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In 1900 Miss Anthony, then over
eighty, decided that she must resign the presidency of our
National Association, and the question of the successor she
would choose became an important one. It was conceded that
there were only two candidates in her mind--Mrs. Carrie Chapman
Catt and myself--and for several months we gave the suffrage
world the unusual spectacle of rivals vigorously pushing each
other's claims. Miss Anthony was devoted to us both, and I
think the choice was a hard one for her to make. On the one
hand, I had been vice-president at large and her almost constant
companion for twelve years, and she had grown accustomed to
think of me as her successor. On the other hand, Mrs. Catt had
been chairman of the organization committee, and through her
splendid executive ability had built up our organization in many
states. From Miss Anthony down, we all recognized her steadily
growing powers; she had, moreover, abundant means, which I had
not. In my mind there was no question of her superior
qualification for the presidency. She seemed to me the logical
and indeed the only possible successor to Miss Anthony; and I
told "Aunt Susan'' so with all the eloquence I could command,
while simultaneously Mrs. Catt was pouring into Miss Anthony's
other ear a series of impassioned tributes to me. It was an
unusual situation and a very pleasant one, and it had two
excellent results: it simplified "Aunt Susan's'' problem by
eliminating the element of personal ambition, and it led to her
eventual choice of Mrs. Catt as her successor.
I will admit here for the first time
that in urging Mrs. Catt's fitness for the office I made the
greatest sacrifice of my life. My highest ambition had been to
succeed Miss Anthony, for no one who knew her as I did could
underestimate the honor of being chosen by her to carry on her
work. At the convention in Washington that year she formally
refused the nomination for re-election, as we had all expected,
and then, on being urged to choose her own successor, she
stepped forward to do so. It was a difficult hour, for her
fiery soul resented the limitations imposed by her worn-out
body, and to such a worker the most poignant experience in life
is to be forced to lay down one's work at the command of old
age. On this she touched briefly, but in a trembling voice; and
then, in furtherance of the understanding between the three of
us, she presented the name of Mrs. Catt to the convention with
all the pride and hope a mother could feel in the presentation
of a daughter. Her faith was fully justified. Mrs. Catt made an
admirable president, and during every moment of the four years
she held the office she had Miss Anthony's whole-hearted and
enthusiastic support, while I, too, in my continued office of
vice-president, did my utmost to help her in every way. In
1904, however, Mrs. Catt was elected president of the
International Suffrage Alliance, as I have mentioned before, and
that same year she resigned the presidency of our National
Association, as her health was not equal to the strain of
carrying the two offices.
Miss Anthony immediately urged me to
accept the presidency of the National Association, which I was
now most unwilling to do; I had lost my ambition to be
president, and there were other reasons, into which I need not
go again, why I felt that I could not accept the post. At last,
however, Miss Anthony actually commanded me to take the place,
and there was nothing to do but obey her. She was then
eighty-four, and, as it proved, within two years of her death.
It was no time for me to rebel against her wishes; but I yielded
with the heaviest heart I have ever carried, and after my
election to the presidency at the national convention in
Washington I left the stage, went into a dark corner of the
wings, and for the first time since my girlhood "cried myself
sick.''
In the work I now took up I found
myself much alone. Mrs. Catt was really ill, and the strength
of "Aunt Susan'' must be saved in every way. Neither could give
me much help, though each did all she should have done, and
more. Mrs. Catt, whose husband had recently died, was in a
deeply despondent frame of mind, and seemed to feel that the
future was hopelessly dark. My own panacea for grief is work,
and it seemed to me that both physically and mentally she would
be helped by a wise combination of travel and effort. During my
lifetime I have cherished two ambitions, and only two: the
first, as I have already confessed, had been to succeed Miss
Anthony as president of our association; the second was to go
around the world, carrying the woman-suffrage ideal to every
country, and starting in each a suffrage society.
Long before the inception of the
International Suffrage Alliance I had dreamed this dream; and,
though it had receded as I followed it through life, I had never
wholly lost sight of it. Now I realized that for me it could
never be more than a dream. I could never hope to have enough
money at my disposal to carry it out, and it occurred to me that
if Mrs. Catt undertook it as president of the International
Suffrage Alliance the results would be of the greatest benefit
to the Cause and to her. In my first visit to her after her
husband's death I suggested this plan, but she replied that it
was impossible for her to consider it. I did not lose thought
of it, however, and at the next International Conference, held
in Copenhagen in 1907, I suggested to some of the delegates that
we introduce the matter as a resolution, asking Mrs. Catt to go
around the world in behalf of woman suffrage. They approved the
suggestion so heartily that I followed it up with a speech
setting forth the whole plan and Mrs. Catt's peculiar fitness
for the work. Several months later Mrs. Catt and Dr. Aletta
Jacobs, president of the Holland Suffrage Association, started
on their world tour; and not until after they had gone did I
fully realize that the two great personal ambitions of my life
had been realized, not by me, but by another, and in each case
with my enthusiastic co-operation.
In 1904, following my election to
the presidency, a strong appeal came from the Board of Managers
of the exposition to be held in Portland, Oregon, urging us to
hold our next annual convention there during the exposition. It
was the first time an important body of men had recognized us in
this manner, and we gladly responded. So strong a political
factor did the men of Oregon recognize us to be that every
political party in the state asked to be represented on our
platform; and one entire evening of the convention was given
over to the representatives chosen by the various parties to
indorse the suffrage movement. Thus we began in Oregon the good
work we continued in 1906, and of which we reaped the harvest in
1912.
Next to "Suffrage Night,'' the most
interesting feature of the exposition to us was the unveiling of
the statue of Saccawagea, the young Indian girl who led the
Lewis and Clark expedition through the dangerous passes of the
mountain ranges of the Northwest until they reached the Pacific
coast. This statue, presented to the exposition by the women of
Oregon, is the belated tribute of the state to its most
dauntless pioneer; and no one can look upon the noble face of
the young squaw, whose outstretched hand points to the ocean,
without marveling over the ingratitude of the nation that
ignored her supreme service. To Saccawagea is due the opening
up of the entire western country. There was no one to guide
Lewis and Clark except this Indian, who alone knew the way; and
she led the whole party, carrying her papoose on her back. She
was only sixteen, but she brought every man safely through an
experience of almost unparalleled hardship and danger, nursing
them in sickness and setting them an example of unfaltering
courage and endurance, until she stood at last on the Pacific
coast, where her statue stands now, pointing to the wide sweep
of the Columbia River as it flows into the sea.
This recognition by women is the
only recognition she ever received. Both Lewis and Clark were
sincerely grateful to her and warmly recommended her to the
government for reward; but the government allowed her absolutely
nothing, though each man in the party she had led was given a
large tract of land. Tradition says that she was bitterly
disappointed, as well she might have been, and her Indian brain
must have been sadly puzzled. But she was treated little worse
than thousands of the white pioneer women who have followed her;
and standing: there to-day on the bank of her river, she still
seems sorrowfully reflective over the strange ways of the nation
she so nobly served.
The Oregon campaign of 1906 was the
carrying out of one of Miss Anthony's dearest wishes, and we who
loved her set about this work soon after her death. In the
autumn preceding her passing, headquarters had been established
in Oregon, and Miss Laura Gregg had been placed in charge, with
Miss Gale Laughlin as her associate. As the money for this
effort was raised by the National Association, it was decided,
after some discussion, to let the National Association develop
the work in Oregon, which was admittedly a hard state to carry
and full of possible difficulties which soon became actual ones.
As a beginning, the Legislature had
failed to submit an amendment; but as the initiative and
referendum was the law in Oregon, the amendment was submitted
through initiative patent. The task of securing the necessary
signatures was not an easy one, but at last a sufficient number
of signatures were secured and verified, and the authorities
issued the necessary proclamation for the vote, which was to
take place at a special election held on the 5th of June. Our
campaign work had been carried on as extensively as possible,
but the distances were great and the workers few, and as a
result of the strain upon her Miss Gregg's health soon failed
alarmingly.
All this was happening during Miss
Anthony's last illness, and it added greatly to our anxieties.
She instructed me to go to Oregon immediately after her death
and to take her sister Mary and her niece Lucy with me, and we
followed these orders within a week of her funeral, arriving in
Portland on the third day of April. I had attempted too much,
however, and I proved it by fainting as I got off the train, to
the horror of the friendly delegation waiting to receive us.
The Portland women took very tender care of me, and in a few
days I was ready for work, but we found conditions even worse
than we had expected. Miss Gregg had collapsed utterly and was
unable to give us any information as to what had been done or
planned, and we had to make a new foundation. Miss Laura Clay,
who had been in the Portland work for a few weeks, proved a
tower of strength, and we were soon aided further by Ida Porter
Boyer, who came on to take charge of the publicity department.
During the final six weeks of the
campaign Alice Stone Blackwell, of Boston, was also with us,
while Kate Gordon took under her special charge the organization
of the city of Portland and the parlormeeting work. Miss Clay
went into the state, where Emma Smith DeVoe and other speakers
were also working, and I spent my time between the office
headquarters and "the road,'' often working at my desk until it
was time to rush off and take a train for some town where I was
to hold a night meeting.
Miss Mary and Miss Lucy Anthony
confined themselves to office-work in the Portland headquarters,
where they gave us very valuable assistance. I have always
believed that we would have carried Oregon that year if the
disaster of the California earthquake had not occurred to divert
the minds of Western men from interest in anything save that
great catastrophe. On election day it seemed as if the heavens
had opened to pour floods upon us. Never before or since have I
seen such incessant, relentless rain. Nevertheless, the women of
Portland turned out in force, led by Mrs. Sarah Evans, president
of the Oregon State Federation of Women's Clubs, while all day
long Dr. Pohl took me in her automobile from one polling-place
to another. At each we found representative women patiently
enduring the drenching rain while they tried to persuade men to
vote for us. We distributed sandwiches, courage, and
inspiration among them, and tried to cheer in the same way the
women watchers, whose appointment we had secured that year for
the first time. Two women had been admitted to every
polling-place--but the way in which we had been able to secure
their presence throws a high-light on the difficulties we were
meeting. We had to persuade men candidates to select these
women as watchers; and the only men who allowed themselves to be
persuaded were those running on minority tickets and hopeless of
election --the prohibitionists, the socialists, and the
candidates of the labor party. The result of the election taught
us several things. We had been told that all the prohibitionists
and socialists would vote for us. Instead, we discovered that
the percentage of votes for woman suffrage was about the same in
every party, and that whenever the voter had cast a straight
vote, without independence enough to "scratch'' his ticket,
that vote was usually against us. On the other hand, when the
ticket was "scratched'' the vote was usually in our favor,
whatever political party the man belonged to.
Another interesting discovery was
that the early morning vote was favorable to our Cause the vote
cast by working-men on their way to their employment. During
the middle of the forenoon and afternoon, when the idle class
was at the polls, the vote ran against us. The late vote, cast
as men were returning from their work, was again largely in our
favor--and we drew some conclusions from this. Also, for the
first time in the history of any campaign, the anti-suffragists
had organized against us. Portland held a small body of women
with anti- suffrage sentiments, and there were others in the
state who formed themselves into an anti-suffrage society and
carried on a more or less active warfare. In this campaign, for
the first time, obscene cards directed against the suffragists
were circulated at the polls; and while I certainly do not
accuse the Oregon anti-suffragists of circulating them, it is a
fact that the cards were distributed as coming from the
anti-suffragists--undoubtedly by some vicious element among the
men which had its own good reason for opposing us. The
"antis'' also suffered in this campaign from the "pernicious
activity'' of their spokesman--a lawyer with an unenviable
reputation. After the campaign was over this man declared that
it had cost the opponents of our measure $300,000.In 1907 Mrs.
O. H. P. Belmont began to show an interest in suffrage work, and
through the influence of several leaders in the movement,
notably that of Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, she decided to assist in
the establishment of national headquarters in the State of New
York. For a long time the association's headquarters had been
in Warren, Ohio, the home of Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, then
national treasurer, and it was felt that their removal to a
larger city would have a great influence in developing the
work. In 1909 Mrs. Belmont attended as a delegate the meeting
of the International Suffrage Alliance in London, and her
interest in the Cause deepened. She became convinced that the
headquarters of the association should be in New York City, and
at our Seattle convention that same year I presented to the
delegates her generous offer to pay the rent and maintain a
press department for two years, on condition that our national
headquarters were established in New York. This proposition was
most gratefully accepted, and we promptly secured headquarters
in one of the most desirable buildings on Fifth Avenue. The
wisdom of the change was demonstrated at once by the
extraordinary growth of the work. During our last year in
Warren, for example, the proceeds from the sale of our
literature were between $1,200 and $1,300. During the first
year in New York our returns from such sales were between
$13,000 and $14,000, and an equal growth was evident in our
other departments. At the end of two years Mrs. Belmont ceased
to support the press department or to pay the rent, but her
timely aid had put us on our feet, and we were able to continue
our splendid progress and to meet our expenses.
The special event of 1908 was the
successful completion of the fund President M. Carey Thomas of
Bryn Mawr and Miss Mary Garrett had promised in 1906 to raise
for the Cause. For some time after Miss Anthony's death nothing
more was said of this, but I knew those two indefatigable
friends were not idle, and "Aunt Susan'' had died in the
blessed conviction that their success was certain. In 1907 I
received a letter from Miss Thomas telling me that the project
was progressing; and later she sent an outline of her plan,
which was to ask a certain number of wealthy persons to give
five hundred dollars a year each for a term of years. In all, a
fund of $60,000 was to be raised, of which we were to have
$12,000 a year for five years; $4,500 of the $12,000 was to be
paid in salaries to three active officers, and the remaining
$7,500 was to go toward the work of the association. The entire
fund was to be raised by May 1, 1908, she added, or the plan
would be dropped.
I was on a lecture tour in Ohio in
April, 1908, when one night, as I was starting for the hall
where the lecture was to be given, my telephone bell rang.
"Long distance wants you,'' the operator said, and the next
minute a voice I recognized as that of Miss Thomas was offering
congratulations. "The last dollar of the $60,000,'' she added,
"was pledged at four o'clock this afternoon.'' I was so
overcome by the news that I dropped the receiver and shook in a
violent nervous attack, and this trembling continued throughout
my lecture. It had not seemed possible that such a burden could
be lifted from my shoulders; $7,500 a year would greatly aid our
work, and $4,500 a year, even though divided among three
officers, would be a most welcome help to each. As subsequently
arranged, the salaries did not come to us through the National
Association treasury; they were paid directly by Miss Thomas and
Miss Garrett as custodians of the fund. So it is quite correct
to say that no salaries have ever been paid by the National
Association to its officers.
Three years later, in 1911, another
glorious surprise came to me in a very innocent-looking letter.
It was one of many in a heavy mail, and I opened it
absent-mindedly, for the day had been problem-filled. The writer
stated very simply that she wished to put a large amount into my
hands to invest, to draw on, and to use for the Cause as I saw
fit. The matter was to be a secret between us, and she wished no
subsequent accounting, as she had entire faith in my ability to
put the money to the best possible use. The proposition rather
dazed me, but I rallied my forces and replied that I was
infinitely grateful, but that the amount she mentioned was a
large one and I would much prefer to share the responsibility of
disbursing it. Could she not select one more person, at least,
to share the secret and act with me? She replied, telling me to
make the selection, if I insisted on having a confidante, and I
sent her the names of Miss Thomas and Miss Garrett, suggesting
that as Miss Thomas had done so much of the work in connection
with the $60,000 fund, Miss Garrett might be willing to accept
the detail work of this fund. My friend replied that either of
these ladies would be perfectly satisfactory to her. She knew
them both, she said, and I was to arrange the matter as I chose,
as it rested wholly in my hands. I used this money in subsequent
state campaigns, and I am very sure that to it was largely due
the winning of Arizona, Kansas, and Oregon in 1912, and of
Montana and Nevada in 1914. It enabled us for the first time to
establish headquarters, secure an office force, and engage
campaign speakers. I also spent some of it in the states we lost
then but will win later--Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan-- using
in all more than fifteen thousand dollars. In September, 1913,
I received another check from the same friend, showing that she
at least was satisfied with the results we had achieved.
"It goes to you with my love,'' she
wrote, "and my earnest hopes for further success--not the least
of this a crowning of your faithful, earnest, splendid work for
our beloved Cause. How blessed it is that you are our president
and leader!'' I had talked to this woman only twice in my life,
and I had not seen her for years when her first check came; so
her confidence in me was an even greater gift than her royal
donation toward our Cause. |
