At the close of her speech, of which we have no report, Miss Couzins asked a collection for Miss Carroll. The audience generously responded to her cloquent plea, and the sum was sent to Miss Carroll, and a letter of thanks received from her sister.

Mrs. Belva A. Lockwood presented and spoke to the following resolution:

Resolved: That the legislation now pending in the committee's of Congress looking to the disfranchisement of the women of Utah, viz.: House Bill No. 946 and Senate Bill No. 1,283, are unconstitutional and unjust; blows aimed at the liberties of the citizens; and that they propose to strike at the root of our civil government.

Her speech was a severe criticism on the disfranchising of the women in Utah as proposed by the Senate Bill reported from the Judiciary Committee by Senator Hoar, and on the House Bill known as the Cassidy Bill which proposed to abolish the territorial government. *

Mrs. Helen M. Gougar, of Indiana, spoke on “Woman before the Law.”

She showed, by historical facts, that men have made a more complete failure of human government, than any other thing they have attempted. She maintained that kingdoms, empires and republics have passed through the several stages of infancy, youth, middle age, old age, decay into death for other governments to rise upon their rums and pass through the very same stages. This decay and death of governments came largely from the fact that none had yet attempted to develope the best elements within it, but all had been guilty of some form of class legislation. She traced the progress of human liberty to the landing of our fore-parents at Plymouth Rock. She traced the development of human liberty, as shown in the history of the ballot, which was at first given to a certain class of believers in orthodox religions, the property holders, then to the colored men, showing how class legislation had been gradually done away with by allowing believer and unbeliever, rich and poor, lack and white to vote unquestioned and unhindered, and as a result of this onward march of justice, the last remaining form of class legislation now shown by the sex ballot, must pass away. She declared the sex-line to be the lowest standard upon which to base a privilege, and unworthy the civilization of the present time. She answered many of the popular objections to Woman Suffrage by showing that if education is to be made the test of the ballot, women would not be the disfranchised class in America, as three-fifths of all graduates from schools and colleges in the last ten years have been women, and in the last five years four-fifths of these have been women. If morality is to made a test of the ballot, women would do more voting than men. The ratio of law-abiding women to men is as one to every one hundred and three, of drunken women to drunken men one to every one thousand; reasoning from these facts that sobriety, virtue and intelligence being necessary qualifications for a State, women enfranchised would largely reflect these elements in the government.

To the objection presented by Mr. Reagan, member of Congress from Texas, that 04946women could not go to war, therefore they ought not to vote, Mrs. Gougar drew a graphic picture of a mother in Montgomery country, Indiana, who gave nine sons to the Union Army, not one of whom returned home alive. She drew the picture of Mr. Reagan sitting in the cabinet of Jefferson Davis, plotting treason and doing all in his power to destroy the life of the Nation, and asked: Which did the most in saving the life of this Republic in the late civil war, this mother who gave nine sons, or Mr. Reagan sitting in the cabinet of traitors? [The question was answered by the deafening and three times repeated applause of the audience.]

Before adjourning the Convention Miss Anthony announced that she had just received, through Senator Palmer, an invitation from the President Arthur for the officers and delegates of the Convention to call upon him at noon to-day. She also said that the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage would give the Convention a hearing Friday afternoon, and the House Judiciary Committee on Saturday morning.

The third day afternoon session was opened by Miss Anthony telling the audience of the reception by the President of the officers and delegates of the Association:

She told him the women with her represented twenty States of the Union, and she appealed to him, as a possible candidate for reëlection, to come out squarely for Woman Suffrage. The President replied, “It is indeed a remarkable assemblage of women, and I have observed whenever women were determined to carry a point, they always succeeded in getting all they ought to have.” “I asked him,” said Miss Anthony, “if he did not think women ought to have equal rights and privileges with men.” Miss Anthony's clever way of expressing the President noncommittal responses excited much laughter in the audience. She said that she relieved the United States Marshal of the disagreeable of introducing the delegates. Several of them made remarks to the President. One said, “I will never be satisfied until a president shall be in the White-House whose wife is an avowed Woman Suffragist.” The Treasurer of the Association said, “I will never be satisfied until a woman occupies the White-House as president. “So we came away,” said Miss Anthony, “having been treated with the utmost politeness and as fully pleased as are the numerous delegations of men of all classes who go to call upon the President.”

Miss Anthony then told how many times similar calls and appeals had been made upon the different occupants of the White-House during the past sixteen year, and that they always had been received courteously—but never had a President recommended equality of rights for women in his inaugural address or message to Congress. She concluded by saying, if the women, who called on the President from twenty-six different States and Territories of this Nation, had represented voting constituencies they would have made an impression and received positive answers.

Mr. Edward M. Davis was introduced and made the report of progress in Pennsylvania.

He said: In the absence of our Secretary, Miss Rachel Foster, who is in Europe, you will get but a meager report from our State. Garrison used to say, “Hostility is better than indifference”; we have hardly got our people awake enough to oppose us; ridicule rather than reason now seems to be the weapon of those who do speak. The 05047point of interest just now before our people in Philadelphia is the application of Mrs. Carrie Burnham Kilgore to practice law. To the application in court number two, Judge Hare says, “No”; but upon her attending a two years’ course of study in the department of law in the University of Pennsylvania she received from that institution a diploma, dated June 18, 1883, conferring upon her the degree of Bachelor of Law, and that diploma bore the name of the same Judge Hare! The Judge therefore virtually says: “She is able to perform the work, but she shall not, so far as I can help it”; thus depriving her of the opportunity of earning her living in the way of her own choice. I understand the Judge received a fee for that diploma. Mrs. Kilgore applied for admission to the Philadelphia bar before her marriage; she was not admitted because she was a woman. Now they object that she is married woman. Should Mr. Kilgore die and she persevere in claiming her rights—as she surely would—the objection may be that she is a widow! Judges Pierce and Finlette are doing all in their power to have Mrs. Kilgore admitted; so also are Messrs. Hanna, Ashman and Penrose, Judges of the Orphans’ Court, who have admitted her to practice in that Court. This point will be pressed to success, * and although it is not a Suffrage question, direct, the people need to be taught that their opposition to what is called Woman's Rights is opposition to human rights. Our local society in Philadelphia is based on that idea; it is called “The Citizen's Suffrage Association,” the object being to obtain Suffrage for women and to secure it for men, as the one must be in danger while the other is denied. We have a number of zealous friends in our Legislature who mean to see that this question in fairly treated.

[Abstract of a report of woman's work in Philadelphia, Pa., by Mrs. L.L. Blankenburg, daughter of Dr. Hannah Longshore, one of the earliest physicians in this country.]

Mrs. Blankenburg said: The Woman's Medical College in Philadelphia is the largest and oldest medical school for women in the world. It was incorporated in 1850. Three hundred and seventy-seven women have graduated from it in the science of medicine. Drs. Rachel L. Bodley, Clara Marshall, Frances Emily White, Anna E. Broomall, Hannah T. Croasdale and others are now professors in the college, in connection with which is a hospital for women and a training school for nurses, all under the control of women. About forty women are practicing medicine in the city and represent all the various schools of medicine. Dr. Alice Bennett is the resident physician of the Norristown Insane Asylum. She has entire charge of the women's department, and is demonstrating in a most satisfactory manner the value of kindness as a means of discipline in place of the old regime of force, handcuffs, etc. Dr. Hannah Longshore established herself as a regular physician in 1852, and is still actively engaged in practice, her thirty-two years of experience and activity in her profession refuting the objection to woman's physical and mental disability for successful following a profession. Three women physicians are appointed and employed at the almshouse. Several private dispensaries are managed by women physicians. A few graduates of dentistry are well patronized and there is quite a large class of educated women attending the Dental College, intending to return to their native countries for practice as soon as they graduate.

The Woman's Branch of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, organized in 1869, is in active operation. The Legislature of 1883 granted the power for any member witnessing cruelty to any animal to cause arrest and prosecute. Under the supervision of Mrs. Charles Willing, a Boys’ Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, has been formed in the public schools. A shelter for animals in the city and another in the outskirts, for receipt and care of sick, homeless and 05148loose animals, are open the year round, and this winter at an assembly of the policemen, medals were awarded to the two who could show the best record in assisting this society.

Miss Grace Anna Lewis is a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences, and frequently lectures on her special studies, ornithology and the vertebrata. Mrs. Sarah C. F. Hallowell is an editor of the Public Ledger. Mrs. A. S. Wister is an author and translator. Mrs. Sarah Yendall, manufacturer of worsted yarns, has a capital of $75,000. A few women are in mercantile firms as special partners. One establishment, firm all women, makes children's fine clothing and sends a traveling saleswoman to all the principal Western cities. Many small trades are carried on by women.

During the Centennial year some of the members of the New Century Club formed a Committee for the “Legal Protection of Working Women,” through which they assist the ignorant and defrauded, and several experienced lawyers give their services gratuitously to the work of this committee, when necessary. This Club also established a cooking school, which is continued by Mrs. S. S. Rover, under the name of the Philadelphia Cooking School, which is educationally and financially a success. A large and popular school for young ladies employs Mrs. Rover to give lessons in cooking twice á week, and teachers in cooking are in demand.

Miss Florence Kelly and Miss Gabriel Clements aided Mrs. Eliza Sproat Turner to establish evening classes for working women, and during this winter at 1884, four hundred and six women have enrolled themselves as students. To meet the need for some social pleasures the Working Woman's Guild was established and their rooms are open to members and friends. They have a library, piano, etc.; annual dues one dollar. Mrs. Turner also established the custom of the “country week” for children, and last summer over two thousand children received the benefit of the change.

A free kindergarten has been established by Miss Anna Hallowell, supported partially by her own bounty. it was incorporated in 1881 and received an appropriation of five thousand dollars from the city treasury. A “Public Education Society” was formed by Miss Charlotte Pendleton, to stimulate public sentiment in favor of education. A Children's Aid Society and Bureau of Information was organized and incorporated in 1883 by Mrs. Susan Luley, Gertrude Biddle, Fanny B. Ames, Miss Anna Hallowell and Catharine Merideth. An association of women has been formed, with headquarters in Philadelphia, for the introduction of Silk Culture. The Woman's Christian Association has evening class instruction, a cheap restaurant, boarding house, lodging rooms, and a savings bank, and the Christian temperance women are actively combating the sale of liquor. Mrs. Carried B. Kilgore has been admitted to practice in the Orphans’ Court and has applied to practice in other courts. Miss Cornelia Hancock is a charity organization officer. Dr. Mary Pratt attends the sessions of thee Criminal Court, doing for her feeble sisters what Florence Nightingale did for he Crimean soldiers, helping with sympathy and advice the poor women brought there for trial and punishment. The Philadelphia branch of the Woman's National India Association endeavor to obtain an industrial education and United States citizenship for the Indian as the most expedient way to solve the Indian problem. A house for incurables is controlled by women. In 1883 the State Board of Charities appointed nine women to visit the Philadelphia county public institutions. In 1871 women were appointed by the city to take charge of the dog-collecting department. Two women assistant school superintendents were recently appointed. Sixteen Philadelphia women artists exhibited pictures at the late exhibition, Miss Emily Sartain receiving the one hundred dollar Mary Smith prize for an oil painting. Mrs. Caroline Vest is educating the public school teachers in industrial drawing. The Industrial Art School, with the coöperation of the Woman's Centennial Executive Committee, is thriving. A homeopathic hospital is to be opened under the management of women.

Mrs. Dr. Theodore Wormley engraved on steel eighty-eight illustrations for her husband's work on the “Micro-Chemistry of Poisons.” She had made the original drawings. They had been engraved in Paris in an unsatisfactory manner. They could not be done in this country. An officer of the American Bank Note Company, New York, told Mrs. Wormley only the person who the drawings could engrave them. She studied steel engraving and finished the illustrations. The book is published in New York, London and Paris.

Mrs. Bertha H. Ellsworth, of Lincoln Center, read the report for Kansas prepared by Mrs. Anna C. Wait, member of the Executive Committee of National Woman Suffrage Association.

Mrs. President and Ladies of the Convention:

The lincoln (Kansas) Auxiliary National Woman Suffrage Association sends greeting and a representative, Bertha II. Ellsworth. We are happy to report progress for Kansas during the past year. Although still laboring under the disadvantage of having no State organization and consequently no concert of action among the Suffragists of the State, there are, nevertheless, evidences of a healthy growth of popular sentiment in favor of the ballot for woman. Four years ago last November the Lincoln Auxiliary National Woman Suffrage Association was organized by four ladies. The first year our membership increased to twenty-seven, the second year to forty, six of whom were gentlemen, and we now have an enrollment of seventy-two, nineteen of whom are gentlemen; of these, forty women and fifteen men still reside in the county.

We have held, on an average, one parlor meeting a month, and six public meetings. Three years ago several of our lady members were given a place on the program of the Fourth of July celebration, after we had solicited it through a committee appointed for that purpose. Two years ago we arranged the Fourth of July celebration ourselves, and gave the gentlemen half the program without their asking for it. Last Fourth of July we had a Foremothers’ Day celebration and confined the program to our own society. In September, 1882, we sent a delegate to the annual meeting of the National Woman Suffrage Association held at Omaha, Nebraska, and now send one to Washington.

The Lincoln Woman Suffrage Association has taken an active part in the school district elections in Lincoln Center. In the last four elections we were twice successful and twice defeated. In the latter by forcing the anti-suffragists to bring out all their lady friends defeat our candidate who was a lady member of our society. At the last school election fifty per cent. of the votes cast were by women. All the countries of the State, of which I have any knowledge, have women upon their teacher's examining boards. Our country, Lincoln, has thus employed women for nine years, and four years of the time two of the three members have been women; Mrs. Wait has served in that capacity six of the last seven years.

In Closing Mrs. Ellsworth said:

The winter of the report I have just read would be a fitter representative of Kansas and Kansas Suffrage work than myself, for to her more than to any other person does this cause owe its growth int its present strength in Central Kansas. Mrs. Waite has failed to report her own earnest, efficient services among the influences that have forwarded the cause of Suffrage in our State, and I feel it to be my duty to say a few words in regard to her work, which is a grand proof of what a woman may accomplish even with her hands filled with every day cares and duties, and swift to aid every good cause which is founded in human need and right. All I can say will be but a poor 05350tribute to this infinitely brave, persevering and modest little woman, who for years has been living proof that a woman can be a model housekeeper and an efficient school teacher, and still find time to edit a woman's column in the country paper, organize and sustain Suffrage societies in her own and other countries, improve every opportunity of introducing and circulating Suffrage literature, faithfully discharge the duties of of corresponding secretary (no small task when well performed), and he undeniably always and everywhere a real lady and true woman.

When four years ago she began editing a column headed “Woman as a Citizen” in her husband's newspaper the Lincoln Beacon many people said it would quench the light of said Beacon entirely, and a few subscribers did indeed their paper stopped, and a few who did not go so far as that, still said amen to the remonstrance of a foreign born citizen and voter who said: “Captain Vait is von pig fool to mix der blame Vimmen's Right beeznez mit dot Beacon .” But the world did not come to an end because of these mal-contents, neither did the paper, but it flourished and grew apace and gained hundreds of better subscribers in place of the few who withdrew; and so ably has woman's position as a citizen been therein defined and advocated, and so well have these doctrines commended themselves to thinking people, that the “Vimmen's Right beeznez.” so far from dimming our Beacon, has carried it far beyond a merely local circulation; as letters received testify, its light is welcomed in many homes in almost every State and has ever reached Canada and England.

Last fourth of July our Lincoln Suffrage Society celebrated Foremother's Day. My friend, Mrs. Wait, in enjoining me to come and bring an essay or poem appropriate to the occasion, said: “I wonder when our freedom day will come? I wish Kansas could win and wear the crown of enfranchising her women. Already she has been the battle-field where two victories have been won, and I covet for her the third and greatest victory of Woman Suffrage.” My friend's words lingered in my mind, and formed a picture I have tried to express through our Kansas Banner showing our State crowned with free soil and prohibition, and the third crown of Woman Suffrage however above and ready to be placed upon her head. In connection with this I composed and recited a poem called Kansas, of which I will here give the opening and closing stanzas: Columbia, child of progression, Boasts treasures from sea unto sea, And proudly repeats the assertion That here is the land's of the free From her brow, resting on the Atlantic, To-day Freedom's flag is unrolled To the land where the mighty Pacific Is laving her sandals of gold. Free alike all who dwell’ neath that symbol, She calls on the Nations to see; Thou forgettest thy sex, Oh, Columbia, When counting thy equal and free. Hear'st thou not woman's voice still entreating In they freedom for an unfettered part? Let us trace Freedom's life currents beating Through Kansas, Columbia's heart. Oh, brothers of Kansas! bear witness, The hearts of our women are strong To bravely bear trial and hardship, And overcome evil and wrong. In reviewing your trials in Kansas With them do no memories blend, Of where they were lighted by woman, Who proved faithful helpers and friend? 05451 Her labor and counsels assisted Our homes, schools and churches to build, To her keeping and training are trusted The treasures with which they are filled. If strong to assist you in trial, Wise to reason, teach, counsel and cheer. Then why to her vote give denial? To honor and trust her why fear? Is the ignorant slave or poor drunkard, Or that man of an immoral life, Better fitted to trust with the ballot Than the true hearted mother and wife? To the hands so well fitted to use it: The power of the ballot entrust; Nor fear they will ever abuse it, Act brothers, as wise men and just. And Kansas who dowered with freedom The sons of her soil in the past, Should bestow the same boon on her daughters, Through us she asks justice at last. Brothers, help us to place on her forehead, This crown which still hovers above; Free indeed wilt thou then be, Oh, Kansas, Thou triple crowned State and our love!

Mrs. Julia Ballard Nelson, of Minnesota, read the report of Sarah Burger Stearns, Vice-President of the National Association for Minnesota. At its conclusion Mrs. Nelson made an excellent extemporaneous speech. She told in it why she wanted the ballot; said she was a missionary and a farmer. She remarked that she had raised some calves on her farm and thought herself in much better business than in raising boys, who, when they grew up and had a moustache, should undertake to teach their mother how to be a woman.

To the Sixteenth Annual Convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association:

From far and near the world has watched with deepest interest the heroic efforts that you and you hosts or friends have made, for sixteen years, to secure one single act of justice from an ever-changing Congress. To all appreciative minds, the self-sacrifice, patience, courage and devotion shown by you, seems truly sublime. While the National Association has thus persistently and heroically sought to bring the question woman's enfranchisement before Congress, and though Congress, before the States, in such manner that their intelligent representatives might consider and decide the matter, State and local societies have been appealing to Legislatures for such action as could be taken by them, without the coöperation of Congress.

Western women acknowledge with pride and pleasure that Western legislators have proved themselves quite as honorable in their dealings with mothers, sisters, wives and daughters as have those of other sections, boasting a higher culture or claiming more of chivalry. In Minnesota ladies have been invited to address the Legislature, have been listened to with polite attention and their petitions many times granted. In 1870 petitions for a law enfranchising women were responded to by a bill proposing an amendment, to be voted upon by women as well as men, and the votes of the women to be counted as legal votes. This was granting more than was asked for, and for this 05552reason—that the bill went too far—it was vetoed by the Governor. In 1875 our Legislature submitted to the electors a Constitutional Amendment giving women School Suffrage, and making them eligible to hold any office relating to the management of schools. This was adopted, and followed by legislative enactment, in 1876.

County superintendents report the number of ladies serving on school board as on the increase, and as serving well. Three women are now county superintendents. There are two lady professors in the State University, and several ladies are high school principals and teachers in the normal schools. Nearly all are graduates of Eastern colleges and universities.

The Legislature of 1877 submitted a Constitutional Amendment giving women a vote on the temperance question. This was of course overwhelmingly defeated by the liquor men and their sympathizers, to whom it was submitted. In 1878 the temperance people petitioned to have this amendment re-submitted, but the Legislature thought such action useless, as it doubtless was.

In 1879 the Suffrage women of the State, acting upon the plan proposed by the National Woman Suffrage Association, presented a petition to our Legislature praying for the adoption of a joint resolution respectfully asking Congress to submit to the several State Legislature an Amendment to the Federal Constitution, enfranchising women. When this petition was considered in the House, and the resolution prayed for, voted upon, there were found to be forty-eight in favor to fifty-three against. When the petition was considered in the Senate, a “resolution praying our United States Senators and Representative to such their influence towards securing an Amendment to the Federal Constitution enfranchising all citizens, “was adopted by a majority of six.

Sessions of the Legislature have been from this time held only biennially. In 1881 the State Woman's Christian Temperance Union again petitioned for an amendment which, if adopted, would give the ballot to women on temperance questions. They also petitioned for a prohibitory law. Failing to secure either the temperance ballot of the law, the leaders of the State Woman's Christian Temperance Union were more than ever convinced of the necessity of full Suffrage for women. At its annual meeting in 1881, a resolution was passes, with but one dissenting voice, declaring that full Suffrage for women should henceforth he claimed by the Minnesota Woman's Christian Temperance Union.

Many years ago the Suffragists of this State commenced organizing local societies. The first was organized at Rochester in 1869. The first permanent one at Kasson; the next of Champlain. Organization of this kind are yet few, however, as the friends of Suffrage have until recently lacked the stimulus of a State Association to lead in carrying on coöperative work. In 1881 representative women from various parts of the State met and organized a Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association, auxiliary to the National. The State Association has sought to build up popular sentiment by quickly distributing Suffrage literature, sending out circular-letters appealing to the intelligent and thoughtful to become members of both State and local societies, and thus be preparing for future work. The State Association has been aided very much by a Woman Suffrage department, edited by Mrs. H. E. Gallinger, in the State Temperance Review. In the summer and fall of last year Mrs. L. May Wheeler was employed by the State Association as a lecturer and organizer of local auxiliaries. Her efforts have been kindly received and much good work has been done.

During the Northwestern Industrial Exhibition, held at Minneapolis in August of last year, a Woman Suffrage headquarters was fitted up on the fair-ground in a fine, large tent, made attractively by flags, banners and mottoes. The State and local societies were represented, officers and members from both being there to receive all who were in sympathy, to talk Suffrage to opposers, to pass out food leaflets, to exhibit copies of 05653the Woman Suffrage History and call attention to the needs of the State Association.

In October last this Association held its Third Annual Meeting, at Minneapolis, continuing its sessions through two days and evenings and awakening much interest and enthusiasm. The Convention was favored with the attendance and encouraging words of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, who had come to Minneapolis by invitation of the State Association to lecture upon the benefits of Suffrage for women.

It was perhaps as long ago as 1872 that Minnesota commenced to do her share in the work of petitioning Congress for an Amendment to the National Constitution enfranchising women, since which the women of the State have many times gone out at the risk of health and life, through the deep snows and against the strong winds and bitter cold of a Minnesota winter, to gather names to be sent to Washington, until growing weary of petitioning, they have rested awhile. During the last two months they have taken up the work and again with great zeal and courage, getting the signatures of nearly every man or woman spoken to. They have sent, or will send in their share of names.

Our honored guest of the Convention from the Old World, Mrs. Jessie M. Wellstood, of Edinburgh, made a report from Scotland. She gave a clear and distinct history of the efforts of the women of Scotland to obtain the privilege of voting.

Mrs. Wellstood said: They had succeeded in obtaining the right to vote in the school and municipal elections, and in the choice of parochial guardians. They now have to obtain only the right to vote for members of Parliament. Whilst I have stood upon this platform at the various meetings this week, surrounded by good and earnest women. I have more and more realized the truth, that a strong bond unites those who are working for a just and holy cause. I no longer feel as a stranger or an alien, but as a member of the loving and large-hearted sisterhood of this vast continent. When my honored friend, Susan B. Anthony, gave me an invitation to attend this Convention last year in Edinburgh, I confess that I scarcely realized the intellectual feast to which I was bidden. As a guest, I now most heartily thank her, together with the delegates and members of the Convention, for their kind and courteous reception and treatment of myself and friend. Be assured, dear sisters, we shall always hold you in grateful remembrance; and shall from time to time, if life is spared, trace your progress and rejoice when you reach the goal whither your wishes and labors are tending.

I look upon Woman Suffrage as the grand foundation of all woman's work. When her voice and influence is heard through the action of the ballot, then can we hope that more equal laws and truer justice shall be meted out. To those who are sitting at case, folding their hands and sweetly saying: “I have all the rights I want, why should I trouble about these matters? “ let me just quote the burning words of the grand old prophet Isaiah, which entered into my soul and stirred it up to action: “Rise up, ye women that are at ease; hear my voice, ye careless daughters, give ear unto my speech—many days shall ye be troubled, ye careless women etc.” It is just because we fold our hands and sit at ease, that so many of our less fortunate fellow creatures are leading lives of misery, want, sin and shame. Let us women then listen to the stirring call, go forth in the strength and zeal given to us by our Divine Master and fulfill the injunction, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.”

Mrs. Wellstood then read the report of Scotland, prepared by Eliza Wigham, of Edinburgh:

The Edinburgh National Society for Woman Suffrage was inaugurated on November 6th, 1867. In the previous year, women in Scotland had united in sending the 05754first petition to Parliament in favor of Woman Suffrage, but ever since that period their efforts have been continuous in spreading information, petitioning, etc., and many are the names of honored early workers, which appear on the records of the Society—some of whom continue to this present day, whilst others have “fallen asleep.”

The first president, Mrs. Priscilla Bright McLaren, still holds the same office, and has taken the chair at the various demonstrations of women, which have been held not only in Scotland, but in England also. She has been constant and energetic, whilst her graceful, earnest advocacy, and her beautiful addresses, have done much to promote efficient action, and succesful effort. The first secretaries were Miss Wigham and Miss Agnes McLaren. The latter gave to the question, the faithful, indefatigable service which sustained the cause in its early days, and her interest has never flagged, although she resigned her office when adopting the medical profession. Very soon the committee began to extend its operations throughout the country, and the first meeting resulting in the formation of an allied society was held at Dalkeith on Friday, February 14th, 1868. The maiden speeches of the three delegates from the Edinburgh committee are yet remembered.

The first Edinburgh public meeting was held in Queen Street Hall, January 17th, 1870, when Jacob Bright came, as the Parliamentary leader, to take part in it. Duncan McLaren, M. P., presided, and Professors Masson, Calderwood and Lyon Playfair together with several Edinburgh citizens spoke powerfully for the cause. Sir David Wedderburn, M. P. for Haddington, was also present testifying his interest at that early date—interest which continued to the end of his life in 1882. As yet, no woman ventured to appear upon the platform; but at the next public meeting, which crowded the Music Hall and which was attended by John Stuart Mill, the Secretary read her own report and the committee had scats on the platform. Courage was being gained and public opinion influenced. In the first year of the society, the new Reform Bill came into operation and the question was started, whether its provisions did not entitle women as well as men, who had the needed qualifications, to vote for members of Parliament. The bill, interpreted by an act of Lord Romilly's for shortening the wording of acts of Parliament, decreed, that where the word man was used, women were clearly included. This proposition was acted on by the Woman Suffrage Committee, and a request was sent from it to all the Burgh Assessors in Scotland, that they would place the names of all the women rate-payers on the electoral roll. The Assessors of Aberdeen did so. The question was thus brought forward; but all the names of women were eventually struck off the lists by the magistrates. In Edinburgh and some other places, individual applications were made, but the claims were rejected although ably supported by friendly lawyers. The question however was thus made prominent; and for the county of Edinburgh the interesting fact was presented of a woman pleading her own cause before the sheriff. Miss Mary Burton claimed the franchise, and very ably supported her claim, quoting the canons of English law to show that the term men, included women—in the Bible in most important passages where woman was the agent of action, the word man is employed. For example—as echoed by Milton—” Of man's first disobedience, etc.” The lawyers listened with surprised interest; but, although unable to answer the arguments, dismissed Miss Burton's application, as evidently outside of the intention of the Reform Bill.

Although women are still denied the right of voting in Parliamentary elections, they have received the school board and municipal votes. The vote also for parochial guardians has been accorded to them, and on school and parochial boards women have not only voted, but have been elected to serve. They are looked upon as most valuable and influential members. Miss Phœbe Blyth and Miss Flora Stevenson were the first ladies elected on the Edinburgh school board. The former served nine years, and the latter is still a member of the board. On another school board the name of Mrs. Elizabeth 05855Pease Nichol has stood from the first election until now. These ladies are also intimately associated with every effort for the advancement and protection of women. Mrs. E. P. Nichol was one the oldest and ablest of the anti-slavery workers, * and her principles of liberty are manifested in all questions of emancipation. Miss Burton (whose name has already been mentioned) after some labor succeeded in obtaining equal privileges for girls in one of the public educational institutions of the city, where previously they had been given chiefly, if not entirely, to boys. She was thereafter elected as a director, being the first lady who received such a distinction in Edinburgh. Now ladies are invited to sit on many committees and directorships, and their help is gratefully acknowledged. So the movement progresses and must still advance. All the work of these years has been of a doubly educational character. The Nation has been educated as to the importance of placing women in positions of trust, and women have been educated in qualification for such positions.

The work of petitioning, memorializing and holding meetings has gone on through all the years since 1867; but last year all effort culminated in the great demonstration of Scottish women in St. Andrew's Hall, Glasgow. Five thousand women were gathered together to assert their interest and determination. Mrs. McLaren presided, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was present from America, Miss Lydia Becker and Mrs. Lucas from England and Miss Tod from Ireland. The speakers were all women, and the appreciation of the vast audience was manifested as they cheered in response to the eloquent and argumentative speeches of the delegates. One of the newspapers remarked, “That never had a meeting been held, wherein so much good sense was spoken with so few words.”

Very soon after this demonstration the first municipal election in Scotland took place, at which women had an opportunity of recording their votes. The occasion was very interesting, and many memorable incidents occurred. In one of the Edinburgh wards (where women came freely forward to vote), one lady bravely became qualified to assist operations at the polling-booth, by being “sworn in” before the magistrates on the previous day—thus usefully helping and encouraging the new voters. Of course this service called forth the bitter criticisms of some of the newspapers, but this she cared not for. Another step has been taken in asserting the right of women to equal interest in the government of the city, and consequently in the government of the Nation. When the object of this and kindred Associations shall be have been gained, and the valued coöperation of women in all matters which interest male and female alike secured, then shall these pioneers be thought of with gratitude—for they stood by a principle, when it was as yet unrecognized and its advocated often treated with ridicule and contempt, but it will be confessed of them as of kindred workers: “Then to side with truth is noble, While we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and honor, And ‘tis prosperous to be just.”

At the third evening session of the Convention, Miss Anthony introduced Mrs. May Wright Sewall as Chairman of the Executive Committee of the National Woman Suffrage Association, and principal of a classical school for girls in her city of Indianapolis. Mrs. Sewall's subject was “The Forgotten Woman.”

In a recent hearing given by the Legislature of the old Bay State to the advocates of Woman Suffrage, the Hon. Wm. J. Bowditch spoke on “The Forgotten Woman of Massachusetts.” It would seem that his address was prompted by a clause in the inaugural of Governor Robinson, which runs thus: “It is always wise and salutary to devise legislation of such a character as will reach the humblest and the poorest citizen, who has no voice but his own to present his needs, no power in combination with others to emphasize his opinions.” In the address which, as reported fills some half dozen newspaper columns of ordinary length, and which is as remarkable for its temperate tone, as for its array of astonishing facts and for its irresistable logic. Mr. Bowditch shows that the poorest of and humblest citizen of Massachusetts are women—working-women, who to the number of twenty thousand work ten hours a day during every working-day of the year, for an average of $2.34. He shows that by the closest economy those women can not, after paying for bare subsistence, i.e. for the humblest shelter, the plainest food the simplest clothing, save more than an average annual net of $4.00. He shows from statutes now in force in the general common wealth, that these women are discriminated against, in that they have no means of collecting their pay regularly; and when by illness, or by the ill-luck or the indifference of their employers their wages are in arrears, they are compelled to incur debt for the bare necessaries of existence; and under “The Twister Process,” when their wage earning labor begins, and they pay their debts, they are legally robbed of $4.16 which they are obliged by law to pay in fees. He shows that those poor women, having fallen into debt, cannot avail themselves of the business men's privilege and go into insolvency; to do that requires indebtedness amounting to $200 and a deposit of $40—a fortune which would be wealth in the eyes of these very poor. Farther, they are not protected in their persons—or so poorly protected, that a crime against a woman in Massachusetts, a crime which robs her of her chastity, of her self, of her who future, is esteemed a less crime and incurs a less penalty than the stealing of a cow, or of a dog valued at $100, or than the over-working of a horse. He shows that the law of Massachusetts, which thus fails to protect women in their property and person. does not withhold its hand from them on assessment days, but that despite its declaration in consonance with the old declaration, that taxation without representation is tyranny, it does tax the property of its women, and under the laws of the State steals annually from its women a sum amounting to more than $2,000,000. Mr. Bowditch very naively asks, how under such a state of things does it happen that the Governor fails in his inaugural to enumerate these wrongs and suggest a remedy? He pertly replies: “Because the Governor has entirely forgotten them.” Why does he forget them? Because they are not voters, they have no ballots, and hence cannot emphasize their opinions in a way to reach a governor's ears.

It will be seen, that the forgotten woman of Massachusetts is poor, weak, crushed, defenseless. The forgotten woman of this type is numerous in Massachusetts and throughout the Nation. But not only is the weak, the poor and the crushed woman forgotten. I have been greatly astonished on several occasions during the past year by the losses of memory to which masculine minds of the finest quality are subject. Less than a twelvemonth since, I listened to an admirable essay on John Stuart Mill. His philosophy was analyzed and explained, his system of political economy explained, his brief parliamentary career partially outlined, his religious beliefs stated, a list of his writings enumerated—but no mention was made of his wife, the person who really struck the key-note of his career, and from the list of his writings, the book which is his masterpiece of logic, viz., “The Subjection of Women,” was strangely omitted. I questioned: Why had the writer seen silent upon the most notable features of his hero's career and labors? and was told he had entirely forgotten those points.

Six weeks ago one of the largest and most appreciative audiences ever gathered in 06057Indiana, was met to do honor to Indiana's great War Governor on the occasion of the unveiling of his statue. The leading men of the State of both political parties sat upon the platform, and several spoke. The old man eloquent, whom we love to call onr “silver tongued,” Ex-Secretary Thompson, delivered an address replete with stately eloquence. The qualities of his hero were touched with so deft a hand, the great crises of his life portrayed so vividly, that Morton at this best, was the picture stamped upon the heart and memory of every listener. At this best—with one feature blurred—the justness and liberality of the man was not illustrated by a citation of his support of the Bill not to admit Penbina Territory, unless its women should be enfranchised, and by citations from his speech in support of the Sixteenth Amendment; had Morton's advocacy of Woman Suffrage been emphasized that day, when the hearts of his admirers were open to any impression connected with his memory, who can doubt that the favorable regards of hundreds would have been won to the cause? We must believe it was quite forgotten by the biographers and the orators.

Upon the death of Wendell Phillips, his hallowed name was made the text for an evening sermon from one of the ablest and most popular pulpits in Indianapolis. The discourse was discriminating and appreciative, but dwelt almost exclusively upon Phillips’ championship of the black slave, of the oppressed Irishmen and the exasperated Nihilist, and dismissed with a word his espousal of the cause of Woman's Rights and Woman Suffrage, explaining it by the character of Mrs. Phillips and her husband's personal devotion.

Little things may these be, but they show how utterly men ignore women in their serious studies and considerations. Nothing could more vividly illustrate the forgetfulness of men concerning women. It would seem that woman is remembered by men “only in their hours of ease,” when they find her a bewitching plaything; in their homes, when they find her the best of servants; in sickness and misfortune, when they find her an unmatched nurse, a ministering angel; in sin, when they never forget the woman Eve, to whom they trace their fall—but “hours of ease,” “hours of sickness,” “hours of signal misfortune and of remorse for sin,” are the moments and the incidents of life; and in man's working time, woman is forgotten. How shall she succeed in reminding him of her? In keeping the unreliable masculine memory alive to her presence and her demands. By making herself a factor in his life and in his success everywhere. Women must remember women. It is an axiom, that the only way to lift the masses, is by lifting the high still higher. The weak and poor women will remain forgotten, so long as the strongest and richest women are not remembered. I appeal to women to cultivate self-respect. Self-assertion has been described in women as unwomanly qualities unless woman really lack self-respect; and they are afraid to claim their simple due, lest it shall burt man.

Here in Washington all the members of Congress with whom I talk, are regretting the meagre opportunities now offered to public men for making a reputation; they are all sighing for a career, for a chance to be heroic and to do the great deed of this day. They all envy Washington his opportunity for patriotism, his chance to lead his hands of freemen against the haughty oppressor. They all envy Lincoln, and every man thinks, that had he only had Lincoln's opportunity, he too might have written the Emancipation Proclamation, and won an enduring fame. All these men have forgotten women, have been permitted by women to lapse into this forgetfulness. It was not a grander thing to lead the forlorn hope in 1776, not a grander thing to strike the shackles from the black slaves in 1863, than it would be in 1884 to carry a presidential campaign on the basis of “Political Equality to Women.”

The career, the fame to match that of Washington, to match that of London, awaits the man who will espouse the cause of forgotten womanhood, and introduce that womanhood to political influence and political freedom.

The Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford, pastor of the Second Universalist Church of Jersey City, was the next speaker. Her subject was, “New Jersey as a Leader.”

Mrs. Hanaford spoke of the State of New Jersey as being not only the oldest land on the continent, according to scientists, but as having been the first to admit women to political equal. The Quaker settlers of New Jersey framed articles of agreement whereby universal Suffrage was secured. These governmental laws were made public March 3d, 1676. Until 1709 this equitable Constitution was in force. Then a provincial law confined voters to male freeholders. On the 2d of July, 1776, two days before the Declaration of Independence, New Jersey adopted a Constitution, which was in force till 1844, in which women were in every way counted in political equals of men, and under which they voted as freely. In 1807 an arbitrary act of the Legislature took away the right to vote from women and negroes. In 1844 a new Constitution was framed and adopted, those who had been illegally deprived of their votes of concurring, and until the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the National Constitution, only white males voted. Congress restored the negro's right. Congress ought, by a Sixteenth Amendment, to restore woman's right to the ballot, or New Jersey herself should spring to the front and be a leader, as in the colonial days. If not, she may be outstripped by distant Oregon. The present Governor, Leon Abbott, has signalized his gubernatorial career by an act of justice to the negro. His fame would be greater still if he would champion the rights of woman.

After a deserved tribute to Wendell Phillips and other early friends of liberty and justice, Mrs. Hanaford closed with the hope that our land would yet be a true republic, when the mother-heart shall assist in the the affairs of home and church and State, and which shall then be able to comprehend “the tenderness in the midst of the Almightiness—the Lamb in the midst of the throne.”

Mrs. Mary E. Haggart, of Indiana, spoke upon the question, “Why Do Not women Vote?”

She said: Because the world has been told that the Woman Suffrage movement is not a reform in the true sense of the word. However that may be, it is a return to first principles and a reminder that natural rights have no sex. Because the world has been told that for a man to be womanly is to lose his influence, and for a woman to be manly is to lose her influence. She admitted the latter portion of the proposition, provided manhood consisted in drinking whiskey, smoking and chewing tobacco, spitting, swearing and fighting! In this manner Mrs. Haggart went through the long list of objections which the opponents of Woman Suffrage have made, and for each one she had a ready answer, novel and logical, holding the vast audience, at that late hour, spell-bound to its close.

At the opening of the afternoon session of the fourth and last day, Mrs. Lizzie D. Fyler, of Eureka Springs, presented a very interesting account of woman's legal position in Arkansas and of her own success there as a practicing lawyer. This was the first time we ever had on our platform a representative from Arkansas.

Mrs. Fyler said: It is, perhaps, something new in the annals of these conventions to receive a report from a State hitherto unknown in Suffrage, and which does not even contain an equal rights association. Yet I am proud to say that, after a four years’ 06259residence in the beautiful though much traduced of my adoption, she has not been indifferent to the demands of woman.

A history of the laws pertaining to women shows that the stability of privileges accorded to them must largely depend upon the motives or influences that prompted or impelled the passage of the acts conferring them. If granted hastily, without long and persistent agitation, their tenure of life depends upon immediate results. Should they rouse some fossilized prejudice sitting in the capacity of judge, they must be instantly repealed, because “proven injurious to the best interests of society.” While privileges thus granted are to be welcomed as harbingers of hope, they cannot be permanent because not the demand of public sentiment. While privileges granted to women because of a true appreciation of justice, and a desire to advance alike the interests of all citizens, founded upon a basis of public sentiment, make them as stable as the laws that govern the actions of men. This is the origin of the following liberal statutes, which are justly the pride and boast of Arkansas. The property of married women are thus protected:

Section 4,193 Gant's Digest reads: “The property, both real and personal, which any married woman now owns or has had conveyed to her by any person in good faith, and without prejudice to existing creditors, or which she may have acquired as her sole and separate property, that which comes to her by gift, bequest, descent, grant, or conveyance from any person; that which she has acquired by her trade, business, labor, or services, carried on or performed on her sole or separate account, that which a married woman in this State holds or owns at the time of her marriage, and the rents, issues and proceeds of all such property, shall, notwithstanding her marriage, be and remain her sole and separate property, and may be used, collected and invested by her in her own name, and shall not be subject to the interference or control of her husband, or liable for his debts, except such debts as may have been contracted for the support of herself or her children by her or her agent.”

§ 4,194. “A married woman may bargain, sell, assign and transfer her separate personal property, and carry on any trade or business, and perform any service or labor, on her sole and separate account, and the earnings of any married woman from her tradé, business, labor or services shall be her sole and separate property and may be used or invested by her in her own name, and she may alone sue or be sued in the courts of this State on account of the said property, business or services.

The following statutes render her still more independent, as they exempt her husband's property from her mistakes or misfortunes:

§ 4,195. “No bargain or contract made by any married woman in respect to her sole and separate property, or any property which may come to her by descent, devise, bequest, purchase, or the gift or grant of any person, and no bargain or contract entered into by any married woman, in or about the carrying on of any trade or business, under any statute of this State shall be binding upon her husband or render him or his property in any way liable therefor.”

§ 4,197. “In an action brought or defended by any married woman in her name, her husband shall not, neither shall his property be liable for the costs thereof or the recovery therein. In an action brought by her for a injury to her person, character, or property, if judgment shall pass against her for costs, the court in which the action is pending shall have jurisdiction to enforce payment of such judgment out of her separate estate or property.”

Her rights after death are secured by—

§ 5,762. “The real and personal property of any female in this State, acquired either before or after marriage, whether by gift, grant, inheritance, devise or otherwise, so long as she may choose, be and remain the separate estate and property of such female, and may be devised or bequeathed by her the same as if she were a femme sole.”

As a mother her rights, though not all they yet will be, are still in advance of those of many older and prouder States.

§ 4,198 says: “No man shall bind his child to apprenticeship or service, or part with the control of such child, or create any testamentary guardianship therefor, unless the mother, if living, shall in writing signify her assent thereto.”

§ 2,204. “When a decree shall be entered the court shall make such order touching 06360the alimony of the wife and care of the children, if there be any, as from the circumstances of the parties and the nature of the case shall be reasonable.”

§ 2,210. “A widow shall be endowed of the third part of all the lands whereof her husband was seized of as estate or inheritance, at any time during the marriage, unless the same shall have been relinquished in legal form.”

§ 2,230. “A widow shall be entitled as part of her dower, absolutely and in her own right, to one-third part of the personal estate, including cash in hand, bonds, bills, notes, book accounts and evidences of debt whereof her husband died seized and possessed.”

§ 2,231. “If a husband die leaving a widow and no children, such widow shall be endowed of one-half of the real estate of which such husband died seized and one-half of the personal estate absolutely and in her own right.”

§ 62. “In addition to dower a widow shall be allowed to keep as her absolute property all the wearing apparel of the family, her wheels, looms and other implements of industry, all yarns, cloths and clothing made up in the family for their own use; such grain, meat, vegetables, groceries and other provisions on hand as may be necessary for the subsistence of the widow and her family for twelve months, and as many beds with bedding and such other household and kitchen furniture as shall be necessary for herself and the family of the deceased residing with her and under her control. Nor shall any property acquired by the widow be sold to pay any debts of her husband contracted before marriage, nor shall such property be embraced in the schedule of the effects of this estate, should the same be deemed insolvent.”

§ 2,234. “In cases of provision by will for widows in lieu of dower, such widow shall have her election, to accept the same or be endowed of the lands and personal property of which her husband died seized.”

By this last act Arkansas can never be disgraced by a sight, too common in some States, of penniless widows of rich men.

The divorce laws, while less liberal than those of some States, still cover her with their protection.

§ 2,204. “During the pendency of an action for divorce or alimony the court may allow the wife maintenance, and a reasonable fee for her attorneys, and enforce the payment of the same by order and execution, the same as in cases of contempt.”

I have been thus explicit, and perhaps tiresome, in giving these statutes in full, because it is often said that woman's mind is not capable of comprehending anything so complex as law, and therefore that her statements are misrepresentations; and also in justice to our State, which has so long rested under an opprobrium never deserved, but placed over her for political purposes, by which it is hard to be convinced that laws so just and generous have emanated from men represented as waving a pistol in one hand and a bowie-knife in the other.

In educational facilities the girls of Arkansas have every advantage offered to their brothers. That they have not accepted their opportunities as they might have done has been due to ancient prejudices and a former general lack of good schools. Now, when institutions of learning are springing up on all the hill-sides and in every valley, and the people are awakening to the needs of a higher education, our girls have caught the sound of the approaching footsteps of the youth who bore a banner with strange device, “Excelsior,” and are steadily coming forward to claim their privileges. With the sturdy health characteristic of the daughters of a climate blessed with balmy air and the purest waters that flow, they cannot long remain laggards in this race for a higher womanhood.

In payment for services the State makes no discrimination on account of sex. Both clerks of the Legislature have for several years been women and have received the same salaries formerly given to men. As teachers, their salaries are the same as those of men; scholarship and the grade of the school alone determining the amount. In my own city of Eureka Springs, at a teachers’ examination, there were sixteen lady and two gentlemen applicants for nine schools. The positions were awarded according to scholarship and were all given to ladies, with the exception of one intermediate department accorded a gentleman, with a lady as principal!

The crowning glory of the women of our State is our temperance legislation, in which we have reason to feel ourselves in advance of every other State in the Union. Section 1 of act 32, passed in the session of 1880-82, provides that:

“Whenever the adult inhabitants—women are inhabitants—residing within three miles of any school-house, academy, college, university, or other institution of learning, or of any church house in this State, shall desire to prohibit the sale or giving away of any vinous, spiritous, or intoxicating liquors of any kind, or alcohol, or any compound or preparation thereof commonly called tonics or bitters, and a majority of such inhabitants shall petition the county court of the county wherein such institution of learning or church house is situated, praying that the sale or giving away of the intoxicating liquors and alcohol enumerated in the premises be prohibited within three miles of any such institution of learning or church house, whereupon said county court, being satisfied that a majority of such inhabitants have signed such petition, shall make an order in accordance with the prayer thereof, and thereafter for a period of two years it shall be unlawful for any person to vend or give away, etc., etc.”

This act, conferring such powers upon the women of our State, was passed without the slightest opposition from the liquor element; they believing that it would prove as futile as the already existing local option law. But as if to refute all preconceived ideas, and to prove to every doubter of woman's ability, that she needs only the light of hope and the voice of duty to call her dormant powers into action, this act met with such a reception, that to-day you may travel over miles and miles of the so called “bloody State of Arkansas,” and not see a saloon. This law has banished wine from the tables of our people. It has elevated the whole moral tone of society. It has reduced our criminal docket more than one half. I have the words of the Congressman of my own district, himself a lawyer for twenty years practicing before the same courts, that while the population has largely increased, the criminal docket has been diminished one half since the women had spoken for the truth. It has accomplished even greater things than these, for it has aroused our women to the knowledge that crying evils require at their hands something beside tears and prayers; and it has shown them another text in the sacred book beside “Let your women keep silent in the churches,” which reads, “Faith without works is dead.” Women's active and earnest participation in the execution of this law is teaching our men, that true womanliness knows no boundary line, thus preparing the way for the fuller life that is slowly but surely coming to all women.

I believe that we have little or none of the settled prejudice to contend with that is met everywhere in the North. We only need education on the subject of equality before the law. Our men are chivalrous and kind, and possess an integrity of character, that will make them follow the right when they find it. To show how readily prejudice yields to truth under our balmy skies, I will give a brief outline of my experience as a student of law and an applicant for admission to our courts.

Three years ago a gentleman said to me, “Why don't you read law as a profession, our courts are open to you and it would help you in your chosen work.” His office was opened to me, which privilege I quietly accepted; but in so doing found myself suddenly transformed into on eighth wonder. Pointed out in the street, my house besieged with visitors upon every immaginable errand, curious to see how a woman lived who dared to think contrary to local opinion. I am glad to say they found a happy wife and mother surrounded with books, pictures and flowers. The first time I entered the court-room—a justice's court—and such courts have formerly been far from orderly gatherings—my friends feared for the result. But before I had taken scarcely a step into the room, every hat was off and a passage cleared for me. When I felt the room at midnight, my cheek had not flushed from even a discourtesy. The fact that a lady was reading law roused investigation, and on the old books was found a statute which read:

“Any male citizen of good moral character who shall have attained the age of twenty-one years, and shall have passed a satisfactory examination in open court, may be licensed to practice before the courts of this State.”

To make sure that the door was not only closed but fastened, I made application and was refused. To satisfy myself, I asked, and received a private examination, and was granted the courtesies of the bar. Soon after that I attended the circuit court of our country; when I entered the bar, the judge came from his bench, and the lawyers, including the most prominent men of the eight countries of our district, came forward to give me a welcome. To-day I rejoice in the personal friendship of every member of our bar, and have the pledge of their support in an effort to have the word “male” striken from that statute at the next meeting of our Legislature.

All that Arkansas needs, is to be freed from the prejudices that exist against her, for the world to understand that she has come out from her unhappy past of slavery and war, and with her large immigration of intelligent, industrious people, she is now standing in the morning light of a new day.

Our State Industrial School, located at Fayetteville, will compare favorably with similar institutions in other Western States, and is superior to many, in that its faculty is composed of both men and women.

As an example of the disadvantages under which we labor because of this impression, that ignorance is universal in our State, I will relate an amusing incident that occurred during my journey here. The day we passed through Cincinnati there had been an auction sale of books. A passenger had purchased for a very small sum a Latin work two hundred and eighty years old. It was of course printed in ancient English style, and was to most of those on board a blank volume. In its passing about it fell into the hands of a lady, who found it all illumined with treasures for which she had sought in many libraries in vain. While translating it aloud to her companion, others had gathered around until the audience embraced most of those in the car. An old gentleman passed her his card with, “Madam, may I inquire your place of residence?” Had she said, “Massachusetts,” the reply would undoubtedly have been, “Ah, indeed!” but when the reply came, “Arkansaw,” a look of as blank astonishment passed over that company as though she had said: I come from the land whence there is no returning!

In closing this report I have only to add, that the ground is ready and waiting for the seed-sowing. When the plan of work, adopted by this Association, shall have carried its grand principles of justice and equality to women into every school district, Arkansas will come up to these conventions like Washington Territory to-day, bearing in her arms sheaves of ripened grain.

Geo. W. Clark of Rochester, N.Y., now over eighty years of age, was introduced to the Convention by Miss Anthony as one of the faithful and tried Abolitionists, known all over the country as “The Liberty Singer,” who traveled along the line of song service, as did the Hutchinsons forty years ago, whose voice she had often heard in the reform conventions of those early years. Mr. Clark was warmly greeted by the audience, and said by way of encouragement to the friends:

That he had lived to see the triumph of the reform for which the Abolitionists were then struggling in the emancipation of four million slaves, and he was still an Abolitionist, as he saw many great wrongs yet to be overthrown, many great crimes and abuses to be abolished. But he felt in the able, earnest and determined efforts of 06663these heroic ladies an assurance, that the triumph of Woman Suffrage was near at hand, in fact, he believed it was nearer to them to-day, than that great victory was to the Abolitionists thirty-five years ago.

Mr. Clark here paid an eloquent tribute to Wendell Phillips in a song he had written for the occasion. He further said:

Mr. William Shakespeare, whose very quaint, wise and wonderful sayings are still cherished and so often throughout the civilized world, not only doubled, but tripled on the power of truth and right, when he said, “Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just!” Of course the word “he” in his pithy sentence is a masculine interpolation and should read, “Thrice is ‘she’ armed who hath her quarrel just?” What is sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose! But a greater than Shakespeare hath said, the “Truth is mighty and will prevail!” And so I believe that, “Come what there may to stand in the way, That day the world shall see: When the Might with the Right And the Truth shall be!”

In closing Mr. Clark said:

When I saw slavery depart from the land I felt like good old Simeon, “Now lettest thou they servant depart in peace,” and then I thought I would like to stay a little longer and see the negro enfranchised, and now I feel I can not be satisfied unless I see the enfranchisement of woman.

Miss Anthony, apropos to the singing, said, in the Kansas campaign of 1867, she used to tell the audience, that wherever the arguments of the speakers had failed to convince the heads, the Hutchinson family (John and son, Henry, and daughter Viola) would soon be around and touch the hearts with their inspiring songs.

Mrs. Morrison, of Massachusetts said: She had always wondered why women had not yet been allowed to exercise the right of Suffrage,but recently reading the statement of some scientist that it had taken five hundred thousand years for man's brain to evolve from a monkey's, she could realize the necessity of plenty of time for development. The question was often asked, “What would become of the homes?” if women had Suffrage; she had come here at the express wish of her husband and son, who had promised to see to the “home” during the few days of her absence; she had believed Massachusetts to be a great State until she had heard the noble Western women's reports. At least it was decided in Massachusetts, that a woman was a “person” and they would try and act from that premise.

Miss Anthony then introduced J. Ellen Foster of Iowa, prominent in the work of the W.C.T.U.

Mrs. Foster said: She was thankful to be introduced by Miss Anthony, and she desired her children to know and remember that their mother was a friend of hers. Years ago her minister had asked her to introduce MIss Anthony to an audience and she had said, “Me introduce a Woman Saffragist?” to which he replied, “If I can give her my pulpit, you can afford to introduce her.” She described reading her first lecture on “The Cradle and the Ballot” to Miss Anthony, while her husband soothed the child which was restless. She said, as she had listened to the uncontrovertible 06764arguments presented by these women, and realized the amount of work which has been done, she could see the value of having had Susan B. Anthony as a leader. She said she always made herself known as a Woman Suffragist, she did not believe in skulking, if asked, “Do you believe the franchise for woman?” Say, “yes!” Have the courage of your convictions. Let each of us try to do our little part of setting up Christ's kingdom on earth.

Mrs. Sewall then read the letter from our Corresponding Secretary, Rachel G. Foster, who with her mother and sister is spending a two years in Europe.

Florence, Italy, February 8, 1884.

To the National Woman Suffrage Association. Assembled in Convention at Washington, D. C.:

“Here wrote and died Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who, in the heart of a woman, united the spirit of a poet and the wisdom of woman, and formed from her verse a golden ring between Italy and England. Placed by grated Florence—1861.”

Such, freely rendered, is the inscription upon a house which we cannot pass without a glance of interest. That this tablet should be placed by a corporation of men shows an appreciation of woman's intellect and high inspiration into which our own American civilization has yet to grow. Italy is grateful to the dead woman who sympathized in the country's struggle towards independence and union; but Italy as yet gives no encouragement to the living womanhood which asks its share in the glorious results.

When in Florence six months ago I was assured by an Italian gentleman of liberal ideas that the widest opportunities were already open to my sex in this country; that no institution or profession excluded women. I was amazed that so few had taken advantage of this freedom. Within three months a case has occurred which is a curious commentary upon this statement. A young woman in Turin, after passing satisfactorily the examinations required, wished to be admitted to the bar. She was refused, no other reason than her sex being adduced. I understand that she is resolved to push her case, and ere this it may have been decided in her favor. So it seems that the doors which stand so hospitably open, so long as all our sex remain quietly outside, need but one woman's foot upon the threshold, when behold! the great hingers creak, and in place of the former hypocritical attitude, is seen the true expression of conservatism—the doors are shut!

In Milan, through the kindness of Mme. Lazzati (one of its directors), we visited the Professional School for Women. In the United States a similar institution would be styled “Industrial.” It owes its origin to the interest and devotion of Mme. Mautegazza. It began in 1870, with seven pupils. In 1883 its average attendance was one hundred and sixty, and it now receives a small subsidy from government. It prepares women for employment in the departments of telegraphy, look-keeping, dressmaking, tailoring, manufacturer of artificial flowers, china decorations, designs upon parchment, and its success is unquestionable. But Mme. Lazzati is a thinking woman, and beyond her interest in the fitting of women for trades, she sees also the necessity of an improvement in their wages. A foreigner and ignorant of the language, I was unable to be present at one of the gatherings, but she informed us that by the end of this week one hundred meetings would have been held, almost simultaneously, in as many different cities and towns, in the interest of woman's political equality. Thus you may see that they have struck the key-note, even here in Italy, and are awakening to the necessity of self-representation. So is rolling on the mightiest revolution which the world has yet felt.

Oh, if those men at our capital, who say they are there to represent the ten million 06865women of the republic, could but realize what a miserably half-souled government is ours after all! The age of gold, of which the ancients dreamed so longingly, will never come in the reign of one-half of humanity. It is to be looked for only when man and woman shall form the complete governing power, and when our legislation shall recognize as its pivotal interest the rights, the safety and the happiness of the individual and of the family. Rachel G. Foster, Julia T. Foster, Mrs. Julia Foster

The following resolutions were then presented by Mrs. Harbert and adopted:

Resolved, That the example of Mary Miller, the woman recently commissioned by the Bureau of Navigation as a steamboat captain on the Mississippi river, is an exhibition of pluck worthy of imitation, tends to define the status of woman as a person and citizen, and is an encouragement to future aggressive movements by women.

Resolved, That we tender to the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Folger, our thanks for his just and manly decision in the case of Mrs. Mary Miller.

Resolved, That the thanks of this Association are due to the press of the city and the Associated Press for courtesy and kindly reports of the proceedings from day to day.

Resolved, That our thanks are hereby tendered to Mr. and Mrs. Spofford, of the elegant and popular Riggs House, for their generous hospitality and kindly assistance, and also for the reception tendered to Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony, and the delegates of the Convention.

Resolved, That we gratefully treasure the memory of Elizabeth B. Schenck of California; Betsey Dow Hawks of Illinois; Nancy M. Baird of Maryland; Ester E. Jewell of Connecticut, Vice-Presidents of our Association; of Sojourner Truth Mrs. Stowes Sybian Sybil; the young and promising Jennie O'Connor of Washington, D. C., and Mary Martin of Chicago, who have fallen from our ranks during the past year.

Resolved, That in the death of Wendell Phillips the Nation has lost one of its greatest moral heroes, its most eloquent orator and honest advocate of justice and equality for all classes; and woman in her struggle for enfranchisement has lost in him a steadfast friend and wise counselor. His consistency in the application of republican principles of government brought him to the Woman Suffrage platform in the inauguration of the movement where he remained faithful to the end.

The National Woman Suffrage Association in convention assembled, would express their gratitude for his words for woman before the Legislation of so many States, and on so many platforms, both in England and American, and would extend their sincere sympathy to her who was his constant inspiration to the utterance of the highest truth, his noble wife, Ann Green Phillips.

Robert Purvis, who was to speak on this resolution, was so overcome with memories of his noble friend, that he hastily left the platform.

Mrs. Harbert said: We bring to you from the Prairie State (the State that Douglass loved, and that from which went Lincoln forth to break the last remaining fetter worn by man) facts and figures that refute the oft repeated statement that “women do not wish to vote”; since in our State more than one hundred and eighty thousand women have petitioned for the right of Suffrage—some of these petitioners claiming the temperance ballot, others their right to have their opinions counted upon educational questions, while nearly fifty thousand patriot women have petitioned for the 06966right to vote in all questions connected with the public weal, believing with President John Adams that, “the industry, the frugality, the morality, which, exerted on a smaller scale, render a home, a parish or a town happy, exerted upon a larger scale, might save whole nations and generations from misery, want and contempt!

During the past year a remarkable change of public opinion upon the question of Woman Suffrage has been noted in Illinois. The W. C. T. U. with a paid membership of six thousand has declared for woman's ballot as a necessary weapon for promoting moral reform, while many Woman Suffrage clubs and organizations have been formed. Good work has been one in Henry county and the Seventh Congressional district under the leadership of Mr. M. E. Holmes and Rev. C. C. Hanah. In the Eleventh district Mrs. Julia Mills Dunn and the Suffrage Association of Moline have taken the initiative in effective lectures, a reading room, etc., for the benefit of the working men. The society at Orion, with its president, Mrs. E. Lippincott, Mrs. Hannah J. Coffee and others observed Foremothers’ Day, while the societies of Geneseo and Rural, Mrs. H. T. Miller and Mrs. B. G. Wright, presidents, united in the observance of Miss Anthony's birthday. Mrs. Clara Lyon Peters has organized a society at Watseka. The annual meeting of the State Association, convened at Evanston, was one of the most influential conventions yet held in the State. A memorial service, in emphasis of the remarkable life work of Lucretia Mott, was held in Chicago.

The press of Illinois is proving itself loyal to the interests of its women citizens. The Chicago Inter-Ocean, one of the leading journals of the West, has for six years past yielded two columns of the daily, semi-weekly and weekly editions to the editorial control of the president of the State Woman Suffrage Association. The State Press Association has accorded to woman most generous recognition, electing women to the office of vice-president. Mr. W. O. Carpenter, Miss Sarah Richards and Mrs. Harbert have been officially appointed, by the Governor of the State, delegates to the National Conference of Charities. Hon. M. B. Castle of Sandwich, a member of the State Executive Committee, has at his own expense published thousands of leaflets for distribution.

The “Margaret Fuller Society” of Chicago organized for the purpose of “the education of women in political economy and the principles of government,” has, in its regular monthly meetings, discussed the great question of the hour with marked ability. Women have been placed as matrons in the police stations of the city, and in the jail and Bridewell. At the session of the Woman's Congress in Chicago in October last, the president, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, chose for her subject “The Benefit of Suffrage for women.” The demand for Suffrage literature steadily increases. The press, the pulpit and the bar at last recognize the justice of our claim to the ballot as citizens of the republic, while the condition of women and children in our prisions and alms houses, the industrial, educational and moral needs of all classes indicate the immediate need of a new department of domestic legislation.

Caroline Gilkey Rogers gave a very interesting account of her work for School Suffrage in the village of Lansingburgh, N. Y.

Mrs. Rogers writes: In the space allotted me I can give only a few points of my Washington report. Coming, a stranger, about four years ago, to this New York village of nine thousand inhabitants, I did not find even one sympathizer in the Woman Suffrage cause. The law had passed giving women the vote on school matters, but they had not availed themselves of it. I succeeded at the first election after my arrival in getting a woman's name on the ticket as librarian, and she was elected; also in getting twelve women out to the school meeting the evening before election—the first time a woman had ever attended. In this town there had never been a vote of over fifty men 07067on school matters, and at this election over one hundred men voted and forty-three women. I have not space to tell you of the gallant service of my good house Jessie, and how we ran the big family carriage to and from the polls carrying load after load of women, and how the quiet village woke up and what the old fogies did and said.

At the second election we had a woman candidate, amid great opposition and excitement—three tickets in the field. Over six hundred votes were polled, one hundred and twenty-five women voted; two of these women were over ninety-one years old, one of them the largest tax-payer in town, the property earned by her own industry and wonderful business capacity. Everything was orderly about the polls and we were treated with courtesy and respect.

At the third and last election nine hundred and ninety-eight votes were polled; two hundred and fifty-two women voted: We made it a gala-day, as usual. The parlors of our candidate, being near, were made headquarters for women—windows thrown open and filled with flowers and young ladies. So from a male vote of about fifty we have in three years carried it up to one thousand, and both men and women seem now impressed with the propriety of mothers, wives and sisters having a voice in the question. In examining the tax books of the town I find women pay one-fourth of the taxes, and why should they not have a voice in the public interests they are taxed to support?

Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller, of Sandy Spring, Maryland, was introduced.

Mrs. Miller said: Since Miss Anthony has honored me with an invitation to say a few words during the Convention, I dare not decline, as I feel bound to do all that lies within my power for the advancement of this cause. We are met here to plead the cause of universal Suffrage, and I think I cannot do better than to begin with a quotation from an address delivered upon this subject at Portland, Oregon, by Wm, Lloyd Garrison, jr.,—the authority will be acknowledged, the style good, the sense secure, and it will open up promptly one of the greatest difficulties under which this Association labors—he says: “I see before me the familiar, time-honored, Woman Suffrage Convention; how well I know it! Year in and year, out, through discouragement, ridicule and apathy, doomed to repeat the old arguments, to answer for the thousandth time the objections raised by timidity and prejudice, the weary, yet unwearied advocates of simple justice compel the attention of the public! How many times, with exhaustive eloquence and unanswerable reasons, have these stale objections been demolished! There was a time that when the brains were out, the man would die, and there end—but now they rise again, and we are forced again and again to slay the slain; but tiresome as it is to continually repeat line upon line and precept upon precept, and to labor to prove that two and two make four, such is and always must be the work of reformer.

‘Thus, with somewhat of the seer Must the moral pioneer From the future borrow! Clothe the waste with dreams of grain And on midnight's sky of rain Pain the golden morrow.’”

So said Mr. Carŕison, and I add, that, with the long array of earnest thinkers and brilliant speakers that have been striving in this cause for years, the utmost that we can hope to do in this day is to stir up older minds by way of remembrance and to inspire younger ones with energy and zeal. Of the objection that the franchise is already too broadly exercised and should be limited, Mr. Garrison again says: “This objection 07168is not only irrelevant, but it is also impertinent unless these same restrictions be applied to men and women alike, and it does not in any wise touch the question at issue. Another favorite argument with our opponents is this, that no woman has as yet shone exceptionally, that is, head and shoulders above the entire race in any branch of science, art, literature, music, or invention. I reply to this, let us wait awhile, woman has had but slight chance, but small opportunity. Each generation of men has had the benefit of the combined wisdom and experience of every generation that has preceded it since the race first appeared upon the earth. Man's powers have been permitted, nay, obliged to expand and to express themselves in all possible directions, he has had as it were infinite training, and the effects of training are, as we know, incalculable; we see this in the learned pig, the dancing elephant, the dog, the horse, in man; why not the same results in woman?” But how has it been with our sex? Why, for us there has been made by man and not by God, a procrustean bed upon which we have been forced to lie; and, if perchance we grow too large for this poor and narrow pallet, we must be clipped and trimmed to suit it. And yet, with all the wasted ages back of us, moving in fetters rather than in freedom, breathing still the stifling atmosphere of restriction and repression, we are nevertheless steadily advancing towards a beckoning future—rich not only in glorious promise, but teeming with grand realities! I think now of two prominent English women who are lecturing; the one before the National Secular Society of that country upon “Mind Physiologically Considered,” the other upon “English Land Tenures,” giving, the journals say, a very clear and interesting exposition of the basis of that law, while a third is engaged in a course of lectures upon “The French Revolution,” which belong, it is said, to the very best that literature has produced on this theme, to say nothing of the scores of women of our own land, whom, were I a betting character, I would pit against an equal number of picked men to do the same amount and the same grade of good and faithful work!—And yet it is said that women are not fit for self-government, that we are too frivolous, too weak; you may rest assured that the responsibility alone of self-government will best and most certainly check frivolity, impart strength to character and itself create this very fitness that is so much harped upon. What but the strictest government of self constitutes the charm and the inestimable worth of the tender, loving and loyal women, whose lives still bless or whose memories consecrate every true home throughout the world?

There appeared lately in one of the daily papers an article entitled “Woman Suffrage in Wyoming,” which was extensively copied and enthusiastically read; it stated as its summary, that “corruption, trickery, fraud and vice had by the enfranchisement of women been reinforced by weakness, ignorance, indifference, cowardice and imbecility, that as a consequence public morals are laid low in Wyoming, and practicable plans of reform lack intelligent support.” Alas! alas! Now, my friends, in the first place I do not for a moment believe one word of this, and I only wish that there was here present from that distant Territory some one who could and would hotly refute the charge. If such a state of things can by any strange possibility be true, it speaks very badly for the men of that Territory; they are surely formed of far more plastic material than those of any region of which I have either personal experience or reliable information. We do not for a moment suppose that universal Suffrage will completely transform and purify politics; why should we? Does any one, any one man I mean, who is or should be posted in such things, pretend to say, that it is the mass of unwinnowed emigrant and negro votes that makes politics corrupt? Surely not. Men follow their leaders in thought, in fashion and in affairs, and it requires far more than the average intelligence of the swarms just mentioned to manipulate votes and their returns, to insert treacherous planks into platforms, to incite those passions in men which run the whole gamut of cupidity from 07269sheriff to president, from collector of the port of New York to contractor for a village mail-route in the far West, in fact to do the heavy mischief; we do claim however, that by the emancipation of our sex that fearful evil—from which I verily believe springs directly or indirectly all others, whose results are broken homes and ruined lives, bodies and souls shattered and degraded—the overwhelming curse of intemperance, will not only be greatly modified, but will be measurably eradicated; and this alone, it seems to me, should prove the “open sesame” to the enfranchisement of women! Lastly, all women know, whether in Wyoming or in Washington or wheresoever they may be, that no making or no repealing of any law or laws enacted by man can affect their womanhood; this grand heritage can only become more or less valuable through the keeping or the breaking of the eternal laws of the Universe. I was glad to hear such sentiments as the following, straight from the heart of an earnest, active and useful citizen of this metropolis, a native of Washington, a young man over whose utterances I rejoice since I believe they will assist in moulding the opinions of our honored but rather tardy State of Maryland—he said to a class of graduates of the Hannah Moore Academy: “True modesty is not made from without but from within, and it throws an atmosphere of purity around its possessor that bows the head of vice. No honest labor can unsex or degrade any one—if the most menial labor could do the last, there would be but one sex among the peasantry of Europe; but it is not true ‘The bravest are the tenderest, and are yet men; the loving are the most daring, and are yet women!’ I have faith enough in women to believe that they would lift us up, and not that we would drag them down!” I regard such sentiments as these as a bright sign of the better times, though, like little Oliver, I feel like asking for more, and I earnestly trust that this same gentleman and lawyer will soon be eloquently advocating the cause that we are pleading to-day.

There are a great many excellent people in the world who are strongly prejudiced against what they designate “isms,” but who are always glad of any opportunity of serving God, as they express it. I ask, what can finite beings do to serve omnipotence, unless it be to exert all their powers for the good of humanity, for the uplifting of man, which, if ought of ours could do so, must rejoice our creator. When we see more than one-half of the adult human family—reasonably industrious and intelligent, if we make for them no larger claim, and certainly the raison d'etre of the other half called to account by the laws of the land, and held in strict obedience to them without the slightest voice in their making with neither form nor shadow of representation before state or country, do we not see that there rests upon the entire race a stigma and a stain, that materialist and idealist, churchman and agnostic should each and all hasten to remove? “Behold, the fields are white unto harvest, but the laborers are few!” How can it be longer tolerated that the wives and mothers, the sisters and daughters of a land claiming the highest degree of civilization and boasting of freedom as its watchword, should still rank (and rankle) before the law with criminals, idiots and slaves. I feel as confident as I do of my existence, that the apathy which we are now fighting against, especially among our own sex, springs mainly from want of thought; the women of culture and refinement throughout the country placidly accept, as well they may, the comfortable conditions in which they find themselves. They receive without question the formulated theories of woman's sphere as they accept the formulated theories of the orthodox religions into which they may chance to have been born; occasionally an original thinker steps out of the ranks and finds herself after a while with a few followers—they remain but few however, for it is too much trouble to think—and so the sorrow and the loss fall heaviest upon the thousands of weary, wretched women, who are scarcely conscious of the tie of father or of brother, and to whom the name of husband, even be it legal, is, alas, too often but the synonym of tyrant! poor, oppressed, overburdened women, whose voices, whether rising into a 07370wail of agony, or sinking into despairing sighs, reach no sympathetic ear, no heart that represents them in the land. “'Tis true 'tis pity, and pity 'tis true!” My friends, we are often sorrowful, but we are never discouraged nor dismayed; we will work on, work ever!

“We will work! And pure slumber shall wait on our pillow; Work and we'll ride over care's coming billow, Lie down undaunted ‘neath woe's weeping willow, Nor heed the world cynics that point but to ill!

“We will pause not! Tho’ shame, scorn and hardship surround us, We'll bravely fling back the cold chain that hath bound us, We'll look to yon pure heaven smiling beyond us— We'll work with a stout heart and a resolute will!”

I have come upon the stage too late! The victory is almost won! Would that I had been accounted worthy to share the glorious warfare of these scarred and toil-worn veterans—alas, I can but join the pæan of all honor and all praise to them, now and forevermore!

At the opening of the last evening session, March 7th, Edward M. Davis eulogized Wendell Phillips in a short speech. Miss Anthony commented on the hearing of that morning before the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage and announced a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee the following morning. She spoke of her regret at the absence from this Convention of Madam Neyman of New York, Rev. Olympia Brown and Evaleen L. Mason of Wisconsin. Rev. Florence Kollock was the first speaker of the evening, “The Ethics of Woman Suffrage,” her subject.

Miss Kollock said: Since all persons are created subject to common wants and woes, and all are actuated by common desires and necessities, it is a logical deduction that the terms right and duty have a common significance and an equal claim upon all members of the human family. Hence to assume the duties and responsibilities of the franchise right will not be to assume new duties, nor to take upon one's self new responsibilities, but simply to discharge duties that are already one's own. By no human power can they be imposed or removed. They come with the gift of life.

By what moral right then stands a law upon the statute books the infringes upon the rights and duties of womanhood—that prohibits a mother from the full discharge of the duties of her sacred office, as all are prohibited through the law that forbids her the opportunity of throwing her who moral strength, influence and convictions against the existence and growth of social and political iniquities, and in defense of truth and purity. The great evils of our day are of such a nature that all, regardless of moral principles or sex, suffer from their effects, proving clearly that all have a moral obligation in these matter—that one suffers from an evil carries with it the highest authority to remove that evil. The silent influence of woman has failed to accomplish the desired good of humanity, has failed to bring about the needed moral reforms, and all observing persons are ready to concede that posing is a weak way of combating giant evils—that attitudism cannot take the place of activity. To suppress the full utterance of the moral power and convictions of those who so largely mould the character of the race is a crime against humanity, against progress, against God.

The next speaker was Mrs. Harriette Robinson Shattuck, Vice-President of the National Woman Suffrage Association for Massachusetts, and President of its auxiliary society of that State. Her subject was, “Our Outlook.”

Mrs. Shattuck said: The advance of woman in the past thirty years—an advance unprecedented in all previous history—is directly due to the demand of the Suffragists for the full equality of woman with man. The one fact to which all history points with unerring finger is the desire of the human soul for freedom. Individual freedom is the goal towards which the whole living universe from monad to man, is irresistably tending, and just as certain as that man has steadily advanced from a life of barbarism, where he knew himself only as a part of the natural world around him, to a civilization where he knows and lives the life of the spirit, just so certain will woman advance to her place by the side of man stand there until the two, fee and equal, aiding, advising and sustaining each other, shall work together for the uplifting of the State. Again, it is absolutely necessary for the improvement of the race that the manly and womanly elements shall be side by side in all walks of life, and the fact that our social status, our literature and our educational systems have been greatly improved by woman's coöperation with man, points to the eternal truth that man and woman must work hand in hand in the State also in order that it shall be uplifted and saved. Woman herself will not be harmed by the ballot, for the acquisition of greater responsibilities improves and not degrades the recipient thereof. If the ballot has made man worse it will make woman worse, and not otherwise. Whoever studies the history of the race from age to age and nation finds the world has advanced and not retrograded by giving responsibility to the individual. The opposition to Woman Suffrage strikes a blow at the foundation-stone of this republic, which is self-representation by means of the ballot. At the bottom of this opposition is a subtle district of American institutions, an idea of “restricted Suffrage” which is creeping into our republic through so-called aristocratic channels. In answer to this it must be said and insisted that this cry arises from a false idea of the nature of the franchise.

The ballot is an education itself—a first step to political knowledge should be craved and not despised, for upon it depends our whole prosperity as a Nation. Person who wish a restricted ballot would do well to live for a time in England and study the effect of that form of government. We must, as Charles Summer said, “trust the republic and the ideas that are its strength and its safety”; and before we cry that this republic is a failure, and ruin imminent from the foreign vote, we must really possess a republic in the full sense of the word. When great crises come in our politics, the majority usually comes out forcibly for the right. We can trust the people. But we have not yet given all the people a chance. If all voted, the majority would be sure for the right. If, after women possess the ballot, this republic shows symptoms of ruin and decay, we may then try for a change of government. But while the acknowledged moral force of the Nation is kept silent in State affairs, we have no right to ask for a restricted ballot, or oppose the enfranchisement of all men, however low and ignorant. While we do wrong there is some danger. Let us not increase that danger by persisting in our wrong-doing. Let us rather carry out at once the ideas so strongly laid down in our Declaration of Independence and in our Constitution. All the people must have self-government; every individual must have the right to express his and her opinion in the State by means of the only method—the ballot. The cry about the danger of giving the ballot to very one is itself the only danger now threatening us. We do not want fewer votes, but more, and we want not to deprive men and women of the ballot, but to give it to them and 07572then teach them the proper use of it. They cannot be taught to use it before they possess it. That would be like learning to swim before entering the water. Education we need; but education with, and not without the ballot.

We have nothing to fear from doing right, and nothing to fear from being true to our republican principles. If we persist in doing wrong and in being untrue, disaster may come to us and our fair land. It is the God-given duty of this republic to lift woman up to her proper place by the side of man. If she does her duty she will be a glory and an honor to all future nations; if she falls her name will be added to the list of those nations which have gone down to death.

In the meantime we have no reason for discouragement. Our cause is sure of success. The only question is one of time. To all women we say, prepare for the duties which are surely coming to you; and to all men, help up to bring about the speedy consumation of our hopes. Let us all take courage, keep up a brave heart, work untiringly and never loose faith, for “Westward look, and land is bright!”

Miss Anthony introduced Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway of Oregon, Vice President at Large of the National Woman Suffrage Association for the Pacific coast, and editor of the New Northwest, a paper which she, with the aid of her sons, had kept afloat for the past thirteen years in that far-off Northwest.

Mrs. Duniway said: Nowhere else save in New America could the Declaration of Independence have been born. If, at the time of its birth, any man in the Old World had dared to give utterance to the momentous fact that “all men are created equal,” he would have starled kings upon their thrones; principalities and powers would have arrayed themselves against him, and he would paid for his temerity with his head. But the New World afforded the proper soil for the birth of the struggling thoughts that had long been gestating silently in the brains of men across the seas. The love of adventure imbued our fore-fathers and fore-mothers with a brave and free spirit that had in it the elements of grandeur. It was through the experiments generated by this love of adventure that they learned to declare at last, that “governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The broad ocean rolling between them and the monarchical powers of Europe, kept at bay the enemies of liberty, who sought to strike her down, and she in turn became strong and powerful. But, although the theories with which men clothed her were perfect, she was only half free in fact and practice, since one half of her subject were denied the right to give or withhold the “consent” from which alone could be derived a “just government.” Protests, for years, seemed unavailing. But all the while the spirit of liberty was growing. The friends of progress were on the alert, and the Declaration of Independence was in due time born again in the New America, beyond the Mississippi, and beyond the Rocky Mountains. In Wyoming and Washington Territories she is a full grown goddess now, and men accept the situation gracefully; for it has been officially declared, that a “just government” cannot exclude women from participation in its affairs.

A government composed of men alone is as inharmonious and incomplete as a one-sexed home. It does not contain within itself the elements of purification or perpetuity, and would, inevitably fall to pieces from inherent decay, if long persisted in. But this government will not persist in its present usurpation of power one-half of the people, and it will not die. Already the day is breaking. The sunlight of liberty 07673for women at large in the far West, will arise in glory over all the land before the nineteenth century shall fall asleep among the ages.

The husbands, sons and brothers of women are rallying to their standard, and the fiat has already gone forth that is to make them free indeed. The eyes of the Nation—of the world—are upon Oregon now. Her sons are to speak for their mothers at the ballot box in June, and we believe and hope that they will speak for them in behalf of liberty an justice. “Equality before the law,” is our watchword as we go marching toward victory.

In the midst of her speech Mrs. Duniway turned to the President, and said, “I promised to stop and give Miss Anthony time for a closing word.” Miss Anthony said, “I simply wish to appeal to the audience to give a liberal contribution to aid Mrs. Duniway in carrying the Oregon work to a successful end on June 2d, when we all hope she will be able to send over the wires, ‘A triumphant victory,’ ‘The women of Oregon crowned with their primal right of citizenship.’” Mrs. Duniway resumed her speaking, and the audience responded by dropping into the baskets of the collectors the liberal sum of eighty-six dollars. At the close of Mrs. Duniway's most satisfactory address—

Miss Anthony said: the reason men were so slow in conceding political equality to women, was because they could not believe women suffered the humiliation of disfranchisement as they would. A dear and noble friend, one who aided our work most efficiently in the early days, said to me, “Why do you say the ‘emancipation of women’?” I replied, “Because women are political slaves!” Is it not strange that men cannot comprehend that what to them would be degradation, slavery, is to women elevation, liberty? Men prize the right of Suffrage for themselves above all trice, and count the denial of it the most severe, punishment. If a young man serving out a five or seven years penalty in a State prison has a living friend outside who cares for him, that friend will get up a petition, secure the most influential names possible—begging the Governor to commute the young man's sentence, if for no more than forty-eight hours prior to its expiration, that, when he comes out of prison, he may not be compelled to suffer the disgrace of disfranchisement, and that he may not be doomed to walk among his fellows with the mark of Cain upon his forehead. And the only penalty inflicted upon the men, who a few years ago laid the knife at the throat of the Nation, was that of disfranchisement, which all men, loyal and disloyal, felt was too grievous to b borne, and our government made haste to permit every one, even the arch leader of them all, to escape the humiliation, the degradation, and again to be honored with the crowing right of United States citizenship. How can men thus delude themselves with the idea, that what to them is ignominy unbearable, is to women honor and glory unspeakable! Why cannot men put themselves in women's place, and feel and act for us, as they would have us feel and act for them, if we possessed all the powers of government, and denied all to them?

This is the sixteenth year of our coming to the capital with our conventions, and petitions and appeals to Congress, to take the initiative step toward the amendment of our National Constitution to prohibit the several States from disfranchising United States citizens on account of sex. We have from time to been granted hearings before committees of both Houses; we have had two or three minority reports, and the last Congress gave us a Special Committee on the Political Rights of Woman, in 07774each House, each of which, for the first time in the history of our appeals to Congress, presented to its respective branch a majority report, recommending the passage of the proposition for a Sixteenth Amendment. The Senate of this—the Forty-eighth— Congress reäppointed our Special Committee without opposition, and at our hearing this morning, every one of its members was present, and gave most respectful attention to appeals and arguments from eight of our delegates, representing five different States. They promised a speedy and favorable report. In the House of Representatives two unsuccessful efforts have been made to raise a select committee for us. On the first motion the nayes were 124, the yeas 85. Of those voting no, only 4 were Republicans, while of those voting yes, 13 were Democrats. I immediately addressed a letter to each of the 112 absentees, asking how he would have voted had he been present, and how he would vote if the motion were renewed. I received 28 replies from Republicans, all saying they would have voted yes; and of 22 answers from Democrats, 8 would have voted, yes, 9, no, and 5 were befogged or not quite certain; there are still 62 of the absentees unheard from. Because of this refusal of the House to give us a special or standing committee, our petitions are in the hands of the Judiciary Committee, and we are to have a hearing before that most influential committee to-morrow morning.

What the people and Congress need, is education on this great question of equality of rights for women, and every one of us can help the cause along by expressing our opinion on the subject in public and private, in season and out of season. Let us each and all talk and work with renewed earnestness, to hasten the day when the women of this republic shall no longer be compelled to stand begging for the sacred rights of citizenship, so freely conferred on all men, native and foreign, white and black, virtuous and vicious! How much longer must we wait for Congress to act upon our innumerable petitions smothered under the dust of nineteen years in the archives of the capitol?

Miss Anthony then declared the Convention adjourned until 1885, when she hoped all might come to Washington for the last time, Congress having granted their demands.

The State represented in the Convention were as follows:

Arkansas. —Lizzie D. Fyler.

We append the following reports, some of which were not read as no opportunity offered, others came too late, but we give place to all alike, that we may have a complete record of the year:

Laramie City, W. T., March 29th, 1884.

Miss Susan B. Anthony, Vice-President of the National Woman. Suffrage Association, Washington, D. C.:

My Dear Friend : In the hurry and toil of professional labor I pause a moment to answer the questions propounded in your kind letter of late date, as to Woman Suffrage in Wyoming. I might answer all by saying Woman Suffrage is a success. But as this would furnish no information and would be merely a declaration of opinion, I have concluded to give you some of my experiences in dealing with the question practically and therewith something of its history.

The act giving to women the right of Suffrage was passed by the first Legislative Assembly of Wyoming and was approved by the Governor, December 10th, A. D. 1860. It may be proper for me to say I was not at that time in favor of the measure, and would have voted against the bill had I been called upon to act in the premises. “Two years later it was my fortune to be a member of the Second Legislative Assembly of Wyoming. This body was composed largely of Democrats. A bill to repeal the Suffrage act of 1869 was introduced, passed both branches of the Assembly and was presented to the Governor for his approval. The then Governor, John A. Campbell, a fearless, resolute and noble man, who has since been called to the “haven of rest,” vetoed the bill and returned it with his objections to the Assembly. The Democrats determined to pass the bill over the veto, and to this end brought down the party lash with vigor and each every Democrat that showed signs of weakening was whipped into the trace. To carry the scheme through required of course a two-thirds vote and the Democrats lacked one. It was known, however, that several of the Republican 07976members were originally opposed to Woman Suffrage and it was believed that one or more of these could be induced to act with the Democrats in passing the bill over the veto. The Republicans consulted together and it was found very few if any of them were originally Woman Suffragists, but two years of trial had disclosed some beneficial results, and it was for this reason unanimously agreed it would be an act of great injustice to repeal the law until the experiment had had a full and fair trial. We therefore agreed to stand by the Governor and prevent repeal. This was done and the highest privilege of citizenship thus saved to the women of Wyoming. Since then women have exercised their elective franchise, at first not very generally but of late with universality, and with such good judgment and modesty as to commend to men of all parties who hold the best good of the Territory in high esteem.

It may now be truthfully said that Woman Suffrage is as firmly settled in Wyoming as man Suffrage, and by all the best people of the Territory the former is regarded as being fully as respectable as the latter. The right of universal Suffrage as applied to government is of doubtful expediency. The ballot in the hands of ignorant, vicious people is a positive evil that ought to be abated. If ignorance, vice and immorality existed among the fair sex alone, or even to a greater degree than among men, the ballot might reasonably be denied them. In our large cities there are great numbers of vile women, but in the same cities the much greater number of vile, drunken, miserable men is attested by the common observation of humanity. That the use of the ballot should be restricted seems to me quite clear, but that the line of restriction should not be drawn between the sexes is equally certain. In a country like ours, in which the majority vote controls its destinies, the highest good plainly requires the prohibition of the ballot to the ignorant and vicious, and its use extended to the educated and pure without regard to sex. From whatsoever point we view the Suffrage question, it is quite apparent that the class of people to which we must look for improved morals and legislation is represented in the homes of the country—the married people. The man with home and children has a deeper interest in good laws and pure morals than the man who is alone in the world. The young are generally careless and indifferent upon most questions of legislation and government, while the more mature in years, the fathers and mothers, are ever on the alert to guard those dear to them. Who so anxious for wholesome laws, good government and pure morals as the fathers and mothers of the land? What influence, what power so effective as the home in establishing and maintaining honest government and good laws? Whoever owns a little home, a little tract of land, however small, so it suffices the family wants, is independent. Upon the shoulders of this independent class rests the destiny of this great Nation. It is to the home influence, to the people who have homes, we must look in the future for relief from the evil effects of the ballot in the hands of vicious, bad people. And the more we have of this in politics, legislation and government the better for the State. Let us have, then, all we can get of the home influence, male and female, and arm it with the ballot, that it may have the power to protect itself against the evils of bad legislation, poor and inefficient officers, the curse of intemperance and other vices.

As one of the pillars of the Woman Suffrage movement I would respectfully suggest to you the propriety of presenting this argument of arming the home with the ballot as a strong one in favor of your claim to the right. In Wyoming we see husband and wife going to the polls arm to cast their votes. If they vote alike, as many claim, the power of the home for good is doubled. If, on the other hand, the husband is a drunkard, as sometimes happens, and votes for whiskey and whiskey candidates, the wife's vote is sure to counterbalance his, and there is yet hope for the home.

But it is not true that husbands and wives vote alike. It often happens that the husband is a Democrat and and the wife a Republican, and vice versa . A notable 08077instance of this is our present delegate in Congress a Democrat. At the time of his election his wife was a Republican and is now. In Carbon county Mrs. _____ is county superintendent of schools, was elected on the Democratic ticket—an excellent superintendent she is, by the way—at the same time her husband was and is now a Republican, and worked on election day earnestly and manfully for the success of the Republican ticket. In the majority of cases, however, husbands and wives vote the same ticket, but the wife will scratch all objectionable names from her ticket, while the husband will generally vote straight. Mrs. Brown and I agree politically and go to the polls together. You will excuse me for saying Mrs. Brown is a very sensible woman, and being sensible thinks of herself and acts upon her own judgment. If she finds the name of a Republican on her ticket that is a dishonest man, a whiskey bloat or a libertine, off comes that name and in its place goes down the name of a decent Democrat, if there happens to be such an one on the other ticket; but I—well—I am apt to think the worst Republican on the ticket better than the best Democrat in the land and so I vote it straight. These instances are given to show what is very common in the Territory as to the manner of voting, and at the same time that it may appear how woman's ballots are made to count for good. She will usually vote the ticket her husband does, if she has a husband, but if there is the name of an unworthy man thereon she will surely scratch that name—and so well is this now understood by all parties, they rarely present the name of an unworthy man as a candidate. If they do, the women take it upon themselves to beat that man. It is sometimes asked if these differences of opinion do not create dissensions in families? and I answer very decidedly, no. We are a more tolerant people than you of the East and carry into our daily lives the theories we advocate and thoroughly believe in— i. e., religious and political liberty.

I have been asked if women make good jurors, and I answer by saying, that so far as I have observed their conduct on juries, as a lawyer, I find but little fault with them. It was my fortune to aid in the defense of a man charged with murder before the first mixed jury of men and women ever impaneled. It took about a week to try the case, and during this period I wanted the women jurors with great care; looking back now to that trial after a lapse of about fifteen years, I am compelled to say the ladies discharged the to them novel duties of jurors with credit to themselves and with great good sense. Subsequent experience has strengthened my confidence in women for these duties. They do not reason like men upon the evidence, but, being possessed of a higher quality of intellectuality, i, e., keen perceptions, they see the truth of the thing at a glance and go for it “there and then.” Their minds once settled neither sophistry, logic, rhetoric, pleading or tears will move them from their purpose. If Ohio will put women in the jury box, such a farce as the late will never again happen, and the terrible scenes that have and are now following it in Cincinnati will never again stain the annals of that great State. A guilty person never escapes a just punishment when tried by woman juries.

The effect of Woman Suffrage upon the people of Wyoming has been good. It has been said by one man that open, flagrant acts of bribery are commonly practiced at the polls in Wyoming, and this statement is made to show that the effect of Woman Suffrage has not been good. The statement is not true; but I suppose the person who made the above statement believed it true, and it is presumed he predicted his assertion upon his observations in one election and in one town only in the Territory. In the last election there was in the city of Cheyenne large sums of money expended to influence the result, and votes were bought on the streets in an open and shameless manner. As United States Attorney for the Territory, it became my duty to investigate this matter before a grand jury composed of men. The revelations before the jury were astonishing, and many cases of bribery were clearly proven; but while a majority 08178of those composing the jury were men of the highest integrity, there were so many members who had probably taken part in the same unlawful transactions, no indictment could be obtained. The circumstances attending this election were phenominal. Such conduct never before occurred in the history of the Territory, and it is believed will never occur again. It would be unjust to the women of the Territory however, if I should fail to add that in the investigation made before the grand jury of the bribery matter, while it was clearly proven that many men sold their votes, is was strikingly apparent that few if any women, even of the vilest class, were guilty of the same misconduct.

It has also been stated that the best women in the Territory do not avail themselves of the privilege of the elective franchise. This statement is maliciously false. The women of Wyoming vote with as much universality as men, and no State or territory can boast nobler or purer women. The foolish claim has also been made, that the influence of the ballot upon women in bad. This is not true. It is impossible that a woman's character can be contaminated in associating with men for a few moments in going to the polls any more than it would be in going to the church or to places of amusement. On the other hand women are benefited and improved by the ballot. Most women in Wyoming accumulate more or less property, and under our laws manage their property, though married, as if single. The management of the control and conduct of business necessarily gives them new ideas, and brings a knowledge of affairs that none of us get but by experience. This makes them more intelligent, gives them enlarged ideas of life and its duties, instills higher aims and makes them better wives and mothers. Women whose minds are occupied with business and affairs of State, have no time or inclination to go into ecstasies over the latest style of a hat, or wax eloquent over that “love of a bonnet.” The fact is, Wyoming has the noblest and best women in the world, because they have more privileges and know better how to use them.

To conclude this very long letter I will say, Woman Suffrage is a settled fact in Wyoming and will endure as long as the State. It has accomplished much good. It has harmed no one. We are therefore all in favor of it, and none can be found to raise a voice against it. Wishing you God speed I remain, Yours sincerely, M. C. Brown.

To the President, Vice-President and Officers of the National Woman Suffrage Association in Convention Assembled:

Dear and Honored Ladies: I take pleasure in addressing you in the subject of Woman Suffrage, as it is one very dear to me, and I firmly believe of vital importance to the Nation. Women have voted in Utah fourteen years, but because of the little word “male” that still stands upon the statutes, no woman is eligible to any office of emolument or trust. In three successive Legislatures bills have been introduced and actually passed, providing that the word “male” be erased, but each time the Governor of the Territory, who has absolute veto power, has refused his signature. Yet women attend primary meetings in the various precincts, and are chosen as delegates to county and territorial conventions. There has not been a convention in Salt Lake City for eight years without women delegates. They are also members of county and territorial central committees, and are thus gaining practical political experience and preparing themselves for positions of trust, honor and usefulness.

In 1882 a convention was held to frame a constitution to be submitted to the people, and presented to the Congress of the United States. Women were delegates to this convention and took part in all its deliberations and were appointed to act on committees 08279with equal privileges. It is the first instance on record, I think, where women have been members and taken an active part in a constitutional convention.

Much has been said and write, and justly, too, of Suffrage for women in Wyoming, but in my humble opinion had Utah stood on the same ground as Wyoming, and women been eligible to office as they are in that Territory, they would ere this have been elected members to the Legislative Assembly of Utah.

It is currently reported that Mormon women vote as they are told by their husbands. I most emphatically and positively deny the assertion. All Mormon women vote who are privileged to register. Every young girl born here, as soon as she is twenty-one years old goes and registers and considers it as much a duty as to say her prayers. Our women vote with the same freedom that characterizes any class of people in the most conscientious acts of their lives.

To say that our women are low and ignorant is as cruel and malicious as it is false. We have eight or nine women physicians, graduates from medical colleges, women as learned in medicine and surgery as men are, and as capable of performing the offices pertaining to the profession. They are engaged in all sorts of industries and almost all professions. In our stores there are young girls as clerks, cashiers and book-keepers, in our printing offices women and girls as type-setters, and in our bookbinderies there are girls employed regularly. Every industry is open to woman for which she is by nature or education fitted. I believe we have as many women school teachers as in any city of the same number of inhabitants.

Miss Anthony wished me to state how the Edmunds law affected Woman Suffrage. In the very same manner as it affected men—all are disfranchised who had at any time, no matter how long past, lived in the order of plural marriage. There was no exception. Women who have been widows ever since the law of 1862, and even before, are disfranchised of the same ground as those who have at any later period lived in the same order of marriage.

I contend that no woman is a polygamist, as she does not live with more than one man. Yet disreputable women are allowed to go to the polls and vote because, forsooth, “it is not in the marriage relation.” So you see woman who are the daughters and grand-daughters of men who have faithfully and valiantly served their country in times of war, are disfranchised because of their polygamous associations, while the most vile and infamous women are suffered to go to the polls and deposit their ballots. We have been very anxious about the bills introduced into the congress of the United States containing clauses annulling Woman Suffrage in this Territory, and we sincerely and ardently hope and trust that the members of the National Woman Suffrage Association will use their influence to prevent the passage of any such measure or law during the present session. The Utah commissioners have recommended in their report to Congress that the Suffrage be taken from the women of this Territory, but what good reason can be given? None whatever! The young people of this Territory are firm supporters of the principle of political equality, and the future will prove how beneficial and elevating are the effects of the practice of this theory in the advancement of all that will promote the best and highest interests of the State.

With best wishes for the success of the Convention in all its deliberations, and the hope that the time is not far distant when woman will occupy her true position and stand aside by side and shoulder to shoulder with her brother man, believe me your co-laborer in the cause of woman's enfranchisement, Emmeline B. Wells.

The writer of the above is the fourth wife of ex-Mayor Wells of Salt Lake, in good standing in the “Church of the Saints”; while the writer of the following, Mrs. Annie Godbe, is the first 08380wife of Mr. William Godbe, a prominent leader of the seceders in 1871, called by the Mormons, “Apostates”: Salt Lake City, February 26, 1884.

Miss Susan B. Anthony, Riggs House, Washington, D. C.:

Dear Friend: In response to your request I send you a few lines as to the condition of things in this Territory in their bearing upon the great cause to which your life has been devoted, that of Woman Suffrage. The situation here is anomalous, and viewed and written about from so many different standpoints is, for the most part, misunderstood and misrepresented.

To Utah, with her priesthood and polygamy, was reserved the plan of granting the ballot to woman at the early part of your contention for this right. Yes! Brigham Young, the exemplar of Moses and Solomon, the man of twenty wives and absolute dictator of his people, made haste to clothe women with this power in order that his own might be strengthened and theocracy and polygamy perpetuated.

What a travesty on the noblee cause you represent! Could satire be more scathing or better calculated to delight the souls of our opponents? The women of a young and rising State, not granted this right in answer to their demand, but having it forced upon them under circumstances that compel their use of it to their own injury, to perpetuate an institution, heartburning and heartbreaking and of all others most crushing to their womanhood, and at the same time fastening this Moloch of cruelty on their children and their children's children yet unborn. Is it strange, think you, that the believers and advocates of your cause in Utah, outside the Mormon church, should consent, and gladly, for this grossly misused power to be taken away and thus relieve the wretched women of this Territory of a grevious burden, since the exercise of it under priestly dictation can only serve to tighten their chains and prolong their sorrows?

Let us not confound ideas on this vital subject, but look the truth squarely in the face. Woman Suffrage is abstractly right, because it is the recognition of the equality of woman with man, and is therefore sound in principle as applied to a state of things where this equality is possible, as it undoubtedly is in Wyoming and Washington Territories. But do you not see, dear friend, that the very reverse is true, if its application be made to a people who are, to all intents and purposes, denied self-government, who are dictated to on all things political, temporal and spiritual by one irresponsible human will? Could any intelligent person, unwarped by prejudice, because a principle is inherently sound and right in relation to a given condition of things, apply it to another condition the very antipodes of the first?

I have heard it said that it may be better to let the power remain where it is and let the women of Utah patiently abide the day of better things that is soon to come! But would this be kind or wise? Do not the cattle die while the spring grass is growing? And is it not sorry consolation for those that starve and freeze to know that by and by the sun will be warm and the pasturage rich? I am aware that to a certain extent this objection to the misuse of the ballot in Utah may be applied to others, who, like the Mormons, yield unquestioning allegiance to a priestal head, but let it be remembered that in one instance it relates to individual cases living under a republican government, surrounded by liberalizing influences, while in this it relates to a community whose allegiance is first and wholly to a priesthood seeking to establish a literal “Kingdom of God!” A kingdonm that is to supercede the National Government and “break in pieces and subdue all other kingdoms.” It means literally this and nothing less. “Kingdom of God” forsooth! All kingdoms have been divine, if the claims of the kings are to be accepted. The world, or the goodly portion of it, is trying to establish a “kingdom of man,” based upon justice and equality to all! What madness then, to use no stronger word, to foster reason against it! Verily the power that 08481shall attempt it, whatever name, shall be broken and the highest and holiest through-out all lands shall say, “Amen.”

We do not advocate the withdrawal of the ballot from the women of Utah as the best method of solving the Mormon problem. Such a measure would be partial and invidious, to say the least. Better far would it be to treat both sexes alike, and if for sufficient cause the women should not vote, it is quite clear that the men should not, for the same reason. Radical legislation, or none, is the common judgment here outside of the Mormon church. But we women must take, not what we want, but what our masculine masters see fit to give us, and if they take the ballot from the women only, they thereby reduce the political power that is crushing us just one-half. What has been done so far in the way of legislation for Utah, has been first-class tinkering, as unworthy of statesmen as irritating and mischievous to the people. You will perceive, then, that the great them that absorbs so much of your life and that if your noble associates; one, too, destined as it as to free woman from her disabilities and elevate her to her true position in the world, must nevertheless be subordinated here in Utah for the time being by the great wrong that immediately besets us by the sad fact that Woman Suffrage in Utah is made a means of her degradation.

Should these few words of mine need confirmation, which respect for your intelligence will not permit me to believe, you will find it in the sad spectacle of sincere, good-meaning Mormon women standing on your progressive platform as representatives of a huge polygamic theocracy with Woman Suffrage the hope of its perpetuation. To the deep significance of this telling lesson I beg you will not be indifferent, nor deem me lacking of faith in the great underlying principles of your cause; but believe me that Woman Suffrage in Utah to-day is a cruel perversion of the beneficient aims of its advocates, a base counterfeit, misleading and mischievous, that “keeps the word of promise to the ear only to break it to the hope.”

Your for truth and justice, Annie Godbe.

Webster, February 22, 1884.

To the National Woman Suffrage Association in Convention Assembled:

To report the work done for our cause in Dakota Territory will tak but little time. We lack organization—the country being so sparsely settled, and such wide distances between towns, that the settlers are comparatively strangers to each other. Matilda Joslyn Gage and myself are the only persons I have known to have lectured or done any work in behalf of Suffrage, which was principally done upon the line of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad, and be it said to the credit of that company (through the Hon. C. H. Prior, assistant general superintendent), they showed the courtesy of furnishing us passes for the furtherance of this work, which proves that corporations—ever vigilant for their own interests—fully realize that women are desirable citizens to have upon the line of their railroad.

Mrs. Gage sent a memorial to our State Constitutional Convention (at Sioux Falls, September 6, 1883) which was duly received and read, “protesting against taxation without representation, and asking for the right of Suffrage for the women of Dakota, etc., etc.,” which was to the point as any thing from her able pen ever is. Owing to sickness in Mrs. Gage's family, she was deprived of being present at the convention, which was to be regretted, as she would have been given the opportunity of addressing that honorable body. The privilege was accorded me, but I made the mistake of asking only five minutes of their valuable time; however one thing is assured, I spoke as many words for Suffrage in thee time alloted, as possible, and presented them with a petition of more than a thousand names, “praying that the word ‘male’ 08582be not incorporated within our State Constitution when adopted,” to all of which appeals they gave no attention.

Besides this, I attended the convention two weeks, and was present at every meeting of the committee on elections to answer objections to the enfranchisement of woman. At their last meeting before making their report one member moved, “that the word ‘male’ be not incorporated within their State Constitution when adopted.” The motion was seconded and voted upon—there being a tie, the chairman cast his vote in the affirmative; the Committee adjourned to report in open convention the next morning. And yet, after all this seeming good intention of the committee, they reported only this: “Women may still have the right to vote at school elections, and for officers, etc.,” simply renewing a privilege we already had. However there was a vote taken in the convention on Suffrage for Woman, and but three members, I am mortified to say, voted in favor of equality before the law.

One delegate, Judge Moody, had the manliness to say to the convention in defense of woman's right to a voice in the government, “Who can say that my wife and daughter are not as competent to vote as I am to hold an office?” The majority laughed and scoffed, saying, “All the women wanted was to hold the offices!” I am not disheartened, but determined with renewed energy to battle for equal rights, and to concentrate our forces at the next meeting of our—their—Territorial Legislature, where I sincerely hope we will not be denied simple justice.

Here in Dakota wives have no dower in a deceased husband's property, not even the pittance, usually allowed in the States, of “the use of one-third of his(?) property.” That this country may soon become something higher and better than a semi-republican form of government, is the hope of Yours very respectfully, Marietta M. Bones

Carson City, January 26, 1884.

My Dear Anthony:

Your letter, enclosing the notice of the Annual Washington Convention, is received.

We have not much to report, and yet, as a State, we are constantly doing something that tends toward Woman Suffrage. Last winter we had a bill passed in the Senate, but defeated in the House. Our Representative, Cassidy, and both our Senators are Suffragists. I am sure they would vote for a Sixteenth Amendment.

For our own State Legislature there are always in the remote mining counties men elected who have not breadth of mind enough to comprehend any advancement for women. Enclosed please find a small contribution.

Very truly your friend, Hannah R. Clapp

My Dear Miss Anthony:

You ask me to give you a report of Nebraska for the past year, making a brief mention of the campaign vote of 1882. As I cannot take the time to make a formal report, may I write it as a letter to you? Then it will not seem a task but a pleasure.

The morning dawned bright and clear in Nebraska on the 5th of November, 1882. The most casual observer might have seen that some unusual interest was commanding attention. The fact that it was election day would not be sufficient explanation, for is not election day that which keeps woman at home for fear of insult on the crowned street? Everything wore a holiday appearance. Polling places gaily decorated with bunting. Banners floated to the breeze bearing the suggestive mottoes: “Are Women Citizens!” “Taxation without Representation is Tyranny!” “Governments derive their just Power from the Consent of the Governed!” “Equality before the Law!” 08683etc., etc. Under pavilion, or in adjoining rooms, and sometimes in the very shadow of the ballot-box, richly dressed women presided at well-filled tables serving refreshments to the voters and handing to those who would take them tickets bearing the words: “For Constitutional Amendment Relating to Right of Suffrage,” while the National colors floated alike over governors and governed; alike, over the patriot working for justice, and the six months residents of foreign birth who promptly marched up to defend his newly acquired rights from being shared by the daughters of the Pilgrims; alike, over women beseeching men to cast their votes for their freedom, and men who all day long were-selling their sister's birthright for a glass of beer or for a personal vote.

It looked like a holiday picnic with the clear, warm day, the well-dressed people, the flowers, the badges and the flags; but the tragic incidents of that day would fill a volume. Each locality has its own record, but you were cognizant of the features of the day as they presented themselves in the metropolis of the State where five hundred of the best women crowned the work of the campaign with their efforts at the polls—and worked in vain. Conservative joined hands with vice, egotists with ignorance, demagogue with veniality; and when the sun set, Nebraska's golden opportunity to do the noble act of simple justice was gone— lost by a vote of 50,693 to 25,756— so the record states. But it must not be forgotten that many tickets were fraudulently printed, and that tickets which contained no mention of the Amendments were largely counted against it, as also were all tickets having any technical defect or omission; for instance, tickets having the abbreviated form “For the Amendment” were counted against it. It will always remain an open question, whether the Amendment did not after all receive an actual majority of all votes cast upon that question. In this new state crowded with the duties incident to the development of a new country, the women had done what women might to secure their rights, but they had been sold for a mess of pottage.

A convention of the Nebraska Woman Suffrage Society was called for December 9, 1882, in the city of Kearney, where among the noble men and women who had carried Buffalo county for the Amendment it was resolved to continue the State work and especially to strive for a Sixteenth Amendment. Between that time and the close of the Forty-seventh Congress, your vice-president secured nearly three thousand names of petitioners for a Sixteenth Amendment, and forwarded them to Senator Saunders.

The third annual meeting of the State Association was held in January, 1883, at Lincoln. The usual business was transacted and a special committee appointed to secure favorable legislation. In view of the fact that so much of the opposition had been based on the allegation that “women do not want to vote,” the Committee prepared a resolution for the immediate re-solution of a constitutional amendment, making it legal for women to vote on its final ratification. The joint resolution was introduced by Senator Charles II. Brown of Omaha, a Democrat, and ably defended by him, by Senator David Butler, an anti-monopolist, and others. It was lost by nearly a two-third vote. Bills favorable to property rights of women, were lost for want of legislative time. But a bill was passed with only one dissenting voice, providing that one of the two assistant physician at the insane asylum should be a woman. The bill provided that the physician oldest in office should be the first assistant and receive the larger salary. Dr. Minerva Lewis received the appointment, and still retains the position.

Following the work in the Legislature a convention was held at Grand Island in May at which three-fourth of the counties in the State were represented by letter or person. The Grand Island Society at this time numbered about sixty members and was in flourishing condition. A few weeks since they celebrated their first anniversary with a grand banquet. During the convention which was one of the most 08784successful ever held in the State, a committee was appointed to publish a trial issue of a paper which should contain the new constitution, an account of the legislative work and a call for the next convention, to be held in August at Hastings. According to the new plan of work, this was the annual delegate meeting, and all business was done by delegates sent by the county societies; officers were elected, committees for various departments of work were appointed and a specimen copy of The Woman's Tribune was received with such interest that it was decided to continue its publication. At a recent mass convention held in York, a publishing company was inaugurated to establish a financial basis for the paper. The Woman's Tribune is especially devoted to work for Suffrage in all localities, but has many features of general interest, having departments relating to the household, the children, science, industry, etc. A specially interesting feature is the department of law pertaining to laws as they effect women, and edited by our one woman lawyer, Mrs. Ada M. Bittenbender of Lincoln, who was the president of the State Association during the campaign of 1882. So far it has been only possible to issue the paper monthly, but it will be made a weekly when well established. It is published at Beatrice.

Although the amount of work accomplished indicates that some persons are earnest and self-sacrificing, yet a great reaction is felt since the election of 1882. The pulpit is silent on the subject; with a few exceptions the press ignores or ridicules, and he is a brave man indeed who will work or speak for Woman Suffrage. What may be expected from our politicians is indicated by the vote our Representative Weaver gave on appointing a Woman Suffrage Committee in Congress. They claim the question is settled by a vote of the people. Some women, worn out with campaign work and expense, dread the though of continuing the struggle, and prefer to leave it to another generation. Many are indifferent, and many still uninformed. Hence the Association has determined to carry on its work in an educational and encourging way by means of the paper.

Little prejudice exists against the employment of women in Nebraska. They are found in telephone, telegraph and post-offices. They are printers, editors, bookkeepers, farmers. Three are ministers. They are welcomed everywhere as physicians. At the election of 1883 fifteen countries nominated women for county superintendents of public schools and eight were elected. For some of them it was a reelection, and it is universally conceded that women fill this office with great success. A few women are found on the school boards.

Nebraska women have what is called School Suffrage, although they cannot vote either for county or State superintendents. The qualifications for the school ballot are: “The woman must be the mother of children of school age, or possess real estate or have been assessed at last assessment of personal property.” It is astonishing how many women are disqualified to vote, yet the number of those who do vote at the spring elections is constantly increasing and becoming a recognized factor, exciting little comment.

Silk and bee culture are beginning to engage the attention of Nebraska women; and I must not forget to add that many of our girls are taking up homesteads and tree claims in the beautiful sections of country along the new lines of railroad in the middle, west and north of the State.

Faithfully yours, Clara Bewick Colby.

For fifteen years a society for the enfranchisement of women—Dr. Laura Ross Wolcott, President— has existed in this State, which has done very good work; several 08885hearings before the Legislature have been held, and a very respectable number of votes cast for Woman Suffrage at different sessions of the Legislature.

In 1881 and 1882 the Woman Suffrage Society of Madison, through their committee, Mrs. H. R. Olin, did a good work for the education of the people by sending out Woman Suffrage leaflets to be published in the papers of each county; quite a large number of papers were enlisted in the enterprise, and the publications were thus circulated in most of the countries of the State. During the summer of 1882, the Marathon County Woman Suffrage Society, under the leadership of Mrs. A.B. Gray, raised money, and arranged for lectures to be given on the subject in different parts of the State, the result was the organization of several new societies. A call was issued for a mass convention to meet at Madison, September 1882, for the purpose of organizing a State Woman Suffrage Society. Arrangements for the convention were made by the Madison Society; and Milwaukee, Racine, Muckwanago, Whitewater, Fox Lake, Black River Falls, Elroy, Richland Center, Baraboo, Grand Rapids, and Schofield responded to the call. A state Association was organized, of which Dr. Laura Ross Wolcott of Milwaukee, was elected President; Mrs. Helen R. Olin of Madison, Chairman of Executive Committee; Miss Ella Giles of Madison, Secretary; and Miss Alice Frisby, Treasurer.

During the year Mrs. Evaleen I., Mason, Adeline Swain and Rev. Olympia Brown of Wisconsin; Mrs. M. E. Haggart, Mrs. May Wright Sewall and Mrs. Amy T. Dunn of Indiana, engaged in a partial canvas of the State under direction of Miss Sarah H. Richards, the agent of the State Society. Had the agency continued longer, and the canvas been carried forward, much more might have been accomplished. The State Association has been most unfortunate—the President, Dr. Wolcott, overburdened with professional labors and far from well, resigned her position, the Treasurer, Miss Frisby, a young woman of uncommon promise, died of diphtheria; these discouragements were followed by the resignation of the Secretary, Miss Giles, and finally by that of the Chairman of the Executive Committee, Mrs. H. R. Olin. But, notwithstanding these discouragements, the work is going on well in the local societies.

The Richland Center Society reports itself by its Secretary Mrs. Laura James, as follows: “We have fifty-four members; we have rented a nice room and are beginning a library; we put into it everything we can hear of in the way of progressive magazines and papers. The leading county papers publish our club minutes every week, and grow more favorable towards us, and so do the churches and temperance societies. In short, we have a footing and recognition now as a permanent living institution.”

The society at Whitewater numbers some seventy members, and so doing well. The societies at Milwaukee, at Muckwanago, at Schofield, and other places are awake to the needs of the times. We are hoping to supply the vacancies in our list of State officers, and to put ourselves into working order before the opening of the next session of the Legislature. Meanwhile we send greeting to the National Woman Suffrage Association in Convention assembled at Washington, D. C., March 4th, 5th and 6th. May your meetings be characterized by zeal and enthusiasm, your deliberations marked by wisdom and prudence, and your efforts crowned with victory. “God bless us all, God bless us every one?” Olymphia Brown.

Dear Friends in Convention Assembled:

In making a report for Michigan it is perhaps proper to begin a few years back, as heretofore little has been presented in regard to this State in the conventions of the National Woman Suffrage Association. March 16, 1874, the Legislature of Michigan, by a decisive majority, passed a resolution to submit a Woman Suffrage amendment 08986to be voted upon, separately, at the following November election. A State Suffrage Association was soon after recognized at Lansing, and committees appointed in the several Congressional districts of the State. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was invited to lecture in the principal cities of the State during the month of June; May F. Eastman, Matilda Hindman and other speakers continued the agitation through the summer; the American Woman Suffrage Association held its sixth annual convention in Detroit, in October; Susan B. Anthony spoke every night of the last six weeks of the campaign, and Michigan men and women not a few aided in the canvas. The writer was one of a score of women who attended the polls in Manistee, serving hot coffee at a little table by the door, but too timid to electioneer for the cause in any other way. The official returns showed over forty thousand votes for the amendment and three times that number against it.

The defeat of the amendment was followed by the disbanding of the State Woman Suffrage Association, which was offered mostly by men, and the cause seemed to languish in the intervening years until 1879, when Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony again made extensive lecture tours through all the chief cities of our State, resulting in the organization of many local societies, as evidenced by the presence of their delegates at the Twelfth Annual Convention of the Annual Woman Suffrage Association, held at Grand Rapids, in June, 1880. Notable among these societies were those of Manistee, Frankfort, Big Rapids, Grand Traverse, Hartford, Flint, etc. In the winter of 1883 the Manistee society collected over three thousand signatures to a petition to the Legislature, asking municipal Suffrage for women. The same society also addressed a circular letter to members of the Legislature asking their views on the question; about one-fourth of them replied, and mainly favorably; nevertheless our petitions were referred, our bill for municipal Suffrage tabled in the House and not reached in the Senate.

The Flint Equal Suffrage Association did effective work also in securing names to the petition and in their spring election by placing three women upon the school board, viz.: Dr. Rachel J. Davidson, Sarah A. Rulinson and Mrs. Sarah E. Dibble. At Adrian, Mrs. H. A. Colvin and another lady were elected school trustees at the spring election; Mrs. Sarah H. Bishop was elected to the same office in Jackson; Miss Lucy A. Coates, school inspector in Benzonia; Mrs. Ella Hopkins, school director in Bear Lake, and Miss M. L. Jones, superintendent of Charlotte schools, has been appointed county examiner. Miss Mary A. Tibbitts, now Mrs. Fairfield, of Manistee, was for years secretary of the school board of county examiners. A the school meeting in Battle Creek one hundred and fifty women voted solid for a temperature candidate. In the city of Manistee, at the school election in July, the polls were literally captured by the women—their vote being the largest. A committee of three had been appointed from each of the temperature and Suffrage societies to stay at the polls and instruct women as to their rights under the school law, copies of which were printed in three languages for their benefit. Owing to the large foreign element it has not been thought best to put women in nomination here, but rather unite with the better class of men upon candidates who could be elected without combating Old World prejudices.

The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, while not so well advanced in regard to Woman Suffrage as in most of the sister States, still have established a department of franchise which is doing good work, and most of its foremost women are Suffragists as far as regards voting on temperance and educational matters. The churches, generally, ignore this question; at least no action is known to have been taken in its favor in any of their convention in this State. However, there is satisfaction in knowing that many of our ablest divines are in full sympathy with the cause.

Throughout the State we find many women in positions of trust and honor—lawyers, 09087doctors, editors, postmasters and notaries public. Mrs. Martha Strickland, of the law firm of Strickland & Strickland, St. Johns, is dealing telling blows as a speaker against monopoly. Mrs. Sarah E. V. Emery, of Lansing, was a delegate to the State Greenback Convention last March, and is also a good speaker. Miss Annie Miller is on the editorial staff of the Hesperian. A Lansing lady edits a home department in the Agricultural World. Mrs. H. M. Conklin publishes the St. Charles Independent; the writer edits a woman's department in the Manistee Standard. While in other business we find Miss Irene J. Miller, deputy-sheriff in Saginaw; a woman's exchange in successful operation in that city; Miss Mary Brown teaching a night school in Jackson, and Mrs. Anna Newton, of Pontiac, making a good living raising and important sheep. Mrs. Mary L. Doe, one of our earnest and true Suffragists, has been secretary of the Grand Lodge I.O.C. for years, and received at their last election a very handsome vote fore Worthy Chief, the highest elective office in the order. Miss Nellie Bates, of Flint, is said the best violinist in the State; Miss Frances L. Stewart is postmaster of Ypsilanta and there are many women serving the State in this capacity who do not hold the commission or receive the pay. Among those who are holding official positions in the State we note Mrs. H.A. Tenney, State Librarian, and her assistant, Miss L. L. Parker. Miss Mary A. Miles is clerk for the attorney-general, and many others are serving in similar positions. The fact, however much we may deplore it, remains, that we have no acknowledged leader in the cause in Michigan. The Manistee Woman Suffrage Association has probably done more real work during its brief existence than has been done in all the other years since 1874; yet its officers are most women of family cares and limited means, strong only in an abiding faith and enthusiasm for the cause which they believe underlies all other reforms. No aggressive has been attempted during the year by any of the local Suffrage societies in the State. The work has been mainly educational, by circulating Suffrage literature and periodicals and obtaining, where practicable, speakers to address the public upon the subject of equal rights.

In faith, love and hope, Fanny Holden Fowler.

Toledo, February, 26, 1884.

Miss Susan B. Anthony:

Dear Madam: The Toledo Woman Suffrage Association extends greetings and congratulations to the National Woman Suffrage Association in convention assembled. In earnest sympathy with your noble work for the enfranchisement of women, we have for sixteen years labored in our city for the furtherance of the same object. Our Association has never failed to hold regular monthly meetings, nine months of the year, to take cognizance of all movements tending to the elevation and enfranchisement of woman. Its work has been largely of an education nature. Among the subjects to which we have given attention during the past year are:

The refutation of reports pronouncing Woman Suffrage a failure in Wyoming, and showing it to be a success in every view. Congratulations to the women of Toledo for founding a woman's exchange. Mrs. E. S. Fray, one of our members, addressed the municipal government of Toronto, Canada, in favor of giving Canadian women school and municipal Suffrage, and founded a women's franchise club in that city. The debate on municipal Suffrage in Massachusetts was considered. Sympathy was tendered Mrs. Gougar of Lafayette, Indiana, in the persecutions she underwent in defense of temperance and Woman's Rights. Correspondence was had with the Ohio State Suffrage Association. Respect was paid the memory of Miss Lillie Darst, engrossing clerk of the Ohio Senate. The present educational status of women in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, France, Italy and India received consideration. 09188Translation from French papers read bearing upon the condition of women in France. The Lenten lectures of Dr. Morgan Dix were read and commented upon. Notice was taken of all women who have entered upon professional careers. Mrs. Stanton's and Miss Anthony's work for the cause of woman's enfranchisement while in Europe was brought before the Association; the labor question in Italy and its effects, presented by Mrs. M. Berra of the Association; the moral victory gained by English women through the prevention of legislation protecting vice; the woman's department of the Boston Institute fair; the work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union at the Toledo polls at the fall elections; respect paid the memory of the late Charles H. Codman of Boston, a friend of woman's enfranchisement. Dr. Hammond's article, entitled “Sex in Politics,” in the North American Review, was read, and answered by Mrs. R. L. Segur of the Association. The eleventh annual session of the advancement of women and its proceedings were noticed. The Woman Suffrage work in England was frequently reviewed. The action of the governor of Massachusetts in declaring women ineligible to membership of the State board of health, charity and lunacy, because not persons, was considered. An original paper on women's industrial work in Boston, from personal observation, was given by Mrs. E. R. Collins. Rejoicings were held over the adoption of Woman Suffrage in Washington Territory, and letters sent to Mrs. Duniway and Governor Newell. Respect was paid to the memory of Sojourner Truth. The members of the Association agree to pay taxes under protest, because not represented. Regrets were expressed over the defeat in the House of Representatives of a standing committee on Woman Suffrage. The article on “Women's Inventions,” written by Mrs. M.J. Gage was read. Respect was paid the memory of Wendell Phillips. Woman's higher education in Wales was considered, also the granting of a master's license to sail her own steamer to Mrs. Mary Miller of New Orleans. An original paper was given by Mrs. J. Cravens, descriptive of a visit to the United States House of Representatives when the vote on appointment of a standing committee on Woman Suffrage was taken.

Our proceedings of meetings are always published in the Toledo papers, and we have evidence that they are extensively read throughout Northwestern Ohio, and feel that we are and have been a power inn educating public opinion upon the great question of human rights, to agitate which our Association was formed.

I am respectfully, Rose L. Segur.

To our Noble President Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Members of the National Woman Suffrage Association now in Convention:

In reply to our beloved Miss Susan B. Anthony to send a letter if I could not attend the Convention, I forward the following. The distance and expense of travel from Cincinnati to Washington is much in the way of my going; the same, too, may be the excuse for many other liberty-loving women, who otherwise would be present, this being such a broad and extensive country to travel over; still, for all this, as you ever have, you will likely gather together a goodly number of brave women, who are alive to the importance of their independence, thus their release from thraldom. Miss Anthony desired, also, that the information I might give should hear upon the progress of the cause in Ohio.

Not much was done directly or indirectly in behalf of the cause until the fall of 1867, at which time Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Miss Susan B. Anthony came to Cincinnati and held public meetings, and started the ball of liberty which had been standing still after the emancipation of the slave, the people believing that freedom had risen to its highest pinnacle not taking the broad highway and obtaining for woman the protecting means of independence, the franchise, but it has run off hither and thither on different tangents, accomplishing some good, however, in its onward 09289march. Yes, much good is being done here in various ways, principally among young women who have grown up since the war, who know but little what some of us older know of being deprived of just and equal rights, which we should share in common with our brothers. These rights referred to are not political rights however—the women here have not gotten to that point of independence—but rather in the social and industrial sphere, especially in the latter. In the years above referred to, no women were employed in the different kinds of avocations here, now they are to be seen everywhere, but are compelled to take less for their time and labor than men, and here lies the secret of woman's opportunities now obtained in the busy world. There is one house in particular here, which is in the habit of demanding of the girls they employ to serve three weeks for nothing, then they average from two to six dollars per week; they are requested not to talk with one another about what they get, under pretense of not creating a spirit of rivalry. Yes, there has been a great change wrought in this city at least; we can see at all times, in the evening and the morning, throngs of girls passing to and from their day's work, lunch-basket in hand, as unconcerned as thought it had been done in all the years of the past. There is another feature in the advance of woman, that is the opportunity extended small girls to act as cash bearers; this movement was introduced here about three years ago. We have one ladies’ business college, kept by Miss Ellen Nelson; a school of oratory, managed by Mrs. Westerndorf; a woman's hospital, of which the managing physicians are all women, Mrs. Ellen Kirk and Mrs. May Howells, chief among them. We have, too, a woman's exchange doing good work, and many minor movements showing that woman is working up and beginning to see she is needed elsewhere besides at home, and that there are more cobwebs to brush away than in her own closet. Now and then may be seen little girls selling newspapers; when I saw this new departure in woman's sphere, it occurred to me how shocked the people were, when years ago Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony sent out girls in New York to sell the Revolution. There had then never been any objection to woman's suffering and toiling and starving in her sphere, so often a poverty stricken home, if she would not send forth her little girls to sell newspapers. During the terrible flood we have just passed through were seen many little girls thus employed. I was much amused one evening, when, passing along the street one of these little new-girls—a neatly attired child—came up to me saying, “Will you buy a penny paper, mum? all about the flood!” “Yes,” I said, “I will buy one from you, as you are a nice, polite little girl, and I love to see girls industrious and willing to help their mothers and those at home in need.”

I will close by saying, that amid this busy throng I am publishing a monthly journal, The Ægis, devoted to the interest of woman, which takes much of my time and energy to keep alive. Wishing every possible success, and that the pioneers of this great movement may live to see the day when the earth will be the brighter and better from the emancipation and enfranchisement of the women of the nations.

Most respectfully, Annie Laurie Quinby.

Cornelia C. Hussey writes: An old gentleman, Aaron Burr, a resident of East Orange, has just passed on to his long home, full of years—eighty-eight—and with a good record. He told me about his sister's voting in New Jersey, when he was a child—probably about 1807. The last time I took a petition for Woman Suffrage to him, he signed it willingly, and his daughter also.

Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford writes: Mrs. Celia B. Whitehead and others industriously circulated petitions; Mrs. Cornelia C. Hussey sent Woman Suffrage tracts to members of the Legislature, and a committee was appointed to hear Woman Suffrage 09390advocates in the assembly room of the State House at Trenton, on February 13, 1884, where Mrs. F.W. Seagrove, Henry B. Blacknell and Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford read papers and spoke in behalf of the petitioners. the courteous and intelligent committee gave hope of a partially favorable report, especially as regards School Suffrage. The newspapers of the State gave dignified and favorable accounts. There is a growing regret in the State that New Jersey women having once voted should ever have been arbitrarily dispossessed of their right, and a hope, that the National Sixteenth Amendment will remedy the evil arising from the illegality of the present State Constitution.

Greenwood, March 1, 1884.

Dear Friends:

I am with you in spirit, but cannot be in person. Our representative in Congress from this State, Charles B. Lore, is with us. At the last election the Republicans had a ship of State mounted on wheels and went with it wherever they held meetings. When they came to Greenwood I put a “blue hen” on board and told them they had no right to run the ship, calling it the New Constitution, with a live eagle to represent freedom, a live coon to represent the “Nigger” (so said the Democrats), without a symbol to represent us women. The “blue hen” was taken on board and went from one end of the State to the other, becoming so attached to those who manned the ship that she would not land at any port they anchored to hold their meetings, but there she sat upon the glass coop I gave her. The Democrats called on the women to use their influence to keep the Republicans from establishing mixed schools. The Republicans pleaded with the women to see to it their men friends voted their ticket, that the smoke might come from every School-house where their children were being educated. I never saw such a change of feeling on our question. Some of the Republicans announced from the platform that they wanted the women to vote. But we shall get the right the same way the negro did. Our Legislature meets next winter; I shall work with the members to secure equal recognition for woman.

Sincerely yours, Mary A. Stuart.

In the year 1869 was held the first convention in this State for the discussion of the great question of equal political rights of all citizens irrespective of sex. For six consecutive sessions the Opera House in this city was occupied with the large audiences who listened with fixed attention to such distinguished advocates of the cause as William Lloyd Garrison, Mary Livermore, Henry Ward Beecher, Paulina Wright Davis, Julia Ward Howe, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton—and at the close our State Society was formed for the purpose, as expressed in the constitution, of securing the ballot to the women of Connecticut on equal terms with the men. The Society at once took up and has since pursued with varying zeal and success the work of printing and distributing tracts on the legal disabilities of married women in this State, on the progress of the cause in other States and countries, on the Bible in its relation to Woman Suffrage, and other subjects relating to the great question, until it has published more than one hundred and fifty thousand tracts and distributed them largely through the State. It has also presented every year petitions and bills to the Legislature asking for justice to the women of the State, and supported these by arguments before committees, who have frequently reported favorably, and with sometimes favorable action in one House or the other, but never in both. Of late the effort has been confined to School Suffrage and temperance, under the conviction that no body of intelligent and right-minded men can longer refuse to women the right equally 09491with men to a voice in the matter of the public education of their children and in that of the appalling evil of the sale of liquor.

That our labors have not been in vain in the past, but have already largely influenced public opinion may be inferred not only from the favorable action of the Legislature from time to time, but especially from the passage of a law in 1877 by which the property rights of married women were placed on the same basis as those of men. How unjust, how utterly unworthy of a civilized State the old law had been, may be seen by any one who will read our tract on “The Legal Disabilities of the Married Women of Connecticut.”

To our friend Governor Hubbard, so lately gone from our midst, belongs the credit of so characterizing this legislation that it could no longer remain a disgrace to our statute-book, but was blotted out as if in very shame. These were his words in his message to the Legislature in 1877: “There has been for the last few years in this State much slip-shod and fragmentary legislation in respect to the property rights of married women. The old common law assumed the subjugation of the wife and stripped her of the better part her rights of person and nearly all her rights of property. It is a matter of astonishment that Christian nations should have been willing for eighteen centuries to hold the mothers of their race in a condition of legal servitude. It has been the scandal of jurisprudence. Some progress has been made in reforming the law in this State, but it has been done, as I have already said, by patchwork and shreds, sometimes ill-considered, and often so incongruous as to provoke vexations litigation and defy the wisdom of the courts. The property relations of husband and wife do not to-day rest on any just and harmonious system. Not only has the husband absolute disposal of all his own property freed from all dower-rights, but he is practically the owner during coverture of all his wife's estate not specially limited to her separate use; and after her death has, in every case, a life use in all her personal, and in most cases in in all her real property, by a little which the wife, no matter what may have been his ill-deserts, is powerless to impair or defeat; whereas, on the other hand, the wife has during the husband's life no more power of her own right to sell, convey, or manage her own estate than if she were a lunatic of slave, and in case of his death has a life use in only one-third part of the real estate of which he dies possessed, and no indefeasible title whatever in any of his personal estate. As a consequence, a husband may strip his wife, by mere voluntary disposition to strangers, of all claim in his estate after his death, and thus add beggary to widowhood.

“I am sure this cannot seem right to any fair-minded man. Neither is it strange that some of our country-women, stung by the injustice of the law towards their sex, should be demanding, as a mode of redress, a part in the making of the laws which govern them. I am confident there is manhood enough in our own sex to right this obvious wrong to which I have alluded.

“I therefore recommend that the law on this subject be so recast that, in all marriages hereafter contracted, the wife shall hold her property and all her personal services not rendered to her husband or minor children, as a sole and separate estate, with absolute power of disposition in her own name, and that the surviving wife shall have,by law, the same measure of estate in the property of the deceased husband, as the surviving husband shall be allowed to have in the property of his deceased wife. This will reduce their property relations to a principle of equality, and, in my judgment, is demanded by the most obvious dictates of justice and equity. Those who are not satisfied with this, can make a different law for themselves by ante-nuptial settlements. I am not unmindful that the husband alone is liable in the first instance for the support of the family; but this is much more than neutralized by the fact that, in most cases, the wife's whole life is spent in the toilsome and unpaid service of the household, and that the whole drift of her estate, in consequence of her more unselfish 09592and generous nature, is towards the husband's pocket, in spite of all the guards of the law and every consideration of prudence.”

Immediately after the passage of a law which full met these recommendations of Governor Hubbard, the late Samuel Bowles of the Springfield Republican, one of the earliest and most intelligent advocates of our cause and a man or rare political sagacity, give this testimony as to the causes which secured this advanced legislation: “Thus we have a new and clear statute framed in accordance with a simple principle of reform, for which the Republican has long done battle—the equality of married persons in their rights and responsibilities of property. The adoption of the reform is due deeply to the general agitation of the rights of women, the efforts of Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, the Smith girls’ cows, and perhaps some flagrant instance of injustice to rich wives by tyrant husbands near the capital. But the great occasion and immediate cause, without which this generation might have pleaded for it in vain, was the perception of the justice of it by Governor Hubbard, and his open advocacy of it in his message. Lawyers have one answer for all reforms regarding property or civil contracts—they are impossible. But here was undeniably the best lawyer in the State who said, and threw the weight of his first State paper on the proposition, that this thing was possible, and, if he said it was possible, there was no man who could gainsay it. The Legislature took the reform on its own sense of justice and on the assurance of Richard D. Hubbard. esq., that it would work.”

A still greater advance in public sentiment is manifest by a decision of our Supreme Court in 1882, and the universal favor with which it was received, by which women are held to have the right to practice law in this State upon admission to the bar, instead of being compelled to secure the passage of a statute allowing it. The day is not far distant when the expression of a doubt with regard to the right of a woman to pursue any profession or industry that she pleases will excite only a contemptuous smile; nevertheless it was reserved to our own State to be the first to recognize this clear rule of social right as one also of law. Chief Justice Park, in giving the opinion of the court, says: “We are not to forget that all statutes are to be construed, as far as possible, in favor of equality of rights. All restrictions upon human liberty, all claims for special privileges, are to be regarded as having the presumption of law against them, and as standing upon their defense, and can be sustained, if at all by valid legislation, only by the clear expression, or clear implication of the law.” These noble words are worthy a place among the great utterances for liberty that have become historical.

And in this connection we must not forget our honored co-worker, Miss Mary Hall, who, at great cost to her sensitive nature, fought this battle, and to whom we owe a debt of unceasing gratitude.

It remains, then, that we work as never before for the dissemination of light and truth. To this end, money is needed for printing and for sustaining agents, who shall organize clubs in every town to prepare women both to act with wisdom and efficiency on these great questions of temperance and education, so soon, as we believe, to come within their control, and also to feel the value and need of the full political rights of citizenship. Let every one whose reason accepts the justice of our demand give his or her name to our society, with the annual fee of one dollar, and we may hope for early and large results.

Our argument is only this, and we put it in the words of Wendell Phillips, whose life was consecrated to the advocacy of human rights: “The questions for me are these: Has God made women capable—morally, intellectually and physically—of taking this part in human affairs? Then, what God made her able to do, is a strong argument that he intended she should do. Does our sense of natural justice dictate that the being who is to suffer under laws shall first personally assent to them; that the 09693being whose industry government is to burden should have a voice in fixing the character and amount of that burden? Then, while woman is admitted to the gallows, the jail, and the tax-list, we have no right to debar her from the ballot-box. But to go there will hurt that delicacy of character which we have always thought peculiarly her grace. I cannot help that; let him who created her capable of politics and made it just that she should have a share in them, see to it that these rights which he has conferred do not injure the being he created. Is it for any human being to trample on the laws of justice and liberty on an alleged necessity of helping God to govern what he has made? I cannot help God to govern his world by telling lies or doing what my conscience deems unjust. How absurd to deem it necessary that any one should do so. When infinite wisdom established the rules of right and honesty he saw to it that justice should always be the highest expediency.”

Isabella Beecher Hooker.

Dear Friends of the Convention:

Last week our new town house was dedicated. The women accompanied their husbands. One man spoke in favor of Woman Suffrage—said it was “surely coming.” In this town, at the Corners, for several years they have tried to get a graded school, but the men voted it down. After the women had the School Suffrage one lady who has a large family and did not wish to send her children away from him, rallied all the women of the Corners, carried the vote, and they now have a good graded school. Our village is moving down that their boys and girls, may have the benefit of the good school there. I think the women who have been indifferent and not availed themselves of their small voting privilege, by which we might have established the same class of school in our village, will now regret their negligence, at least every time they have to send three miles for a doctor. Thus, stupid people, blind to their own interest, punish themselves.

I regret not being able to send a report of the good that woman's use of the ballot in a limited form has done for us in this State. The voting in the town hall is the “infant school” for women in the use of the ballot. Thanking the ladies all for meeting at the capital of the Nation, and regretting not to be counted among the number, I am, yours sincerely, Mary A. P. Filley.

Portland, Me., March 1, 1884.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

I regret to say it is impossible for me to be at the Convention on the 4th of March, with the noblest, greatest of American Women. It has been said over and over again, and reiterated recently by Mrs. Clara D. Leonard, of Springfield, Mass., in her able address before the Massachusetts Legislature as remonstrant against Woman Suffrage, that men represent women in municipal governments and legislative enactments. This representation is shown by the constant disregard of petitions by women for women. In our Legislature the petition for a reformatory prison for women was tabled; the one asking for a small appropriation for the industrial school for girls, where there is provision made for only forty inmates, met a similar fate; while the State provides for two hundred boys and the Legislature appropriates thirty-six thousand dollars for their reformatory. The petition asking that a woman physician be placed in charge of the women of the State insane hospital, signed by thousands of the leading men and women, and the second time before the Legislature, was again defeated. What becomes of the petitions for matrons to care for the women and children taken to the police stations? How many women sit in council with men on the boards of management of institutions where children are educate, women and children reformed or 09794medically treated? Where are the women appointed on boards of overseers to care for the interests of the women and children of the poor of our cities and towns? I might go on with many more such questions, but these few show how much is yet to be done.

P. S.—I send the following extracts from a late report of our Maine vice-president of the A. A. W.:

The women of Maine, if the facts could be fully known of their industries, would be shown to have their full share of talent and productive energy. The number of women engaged in agriculture, 243; professional and personal services, 15,807; trade and transportation, 700; manufactures and mechanism industries, 15,778; total, 33,528. We have a woman president of a woolen mill corporation, one lawyer, three clergy-women, eight physicians, sixty-one authors, one blacksmith, three barbers; three women are engaged in poultry raising—they own incubators and are conducting the business on scientific and business principles; one market gardener. We have a botanist who has made a collection of the flowers of the State; she travels much on foot to gather her specimens, and being an artist has paintings of the rare flowers. By a comparison of the tables of 1870 and 1880 we learn that while in 1870 there were only 55 women engaged in agriculture, in 1880 there were 243, a gain of 188; in professional and personal services a gain of 398; trade and transportation show a gain of 465; manufactures and mechanical and mining industries have increased by 4,036; clerks have largely increased in numbers, and printers have made substantial gains. There has been quite a large relative increase of women laborers the last ten years. The excess of female population in 1870 was 2,439, the 1880 census shows 2,495; a difference of only 56, while the increase of women workers for the same period was 5,087. This increase does not, however, approximate to the actual number of those who are part of the productive forces of the public economy. The work of many women is counted as their husbands, fathers, male relatives or employers, and they may or may not receive compensation therefor. The controlling force that decides the trade or occupation that women may enter is generally to follows in lines where there is the least resistance. The initiative is difficult. Agriculture, manufactures and mechanical industries open easily to women by necessity, by opportunity, by public demand, and by the small requirements of outlay from purchase or preparation. There is but one statement made upon inquiry as to the attendance of women at their business. They hold the highest rank for skill, attention and reliability. They are more careful and bring higher qualifications to their work. Said the assistant postmaster: “One great argument in favor of the employment of women is, that they fill offices of trust for so much less pay than men.”

Memphis, Tenn.

Dear Friend:

Oxford, Miss., has opened her university for women and Prof. Hubbard has recently made an earnest appeal in an splendid article to the press of the South calling on the State to found colleges for women and open those already in existence for men to women also. The Appeal, published in Memphis by Keating & Calaway, is an earnest and generous champion of our case. The Woman's Christian Association for redeeming fallen women is doing good service in liberating the minds of many of our women by leading them to work in concert.

The very existence of slavery put the South in a condition opposed in progress, and the fact of negro women voting, if the ballot he given to women, will cause our men to fight every inch of ground. A great temperance wave is sweeping over the South and may lead to desirable results. The very evident and culpable dishonesty of all 09895political parties cause many of our good men to shun the political arena and they naturally do all they can to prevent women from thinking anything save evil of the Woman Suffrage movement. The women, who are far from ignorant, are tied to the wheel of conservatism and would be ground into powder before infringing any of custom's laws. Woman's pay for work is very low, only one-half that of men. Women are employed in many ways, as in the North, in dry goods stores, box factories, etc. I find every few women in prison, rarely ever a white woman and only the very lowest of the class of black women. Nothing save a revolution of some character will ever free our women. As your work for abolition freed the negroes by its result, just so will the idle women of the land profit by the energetic work of our Northern sisters. I regret I cannot be with you. Many friends here join me in wishing you “God speed.”

Elizabeth Lisle Saxon.

Dear Miss Anthony:

The women of Louisiana are not doing much outside of domestic life. Within three years a woman's exchange and art gallery have been established and are doing a flourishing business in New Orleans. One Southern woman has studied chemistry and pharmacy and has been admitted to the State society as a member. She keeps a drug store and is a widow. A woman, widow of an Episcopal clergyman, living in a small country town in this State where the inhabitants are too poor to pay a minister, has taken charge, with her two daughters, of the church during ten months of the year, opened the doors, rung the bell, played on the melodcon, done the singing and read the service, visited the sick, baptized dying infants, administered the sacrament and buried the dead. She has done all this from a sense of Christian duty in a State where it would be considered unbecoming and disgraceful for a woman to preach, and, until recently even to practice medicine. There are many women in charge of plantations, and a large number have been employed in stores. There are no opportunities for women to study medicine or any of the sciences. A law was passed some five years ago allowing women to serve on the school board, but so far none have been elected. The only employment for educated women is that of teaching, and they are very poorly paid. Necessity is a great teacher as well as a great leveler and through their adversities and losses woman's courage is being developed and old ideas are being overcome. The women think and reason well but they need leaders, I think they would follow. Yours very sincerely, Harriette C. Keating, M. D.

Lynchburg, Va., March 1, 1884

My Dear Miss Anthony:

I regret very much that I am unable to accept the invitation to attend the Suffrage meeting in Washington. I should take great pleasure in being present if it were in my power and assuring our good sisters who have so long been working for the advancement of woman that the women of Virginia are beginning to come forward and take part in “every good word and work.” The terrible ordeal through which the women of the South passed during the war has doubtless been the means of strengthening and developing the character of those who were bred in luxury and idleness. The care of the sick and wounded of both armies often fell upon the women of the land, and I knew of many cases where equal kindness was shown to friend and foe. It often happened that women were left alone in charge of large plantations and managed to make the crops and sustain the families at home as well as supply their absent loved ones with many comforts by the aid of their faithful slaves. In one instance among my acquaintances the slaves attempted to murder the white overseer, and a young girl, the sister of the planter's wife, who with her sister and her children occupied the 09996mansion house, on hearing the screams of the overseer's wife went alone to the negro quarters at dead of night. She found the overseer lying in a pool of blood and his wife insensible beside him. The young lady herself bound up the wounds of the man and ordered the negroes around her, who had attacked him, to go at once for a physician. The slaves, who had known her from childhood, at once obeyed her commands, and when the physician arrived he found the young girl seated on the floor, holding the overseer's head in her lap, trying to staunch the blood which flowed from the wounds, while the slaves, who had an hour before tried to murder the man, now assisted her efforts to save his life.

The great change in our social system since the emancipation has borne very hard upon the Southern women of both races, but with both it has been the means of developing many admirable traits. Intense interests is felt in political affairs by Virginia women, but the fierce and cruel methods of the politicians among us have not been calculated to induce women to desire to attend public meetings or go to the polls. The actual number of women who wish to vote in Virginia is small at present, but is increasing. Under other names, however, the woman's movement is making rapid progress. Never was so much interest shown by Virginia women in temperance work as in the past two years. Temperance societies are organizing all over the State, and if the women once understood the power the right of Suffrage would give them on this question, I am convinced the temperance clubs would soon become Suffrage clubs. Many modifications in our State laws, all tending to benefit women, have been made in late years. So great is the change in regard to women holding property that I heard an intelligent man remark recently that there was much more encouragement for a man's trying to provide for his daughters, now that women hold property in their own right, without being in any way interfered with in its possession.

There has been a very great advance in the facilities for female education since the war, and although women are not yet admitted to our colleges, they can stand the university examinations, and the present Legislature is considering a bill to establish a State normal institute for female students. I think if some of the Suffrage speakers would make a tour of Virginia, or indeed the whole South, they could make many converts to our cause. It is a significant fact that Woman Suffrage is very often the question under discussion in our local lyceums, and the facts developed in these meetings, though crudely states no doubt, sow good seed in fertile soil. I am very sorry that I cannot accomplish more myself in this good work. My health is very poor and my circumstances make it especially difficult for me to do anything away from my home. I circulate the Woman's Journal as much as I can, and my five little nieces, who see it constantly, are being “trained up in the way they should go,” and I doubt not will, when they reach years of discretion, be ardent advocates of the right of Suffrage for all citizens.

With my best wishes for the success of the woman's movement, and congratulations that so much has been accomplished, I remain, my dear Miss Anthony.

Yours very truly, Orra Langhorne.

1 Victoria Street, London, S. W., Jan. 27, 1884

Dear Miss Anthony:

You do me much honor in asking me to write a letter to be read at your Convention. I shall be very glad if anything I can say should convey to you and your fellow-workers such cheer as comes from the knowledge that warm sympathy follows your steps and waits to rejoice in your triumphs. Since I have had the great pleasure of knowing you and Mrs. Stanton personally this year, my interest in the Woman Suffrage movement 10097in America, always considerable, has naturally become much greater, and I shall now watch each move of your cause with anxious eyes.

If I may presume to offer an old woman's counsel to the younger workers in our cause, it would be that they should adopt the point of view in it (which I endeavored to set forth in my little book on the “Duties of Women”) that it is before all things our duty to obtain the franchise. If we undertake the work in this spirit, and with the object of using the power it confers, whenever we gain it, for the promotion of justice and mercy, and the kingdom of God upon earth, we shall carry on all our agitation in a corresponding manner, firmly and bravely, and also calmly and with generous good temper. And when our opponents come to understand that this is the motive underlying our efforts, they, on their part, will cease to feel bitterly and scornfully toward us, even when they think we are altogether mistaken.

That people may conscientiously consider that we are mistaken in asking for Woman Suffrage, is another point which it surely behooves us to carry in mind. We naturally think almost exclusively of many advantages which would follow to our sex and to both sexes from the entrance of woman into political life. But that there are some “lions in the way,” and rather formidable lions, too, ought not to be forgotten.

For myself, I would far rather that women should remain without political rights to the end of time than that they should lose those qualities, which we comprise in the word “womanliness,” and I think nearly every one of the leaders of our party in America and England agree with me in this feeling. The idea that the possession of political rights will destroy “womanliness,” absurd as it seems to us, is very deeply rooted in the minds of many; and when they oppose our demands, it is only just to give them credit for doing so on grounds which we should recognize as valid, if their premises were true. It is not so much that our opponents (at least the better part of them) despise women, as that they really prize what women are in the home and society so highly that they cannot bear to risk losing it by any serious in their condition. These fears are futile and faithless, but there is nothing in them to affront us. To remove them, we must not use violent words, for every such violent word confirms their fears; but, on the contrary, show the world that while the revolutions wrought by men have been full of bitterness and rancor, and stormy passions if not of bloodshed, we women will at least strive to accomplish our great emancipation calmly and by persuasion and reason.

I do not regard that such a revolution as this must necessarily be wrought slowly, and that years go by while women are gradually rising “to the heights of this great argument,” and training themselves for the noble part which, I doubt not, they will hereafter be called on to act in the great drama of human progress. Whether those who are as old as I am will live to enter the promised land, I cannot tell, nor do I very much care. The final and complete emancipation of our sex ere long is, I think, absolutely certain, and will, I trust, come in the order of God's providence when it will lead only to good, and not to any disorder or oscillation of the political machine such as might have occurred had too sudden success attended the first appeal for Woman Suffrage.

All this going well her, and I hope with you in America; and, with all my heart, clear Miss Anthony, I wish you and the Woman's Convention triumphant success.

Very sincerely yours, Frances Power Cobbe.

For the information of our friends on this side of the water, it is well to say, that Miss Cobbe is an able writer, the author of many books on morals, religion and reform. She is at present deeply interested in the question of vivisection, at the head, in 10198fact, of the movement in England to suppress what she considers cruelty to animals.

10 Oxford and Cambridge Mansions, London, N. W., Feb. 5, 1884.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

Many thanks for your letter of January 9th. With you I wish sincerely I could be at the Annual Convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association of America, to be held in Washington on the 4th, 5th and 6th of March.

I hope the question on your side of the Atlantic is making the way it is on this. If so, we shall simultaneously and shortly see the enfranchisement of women in both countries. Here the agitation for adding this act of justice to our statute-book is gaining in strength daily; the Liberals have called for it throughout the country, through their representatives at the Leeds Liberal Conference in October last, and Liberal Associations, one after the other, are passing resolutions in favor of this reform. We have, therefore, the Liberals of England with us, and so we may feel sure of a speedy victory.

I feel all the more certain of the righteousness of the work, in which I am so much engaged, because I know from words spoken and written by my father as far back as 1845, that, had he been living at the present day, I should have had his sympathy. He was nothing if not consistent, and so he said in a speech delivered in London in 1845, of Free Trade: “There are many ladies, I am happy to say, present. Now, it is a very anomalous and singular fact that they cannot vote themselves, and yet they have a power of conferring votes upon other people. I wish they had the franchise, for they would often make a much better use of it than their husbands.” The reference to the power of conferring votes relates to the creation of forty-shilling freeholds. By this quotation you will see that my father was in favor of Woman Suffrage.

I wish you all success in the struggle you are carrying on so bravely in America, and I know your hearty sympathy is with us here.

Yours most sincerely, Jane Cobden.

Jane Cobden is one of the daughter of Richard Cobden, the warm friend and coadjutor of John Bright in the Corn Law agitation. In the active interest she takes in many reforms, she is a worthy daughter of her noble father.

10 Notting Hill Square, London, Feb. 18, 1884.

Dear Miss Anthony:

Your work is going on so prosperously and encouragingly that I cannot let your Convention in Washington pass over without a cordial greeting and hand-shake to assure you of our sympathy and congratulation in your triumphs. Your new year has opened splendidly with the enfranchisement of women in Washington Territory. Soon, let us hope, Oregon will follow, and then, when your Sixteenth Amendment has been carried, the way will be clear and you will find no difficulty in getting the requisite number of States to pass the required vote.

By the time this reaches you, you will probably have heard by telegraph the chief provisions of the Government Reform Bill. We have no expectation that Woman Suffrage, even of the most limited type, will find a place there; but we have a hope that, if our friends prove true to us, it may find a place in committee.

On February 8th a Parliamentary conference assembled in the conference room of the House of Commons to discuss what the plan of action this session should be. About thirty members of Parliament were present, and it was decided to bring forward a resolution as amendment to the Government Bill. Mr. Woodall, M. P., who presided 10299so skillfully at the great St. James Hall meeting last July, has undertaken charge of the measure. It is a distinct step upwards in our question to have this Parliamentary conference. Nine years ago there was a conference held of members of Parliament and others who were determined to keep woman out; but our own friends never held one of this kind before, and it makes our position distinctly more political.

The work in the country has gone on energetically this winter. One great feature has been the acceptance, by so many of the great Liberal organizations, of the principle of Woman Suffrage. After the great Leeds Liberal Conference, the Edinburgh Liberal Association, the Manchester Liberal Association twice (once in general council and once at their annual meeting), the National Liberal Federation at its annual meeting in Bristol, and numerous smaller associations and clubs, have passed resolutions for Woman Suffrage, and memorials on it to the government. We have sent circulars to all Liberal associations, but these circulars are in themselves of little avail unless supported by personal visits, and our most indefatigable workers in this respect have been Mrs. Scatchard and Mrs. McCormick, who have almost revolutionized the North of England on our question by their personal applications. Meantime our public meetings continue, and will go on as long as the session (or our friends) lasts.

Another very important indication of the temper of the times is the election of ladies on the Parliamentary Committees. The election of most of our large towns are managed by committees or caucuses: eight hundred in Birmingham six hundred in Leeds five hundred in Bristol, and so on. The different wards nominate their candidates now. In Leeds and Bristol ladies have been chosen on these organizations. In Leeds there are three—Mrs. Scatchard, Miss Carbutt and Mrs. Sunley, In Bristol there are also three—Miss Priestman, Miss Emily Sturge and Mrs. Tanner. The two first of these ladies are not only on the Bristol five hundred, but in an inner circle, namely, the executive committee, consisting of only one hundred and fifty members, and the most important section of the organization, to which all election affairs are referred. Thus we have the extraordinary anomaly that, although the law still refuses to woman the right of giving a simple vote in Parliamentary elections, in two of our most important cities they have been elected as fit persons to control and organize the elections for the thousands who vote. Can inconsistency go further?

Another question is exciting great interest: The government is about to appoint a Royal Commission composed of members of Parliament and others to inquire into the condition of the housing of the London poor. Several names are mentioned, and among others it has been suggested that Miss Octavia Hill should be nominated. No other woman has done as much on this subject, or has investigated the condition of the poor so thoroughly as she, and such an appointment would be popular everywhere. At the same time it would be a tremendous innovation to appoint a woman on a government commission! We are hoping that common sense may prevail over red-tape on this subject.

Our English poor-law guardian elections will not take place for six weeks longer; but in Scotland, where they occur earlier, two more ladies have been elected on the city parochial board, the first time ladies have ever been elected on this special board. They are Miss Phoebe Blythe and Miss Katharine Robertson. One gentleman, an advocate, said they were intruding out of their proper sphere, and he hoped the board would unite to keep them in their proper places; but the general feeling was one of great satisfaction.

Every one of these triumphs for women, although not directly concerned with the Suffrage, bear upon it, for they show the need there is for women to take their share in public work, and also the growing appreciation of the value of their efforts. The full recognition of their claim cannot be long delayed now; it has only been postponed thus long on account of its importance, because it was felt that woman's vote meant a 103100fresher, healthier, more practical life, to invade prejudices, and uproot abuse; and therefore all those who had reason to dread the change have resisted it to the utmost.

I hope before long to send you good Parliamentary news; but it is better to defer this no longer, lest it should not arrive in time for the Convention. From all you saw and observed among English friends, you will be able to fill up, by your personal experience, any omissions.

Please once more give my hearty greeting to all the good friends who are doing such self-sacrificing work, who will be assembled at the Convention, from one who is also working for the common cause.

With much affection for yourself, I am sincerely yours, Caroline Ashurst Biggs.

Miss Biggs is the editor of the English Woman's Review, a journal she has ably conducted for many years. It is an arsenal of facts on the woman question the world over, as Miss Biggs does not confine her observations to England. She is an untiring, unselfish laborer in the great work of woman's emancipation. Her grandfather, William Ashurst, recorded himself on the right side of this question in the World's Anti-Slavery Convention, held in London in 1840.

29 Parliament Street, London, S. W., Feb 15, 1884.

Dear Miss Anthony:

I am glad you are safely returned, and have resumed your work. I gladly send a line of hope and encouragement for your meeting. Your visit to our country will have shown you how much women have gained in England of electorial rights, and I trust your great Nation will not long be content to lag behind. You will have observed that the government of Canada has again brought forward their electorial bill, which gives the franchise to women. It will probably soon become law, and this will give fresh impetus to the cause in the mother country, and in her colonies as well as in the States. The men of Oregon will hardly refuse to their women rights, which the British government proposes to concede in the Dominion

You will learn the progress of our cause through the Journal, and I will only ask you to convey to your Convention the sympathy and good wishes of their sisters on this side the water. Yours truly, Lydia E. Becker.

Miss Becker is a most efficient member of the Manchester school board, elected to that honorable position for the fourth term of your years each; editor of the Woman's Suffrage Journal for England; secretary of the Woman Suffrage Society for Manchester; and also secretary of the central committee of the National societies for Women's Suffrage, in London.

London, England, February 8, 1884.

Dear Miss Anthony:

We had a very satisfactory meeting of members of Parliament at the House of Commons yesterday, to consider the course of proceeding in this session in the interests of Woman Suffrage. There were twenty-seven members present out of seventy or eighty invited, which shows great interest in the movement. A resolution was submitted that in Committee of the County Franchise Bill, to be introduced by the government, an amendment should be moved, demanding the franchise for women, “on the same 104101condition on which it is now enjoyed in municipal elections.” To this proposal an amendment was proposed to leave out the latter words, and demand it, “on the same conditions as those on which it is granted to men.” This amendment was carried against the original wording by a small majority, say about ten to seven, many members not voting, and some having gone away on other business, owing to the length of the discussion, which turned on the question of the advisability, or otherwise, of distinctly claiming the franchise for qualified widows and spinsters and not for married women.

Mr. Woodall, M. P., was then unanimously chosen as leader of the movement in Parliament, it having been ascertained that Mr. Jacob Bright, thought thoroughly in accord with the meeting, was unable to take that position.

The bill will not be in Committee, probably, till May, when the great fight will take place. Yours faithfully, John P. Thomasson, M. P.

Mr. Thomasson is the member of Parliament for Bolton—near Manchester—and son-in-low of Mrs. Margaret Bright Lucas. Mr. and Mrs. Thomasson are earnest friends of the cause, and give most liberally of their wealth to aid the work in all parts of the kingdom, as shown in the last English Women's Suffrage Journal by the treasurer's reports, crediting them with £50 for the late Edinburgh demonstration, and £100 to the central committee of the National societies—making in all $750. Where is the millionaire among our American members of Congress, who gives thus liberally to aid the work for the emancipation of the women of our republic?

22 Marine Parade, Brighton, January, 25, 1884.

Dear Miss Anthony:

I respond with pleasure to your request that I should send a word of adhesion to the cause you are to celebrate and advance at the Annual Washington Convention. My words shall be few, and they cannot but be expressive of congratulation and hopefulness.

The cause of Women Suffrage has passed out of the phase of theoretic abstractions, and has fairly taken its position as within the arena of practical politics—nay, as one of the burning questions of the day. To refuse the franchise to women is now an anachronism, while within my recollection to demand it was to place oneself inevitably in the ranks of the dreamer and the fanatic. While our opponents retreat we press forward with ever-increasing hopefulness. It will be the greatest and most beneficent revolution, perhaps, that the modern world has ever seen when the words “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” cease to be applicable to one sex only. To speak of education alone, justice can never be done to the rising generations till the influence of mothers is freed from the ignominy of exclusion from the great political and social work of the day. Believe me sincerely and respectfully yours. P. A. Taylor.

Mr. Peter A. Taylor is a member of Parliament, and active in aid of all reforms, of late giving himself especially to that of “Anti-Compulsory Vaccination.” He has announced his intention to retire from Parliament much to the regret of the friends of Women Suffrage.

22 Marine Parade, Brighton, England.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

I shall be with you in spirit at your great congress meeting. Though unable any longer to take an active part in our struggle for justice, my interest in that struggle is undiminished. I watch with intense interest your work in America, and cannot doubt such earnest efforts will be crowned with success, and success with you will help us towards our goal—political equality of women. While women are kept in political subjection to men, they cannot take their true place in the world; it is not only an injustice to woman, it is suicidal to the progress of humanity, to keep one-half of the human race in subjection to the other. Of course you see our English papers and will know that Hugh Mason has resigned the leadership of our Woman Suffrage cause. The married woman's property bill, which was carried last session, has advanced us a great step, and, if we gain our bill this year—married women holding property in their own right—paying taxes—we will have the vote equally with the unmarried and widows.

I look back with pleasure to last year in London, made more interesting to me by the meeting of Mrs. Stanton and yourself. With eager anxiety I shall wait the result of your grand meeting. Your sincere friend, Mentia Taylor.

Mrs. Taylor may be truly said to be the organizer of the Woman Suffrage movement in England. She has not only done a grand public work, but by her pleasant weekly receptions—during the gay seasons in London—her social influence has done much to recommend the Suffrage movement.

In the following article, which we asked from Mrs. Jacob Bright, we get a glimpse of English history, showing, that some members of the House of Commons are as discourteous as some of our Congressmen. But we American women are especially interested in the able manner in which Mrs. Bright disposes of this recreant knight to whom they had entrusted their bill, and who was expected to advocate the measure at least in a respectful manner in the House of Commons. Mrs. Bright's logic no doubt enabled him to see that he was incapable of being the leader of a great moral question, and he resigned the position to the entire satisfaction of the friends in general.

Mrs. Bright was the leader who so successfully agitated and carried through Parliament the married woman's property bill by her constant appeals and able arguments with all the members in the circle of her acquaintance.

Alderley Edge, Cheshire, November 11, 1883.

“Now if I did not say a word upon Woman Suffrage, I am afraid Miss Becker would never forgive me.—[Laughter]. You know I moved a resolution the very last session in favor of Woman Suffrage—of the Suffrage being conferred upon woman rate-payers, but not for married women; and there I had the misfortune to differ with my friend Mrs. Jacob Bright, who wants married as well as single women to vote. Now I think the married women should vote through the husband, but that women who are widows and rate-payers, and bring up their families and pay their way, have a right to vote. I have done my best to give one, and I hope they will approve of what I have 106103done.—[Hear, hear.] I cannot go through one or two points, but I must say something about the housing of the poor.”—[ From Mr. Mason's address to his constituents on the 6th instant.

To the Editor of the Reporter:

Sir: I have received to-day, under cover of Mr. Hugh Mason's well-known handwriting, a copy of your paper, in which the speech addressed to his constituents on the 6th instant is reported.

I take up the challenge he throws down to me, in the remarks he made on Woman Suffrage. Mr. Mason stated in the House of Commons that he had suffered in his constituency by his advocacy of spinsters and widow's Suffrage. Let those of his constituents who disapprove of his action in this matter make their minds quite easy. Mr. Hugh Mason does not mean spinsters and widows’ Suffrage, any more than he means what the societies profess as their platform, viz., the enfranchisement of all duly qualified women. Every one knows that when Mr. Hugh Mason does mean a thing, there is no possibility of mistaking his attitude. When he appealed, for instance, to his audience the other night “on a great question of religious liberty,” he did not begin, “Mr. Bradlaugh will never forgive me if I don't say a word for Northampton!” Woman Suffrage is for Mr. Hugh Mason an affair of amiable gallantry. He almost apologizes to his audience for the introduction of Miss Becker's little crotchet, but he “fears she will never forgive him if he neglects to say a word for it.” That word is soon said. The audience perceive, the humor of the situation, and laugh and cheer him good-naturedly. Compare the force and fire of his appeal for the enfranchisement of both Irishmen and Englishmen in the counties, to the feeble and ineffective speech in which he brought forward the spinsters and widows’ resolution in the House of Commons last session.

I was in the speaker's gallery on the 6th of July, and witnessed the cold dismay, which his emphatic repudiation of the claims of qualified married women to vote, spread among his lady supporters. Mrs. P. A. Taylor, “the mother of the movement,” was so indignant that she sent in her resignation at once, and refuses any longer to be a member of the society so long as it permits itself to be misrepresented by Mr. Hugh Mason. Now the reasons why I, and the immense majority of those who have worked for the enfranchisement of women, “have the misfortune to differ” from Mr. Hugh Mason are as follows: First, our only claim for giving votes to women at all is that they are able to fulfill the conditions of enfranchisement imposed on men; therefore, we fail to see why the privilege should be refused to a woman when marriage has not altered her legal qualification. Second, our societies, on their foundation, pledged themselves to Mr. John Stuart Mill, as a condition of his support, not to advocate spinsters and widows’ Suffrage, and not to ignore the claim of wives. Mr. Mill saw much deeper into this question than some of those who have followed him. I think when we have made an engagement we ought to keep it, unless we can show good reasons for breaking it. Are there any such? At the time when we gave this pledge to Mr. Mill no married woman could posses the qualification which gives the vote. But we said, “Though she is not qualified now, the married woman's property bill, when it passes, will qualify her, and we will not, therefore, bar her future rights.”

The married woman's property bill became law on the 1st of January of this year, and it has virtually abolished “coverture.” A married woman can be now buy and sell; can sue and be sued; can rent a house and be made responsible for her own rates and taxes, just as a man, or a single woman, or a widow can be made responsible, and her qualification to vote is therefore as good as that of anyone else. Is it not absured that at the very moment when we have won the qualification for married women we should relinquish the claim for their enfranchisement?

I have myself a separate household qualification; I “bring up my family,” I “pay my way,” yet Mr. Hugh Mason says I ought not to be allowed to vote, but should only be represented by my husband. If Mr. Mason's argument holds good—if one woman can be represented by her husband, another can equally well be represented by her father, or her brother, or her son, and there is no need to give votes to women at all. Why, indeed, should Mr. Mason's work-people have votes? Does anyone doubt that he represents them as well as most husbands represent their wives?

Will Mr. Gladstone accept this mutilated measure, and whilst granting the right to vote to women of the lowest character, will he refuse it to the qualified wives and mothers of the nation? He allowed the Tories to take the men's household Suffrage bill out of his hand. Will he give them another chance of refusing an incomplete and foolish measure of reform in order that, when they come into power, they may have the credit of passing a real household Suffrage bill for Women? There can be no true household Suffrage where the wife and mother is unjustly and ungenerously debarred by law from using a privilege to which she would be entitled if she were the unwedded mother of illegitimate children.

I am, sir, yours faithfully, Ursula Mellor Bright.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

I cannot resist the pleasure of sending you a word of friendly greeting across the ocean, wishing you and your fellow-worker success in the efforts to secure the right of voting for women in the United States and in the territories thereof. I ought to say speedy success, for as to ultimate victory, I can no more doubt if than I do the righteous rule of God; but I know that it often seems good to him to delay achievements, so that the work may be done well and thoroughly.

You know we are fighting the same battle on this side of the Atlantic, and I cannot help hoping that we are nearer to the day triumph than you are. For in some respects our procedure is simpler and therefore easier. We have but to get our proposal through the House of Parliament and the work is accomplished for the United Kingdom. We have no ratification to ask for, except at the hands of the Queen, who graciously never says “No” when her faithful Commons and Lords Spiritual and Temporal ask a boon.

Perhaps before you meet you may have to congratulate us or to condole with us as being repulsed in the attack we shall make this spring. You are all so well informed of our doings by your papers that you know all about our coming reform bill as well as we ourselves. I trust we shall succeed in making it qualified women, as well as men, and thus extend the justice Great Britain does in municipal and school affairs as thoroughly in Parliamentary matters, too.

The liberal party seems to be taking the cause up readily. We had a grand conference in Manchester, yesterday, of the National Reform Union, and carried a resolution of “enfranchisement being due to all duly qualified women,” with a large majority. It was a real triumph of the sense of right. Of course no one can say what Parliament will do, but I am very hopeful: before your meeting you will know more, I trust, as I hope the franchise bill may by then have been read a second time and have reached committee, where our fight will have to be.

What good it has already wrought, that we have get the municipal vote and the school vote, I need hardly say. It gives weight to the opinions and feelings of women, and they must in some manner be consulted even now. Wait but a little till they have the Parliamentary, also, and many iniquitous laws, which seem almost immovable now, will fall.

Should there aught occur which brings out the signs of coming victory with clearer 108105light I will write again; If not, let this note suffice to express my warm sympathy with you all and my high hopes for the future. Every step you make forward helps us on; I believe that everything we gain is a strength for you. It is a blessed thing that across the wide ocean we thus can be united in spirit and be tue fellow-workers.

With very kind remembrances to Mr. Stanton and yourself from my wife and me, believe me most faithfully yours, S. Alfred Steinthal.

Rev. Mr. Steinthal is the treasurer of the Manchester society—a wise counsellor and efficient helper. He visited this country last autumn, attended the American Woman Suffrage Association's annual meeting in Brooklyn, and at the close of six weeks from the time he sailed from Liverpool, gave a good report of what he saw and heard in America, at the annual meeting of the Manchester society.

58 58 Cadogan Place, London, S. W., February 21, 1884.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

I must send you greeting and good wishes for your work from England. The Atlantic which rolls between us is not more profound, nor is the American continent more vast than is the ocean of sentiments and prejudices which divide and women from each other to-day. But in the heart of woman is being created a new force, which, like the electric spark, will unite those most widely severed, and like it will open out to humanity sublime possibilities of universal harmonious development hitherto undreamed of. Every woman living must count fortunate in that she holds such mighty and glorious issues in her grasp.

I am, dear friend, your earnest and hopeful fellow-worker, F. Henriette Muller.

Miss Muller has been a member of the London school board for many years and has done grand service in that department. She is one of the most active young women, too, in Suffrage movement . Owning a fine resident in the fashionable part of London, her social influence is inestimable. She is both a good writer and speaker, two accomplishments rarely combined. She was among the first students that graduated from Girton College.

176 Lambeth Road, London, S. E., February 23, 1884.

To Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, President, or Miss Susan B. Anthony, Vice-President of the National Woman Suffrage Association:

Madam: You think that because I am poor-law guardian in a large London parish, I shall be able to say some weight words on the value of the Suffrage to women. Could the words weighty as the sense of responsibility I feel, obedience to your request would indeed be easy. My duty as poor-law guardian obliges me to constantly visit workhouse (1,200), its infirmary (600), and a resident school for 800 children; to sit at the board of guardians every week and take part in decisions about managing this group of some 2,000 poor persons and spending on their behalf some $500,000 of public money annually, about $1,000 of it being given every week to people who would otherwise starve. You can easily see that “all sorts and conditions of men” pass before me every week, and that if I had not known the world before I could not help knowing it now.

Well, and what has this to do with Woman Suffrage? Just this: You don't suppose this great stream of human misery rolls by our board table every week without my seeing a stream within it? And this stream is contempt for women. You must have an eye for the kind of thing or you won't see it. Thinking on social questions is a specialty, like science or music; people with no gift that way are sure to stare blankly and say they hear no difference between a concert Steinway grand and a second-hand piano for seminary young ladies to play scales on. You wouldn't argue with them, of course, but you wouldn't put them on a jury of an international exhibition in the piano section. But unfortunately men and women who are blind, and leaf, and pig-headed about social improvement are thought competent judges of it, nevertheless, and hence they have to be argued with, though the simpler method would be for them to be born again on a new plan. Men of this density sit on my board of guardians, as on every other governing body, and would, doubtless, challenge my statement, that contempt for women distinctly swells the stream of human misery. Such a man would say: “Why, how? Often the woman is as bad as the man, and really starts him towards ruin. And again, heaps of these women who come before us guardians have just ruined themselves.” “Ah! Just so,” I reply; “ruined themselves ‘out of pure cussedness,’ as the Americans would say.” The dense man thinks this is funny, so he laughs and does not answer. This dense man has no eye for social questions; he sees the facts and does not understand their causes. Everything is done to women from their very birth to make them think wrongly of themselves; they are made to give up just where they ought to resist, and they are made obstinate just where a willingness to follow would lead them upward and onward! When they have been deliberately disqualified for fighting, had their firearms taken from them, their nerves ruined and one eye put out—then they are turned into the thick of the fray and everybody wonders there are so few fine marksmen among them. “Such an old thing women always get such low wages”; “Such an odd thing women never seem to have any money in their pockets”; “Such an odd thing women are rarely first-rate at any one thing”—is the way the world expresses it.

Now as a poor-law guardian I see the results of all this mis-handling of women pass before me in a stream of misery; I see life reduced to its lowest terms; and I can say with all my heart that I believe that if women had the Suffrage they would be better off, the stigma of inferiority would be in part removed, they would rise in the scale of humanity, and many apparent differences between men and women would be seen in their true light. People who “can't see what women with the Suffrage,” are, I find, people who can't see the use of representative government at all, who have, in fact, no more political sense than the unmusical man has a sense for pianos; or else those obstructive people are behind their time, and although alive in the body now have the same feelings that used to exist in the bodies of people fifty or one hundred years ago—they are, in short, anachronisms. Now why are we to be governed by anachronisms any more than we wear the coats and hats that were fashionable in 1830 or 1780? If we dressed up in those old clothes the little boys in the street would run after us, and really we could not feel surprised at the little boys. Similarly if we refused the telephone and sent a servant to ride booted and spurred with our notes and messages, we should deliberately choose to live in the past and ignore the present. In the present day society cannot afford to waste time in figuring about in old-fashioned costumes and keeping up old-fashioned customs; society wants every bit of good force turned to best account, and also needs relief from the friction of discontent. Withholding the Suffrage from women causes the friction of discontent, because it ties up the energies of many of our best men and women in the mere struggle for obtaining the Suffrage for women. Withholding the Suffrage from women robs society because it ties up even a greater mass of good force by discouraging women from caring about 110107life in general. “Nobody cares what a woman thinks,” they say, and the sense of being snubbed chills their very life out presently. For withholding the Suffrage from women is a sign that “nobody cares what a woman thinks”; and we are not taken in by protests from men that “women are too good to have the Suffrage.” A man who says we are “too good,” means we are “too silly,” and if he stands talking on and on to prove that he means we are angels and not that he means we are idiots, he is like a man who is caught murdering and elegantly explains to the police that he was only applying power in a particular manner. “Well, it's murder, anyway,” say the police, who have heard a good deal of fine language in the course of their profession, and they put on the handcuffs.

If the brains and heart that have been spent in the last twenty years in trying to get the Suffrage had been able, through the Suffrage, to find their legitimate expression in governing the world, the world would be a cleaner, wiser, purer place—a place somewhat more fit for good men and women to live in, for precious little children to be born into, than it is now. But heart and brains have no leverage till the Suffrage is won. Those who stand in the way of our getting the Suffrage are like children who build sand castles and defy the tide with wooden spades. Men who are trying to help us to the Suffrage are like sailors who man the life-boat. Women are going to have the Suffrage. He that hath cars to hear, let him hear.

I am, madam, yours faithfully, Frances Lord.

Miss Lord is poor-law guardian in Lambeth parish, London, for the third time. There are thirteen other women poor-law guardians in Loudon, and thirty-six in England and Scotland. Of these, twenty-four have the prefix of Miss and twelve that of Mrs.

27 Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, W. C., Feb. 26, 1884.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

It was a great pleasure to hear from you and you have our cordial wishes for the success of your Convention. We cannot send you any account of ourselves this year, but I hope before another twelve months has passed away we shall have some real progress to report. At present we are hiding our light (if we have any) under a bushel, being legally unqualified to practice, which in England means so much. My mother has not recovered the great shock she had just before you left England. My brother was not publicly known at all, but he was deeply valued in his own family and after a long illness we thought he had recovered. Miss Lawrence is very well and is working hard with me. Miss Richardson and Miss Novelli have been devoting themselves lately to commercial speculation at Bedford Park and have been very busy down there. Please remember me to dear Mrs. Stanton—I have often thought of you and of her during these last months. Yours affectionately, Eliza Orme.

Miss Orme is a lawyer, though not admitted to the Queen's Bench. She has her office in Chancery Lane and does all a lawyer's work that she can without admission to the bar; she is a very bright and capable young woman. Miss Richardson is her law partner and a member of the London school board. The other two ladies she names are their law students, one of them a daughter of a very wealthy gentleman.

Edinburgh, February 22, 1884.

My Dear and Honored Friend, Susan B. Anthony:

I feel it a privilege thus to address you. It is a precious remembrance having been you and dear Mrs. Cady Stanton on your recent visit to this country. Once I never expected to know you personally, as I have neither the opportunity nor the courage to cross the Atlantic—though I would do it,if by my so doing I could put you on a political equality with men—a right which we are seeking here as you are seeking it in America. It was indeed an unexpected delight to meet you face to face, and to exchange sentiments and compare our experiences in work, which we believe is to raise the human race generally, and which never can be until woman is permitted to fill the position for which she was created.

There are two opposing forces brought into stronger action in the present day than I believe has ever been known before; one is working for the elevation of woman, the other is working to degrade her. You met many noble women here working in every possible direction for the former—in the great cause of temperance and of social purity, working also to put women in positions of public usefulness, such as serving on school boards and on parochial boards; they meet with great acceptance on those boards for which they are peculiarly fitted. You met our Woman Suffrage societies, whose claims are accepted throughout the Nation, but in the House of Commons there is still opposition, I regret to say, from those calling themselves Liberals; still, we trust in God and the right. Nothing shows more how much the power of good women is needed than the fact that vice stalks abroad with fearful boldness and is every now and then surprised by door being opened which reveals it in hidden places under many revolting forms. This week we learn, almost within the sound of praise rising from a hundred churches in Edinburgh and Leeds, that in one building alone were found one hundred and fifty prostitutes, most of them under fourteen years of age. Everyone says, “How appalling!” But they do not sufficiently realized that it is for the men alone whom we pass in our streets and receive in our houses that this great human sacrifice is offered to that opposing power of evil, which dreads success to the different causes for which we are working, especially that of temperance and that direct power for good which the Parliamentary franchise would give to women. It is true, we cannot make men virtuous by acts of Parliament; spiritual peace must come from a much higher power—but men can be kept from evil and girls from being lost if we had more righteous and just laws, thoroughly executed.

Nothing shows this more than the sad fact I have with shame and sorrow told you of. Until lately a girl was considered able to protect herself at the age of twelve, with great difficulty we got the House of Commons to make the age fourteen. This was sent up to the House of Lords, who undid what the Commons had so generously (?) conceded, and sent the bill back to stand as originally at twelve; as girls are obliged to remain at school until thirteen, it was seen to be illogical to consider her a child in the one case at thirteen, and a woman in the other case at twelve; so, to be logical, they made the bill stand at the age of thirteen. We see how the men understand this and are educated by it to think they do no wrong in bringing all those young girls into their power under fourteen years of age. I would not have dwelt upon this sad topic except to show how degraded our sex must ever be until woman are politically enfranchised. With the direct power of a Parliamentary vote we could use it to promote a higher and better legislation than many men apparently see the need for.

There is no doubt a growing relief in the virtue of total abstinence, but strange to say, the numbers of public houses with us do not diminish. There is the opposing force of votes of the Publicans and the consequent opposing force of members of Parliament for whom the Publicans vote, which can frustrate all the efforts of those who work in the temperance cause throughout the country. I never cease to wonder how 112109the great majority of workers in that cause do not see what a power for good a vote for members of Parliament would give them; if they would give half their strength to gain it, half their own battle would be won.

I was a Exeter Hall, in London, on the day our Parliament assembled; a prayer-meeting was held there the whole of that day. Earnest were the intercession that the hearts of our rulers might be influenced to repeal every vestige of the contagious diseases acts; and the women especially prayed that our men might be led to send representatives to Parliament of much higher morality than such acts testified to, and that the eyes of the women of their country might be opened to see the iniquity of such legislation. I venture to express, that the burden of my prayer had been whilst sitting in that meeting, that the eyes of the women there assembled and of the women throughout our country might be opened to see that we could not expect men who did not consider morality to be a necessary part of their own character to regard it as needful for the men who were to represent them in Parliament; that we needed a new moral power to be brought into exercise at our Parliamentary elections, and as Parliament was meeting that day, and one of its first acts would be to bring in a new reform bill; that we might unite in prayer that the petitions so long put forth by many of the women of this land that their claim to the suffrage should be included in their new act for the extended representation of the people might righteously answered, and the power given to women not only to pray for what was just and right, but to have by the Parliamentary vote, a direct power to promote that higher legislation which they all so much desired. I know nothing which calls for more faith and patience than to hear women pleading for justice, and refusing to help to get in the only legitimate way. But the want of logic is not confined to women. We seem to be on the very threshold of gaining and franchise. Every argument has been exhausted against us, and now, the last bone of contention is, that because by a recent act of Parliament which enabled married women to hold property, a few married women might, by reason of this, be enabled to have a vote. The men seem frightened out of their senses beforehand, that their wives should have this power; and yet they say the difficulty would be, that if marriage did not exclude a woman from voting, all husbands who could afford it would settle property on their wives so that they might possess a vote! Could anything be more inconsistent?

Whilst we have our anomalies here, you have a glaring inconsistency in your country. It is not a property qualification which gives a vote in America. Is not every human being, according to your Constitution, who is of age, entitled to equal justice and freedom? Are you women not human beings? The lowest and most ignorant man who leaves any shore and lands on yours, ere he has earned a home or made family ties, becomes a citizen of your great country; whilst your women, who may, during a life-time, have done much service and given much to the State, are denied the right accorded to that man, however low his condition may be. You are fighting to overcome this great monopoly of citizenship. We watch your proceedings with deep interest. We rejoice in your successes and sympathise with you in your endeavors to gain fresh victories.

The women of your country have played a grand rôle. Your efforts seem to have been more in harmony with the size and grandeur of your country than ours have been. You have not had to struggle so much, perhaps, with the arbitrary power of custom with regard to the elevation of your sex as we have. When you come over to this country we see a certain freshness about you, the result of an inherited freedom of thought and action. When I think of the great deeds of those who have passed away, women who dared everything with men— “When a band of exiles moored their bark On the wild New England shores,” 113110women who shared with men in later years all the struggle and martyrdom connected with that great fight which won freedom for the slave, I feel that the women of America, as they shared the martyr's suffering, must ultimately share the crown which is not only promised to the faithful in the life to come, but even in this life, to such as know to prize freedom and to work for it. You who have been the fellow-workers of those noble women, we who are following in their footsteps to gain fuller freedom for our sex everywhere, cannot be far from that citizenship for which we are so earnestly contending. We see the hard ground breaking up everywhere; we see trees of our own planting bearing foliage; and as these increase, an increase they must, we shall see the lot of woman sheltered from the rigors of those unjust laws which have pursued her more or less through all ages. May the men of this century in your great country seize for themselves the privilege not only of having freed the African race amongst you, but of giving to the women of America, their noble countrywomen, those full rights of citizenship which they so much prize themselves, and thus earn the gratitude of future ages.

I have written in much haste, but I have felt as though I was talking with you. I hope to write very soon on less public topics. In the meantime, with much love to you and Mrs. Cady Stanton, should you communicate with her, I am Yours very affectionately, Priscilla Bright McLaren.

Mrs. McLaren is the wife of Duncan McLaren, Member of Parliament, who in his place in the House for sixteen years has always given his vote and voice for the enfranchisement of woman. She is also the sister of John and Jacob Bright. When this question first came before the House of Commons, John Bright said to his brother-in-law: “McLaren, how are you going to vote?” “In the way,” he replied, “that shall best honor my mother.”

7 Charlotte Street, Bedford Square, London.

My Dear Mrs. Stanton:

* * * * * * We have been somewhat troubled of late owing to the very unexpected steps taken by our Parliamentary leader having been obliged from sickness to give up our bill. At this crisis, when our prospect was hopeful, it was most trying to make a change, especially as it has proved a difficult task to fill his place. However, we were fortunate at last to have the good Mr. Woodall take up our claims in Parliament. He is the gentleman who presided at the St. James Hall meeting the evening you were one of our speakers. You have not forgotten that evening, I am sure, when Miss Craigen moved the amendment, to the consternation of all on the platform. We have had quite an exciting time, but are more calm now and good work is in prospect, as we have arranged for numerous meetings. Our government is passing a kind of fire, as the Conservatives are preparing a vote of censure on their management of the awkward business in Egypt, complaining of the loss of life, etc., etc. Had they been in office the loss would no doubt have been far greater.

I am still very busy with temperance work and I can see here and there some signs of progress. I hope you are making some headway at Washington, for whatever you achieve in the New World makes the way easier for us; hence let us rejoice always together. Mr. and Mrs. Thomasson unite with me in kind regards for yourself and Miss Anthony. Affectionately yours, Margaret Bright Lucas.

4 Grosvenor Crescent, London, S. W., May 18, 1884.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

You will indeed suppose you are forgotten, but it is not so. I shall not soon forget 114111the pleasant time in London last year when we had you and Mrs. Stanton with us. * * * * * * Now that you have been here you can understand fully our work, our difficulties and our successes., but it is very difficult for us on this side to take in the real position of the Woman Suffrage question in the United States. One thing, however, we do know, and that is, that you and Mrs. Stanton will not leave one stone unturned which will benefit the position of women in America. Just now we are much exercised in London because Mr. Gladstone in his franchise bill has left out the women altogether. It is a great shame—but he is obstinate—cannot be moved. We have called a private meeting of the leaders in our movement, for to-morrow, to consider what can be done. It is weary work fighting for the vote and wasting so much strength, when so much needs to be done in other ways and there are comparatively so few to devote themselves to these great reform movement. We have had more discussion than usual in our public journals of late, but in our House of Commons, where we need most help, we are badly off at present. We have had some wonderful meetings in Edinburgh and Newcastle, also one at Basingstoke, where Mrs. Stanton Blatch * spoke for the first time on our platform, and spoke well. * * * *

Yours very affectionately, Katherine Lucas Thomasson.

36 Upper Belgrade Road, Clifton, February 18, 1884.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

Accept my thanks for your kind letter enclosing the notice of your forthcoming Convention at Washington. Gladly would I be present (had it been possible) at this important annual meeting, to rejoice with those whose work I have followed with deepest interest for more than thirty years, at the progress their cause has made and the cheering prospect of its speedy triumph. For after the victories you have already gained, with the excellent results of the ten years’ experience in Wyoming of women voting, and of School Suffrage in twelve States of the Union, your Legislature can hardly refuse much longer to grant the “citizen's right to vote” as a final amendment to the National Constitution.

In England we watch with great sympathy every step of your onward march. Much has been achieved in our country during the last twenty years, since the movement for securing to women the right of voting on equal terms with men was organized. The municipal Suffrage has been of great value to us practically and as an education to women in their responsibilities as citizens, while the appointment of ladies on the poor law guardian and school boards has proved an immense advantage to the inmates of our workhouses and the children and teachers in our schools. The blessing to the poor, and to women in every rank of life, of lady doctors, who have only in these late years obtained permission to practice on equal terms with men, cannot be over-stated, and each year it becomes more widely appreciated. We remember with deep gratitude what we owe to Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell and to the late Dr. Ann Preston for opening the way for their sisters in this great field of human service. And while dwelling on the early toils of the pioneers of the great movement which you and Mrs. Stanton represent to those who had the gratification of meeting you last year in England, my heart turns to Abby Kelly when she trod the thorny path almost alone, and then to the Grimkes and many other saints who have entered into their rest. I need not say how deeply the tidings of the death of Mr. Wendell Phillips has moved us. His lifelong consecration of his great gifts to the cause of freedom, and his identification of his name with this movement for woman's emancipation in its earliest and most despised days, will endear his memory to us forever.

I have written at too great length, yet leave much unsaid, trusting to your interpreting my warm appreciating sympathy from this imperfect expression.

Ever believe me most cordially yours, Mary A. Estlin.

9 Durdham Park, February 20, 1884.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

You ask what the school board and municipal votes have done for women here. The school board vote has caused girls’ education to be carefully considered and given opportunities for a higher education than was possible before—caused the endowment of scholarships for women and gained for them admission to university degrees. These advantages have sprung so suddenly during the few years that it is far to thank the new element for them and not merely to suppose they would have come without it.

The municipal vote has a large and growing influence on thoughtful women; it has brought home to their consciences their share in the duties of citizenship—made them realize that the honor and well-being of nation depend upon the faithfulness of individuals—widened their sphere of thought and taught them new means and new hopes of remedying the evils of centuries. It has carried these hopes to the very poor. Mrs. Scatcherd, of Leeds, had been addressing some meetings of hard-working women in her own neighborhood, and one of the poor women came to her afterwards, with tears in her eyes, to say, “Your words are like a new gospel,” for they had made clear to her how many of the hard conditions of the people round her were not a necessity of life, as she had sorrowfully believed, but were in large measure due to oppressive and mischievous human laws, which were capable of change.

We are certain that good results are springing up all around us, but we are still so hard at work preparing the ground for ground for further and yet richer harvests that we dare scarcely take the time to reckon up our gains. Accept, please, my warm good wishes for the success of your Convention. Your visit and that of Mrs. Cady Stanton have added a deep personal interest to the strong sympathy with which we working on this side of the Atlantic have long watched your kindred movements, and the pleasure of any gain that may come to us here will be twice welcome if we can have tidings at the same time of a similar gain to you. Believe me, my dear Miss Anthony, Affectionately yours, Anna M. Priestman.

9 Durdham Park, Clifton, Bristol, February 20,1884

Dear Miss Anthony:

Accept our warmest congratulations on the advance of American public feeling in regard to Woman Suffrage. Progress in this cause is an advance towards justice and must, therefore, lead to a happier future, not only for women, but for men and women alike. We are, dear Miss Anthony, yours affectionately, Margaret A. Tanner, Mary Priestman.

The Priestman sisters, of which Mrs. Tanner is one, form the center of the Bristol and Clifton Society, one of the most effective branches of the National Society of England.

Laburnam Villa, Twickenham, Washington's Birthday, 1884.

My Dear Friend:

I have just had a visit from dear Miss Estlin. She tells me she has received your “call” and responded to it. You surely need no assurance from me of my full sympathy with your work, as far as I understand them, with your methods also. Many as are the discouragements we meet with, there is much more cause for rejoicing in all women's questions and the progress they make. As yet I have but little to relate 116113of this year's work. Our new reform bill has not been brought before Parliament, but we are not without hope of carrying an amendment in favor of Woman Suffrage to some limited extent. Meanwhile, as you will see by the Women's Suffrage Journal, many incidental opportunities are taken, besides the usual ones of public meetings, for keeping the subject before the public mind. One of these occasions was the last meeting—a social and musical soiree—of the Liberal Social Union. These entertainments—for members and their friends only—are held at the rooms of the Society of British Artists—the exhibition of pictures forming the decoration of a large and handsome suite of rooms in Suffolk street, Pall Mall. On the evening I refer to, Miss Muller, M. L. S. B., gave an excellent address on “Women and the Coming Reform Bill,” which was followed by an animated discussion in which Miss Babb, Mrs. Sims, Mr. A. P. Alien, Mr. Cullis, Mr. Theodore Wright, the chairman, and several others took part. Miss Muller spoke extempore, with her usual vigor and earnestness, and made many good points. She said this nineteenth century of ours is eminently the century of reforms, and spoke of Woman Suffrage as a reform that was of the utmost importance to humanity, as he views of both men and women are wanted on every subject and fiftingly supplement one another. She deprecated the idea of the sexes forming into opposing classes. Differences in opinion must be as marked amongst women as amongst men. Miss Müller enlarged on the educational advantages which an interest in politics gave to women, and instanced the growth in public spirit she had observed in the ladies of Clifton and Bristol, which has produced such good fruit both for philanthropy and politics.

I cannot conclude without a word of deep and heartfelt sympathy at the unutterable loss our cause and all good causes have had in the death of our revered friend, Wendell Phillips. Yours, faithfully and affectionately, Rebecca Moore.

Mrs. Moore is a most earnest and cultured woman, fully informed on all American questions as well as English. She was our correspondent for The Revolution, and all who read that paper during the years of 1868, ‘69,and ‘70, will remember their interest in Mrs. Moore's recitals of the early English work and be glad to hear from her once more, as we, in our visit to England, were glad to see her and learn to appreciate her worth and extensive knowledge, even more than we had anticipated.

The Home Lea, Penketh, near Warrington, Feb. 20,1884.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

Most gladly to I send greetings to you and the noble women assembled in Convention in Washington. I shall be with you in spirit during all your sittings. I only wish that in bodily presence I could say, “all hail!” and enjoy seeing you face to face. To be engaged in so holy a cause as the demand for full justice for women is to be on the winning side—for God is ever with the right.

In looking back over the years, we see how much has been gained in both Great Britain and America. Thanks to the noble workers who have trod with bleeding feet the path that now is full of promise to the women of to-day. We are looking to the bill for the extension of the franchise, hoping it will include equal Suffrage for women rate-payers. Your visit, and that of Mrs. E. C. Stanton, has been a fresh inspiration to us. I trust that ere long we shall have an International Woman Suffrage Association, that the women of all lands may join hands and pledge each other to labor till 117114every vestige of disability be removed and the crown of perfect eqality be placed on the brow of the mothers of the race.

Yours for human equality. Margaret F. Parker.

Mrs. Parker is President of the International Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and she and Mrs. Lucas are the most active organizers of that movement in England. It was Mrs. Parker who, at the parting reception at Dr. Whittles, at Liverpool, to Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony, presented a resolution for the appointment of a committee to correspond with the friend in different countries—America included—with a view to the organization of an International Woman Suffrage Committee, and the subsequent holding of an International Conference in France, England or America.

Parliament Terrace, Liverpool, Feb. 13, 1884.

Mrs. E. Cady Stanton:

Dear Madam: I write as an English friend to your cause, to offer to you the sincere congratulations of your Liverpool sympathizers on the approach of you Sixteenth Annual Convention. We who have straggled for years to emancipate women fully appreciate the sacrifices that you and your worthy sister-workers have made, the labors you have undergone, and we sympathize heartily with you all in what we believe that we see near at hand, the final triumph of the cause, which you have all piloted through sixteen years of scornful opposition, of anxiety and of toil.

In our country the cause makes rapid progress; public opinion now looks forward to new franchise legislation in the session of Parliament just opened: we are making strenuous efforts to have the claims of women included in the expected bill. At the meeting of the annual conference of the National Federation of Liberals held at Leeds recently, a resolution in favor of Woman Suffrage was carried by a very large majority; a similar resolution was carried almost unanimously at the conference of the National Reform Union held at Manchester on the 6th of January, this union having delegates present from upward of seventy reform associations. These facts are of cheering augury and foreshadow, at an early date, the placing woman in her true position as the coë, the fellow-worker and the moral stay of man. Even in France the voice of woman is beginning to be heard, demanding her right to have a voice in the making of the laws, which she is bound to obey, which have power over her property, her labor, nay, even her person, and yet in the framing or amendment of which, she has never been allowed to have a voice. Advances in America, advances in England mutually help philanthropy and human progress.

To the development of tue principles to the fostering of the liberty and happiness of mankind, may the energies of our respective countries ever be directed in peaceful and friend rivalry. With cordial wishers for the success of your Convention, believe me, Yours most sincerely, Ewing Whittle, M. D., Of the Royal Irish Academy.

Dr. Whittle is one of the leading men physicians who take a prominent part in the battle waged against the contagious diseases acts, in England, at the head of which stands the noble Josephine E. Butler. The Doctor and Mrs. Whittle gave a delightful reception to Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony the evening before 118115they sailed for America, where were present not only the distinguished friends of Liverpool, but Mrs. McLaren, Mrs. Lucas, Mrs. Parker, Mrs. Scatcherd and Dr. Fannie Dickinson, who had accompanied Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Anthony to see them off on the Servia, November 17th.

75 Botanic View, University Road, Belfast, Ireland, Feb. 19, 1884.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

I am very sorry that I have been so long detained from answering your kind letter. Nevertheless, I hope this will reach you in time to let me send my most cordial good wishes for the success of your Woman Suffrage Convention.

You know, as I told you when you were here, how strongly I feel that the cause of justice to women is the cause of religion and morality all the world over. It is my deep anxiety for the success of temperance, for the participation of the statutes of the realm, and of the social customs which are so greatly affected by the laws, for the advance of education, and for the bringing of God's law of justice and truth into all the public as well as private affairs of the people, that made me feel it to be my duty to take the lead here in the agitation for Woman Suffrage. And, notwithstanding external differences of surroundings, I am very sure that the same solemn and great ends are those which stimulate multitudes of women in America to claim their just share in the government of their country. I hope, and I believe that victory cannot be far off; and when that time comes, it will be another uniting link between the two great Nations to which we belong. Yours most truly Isabella M. S. Tod.

Miss Tod is the honorable secretary of the North of Ireland Woman Suffrage Committee, and the leader in the various departments of reform that specially claim the attention of women, viz., Woman Suffrage, temperance, anti-contagious diseases acts, anti-vivisection, etc., etc.

69 Rue de Chaillot, Paris, France, Feb. 10, 1884.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

You ask me to obtain for your Washington Convention a few letters from friends of the woman's movement in France. I, therefore, sen you two, written by the leaders of the two parties into which the Women's Rights advocates are divided in this country.

Mlle. Hubertine Auclert—you met her when you were in Paris last May. You were struck by her earnestness, her courage, and her marked ability; but you may have forgotten that she stands at the head of the Militant Woman Suffrage advocates, a very little band, but which, if it had in numbers what it possesses in indefatigableness, would be a formidable army. Mlle, Auclert and her friends make Suffrage their first demand. Her able, wide-awake monthly, La Citoyenne, reads like an American or English Woman Suffrage journal. They hold meetings in Paris and the provinces; they publish tracts; they have organized a National Woman Suffrage Society, and, in a word, are doing all in their power to awaken thought and action on this question of the participation of woman in public life.

The second letter is from M. Leon Richer, the leader of the agitation in favor of ameliorating the condition of woman before the French law. You have no idea of the manner in which the much-vaunted Napoleonic code abuses French women. I cannot go into the subject here. Suffice it to say, that no system of laws, ancient or modern, treats women with greater injustice. M. Leon Richer has devoted all his energy to change this state of things. He has printed books, pamphlets, and news 119116paper articies; he has founded societies; he has organized meetings; he has delivered addresses—all directed toward the same end. M. Richer is editor of Le Droit des Femmes, a monthly devoted to the improvement of the legal position of French women, and he called together the first International Woman's Rights Congress, held in Paris in 1878.

You will see, therefore, that the two letters which I inclose come from the chiefs of the two main movements for the emancipation of French women.

Very truly yours, Theodore Stanton.

Theodore Stanton is the son of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. He has just published a valuable work on the “Woman Question in Europe,” giving the status of women in all the civilized countries in the Old World. As he introduces the writers of the two following letters, they need no words of ours.

“La Citoyenne,” 12 Rue Cail, Paris, Feb. 17, 1884.

Dear and Distinguished Friend:

I rejoice at the victory which you have just gained in Washington Territory. America will soon be, through your efforts, a true land of freedom for all humanity. Your success gives us renewed courage here in France. We keep up the good fight, but, if we except a few moral gains, we are still far from the goal. In our impatience to throw off man's despotic yoke, we stretch our hands to you, O sisters almost enfranchised. We call upon you to come to our aid, as your countrymen, a century ago, besought France to help them escape the subjection of England. Will you not come to our help as, Lafayette and his legion flew to yours? You are fitted to act as liberators. As veterans of the cause, you should take the initiative in calling together at Paris, capital of the world, a Universal Congress in favor of Woman Suffrage. Such a congress could not but have a great influence on public opinion, and would powerfully aid the movement for woman's emancipation throughout the whole world.

I submit this suggestion to the consideration of the Convention, and I beg of you to accept for the American Suffragists, and for yourself, distinguished friend, my warmest expressions of sincere admiration. Hubertine Auclert.

“Le Droit des Femmes,” 4 Rue des Deux Gares, Paris, Feb. 9, 1884.

MADAM: You do me the honor of asking me to send few words to the grand meeting which is to be held at Washington in March. I am very much touched by this mark of esteem on your part, and I seize this opportunity to express to you publicly my deep sympathy for your noble efforts in favor of the political rights of women.

Because I have devoted myself above all to securing the legal rights of French women, some people imagine that I draw back before their political equality. Far from it. I made this demand twenty years ago. But France postpones; France is timid. I turn to most pressing reforms, and devote my chief efforts to measures which can be soonest obtained.

I admire your free America. I salute with respect those brave women who, like Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and yourself, consecrate their whole lives to the grand cause of equality, justice and progress, to which I, too, am devoted.

Continue the good work in the future as in the past. Be sure that the success of your valiant labor will, sooner or later, be felt in the Old World. The rights secured in the United States and England will serve as examples to lagging nations. You are the advance-guard, and I salute you with respect.

Please convey my compliments to the delegates to your great meeting, and accept for yourself my sincerest expressions of regard. Leon Richer

St. Petersburg Place, Bayswater, London, Feb. 16, 1884.

Dear Miss Anthony:

I thank you sincerely for your kind letter, and wish I could be with you at the Sixteenth Washington Convention. Reading about it, brings vividly to my mind the time when we formed the National Woman Suffrage Association in New York. At that time I was able to work ; now, unfortunately, I am not; but I take no less interest in the good cause than I did at that time and for thirty years before—and as I am not able to be with you, I heartily wish I could speak to the Convention in writing, but I am not able to do even that, for I can hardly hold the pen.

All I can say to the friends assembled is fearlessly to demand, not as gift of charity, but as deed of right, that justice should be done to women; for justice recognizes no sex, mind recognizes no sex, humanity recognizes no sex, pleasure and plain, virtue and vice, life and death recognizes no sex. Like man, woman comes innocently into existence; like him, she is subject to all the vicissitudes of life; like him, when she violates the laws of her nature she has to pay the penalty; like him, when she breaks the law she is punished. Then, in the name of common sense, in the name of justice, why should woman, under the same conditions as man, not have the same rights that he has? She pays rates and taxes to support the government, and has a right to representation.

Woman claims the right to the Suffrage because the vote has power. It is the key to the statute books and gives the insignia of citizenship. Without it she is not a recognized citizen, except to pay taxes. The right to the Suffrage would elevate her in her own estimations; she would look upon herself with more respect and dignity. She might not be quite so willing to become a mere toy and plaything to flattering man, but she would be a better companion to an intelligent man; she would take a higher aim and have a higher object in life; she would know that life consists not only in pleasing man, but in endeavoring to make the world better and happier for having lived in it. She would be better capable of fulfilling her duties as a mother who lays the foundation in the infant mind. Woman by some mystic sympathy rules youth, counsels manhood and solaces old age. Talk about the superiority of man! The stream cannot run higher than the source that feeds it.

Ask every member of Congress to remove the stigma and blot resting on the character of his mother, sister, wife and daughter, by giving woman the same rights that are given to the emigrant, if he desires it. Give woman the Suffrage, make her a citizen of the great republic by passing the Sixteenth Amendment, and future generations will bless you for it. Yours, with hope and trust for every good cause, Ernestine L. Rose.

Mrs. Rose, next to Frances Wright, was the first woman in this country to make public demand for equality of rights for women. She was always present in the early conventions, and the most eloquent and logical extemporaneous speaker on our platform. Since 1869 she has resided in London, much to the regret of her old co-workers here.

Berlin, GERMANY, February 10, 1884.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

I am glad you are once more at the helm of our good ship of Woman Suffrage, in Washington—the place above all others where the work done should tell to our advancement. It seems to me everything has been said for and against our cause which can possibly he said, and now we can only avow our continued convictions and 121118use all proper means to gain our end. The action of Washington Territory is most encouraging and also the experience of Wyoming. Every year we lose some of our champions by death. Wendell Phillips, to our great regret, has passed away. I hope we may have accessions each year to fill the gaps, but who can fill his place? I shall hope to hear from the Convention and the success with Congress. With much love to you and all our co-workers, Yours truly, Ellen Clark Sargent.

Mrs. Sargent, all our friends know, was long our treasurer and most influential aid in Washington, being in those early years the only Congressman's wife who publicly identified herself with our then unpopular canse.

Zurich, February 16, 1884.

Dear Miss Anthony:

Friendly greeting to you and the other untiring ones who are working so zealously for the good of womankind, which is identical with that of all humanity. I hope the Convention Which is to meet in Washington the coming month will be a most successful one and lead to the conversion of many minds to the justice of the claims made. Many reasons for conferring Suffrage upon women have been given and discussed with eloquence and brilliancy, since the movement first began, but I know of no stronger reason why women should have the right to vote than that which gives it to the men—the right of self-protection. In our country the ballot is the surest means of protecting individual interests, consequently the women citizens, deprived of this right, must stand in the background and find their wishes unheeded, and in some instances their most vital interests trampled upon. With best wishes, sincerely yours, Elizabeth Sargent.

Miss Sargent is the daughter of our American Minister at Berlin, studying at Zurich, making the eye and ear her specialty. She graduated from the medical college in San Francisco some three years ago.

Zurich, Switzerland, January 18, 1884.

Dear Miss Anthony:

It makes me glad and proud that you remember me and wish for the feeble help which I can give your noble work. * * * * * * I wish profoundly for the franchise for every woman in America. I am humiliated that my country does not confer upon me a responsibility for which I feel myself adequate, just as I am mortified that the universities of American are closed to me.

When my student life is over I shall labor for the best interests of the working women of American, as my father has given himself to work for the best interests of the country, so far as he has seen his way clearly. Meanwhile I am only a student, not yet a teacher. I wish I could be in America for the Convention, but otherwise I am thankful to be here in Zurich, accepting from this little Swiss canton instruction which the university of my own State would on principle refuse me if in practice it had such instruction to bestow.

With an earnest hope that the Convention may be rich in that eloquence to which I cannot contribute, I am now always, with propound respect, Sincerely yours, Florence Kelley.

Miss Kelley, the daughter of Hon. William D. Kelley, of Pennsylvania, graduated from Cornell University, took a post-graduate course, and is now studying as a specialty political economy in Zurich.

Inglewood, Bedford Park, Turnham Green, London, Feb. 4, 1884.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

I can only say good speed to your wishes. The transition, like all transitions, may be trying, but must come, and we must do our best to make it the least volcanic of any political advance. I said good speed, because I hope it will be true and wise and not simply speed. Remember all women are not Elizabeth Cady Stantons, Julia Ward Howes, Mary Livermores, Susan B. Anthonys, or other cultured and patient leaders and workers in the cause. A Tory gentleman said if all women were as bright and beautiful and full of tact as Mrs. Stanton, they would soon get the franchise. Well, that's impossible by instantaneous transformation, but not by careful, patient evolution. Aim for the best, ask for the most, and if we fall short, try again. I have just heard of the great loss to all American women in the death of Wendell Phillips. He was a man of large faith and no fear.

I am sure your visit here good and hope you will both repeat it.

Yours gratefully, Ellen Dana Conway.

Mrs. Conway is the wife of Moncure D. Conway, who fills the most liberal pulpit in London. We are glad to know they propose soon to return to this country to make Washington, D. C., their place of residence. All Americans who have had the good fortune to visit at their delightful home feel a real pride and pleasure in having such representatives of American society abroad.

25 Alma Square, St. John's Wood, London, N. W., Feb. 21, 1881.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

I had intended answering your letter sooner, but have been so very busy. Now, I only have time to say a few hurried words. Although my body is on this side of the water, my heart is with you. The wider my experience becomes, the more do I realize that woman's day is come. Men have brought the world as far as they can without our active coöperation. They have done noble work, nobly; but there are certain things they cannot do, and, unless women put their “shoulder-blades to the wheel,” as Josiah Allen's wife has it, the world is in danger of coming to a stand-still in certain directions.

The problems in this country, although differing from our own, indicate the same fundamental lack. In the British production has increased within a century as eighty to one, yet the working classes, employed in tilling her soil or tending her magnificent machinery, recieve as the price of their toil but one-half a much as their rude ancestors did five centuries ago. A week's wages then would buy three bushels of wheat, now it only buys a bushel and a quarter, and other staples in about the same proportion. We perceive from the above that the trouble is no longer a lack of supply, but that the deplorable suffering in this country is produced by the monopolizing selfishness of mankind. It is not a political but a moral question, for, it this selfishness could be eradicated, the social questions which are disturbing not only England but the whole civilized world to some extent, would be permanently settled. We have brains enough, invention enough, skill enough, and material enough to make the wold a paradise; the one thing which we lack is Christian love, the one thing which we sorely need is moral reform, and this reform, the only one which will prove radical in this age of the world, rests with women.

We have been trying for a long time to perform our work surreptitiously, by slipping in unobserved through the lack back way, the time has come when we must obtain the key of the big front door of the edifice known as political economy, and that key is Suffrage. 123120We must know open the windows and let in the light of day; like good house-keepers we must carry with us our moral and spirituaL soap and water, our scrubbing brushes, broom and dusters. Some way may object to this—people usually do object to house-keeping—but, when after a season of discomfort, order is restored, even the most disturbed members of the human family will rejoice in the results.

I look more and more to American women to take the lead. A social independence has been accorded us which is not yielded to our sisters on this side of the water, and hence, accustomed to greater liberty of thought and action, we are more enterprising. Further, there is more need, I think of woman's influence in America than in older countries. Our National wealth is so great, our climate so stimulating, our speed so headlong, that all the objective surroundings in our country tend to drive the people to extremes, and so there is greater need of woman's peculiar work, for I hold that she has a peculiar work, namely, the teaching of subjective equipoise and self-control.

I have spoken several times in London during the past few weeks. The halls are filled by men with perhaps a handful of women scattered among them. In the animated discussions which follow the lectures, the women take no part, although they turn almost entirely on moral and spiritual subjects. This grieves me, and I trust I shall be able, in time, to persuade a few at least to use publicly the influence with which God has entrusted them.

In closing I wish to send my warmest good wishes, for it is you, the patient and courageous workers, who have taught American women how much the world needs their public ministry, and how grave duty they are putting aside when they do not assume this vast responsibility. It is you who have taught the timid to realize that we often sin quite as much in leaving undone that which we ought to do, as in doing that which we ought not to do. Christ rebuked him who buried his talent, not those who used them. I need not dwell on the work of the English Suffragists, as you, Miss Anthony, will doubtless speak of it at length.

I shall lose the foreign mail if I do not close, and I have only time to say, God speed to the Convention.

Yours sincerely, Rosamond Dale Owen

Miss Owen is the daughter of Robert Dale Owen, who always sympathized in all movements for the elevation of woman. Indiana is indebted to him more than any other one person for the liberal legislation of that States on the marriage question.

London, England, February 2, 1884.

Dear Cousin Susan:

I am still at Surbiton and go into London every day to Moorfield Eye Hospital. It affords the best opportunity over here, in the English language, for the study of the eye. All one time the hospital refused to admit women, but has changed its mind so far as to recognize them as guests of some attending surgeon; so I am theoretically, Mr. Couper, an attending surgeon's guest, practically, am receiving the attention of a student from Drs. Couper, Treedy and Lawson. The gentlemen students are all very agreeable. I still go to the Royal Free Hospital. * * * * * Justice and right demand the ballot for women. Ours is the grand republic, but it will be the grandest republic, and its interest private and public will be best advanced and fostered only by the combined thought and work of its men and women. Have received an invitation to the National Society for Woman Suffrage here on March 11th.

I hope you will meet with success this winter.

Yours with love, Fannie Dickinson.

Miss Dickinson is another American girl pursuing her studies 124121abroad. She is a graduate of Woman's Medical College of Chicago, and a most enthusiastic lover of her chosen profession.

164 Boulevard Haupmann, Paris , Feb. 11, 1884.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

I send my little say, and if you find it quite behind the occasion, as affecting your general feeling in the Convention, you will not have it presented. It is my honest word. I thank you for the invitation to contribute a letter to the Convention.

I realize that my long absence from the United States has made me rusty on the live questions of the day there. Women of this Convention, shall we not ask these questions of the leading political parties: Will you give the ballot to the loyal women who ask for it? Can you establish a true republic with equal terms and equal liberties? We know you too well, that if unlimited logic is liberty, then in the triumph of any party there will be liberty enough to save or sink a world. But the great principle of human equality and its mighty corollary, equal rights of human beings, will it owe any of them anything but just indignation for this, that while they pretend to snatch the Nation from misrule they perpetrate the one deliberate falsehood in the Constitution of our Union, the organic denial of its fundamental law? Our comfort is in the fact, that revolutionists accomplish more than they intend; the wide-spread dissatisfaction that breaks out everywhere in local eruptions, has a more vital significance than the separate disturbances indicate. Reformers of every name and place who forget that half the world is feminine, the law of justice works over your partial heads, and while you institute some sort of revolution in the name of an abuse, you meanwhile gauge the great and crowning outrage of these later years, since human chattleism is abolished, and you know not that every word you utter and every blow given reacts with terrible effect against you own position. Each party will organize movements for its own ends, but will not be able to guide them not ring down the brakes when the goal is reached. When the spirit of revolution is once awakened within the party, new or old, let abuses everywhere shine in their fortresses, though they should not be named in the red hand-writing on the wall. When one wrong is assailed, every wrong is menaced, and it will be hard for our reformers, if in shooting at petty corruptions and microscopic inconsistences of our National affairs, they do not bring in the range of their guns the largest inconsistency and most comprehensive wrong that stands in pyramidal breath in the very heart of this miscalled commonwealth!

Leagues, Liberals, Republicans, Democrats, Internationalists and Communists are only so may whirls and bubbles in the rush of a deep movement, that they ignore. Look at Imperial Europe, the pulse of almighty justice throbbing through the fevered veins of corrupted kingdoms and empires and topping up in blairs and blisters and eruptive pustules, the discordant masses, whose every man is a dangerous atom of a hot sea of surging lava, seeking some outlet by which to cool its fury. This mad and blind struggle for liberty, and the freedom God-given is the only hope of renovation the times offer. No, I repeat it, not one of the reform cliques, has yet taken a fearless stand for absolute justice to all; not one of them should have the God speed of a just woman; not one has ever said woman has political rights and government a duty to protect them: Individuals of every party may respect woman by courtesy, but they permit no power in her hand to convert the may into must. Shall we not let them alone to work their mutual destruction, and the destruction of the larger despotism that holds the liberty of half its subjects as of nothing worth? The Republican party has had power now for more than twenty years—an unparalled opportunity for making to itself a name of justice and righteousness, and establishing the outlawed half of the Nation's constituency in their rights and protecting them against oppression. The experiment tried on the colored man glorified the party, and yet the spirit of liberty 125122was not strong enough to give that wives and mothers of the white statesmen, officers of the law and administrators of justice, the same great right to vote that was given to the colored man of whatever condition. It has turned its back on the true republic of the future and sought only for the spoils; now if their passing bell tolls in the wide earthquake shock of division and overturn, it is justice and not the integrity and upright intention of the opposition that will effect the downfall. Look a moment at the conduct of this party in power. In every crisis it has sent out a cry to our eloquent women, “Come and help us, or the enemy will possess the land,” and to save the Republican party, that has never owned that a women has a right she should by a vote protect, our ablest speakers and writers have thrown themselves into the thickest of the fight and grandly assisted to secure the victory; and what has been their reward? Why, not as much as a politicians promise that she might vote for even a field-driver to keep cows off the lawn before her own door. Shall they have any more such help? Do we owe them allegiance for any benefits they have conferred upon us? No more service will we render them; not till justice is put into their debt by the simple act of the honest intention to work for the rights of all without regard to sex. Rightfully we owe them neither work nor honor, or even the hope for continued power, for we are on the side of common justice, and where that has such cause to complain, we certainly have no motive to commune. If we have not the foresight which discerns the purposes of all this overturning, we shall have the self-respect that will enable us to stand by our protest in dignity till some less timid or less selfish party shall make room for us on a platform firm to all practical truth pertaining to government, and invite us to come up in our own womanly way to a common struggle for a common reward; we will not in our haste or zeal compromise our dignified womanhood, and accept a careless or ambiguous phrase as sufficient for the present, something to gnaw at a little while. As a Nation we are enamored of the name “Republic,” but sorely sensitive are our political parties of any near approach to the fact. We hear them ring all possible changes on the word and its partial synonyms to adorn the banners of parties, new and old, but not a lisp in good earnest to adorn the old faith. The great rivals stand up and call themselves Democratic and Republican, and their little rivals play upon these words in various combinations, and dish with fine variations of meat and fish, fish and meat, but all bash and trash so far as our cause is concerned, for no new ingredient of justice and the absolute right of humanity on grounds of universal application enters into the ragout.

Looking at the great gulf that yawns between principle and application in our government, we sometimes feel that before the true republic comes we should have fairer play under a monarchy. Some women then have legal recognition and are born to power, and the scepter drops into the hand of the baby-queen as naturally as the rattle, and none question the fitness of the arrangement. That certainly must modify the feeling of all loyalists toward all women, for habitually to reverence the highest function of empire in an affectionate mother and faithful wife, will tend to show all other women who wear that natural diadem, as worthy of honor and power. It has become the boast of the defenders of the throne, that royalty is more loyal and just to women than our much exalted democracy. Our falsehood to our Constitution and deed of government is their best argument for propping up their false doctrine of the divine right of kings. When we claim for intrinsic humanity the power of sovereignty they claim for kings, we with gross inconsistency forget to include women in our larger royalty, while they do in the old. The king has his counterpart in the male sovereign, the free and independent voter, but who stands for the queen, whose power and honor are the same in the grand old Saxon monarchy, and makes woman of more regard in the State than does free and democratic America. I believe in the universal birth-right of royalty, so I repeat, let America have her individual who is queen of the independent 126123sovereignty, the woman with a ballot for her scepter, as the man with his; that the democratic name may cover a democratic fact, and be no longer a plea in the mouth of any Parliament of monarchists for the better doctrine of the divine right of kings, which in this is better, that it includes women. No kingdom or empire has the injustice to class all her feminine population, with its idiots and criminals in the great army of the disfranchised. That shame is to America! Meanwhile shall we not say it boldly at this Convention under the shadow of the capitol where justice stands enthroned on the dome, and in the ears of our law-givers, who do not represent us, that we will not serve any party in the least degree that is false to the great republic of the future, false to the fundamental law fo the republic of to-day.

Charlotte B. Wilbour.

Mrs. Wilbour was with us at the organization of the National Woman suffrage Association in 1869, and one of its active leaders in New York. She has resided in Paris for several years.

Dr. Emily H. Stowe, the first woman graduate from the Toronto Medical College, writes: “Our Governor-General and our principal members of Parliament are in full sympathy with the movement for the extension of the municipal vote to women; but we need speakers to rouse the woman to show they are desirous to posses the right.”

Rev. T. R. Brown, Farmersville, Ontario, writes: “Woman Suffrage is gaining rapidly here. The councils in Kingston, Ottawa, Goderich, Therold, Ridgetown, Welland and Hanksburg have all declared in favor of extending the franchise to women. Other councils are agitating the subject with a fair prospect of carrying it soon. There is growing feeling in favor of according to woman her rights.”

Philadelphia, March 28, 1884.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

Impaired health for several weeks past prevented my sending you earlier the note which I had designed. For more than thirty years I have been in favor of Woman Suffrage. I was led to this position not by the consideration of the question of natural rights, or of alleged injustice, or of inequality before the law, but by what I believed would be her influence on the great moral questions of the day. Were the ballot in the hands of women, I am satisfied that the evils of intemperance would be greatly lessened, and I fear, that without that ballot we shall not succeed against the saloons and kindred in large cities. You will doubtless have many obstacles placed in your way; there will be many conflicts to sustain; but I have no doubt that the coming years will se the triumph of your cause, and that our higher civilization and morality will rejoice in the work which enlightened woman will accomplish.

Wishing you success, yours truly, M. Simpson.

As the last public utterance of Bishop Simpson on the question of Woman Suffrage, this letter will be peculiarly interesting to the friends of our movement. Just as we go to press we hear the sad news of his death. In the Pennsylvania chapter in vol. III., of the History of Woman Suffrage, will be found an able argument made by Bishop Simpson before the Constitutional Convention 127124in 1873, in favor of so amending the Constitution of that State as to secure the right of Suffrage to women.

West New Brighton, Staten Island, N. Y., Feb. 17, 1884.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

I cannot come to your meeting, but I can say that I have seen no reason to change the opinions which I have long held, that the exclusion of the experience and intelligence of women from the general conduct of the community, by forbidding them a responsible expression of their views, is inconsistent with the American doctrine of government by consent of the governed.

It is only fair to say, however, that the great multitude of women seem to be very indifferent to the exclusion, and this indifference is the great obstruction of your cause. Politically, as you know, our race is very practical;. The holders of power are not likely to share it with those who apparently do not care for the burden, and the movement to which you have so long and unselfishly devoted yourself will languish until it is plain that women themselves desire the exclusion annulled.

Truly yours, George William Curtis.

And, Mr. Curtis might have added, this indifference is the strongest reason why the right of Suffrage should be conferred on women, just as the indifference of children to the school-house and spelling-book is the strongest reason why they should be brought under such educational influence.

817 DeKalb Avenue, Brooklyn, N. Y., March 4, 1884.

Dear Miss Anthony:

I have hoped till the last to be able to be at the Convention. Not that I have any Woman Suffrage speech to present, O, no! I would feel greatly embarrassed in the presence of yourself and the other advocates, some of whom, no doubt, knew every argument before I knew my right hand from my left, and who have labored persistently until a cause that was once treated with contempt and ridicule, has now become, at least in New York and Brooklyn, the most popular reference with which a public speaker can round off a paragraph and “bring the house down with applause.”

But I would be glad to say a few words from the stand-point of my own experience. A New Yorker of the oldest New York stock, and brought up in the most exclusive circle, I belong emphatically to the class who are reputed as saying they “have all the rights they want.” But I consider it my very first right to know that every other man and woman in the world have all their rights. I can go without my dinner in comfort, but I cannot eat my dinner in comfort while I know that anyone else is wrongfully deprived of his or hers. Hence, I am more wronged when others are wronged than when I am wronged myself. I early saw the abstract right of woman to represent herself, but did not see that any great benefit would follow from her enfranchisement, consequently thought there was no use in making any great fuss about it, but that it would come to pass as a matter of course in the lapse of time, as all that is logically correct is sure to do. But when, feeling myself called of God to a work among the masses of the people I stepped out from the caste, or class in which I was raised, I have found my best usefulness hindered at every point because of the subject condition of women. So I want the ballot for my own sake, because of the benefit it will be to me in my chosen work. It will benefit me to belong to the voting, i.e., the sovereign class, even though I never cast a vote in my life. It will assist me in my humblest labors among the sick, the poor and the vicious, and it will just as much assist me in the elegant city church, among the critical and cultured, and among my ministerial 128125brethern. Who can for a moment imagine that the doors of the “Preachers’ Meeting” of my own denomination in New York city would be closed against me every Monday as they are, or that I would be refused ordination by our own ecclesiastical authorities, if women were recognized before the law in our land as equally sovereign with men? I could tell you of a bill relating to the holding of our church property which was sent to the Legislature at Albany, with which nothing was done because the woman-pastor had no representative there, and the failure of which greatly embarrassed the church and myself personally. I could tell you of actually two lawsuits brought against me (unsuccessful, however), which would never have been brought against a man-pastor of a church, that is to say, against one who was recognized by his denomination. And I now see, that Suffrage carries the whole question of recognition in all these departments.

But I cannot write you as I would. I know our law-makers will be eloquently and forcibly addressed from your platform. I take the great cause to the throne of God. By all the hindrances in the way of my best usefulness, I pray to God for the enfranchisement of women. By the scenes I have witnessed in work-houses, jails, lunatic asylums and in hospitals, in saloons and drunkards’ homes, I pray God for the enfranchisement of women. By the resulting evils that I have seen returning upon the heads of men, I pray God for the elevation from serfdom to sovereignty of one-half the human race. I pray God for equal rights for our united humanity.

Enclosed please find check toward defraying the expenses of the work.

Very truly yours, Anna Oliver.

Rev. Anna Oliver has fought a brave battle in her line, but her general-conference, now in session in Philadelphia, votes, that, while she may preach, she may not be ordained!

Boston, March 3, 1884.

Dear Miss Anthony:

In response to your very kind note of 27th instant, I would say, that not one of the States in the Union can be considered as governed justly, because in none of them does political power rest on the consent of the people governed. The Territory of Wyoming is better off in this respect even than Massachusetts, and in consequence when Wyoming shall be as old as Massachusetts now is, her civilization bids fair to be far nobler and better than ours now is. We recently heard read at our State-House a careful historian's argument against Woman Suffrage. One would imagine that he had never read the declaration of rights of his own State—most certainly he has never adopted as his own the noble principles there laid down. He saw nothing unjust in vesting all political power in the hands of men exclusively, although our fathers considered that on true republican principles it is both “absurd and unnatural” that birth alone should confer political power. Our fathers thought that upon true principles office should be conferred on those of the people who were found to be fit and capable, and not merely on those were born men. Although the ballot is the only mode thus far discovered by which a people can express their consent to the laws under which they live, this same historian never seems to have discovered that upon true republican principles the “incontestable, inalienable and indefeasible right” (for so our declaration reads), by the exercise of the ballot, to institute and reform or totally change the government of Massachusetts, does not rest, as he thinks it ought to rest, with the men, of male voters, but with “the people alone,” for the very good reason given by our fathers in the same instrument, that government is not instituted for the “profit, honor or private interest of any one man or family or class of men,” but for the good of the people alone, i.e., for the good of men and women, who thus have on 129126principle, equally with men, an “incontestable, inalienable and indefeasible right” to the ballot. Our historian does not really believe in a republican form of government. He would limit Suffrage even for men, and never give it to them simply as men! He would not trust a vote except it be to a dollar, or a bank account, or a stock ledger, or property of some kind, and not even to the dollar unless possessed by some man!

Still more strnge was it to hear read a remonstrance against the extension of the Suffrage to women, emanating from a woman who has done very good public work, and who really owes her present position on the Board of State Charities solely to the agitation connected with Woman Suffrage. If it had not been for this agitation we should never have had any woman at all on any of our public boards. Of what great use has it been that our Supreme Judicial Court has in an elaborate opinion decided her to be legally a person if she is nevertheless perfectly willing to abdicate all her personal rights of self-government and place herself in a state of perpetual pupilage? Of what consequence is it that she is legally a person if she has so little appreciation of the value of personality as to seek to have other women classed all through life as mere children, and incapable therefore of expressing any opinion worth noticing as to how they shall be governed, taxed or punished? Did this woman know how unjustly the laws of Massachusetts bear on thousands of her sex who are not favored as herself in worldly position? Only a comparatively few women have a “soft” place. Did she realize to what a depth of degradation her own daughters may be crushed by the operation of these laws? Let us hope that a more careful study of the wickedness of the laws enacted by men alone for the government of women may lead to a change of views on her part. And in the firm faith that justice to women will finally triumph, I remain, respectfully your friend, William I. Bowditch.

Mr. Bowditch a few years years since published a most valuable pamphlet showing the number of tax-paying women in Massachusetts to be over 34,000, and the amount of their taxes $2,000,000—one-eleventh of the entire tax of the State.

Boston, February 24, 1884.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

I shall not be with you at the Washington Convention, but you need no assurance of my hearty sympathy in its success. The cause for which you plead is of commanding importance. No other embraces so many human interests. I do not except the temperance movement, whose larger fulfillment waits for the recognition of women at the ballot-box. The success of equal Suffrage will bring with it the possibility of enforcing the legal penalties for intemperance. Society has failed to make such statutes respected because the greatest sufferers have no voice in executing justice. The moral sentiment created by women has compelled men to pass restrictive laws, but without political power women cannot prevent their uniform violation.

The steady progress of Woman Suffrage is full of encouragement. This year we can rejoice over Washington Territory, and in the coming year let us hope that we may celebrate the consummation of equal political rights in Oregon. In Massachusetts we have new and valuable coadjutors from an unexpected quarter. Indifference has given place to active remonstrance from excellent and able women. Gifted with executive power, unexcelled in public official positions or in organized private benevolence, women like Mrs. Clara T. Leonard and Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells are admirable examples of what women will be in politics. The weakness of their present logic is lost sight of in the illustration they afford of administrative capacity. After listening to their ingenious, arguments, addressed with dignity and force to a legislative committee, it is impossible not to regret that the commonwealth voluntarily deprives itself of such 130127material for votes and legislators. Not only does their strong example help us, but their vulnerable reasoning brings its own confutation and creates discussion. The daily press now freely admits courteous arguments on each side and the public ear is gained as never before.

With renewed good wishes for your Convention, and with the belief that earnest and sincere words must reach new hearts and consciences, I remain, Yours for political equality, William Lloyd Garrison, Jr.

United States Senate Chamber, Washington, March 4, 1884.

My Dear Cousin:

I am honored by your invitation to address the National Woman Suffrage Association at the Convention to be held in this city. I regret that it is not in my power to comply with your complimentary request. The enfranchisement of women is one of those great reforms which will come with the progress of civilization, and when it comes those who witness it will wonder that it has been so long delayed. The main argument against it is that the women themselves do not desire it. Many men do not desire it, as is evidenced by their omission to exercise it, but they are not therefore deprived of it. I do not understand that you purpose compulsory Suffrage, although I am not sure that that would not be for the public advantage as applied to both sexes. A woman has a right to vote in a corporation of which she is a stockholder, and that she does not generally exercise that right is not an argument against the right itself. The progress that is making in the direction of your efforts is satisfactory and encouraging.

Faithfully yours, H. B. Anthony.

Senator Anthony was one of the ever-to-be-remembered nine Senators who voted for Woman Suffrage on the floor of the United States Senate in 1866. He also made a most logical speech on our behalf and has ever since been true to our demands.

United States Senate, Washington, D. C., March 5, 1884.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

I had the honor duly to receive you invitation of the 27th instant to address the National Woman Suffrage Association during its sessions in this city, for which I heartily thank you; but the pressure of duties in the Senate, service upon committees being just now specially exacting, makes it very difficult for me to accept it.

I trust that I need not assure you of my full belief that woman has the right and ought to have the privilege to vote. Whenever a fundamental right exists both public and individual welfare are promoted by its exercise and injured by its suppression. The exercise of rights is only another name for the discharge of duties, and the denial of the Suffrage to an adult human being, not deprived of it for mental or penal disability, is an intolerable wrong. Such denial is not only a deprivation of right to the individual, but it is an injury to the State, which is only well governed when controlled by the conflicting opinions, sentiments and interests of the whole harmonized in the ballot-box and, by its fiat, elevated to the functions of law. But you have no occasion for expression of theoretical views from me.

If I may be pardoned a suggestion, it would be the specification to the public mind of the practical uses and benefits which would result from the exercise of the Suffrage by women. Men are not conscious that women lack the practical protection of the laws or the comforts and conveniences of material and social relations more than themselves. The possession of the ballot as a practical means fo securing happiness does not appear to the masses of men to be necessary to women in our country. Men say: “We do the best we can for our wives and children and relatives. They are as well 131128off as we.” In a certain sense this appears to be true. The other and higher truth is that Woman Suffrage is necessary in order that society may advance. It was not indispensible to the progress hitherto made, for that has been accomplished without it; but even that might have been greatly facilitated by its exercise and advancement is vastly more and immediately dependent upon Suffrage in the hands of woman.

The natural conservatism of an existing order of things will not give way to a new factor in the control of affairs until it has been shown in what way enlightened selfishness may hope for good to society if the change be made. Here it seems to me that the Convention may now strike a blow more powerful than for many years. Society has not so labored with the great problems which which concern its own salvation for generations.

What would woman do with the ballot if she had it? What for education? What for society? What for social purity? What for equalizing the conditions and the rewards of labor—the labor of her own sex first—and towards a just division of production among all members of the community? What for the removal, or for the amelioration when removal is impossible, of hunger, cold, disease and degradation, from the daily lives of human beings? What could and what would woman do with the ballot which is not now as well done by man alone, to improve the conditions which envelope individual existence as with bands of iron? What good things—state them seriatum, as the lawyers say—could woman do in New Hampshire and in New York city, and ultimately among the savage tribes of the earth, which she can not do as well without as with the Suffrage? Would woman by her Suffrage even help to remove illiteracy from Louisiana, intemperance from New England, and stop society from committing murder by the tenement-house abuses of New York?

Let the Convention specify what practical good woman will try to achieve with her God-given rights, provided that men will permit her to enjoy them. Show us wherein you will do us good if we will rob you no longer. It might influence us greatly. Why should we do right for nothing? In fact, unless you show that the exercise of your alleged right will be useful, can you logically conclude that you have any? We must have proof that the experiment will not fail before we will even try it.

Woman Suffragists must connect the ballot with progress and reform and convince men that they, as well as women, will be better off for its possession by the whole of the adult community rather than only by a part. Theories may be true, but they are seldom reduced to practice by society unless it can be clearly seen that their adoption will heal some hurt or introduce some broad and general good.

The increasing discussion of industrial, educational, sanitary, and social questions generally, indicates the domain of argument and effort where victories for the advoctes of enlarged Suffrage are most likely, and I think are sure to be won. Woman should study specially what is called, for the want of a better term, the labor problem—a problem which includes in its scope almost everything important to everybody or anybody. If you will truly show what woman could do, and, by virtue of her higher and holier instincts, her apprehension sharpened by suffering experience, her intellectual acuteness and her sense of moral responsibility for action when power is given her to act at all, would be most likely to do with the ballot in removing the evils which environ the human race, you will carry the great cause which you champion to ultimate, and I believe, to early triumph.

I know this is an unnecessary suggestion, for it is just what you are doing. I only write it because repetition of the important is better than to recite platitudes or even to quote the declaration. I believe in your success because I believe in justice and in the advancement of mankind.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant, Henry W. Blair.

We need not tell our readers that Senator Blair is one of our most earnest and reliable friends on the floor of the United States Senate.

Irvington, March, 2, 1884.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

It has all along been my purpose to return to Washington before the date of your Annual Convention and attend its sessions, but sickness in my family and other unexpected hindrances will prevent. Let me congratulate you on the steady and sure advance of your great cause. Its final triumph is now everywhere sure to be merely a question of time, and that time is being speeded by the patient and faithful labors of yourself and the brave women associated with you in the work. You need no exhortation to courage, constancy and faith, in your struggle to make Suffrage universal by a Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which shall complete and crown the reconstruction of the National government. I am, very truly yours, George W. Julian.

Mr. Julian was the mover of the first bill for a Sixteenth Amendment for Woman Suffrage on the floor of the House of Representatives in 1868.

Washington, March 10, 1884.

My Very Dear Friend:

Please accept the enclosed ten dollars towards expenses of the Convention. What grand meetings we have had every session, complete in eloquent addresses, and to audiences so large and enthusiastic! I think the address of Mrs. Haggart covered the whole ground; was ever before more of wit, pathos and logic, combined in a single speech? All hail the coming day, when equality of rights will be considered and practically maintained as the first of rights for all human beings throughout the world!

With warmest regards, yours truly, Robert Purvis.

Mr. Purvis was one of the few men—and the only one with a drop of colored blood in his veins—who, in the days that “tried Abolitionists souls” bravely and gloriously stood with us in our demand that Suffrage was a right of all citizens, and that the Fourteenth Amendment must not have the proscriptive adjective “male” in it. In other words, that when the door of the National Constitution was opened, it should be to admit all women as well as men of color.

Pomo, California, February 25, 1884.

Dear Friends:

In reading numerous plans and suggestions for the “higher education of women,” I have been forcibly reminded of a story I once read of a baby-girl who blossomed into young womanhood while her ambitious mother was wholly absorbed in devising an elaborate system for her education. From my stand-point of observation it looks as though women, in their struggle for rights versus wrongs, are rapidly developing a higher education for themselves than any so generously devised for them on the old plans of limited womanhood. Pope says: “Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring; ‘Tis shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, But drinking largely sobers us again.” Women love sobriety. In our pleas for constitutional rights, we frankly deny the authority of expediency in all matters touching the moral life and development of the nation 133130or the citizen. Our government, in its initiatory appeal to natural or divine law for its right to be, acknowledged the supremacy of such law in the abstract, but has, alas! ignored it whenever seeming expediency counseled its evasion. And in this course we find the political weakness which hesitates and compromises when prompt action in the line of truth and justice offers the only safe and permanent solution. And it is a significant fact, that expediency (Sojourner Truth's “Weasel,” in the Constitution), has been hatching crocodiles from the beginning. The revolution that secured our independence as a people, bound that independence with the galling chains of slavery, which avenged itself in a civil war costing thousands of millions of dollars, and life of incomputable value, with suffering and sorrow for which no after-thought of justice can ever alone. The miserable expediency which hesitates and compromises, is now paying the same costly tribute to popular vices that demoralize the citizen, pauper the home and threaten the National life—and, blind as a bat in daylight, disfranchises the innocent and gives to the guilty a controlling voice in public affairs. And this is named statesmanship! Women plead for the protection of acknowledged rights, and our political Gamaliels snub us as incompetents placed by the supreme ruler of the universe in perpetual tutelage, and justify their wholesale robbery of our property, personal and mother rights, as theirs by divine right of guardianship. And while indebted to the inspiration and leadership of women for the efficiency of the benevolent reforms of the age, they deny that the sex is endowed with adequate reasoning powers for self-government. Nevertheless, duty to our brother man, to ourselves and humanity, urges that we let our rush-light shine, and, keeping step to truth, justice and love, hasten the noon-day glory of universal benevolence—for not one of the great social moral questions of the day, affecting the happiness of a whole people, can ever be permanent settled without the light of woman's intellect and the transfusing of her mother heart and her vote. God's promise is to and through woman to all the nations of the earth.

I think, considering the patience with which we have listened to details of our general incapacity for political questions, I will not be outraging the amenities if, in this connection, I confess that the moral and intellectual shortsightedness of men schooled in the science of government and practiced in our courts and legislation, touching practical questions in those lines, is simply amazing. The treatment of the Utah question, a matter of vital importance to women, is a case in point. Senator Edmunds, who took the Congressional leadership in legislating for the suppression of polygamy, and whose first bill has failed to accomplish the good hoped from it, has prepared a supplementary bill by which he proposes to increase the efficiency of the first, mainly, as I understand it, by suppressing Woman Suffrage in that Territory. In his supplementary bill he objects to the government of the Territory by a commission which virtually disfranchises all its citizens—that “it is revolutionary and deprives the innocent as well as the guilty of all voice in public affairs,” and adds, “Nothing but the direst necessity could justify such a step.” As this objection to the commission is the exact measure of his provision for the suppression of Woman Suffrage in the Territory, we can most cordially adopt it as our objection to the latter, and further, challenge the need that justifies his provision for the suppression of Woman Suffrage in the Territory. In the first place, as it is polygamy that is on trial, not Woman Suffrage, the dire need for its suppression should be of a polygamous character, which would limit its application to Mormon citizens, but he does not propose to suppress the male Mormon vote. form which we might infer that said vote held within itself some redeeming quality which the Mormon woman's vote lacks; and yet the objection to the latter has been that it is controlled by the males in the interest of polygamous Mormonism. Hence the conclusion is inevitable that the votes of Mormon men and women are alike open to objection, alike entitled to “a voice in public affairs,” Second, where 134131shall we look for the dire necessity that counsels the suppression of the gentile woman's vote, which is solid versus polygamy—the crime on trial? Is it to be found in the supposition that it would be used by gentile men versus polygamy? That it would give womanly impressment to just and wholesome laws? I must say that this supplementary provision for the suppression of polygamy looks on examination like a mistake in terms—a statesmanship that pulls up the wheat and leaves the tares. In discussing the question in the New York Independent he expresses the belief that polygamy is to be overcome “by processes apparently slow and by means that will gather into the opposition to it all the non-polygamous Mormons,” and that it is quite clear to his mind that the suppression of polygamy will be just as far off with the government of the Territory in the hands of a commission as it is now, if not further; for it will only serve to solidify and intensify a class feeling of the Mormons, and tend to draw to the support of the hierarchy and polygamists the whole body of the Mormon people. “On the whole,” he says, “I have the best reason for believing that, if we go calmly and steadily forward, preserving our self-possession, we shall eradicate the polygamy in that Territory.”

I have only time to call attention to two features of this remarkable plan of the Senator's: First, the recommendation of “slow processes” in a warfare with vigilant, energetic and well organized schemes of immigration and colonization of ignorant, superstitious proselytes, not amenable to intelligent argument. The second, his dependence for means to accomplish his purpose upon recruits from the ranks of the enemy. A general in the field, facing the enemy's camp, who should promulgate such a plan would be relieved of his commission as a lunatic. I can see no motive for the Senator's gratuitous thrust at Woman Suffrage in Utah but a hope of arresting the Woman Suffrage movement and defeating its recognition by Congress in the admission of the territories to State rights.

Our dear Wendell Phillips has gone from us. It was he who said, “You must speak now, Mrs. Nichols,” and led me to the Worcester desk for my debut thirty-two years ago. At first my heart cried out at the loss, and that it was just now! But more and more I see that now is the accepted time. His life is being emphasized by his death to revive and sow broadcast his burning words and glorious example of unswerving integrity and wise forethought in the highways and byways inaccessible to them in the long past by reason of prejudice, and lost sight of in the newer and exciting scenes of later years. Such a man was given to teach the grand possibilies of human love and devotion.

I am watching your movements hopefully. Remember, if in a good cause we don't get all we expect, we're sure to get a good deal of advantage we didn't expect.

Yours lovingly, Clarina I. H. Nichols.

Mrs. Nichols was the pioneer of Woman Suffrage in Vermont until 1854, when she moved to Kansas, and there sat through every Free State Convention, working to secure in the Constitution of that new State exact equality for women. Since 1869 Mrs. Nichols has resided in California.

Greenwich, Ct., May 4, 1884.

Miss Susan B. Anthony:

Dear Madam : Permit me, a broken and ruined life, to send you congratulations on your success in your great life-work; although we have not yet the rights of Suffrage, it is almost gained; in three territories woman possesses the right to speak for herself. I send my best regards from the same old sick-room from which the second volume of “History of Woman Suffrage” dismissed me from the world's notice sixteen years ago.

All our old friends, nearly, are gone; and those from—Ben. Wade, Grimes, Ashley, Summer, Colfax, Julian and other are now only shadows of the great struggle of the past. Five continuous years I gave to the Union and to the war, and now I have sickness and suffering, and dependence on children alone for support. How different education and ability work out the fate of and women! Once more let me speak congratulations. Ever your friend, Frances D. Gage.

P.S. Now is a good time to think of dear Mrs. Nichols; I never hear form her, or dear Mrs. Rose; God bless and protect all the dear old friends yet lingering in life.

F. D. G.

Mrs. Gage was the first to move in our cause in Ohio and other Western and Southern States. During the war she devoted herself to labors in the hospitals and among the freedmen of the South. In the midst of her active and efficient labors, in 1867, when about to take part in the kansas campaign, she was suddenly stricken with paralysis, against which she has struggled ever since. As there is a bill before Congress to pension the nurses in our late war, the patriotic services of Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Nicholas, Mother Bickerdyke and many other noble women, may yet be substantially recognized by our government.

Rochester, February 18, 1884.

Susan B. Anthony, and other Dear Friends of the Washington Woman's Rights Convention:

For some I had hoped to be you on this interesting occasion, and very reluctantly forego the pleasure if world give me. I send you a word of greeting, and assure you that I as much in earnest in the cause, as when we first assembled so many years ago at Seneca Fulls, and announced to the world our claim to the right to the elective franchise. The courage and faithfulness of that little band, under the wise guidance of our honored President, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, together with many noble souls who have since joined us, is beyond all praise. Although the history of our struggle has been marked with fierce opposition, with mobs, derision, scorn and contempt, we have never wavered, never given up; and now I think we are on the verge of a most glorious triumph. The waiting has been long, and the conflict is not yet ended. We must still continue to demand our most perfect equality in very department of our government, that government which is now emphatically a manocracy.

Thanking you for the honor you have confered upon me by placing my name among the honorary vice-presidents, I am truly yours in love and sympathy, Amy Post.

Mrs. Post was one of the earliest and truest of the Abolitionists of Western New York, was present at the first Woman's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, in 1848, and stood firmly by Mrs. Stanton in pressing the adoption of the resolution declaring the right to vote the first great need of woman.

Milwaukee, February 25, 1884.

My Honored and Dear Friend:

In response to your letter of January 18th I am compelled to be content with being with you only in letter and spirit. When you learn by the hand of another that for 136133the last year and a half I have been unable to do anything, have been compelled to give up my life-work of teaching and writing and submit to great bodily suffering almost without intervals of rest, cared for constantly by my children, you can well understand how unfitted I an to do more than express by another my heartfelt sympathy with you in approaching meeting. It has been my cherished wish for years to stand once more among you in Lincoln Hall, and reiterate my life-long sentiments and hopes in our noble cause, which time has but strengthened. But that hope has been resigned with so many others of an active life, and I must be resigned to let my sympathies and good wishes, sent from a bed of suffering, suffice, instead. I longed to give you a “God speed” upon your embarking to carry the good work of Woman Suffrage across the ocean to my fellow country-women of the Old World, who need so much a helping hand to teach them to think and act for their enfranchisement, and I also should have rejoiced to welcome you back, which I now do in letter and spirit.

I am glad of this opportunity to once more assure you of my untiring and unchanging devotion to our good cause, and I wish you to know I am with you in all your efforts, being sure that they will be wise and well directed. While my brain acts and heart bears, their best thoughts and throbs will be in sympathy with you and noble fellow-workers.

Yours with love, Mathilde Franziska Anneke.

Madam Anneke fled from Germany for her liberty and life, and has been a most valiant champion of equality of rights for woman in this country since 1853.

Washington, March 6, 1884.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

I am very sorry that my brothers and I have not been able to take part in your Sixteenth Annual Washington Convention. As I can neither speak nor sing for you, I send you this trifle of twenty-five dollars to help those who can.

Your friend, cordially, Arry Johnson Patton.

Mrs . Patton, the “lovely Abby” of the “Hutchinson Family” in the olden days, still loves to sing with the two surviving brothers, John and Asa.

180 Henry Street, Detroit, Feb. 3, 1884.

Dear Friends of the National Woman Suffrage Association:

As I cannot be present with you, my heart must go out to you in the written word. Letters and literature are vastly overdone, but our reform is not done yet—not to a turn— so until it comes to its fulfillment, we must still utter our words, if they only be note of cheer or sympathy, or simple pledges of material aid. But what voice can we spare, even the humblest and least musical? The voice most musical, the voice most commanding in the consideration of our plea is hushed for us here. What a beautiful pattern for us, and for generation to come! What a worshipful son of the fair humanities!

Wendell Phillips brought to the slave and to woman, the conscience of the Puritan and the culture of the generous and gentle blood; and throughout his life the fellowship with a company of choice and uncommon men and women. conduced to the growth and ripening up of as fair a nature, and as noble a reformer as this age shall see. His courage was eminent, his justice and compassion were implanted in the core of his being. So many have gone before him how can we spare him at this time? But we are all thankful, doubtless, we have had his advocacy and his blessing so long.

And in wide contrast, as far as condition was concerned, as well as opportunity, was the venerable mother in our Israel, whom we have recently lost, who had lived her resolute, helpful life in slavery and freedom—as we say—for more than a century, and 137134yet, remaining thirty-six years after our declaration in favor of a really representative government, Sojourner Truth left us, never having experienced a citizen's right to help make the laws or elect our rulers. Like our beloved priestess, who opened, and led the way, our “Sibyl” was forbidden to enter into her right inheritance. Both wrought for us from the beginning; and we have only love and honor for their memories.

But the conflict for self-government still goes on, abroad as well as at home; and Lord Randolph Churchill in the English Parliament has given voice to the old cry of “might against right” this very week, when he said, “the agricultural laborers know nothing of politics, and politics do not concern them.”

Wishing for your wisdom and actual gains in this Convention, I am, my sisters, ever in faith and love, yours, Catherine A. F. Stebbins.

Mrs. Stebbins was also present at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848.

Milton on Hudson, The Knoll, March 6, 1884.

My Dear Susan:

I hope you are in the midst of so many friends and enjoying such satisfactory meetings, that you do not miss one poor old friend. I feel as if I had proved recreant in not coming to the Convention, but I do feel so old, that under any circumstances I would not venture alone so far from home.

When I look back, the way seems so long and the progress so slow, that my hands hang by my side with discouragement. It is difficult to identify myself with the young woman who attended the Worcester Convention of 1850. How could I possibly imagine that thirty years and more would pass, and that still more than one-half our republic would be without representation, but so it is. There seems something conservative in the soil of the Atlantic coast. The far West is infinitely more alive than we are; just think of having Woman Suffrage in three Territories and not even in one of our little Eastern States! One would suppose that perseverance and eloquence were of no avail whatever; it must be that tornadoes, blizzards and geysers are absolutely necessary to make human vision clear.

Affectionately thine, Sarah H. Hallock.

Mrs. Hallock is another of the pioneers of our movement: she was present at the Convention held in Worcester in 1850.

Indianapolis, February 11, 1884.

My Dear Miss Anthony:

It is unnecessary for me to say I would gladly be with you at your forthcoming Convention, but the infirmities of age and the cares of life bear upon me so heavily that I cannot. My conviction as to the righteousness and ultimate success of our cause grows stronger every day. It is useless to repeat the arguments in its favor in this letter. They have been uttered in the ears of this people until they have become familiar as a household word; and, when men recognize that their interests demand that women shall have the ballot, it will be conferred upon us. That time is speedily coming. Then they will yield from their selfishness what they have so long refused to grant from a sense of right and justice.

Who shall say that woman is not the “saving remnant,” for which prophets, philosophers and statesmen have so long looked? How my cheeks flush, and my hearts beats with the quick pulsations of resentment, when Matthew Arnold talks about the “unsoundness of majorities,” when the world has never yet had the voice of the majority of humanity in government! I am glad that the great apostle of culture recognizes that a majority, which consists wholly of men and ignores the voice of one-half of 138135the race, is unsound, and that he has discovered what we wish all men might see, that moral causes govern the standing and falling of States, and tells us that the failure to mind whatsoever things are just and pure and elevated must impair with inexorable fatality the life of a nation. Light is breaking, and we begin to see men as trees walking. Yours for justice, equality and human progress, Zerelda G. Wallace.

Milwaukee, March 1, 1884.

Dear Friends :

The issue which used to be called Woman's Rights, has formulated itself in my mind as right-womanliness. The movement for securing right-womanliness to our Nation, is now quietly seconded by the intelligence and active woman-element of the land. But it is publicly presented only here and there, and now and then by small bodies of which your honorable body, assembled in Washington, is representative. In this demand for enfranchisement different ends to be gained have weight with different minds; but all these ends are comprehended in the desire that woman be endowed with citizenship in order that she may have the legal right to be right-womanly.

If the question were asked, what is right-womanly? few voices would dissent from the assertion, that it is, at least, right-womanly to be religious. But I think I can show that even this womanliness is crippled by disfranchisement. For “woman's hour has struck,” and we may as well set the church bells a pealing. It may as well now be recognized that the church will but stultify itself and degrade humanity if it continue to disfranchise woman's best power and inspirations. And it is recognized that the minister who aids and abets woman's disfranchisement not only works against woman's best development, and the development of the man she influences and the children she creates, but also, that he works against the prime object of the church that pays him a salary to upbuild, not to pull down the human race. For, it is recognized, that the subjection of one class to another cultivates in the subject class two faculties: the desire of pleasing, and the fear of displeasing the dominant will.

Women constitute the numerical majority of church membership. In the church as well as out of it, women are the subject class. The result of this subjection has been to turn the numerical majority of the church into timid falterers, who have practically been taught to build character—not on the Gibraltine rock of duty to Jehovah, self and humanity—but on the prejudices of those who, by the code of church and State, hold woman in subjection to man. Thus, the minority of the church has made the majority timorous and uncertain. It is this burden of disabling disfranchisement then, not the uplifting power of religious womanliness, which has set its seal on the church—two-thirds of the body of which is thus prostrated under a disability—which, were it imposed on the other third, would quickly bring it to rebellion.

It is claimed that woman is naturally more religious and moral than man. If she is (and facts seem to substantiate the assertion), it is incongruous that the less spiritual element of society should be preachers and law-makers for the more spiritual elements. It appeals to common sense that if the more spiritual element is utterly subjected to the teaching and control of the less spiritual and moral element, that the perversion will result in the degradation, not in the elevation of both teacher and taught. The fact, that any church has decreased it to be wrong for woman to demand freedom to do exactly right, more than hints at a necessity for the common sense of the whole church, that the whole church—instead of one-third of it—may be left to preach and practice the whole gospel of dual life.

Twenty-one years as a pastor's wife supply data for the conclusion that the prevaling irreverence for life (present and to come), is the result of relegating womanhood to the position of silent learner at the feet of those “naturally less religious” (less capable of naturally apprehending creative power), than is woman. It is natural that the mother 139136of the race should eagerly apprehend creative power, for it is she who goes down to the portals of death to give life to the world. She understands what life-giving costs! But all this holy teaching revealed at the altar where woman ministers high priest forever, is to man a mystery. And by man woman's lips have been sealed against the utterance of “all the words of life.” And at last it has come to pass that masculine ignorance of the cost of life has included a masculine irreverence for the sacredness of life. This has pervaded pulpit and politics, until to-day, blind impulse immortals into being with as little reverence as with pistol-shot or murderous blow, it hustles them out. The reason there is so little appreciation of the sacredness of life is because one-half of the dual mystery remains yet infolded and unrevealed. For a disfranchising church has silenced woman's utterances, and has embarrassed the religious world with half-orphanage.

Meanwhile woman has always known that rum, passion and ignorance are the incarnation of a triune devil, and she has stood by the church in good and evil report in the faith that it was able to lift up a standard against these enemies. But, if now at last, it shall transpire that minister and run-seller—like Pilate and Herod of old—have become friends in the work of crucifying humanity through the degradation of motherhood, woman, now, as of old, will cling to the Christ and will scout his crucifiers, whether they be robed in publican's blouse or preacher's broadcloth. For the time has now come in which right-womanliness demands for the world a religion in which two- thirds of the numerical majority shall not be misrepresented; a religion which will permit woman to stand squarely on two feet with level eyes and uplifted head, and in which woman's natural purity of heart will be so fully recognized that there will no longer be thrust on her any silly assumption of modesty; a religion which will lift the race up to the true science of life, not crush it down under a coward's fear of death; a religion that will do away with that mystery which is the father of the abomination which, by degrading motherhood, has filled the world with disease, atheism and woe; a religion which will give the world healthful bodies and alert souls, and which will break forth in a universal jubilance more expressive of life's delight in creative excellence, than is the old groan, “Lord be merciful to us miserable sinners!” Why be miserable sinners? Does some minister answer, “it is man's nature to be wicked”? If so, woman is sorry to hear it, and is glad to say distinctly, that it is not woman's nature. Woman is not made on that plan. She is not constructed for participation in any such condition. She naturally detests disorderly life and incongruous teachings; and desires to reléguer, “collect again and bring back,” distorted, fragmentary humanity to the father and mother of spirits. She believes that that “freedom wherewith Christ makes his people free,” includes such an enfranchisement of womanhood, as shall enable her to make the best use of herself, for herself and others.

Thoughtful men who desire to make life beautiful for themselves and their wives, recognize that it is time women were self-governed; that it is time that males (simply as males) ceased trying to interpret the mysteries of womanhood and motherhood. They recognize that woman cannot be serviceably religious except she has part in making and executing the laws which control her life, health and creative mental powers; in short, has freedom to be herself in the full out-flowering, forth-fruiting of her now cramped nature; that then she will not only be her own interpreter, but will make plain many of life's unnecessary distortions and mysteries. Hypocrisy is not religion; self- repression is not religion. They are the reverse. Yet self-repression is the chief thing which has been forced on woman, and this has resulted self-distortion; and this self-distortion, she, in virtue of her motherhood, has transmitted to her sons and daughters. This has gone on, until the best woman of to-day is far from being the heart's delight that she would have been, had generations of enfranchised motherhood garnered up in her being a health-invigorated, brain-inspired heredity. 140We must face the fact. Humanity has been robbed by woman's disfranchisement. But the past with its blunders is beyond our reach. We have the present. In it we can act. So now, like a good comrade in the battle of life, woman asks to be equipped before the law as men are equipped with the one civilized weapon of self-protection— the ballot.

Though, in the midst of the complications which come from the subjection of woman's wisdom to man's will, discouraged souls have cried out: “It is no use to be good, for you can't be good, and if you are good, it will do you no good.” Yet, for each such woman a hundred braver women stand, like the slave in the market place, who, when his would-be purchaser asked, “If I buy you, will you be faithful?” like him reply, “I will be faithful, whether you buy me or not.” Still it is not a pleasant thing for such womanhood to stand, suppliants for freedom, while the motley crowd of voters, scanning them, say, one to another, “Think you, will these be faithful, if we free them?” For men well know women will be faithful, whether free or not; but also, men should know each ideal of faithfulness depends on the development of the soul that forms the ideal. And common observation shows that high honor is not taught in a training school for slaves, but is learned alone through that self-government which renders each act the exponent of the individual's conviction.

Give woman the right to be right-womanly and she will be religious in such a life-blessing way, that there will soon go up from the land the joy-cry: “It is of use to be good, for you can be good, and when you are good, it does do you much good!”

Yours sincerely, Eveleen L. Mason. San Jose, Cal., Feb. 26, 1884.

Dear Friends:

I think Mr. Reagan of Texas would do well to read the Constitution of the United States. I am sure the framers of that instrument, like those who now read his brilliant witticisms, would conclude he had digested very little of its contents, hence that it was “lost” to him at least. He says: “We propose to take up a subject to amuse ourselves with, because there is a clamor of a certain portion, and perhaps a very respectable portion, of the people for it.” Are Congressmen sent to Washington to “amuse” themselves, especially over a subject as dear to the women of this Nation as was that of freedom to our ancestors during the seven years’ struggle for American independence, a government of the people, from which the women—one-half the people—should never have been debarred; and we contend, are not by the principles of the Constitution.

Further, Mr. Reagan says: “I hope it will not be considered ungenerous in me that I oppose the wish of any lady; but when she so far misunderstands her duty as to want to go to working on the roads, making rails or go into the army, I want to protect her against herself.” No doubt that is just why the gentleman opposes the measure. It appears to me, that unless Mr. Reagan understands his duty better, and is more familiar with other matters which he may be called upon to decide—being a representative of the people—of which even he admits women are perhaps a very respectable portion, than he seems to be with the equal rights problem, it would be much more appropriate that he should go to working on the roads, making rails, or go into the army, or almost any other place, than into the halls of Congress, to amuse himself by listening to the clamor of a certain portion of the people.

If women are persons, there is nothing in the Constitution of the United States prohibiting them from equal rights and privileges with men. On the contrary, the very first sentence is a full indorsement of their complete citizenship; “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice (mark that), insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain 141138and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Will denying justice to women insure domestic tranquility, or secure to them the blessings of liberty? Is their posterity exclusively of the male sex?

Art. 1. Sec. 2 says: “Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service, and excluding Indians not taxed, and three-fifths of all other persons.” Surely, women are included in the above clause; the only class excluded are Indians, and they are not taxed. How different the opinion of Mr. Reagan from that of James Madison, who said: “Let it be remembered, that it has ever been the pride of America, that the rights for which she contended were the rights of human nature.”

Cordially yours, Sarah Knox Goodrich.

Mrs. Goodrich is one of the largest tax-payers among the women of her State, and one of the few possessing wealth who annually makes liberal contributions to the success of our movement.

Miss M. Adeline Thomson of Philadelphia, one of the truest of the pioneer friends, writes: “I was at our club to-day. A new committee has been formed to search into the employments of women. One of the committee was told by a teacher at the head of the boys mechanical drawing school, that “there was no reason why she could not attend, only that it was a boy's school, and he didn't know how the students would like her to the there.” “Why,” said she, “I would not hurt the boys!” The answer was so unexpected that he laughed outright and said, “Come and try!” She went; and the result was, that the very presence of a young lady brought harmony, where before there had been a good deal of discord, and the school went on better than ever. Of course the teacher never thought of the girl hurting the boys, but only that the boys would hurt her! His fears proved wholly groundless.”

Besides many more letters from individual friends, * we received messages of greeting from various associations. †