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From 1887 to 1914 we had a suffrage
convention every year, and I attended each of them. In
preceding chapters I have mentioned various convention episodes
of more or less importance. Now, looking back over them all as
I near the end of these reminiscences, I recall a few additional
incidents which had a bearing on later events. There was, for
example, the much-discussed attack on suffrage during the
Atlanta convention of 1895, by a prominent clergyman of that
city whose name I mercifully withhold. On the Sunday preceding
our arrival this gentleman preached a sermon warning every one
to keep away from our meetings, as our effort was not to secure
the franchise for women, but to encourage the intermarriage of
the black and white races. Incidentally he declared that the
suffragists were trying to break up the homes of America and
degrade the morals of women, and that we were all infidels and
blasphemers. He ended with a personal attack on me, saying that
on the previous Sunday I had preached in the Epworth Memorial
Methodist Church of Cleveland, Ohio, a sermon which was of so
blasphemous a nature that nothing could purify the church after
it except to burn it down.
As usual at our conventions, I had
been announced to preach the sermon at our Sunday conference,
and I need hardly point out that the reverend gentleman's charge
created a deep public interest in this effort. I had already
selected a text, but I immediately changed my plans and
announced that I would repeat the sermon I had delivered in
Cleveland and which the Atlanta minister considered so
blasphemous. The announcement brought out an audience which
filled the Opera House and called for a squad of police officers
to keep in order the street crowd that could not secure
entrance. The assemblage had naturally expected that I would
make some reply to the clergyman's attack, but I made no
reference whatever to him. I merely repeated, with emphasis,
the sermon I had delivered in Cleveland. At the conclusion of
the service one of the trustees of my reverend critic's church
came and apologized for his pastor. He had a high regard for
him, the trustee said, but in this instance there could be no
doubt in the mind of any one who had heard both sermons that of
the two mine was the tolerant, the reverent, and the Christian
one. The attack made many friends for us, first because of its
injustice, and next because of the good-humored tolerance with
which the suffragists accepted it.
The Atlanta convention, by the way,
was arranged and largely financed by the Misses Howard-- three
sisters living in Columbus, Georgia, and each an officer of the
Georgia Woman Suffrage Association. It is a remarkable fact that
in many of our Southern states the suffrage movement has been
led by three sisters. In Kentucky the three Clay sisters were
for many years leaders in the work. In Texas the three Finnegan
sisters did splendid work; in Louisiana the Gordon sisters were
our stanchest allies, while in Virginia we had the invaluable
aid of Mary Johnston, the novelist, and her two sisters. We
used to say, laughingly, if there was a failure to organize any
state in the South, that it must be due to the fact that no
family there had three sisters to start the movement.
From the Atlanta convention we went
directly to Washington to attend the convention of the National
Council of Women, and on the first day of this council Frederick
Douglass came to the meeting. Mr. Douglass had a special place
in the hearts of suffragists, for the reason that at the first
convention ever held for woman suffrage in the United States (at
Seneca Falls, New York) he was the only person present who stood
by Elizabeth Cady Stanton when she presented her resolution in
favor of votes for women. Even Lucretia Mott was startled by
this radical step, and privately breathed into the ear of her
friend, "Elizabeth, thee is making us ridiculous!'' Frederick
Douglass, however, took the floor in defense of Mrs. Stanton's
motion, a service we suffragists never forgot. Therefore, when
the presiding officer of the council, Mrs. May Wright Sewall,
saw Mr. Douglass enter the convention hall in Washington on this
particular morning, she appointed Susan B. Anthony and me a
committee to escort him to a seat on the platform, which we
gladly did. Mr. Douglass made a short speech and then left the
building, going directly to his home. There, on entering his
hall, he had an attack of heart failure and dropped dead as he
was removing his overcoat. His death cast a gloom over the
convention, and his funeral, which took place three days later,
was attended by many prominent men and women who were among the
delegates. Miss Anthony and I were invited to take part in the
funeral services, and she made a short address, while I offered
a prayer. The event had an aftermath in Atlanta, for it led our
clerical enemy to repeat his charges against us, and to offer
the funeral of Frederick Douglass as proof that we were hand in
glove with the negro race.
Under the gracious direction of Miss
Kate Gordon and the Louisiana Woman Suffrage Association, we
held an especially inspiring convention in New Orleans in 1903.
In no previous convention were arrangements more perfect, and
certainly nowhere else did the men of a community co-operate
more generously with the women in entertaining us. A club of
men paid the rent of our hall, chartered a steamboat and gave us
a ride on the Mississippi, and in many other ways helped to make
the occasion a success. Miss Gordon, who was chairman of the
programme committee, introduced the innovation of putting me
before the audience for twenty minutes every evening, at the
close of the regular session, as a target for questions. Those
present were privileged to ask any questions they pleased, and I
answered them--if I could. We were all conscious of the dangers
attending a discussion of the negro question, and it was
understood among the Northern women that we must take every
precaution to avoid being led into such discussion. It had not
been easy to persuade Miss Anthony of the wisdom of this course;
her way was to face issues squarely and out in the open. But
she agreed that we must respect the convictions of the Southern
men and women who were entertaining us so hospitably.
On the opening night, as I took my
place to answer questions, almost the first slip passed up bore
these words: What is your purpose in bringing your convention to
the South? Is it the desire of suffragists to force upon us the
social equality of black and white women? Political equality
lays the foundation for social equality. If you give the ballot
to women, won't you make the black and white woman equal
politically and therefore lay the foundation for a future claim
of social equality? I laid the paper on one side and did not
answer the question. The second night it came to me again, put
in the same words, and again I ignored it. The third night it
came with this addition: Evidently you do not dare to answer
this question. Therefore our conclusion is that this is your
purpose. When I had read this I went to the front of the
platform.
"Here,'' I said, "is a question
which has been asked me on three successive nights. I have not
answered it because we Northern women had decided not to enter
into any discussion of the race question. But now I am told by
the writer of this note that we dare not answer it. I wish to
say that we dare to answer it if you dare to have it answered
--and I leave it to you to decide whether I shall answer it or
not.''
I read the question aloud. Then the
audience called for the answer, and I gave it in these words,
quoted as accurately as I can remember them: "If political
equality is the basis of social equality, and if by granting
political equality you lay the foundation for a claim of social
equality, I can only answer that you have already laid that
claim. You did not wait for woman suffrage, but disfranchised
both your black and your white women, thus making them
politically equal. But you have done more than that. You have
put the ballot into the hands of your black men, thus making
them the political superiors of your white women. Never before
in the history of the world have men made former slaves the
political masters of their former mistresses!'' The point went
home and it went deep. I drove it in a little further.
"The women of the South are not
alone,'' I said, "in their humiliation. All the women of
America share it with them. There is no other nation in the
world in which women hold the position of political degradation
our American women hold to-day. German women are governed by
German men; French women are governed by French men. But in
these United States American women are governed by every race of
men under the light of the sun. There is not a color from white
to black, from red to yellow, there is not a nation from pole to
pole, that does not send its contingent to govern American
women. If American men are willing to leave their women in a
position as degrading as this they need not be surprised when
American women resolve to lift themselves out of it.''
For a full moment after I had
finished there was absolute silence in the audience. We did not
know what would happen. Then, suddenly, as the truth of the
statement struck them, the men began to applaud--and the danger
of that situation was over. Another episode had its part in
driving the suffrage lesson home to Southern women. The
Legislature had passed a bill permitting tax-paying women to
vote at any election where special taxes were to be imposed for
improvements, and the first election following the passage of
this bill was one in New Orleans, in which the question of
better drainage for the city was before the public. Miss Gordon
and the suffrage association known as the Era Club entered
enthusiastically into the fight for good drainage. According to
the law women could vote by proxy if they preferred, instead of
in person, so Miss Gordon drove to the homes of the old
conservative Creole families and other families whose women were
unwilling to vote in public, and she collected their proxies
while incidentally she showed them what position they held under
the law.
With each proxy it was necessary to
have the signature of a witness, but according to the Louisiana
law no woman could witness a legal document. Miss Gordon was
driven from place to place by her colored coachman, and after
she had secured the proxy of her temporary hostess it was
usually discovered that there was no man around the place to act
as a witness. This was Miss Gordon's opportunity. With a smile
of great sweetness she would say, "I will have Sam come in and
help us out''; and the colored coachman would get down from his
box, and by scrawling his signature on the proxy of the
aristocratic lady he would give it the legal value it lacked. In
this way Miss Gordon secured three hundred proxies, and three
hundred very conservative women had an opportunity to compare
their legal standing with Sam's. The drainage bill was carried
and interest in woman suffrage developed steadily.
The special incident of the Buffalo
convention of 1908 was the receipt of a note which was passed up
to me as I sat on the platform. When I opened it a check
dropped out--a check so large that I was sure it had been sent
by mistake. However, after asking one or two friends on the
platform if I had read it correctly, I announced to the audience
that if a certain amount were subscribed immediately I would
reveal a secret--a very interesting secret. Audiences are as
curious as individuals. The amount was at once subscribed.
Then I held up a check for $10,000, given for our campaign work
by Mrs. George Howard Lewis, in memory of Susan B. Anthony, and
I read to the audience the charming letter that accompanied it.
The money was used during the campaigns of the following
year--part of it in Washington, where an amendment was already
submitted.
In a previous chapter I have
described the establishment of our New York headquarters as a
result of the generous offer of Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont at the
Seattle convention in 1909. During our first year in these
beautiful Fifth Avenue rooms Mrs. Pankhurst made her first visit
to America, and we gave her a reception there. This, however,
was before the adoption of the destructive methods which have
since marked the activities of the band of militant suffragists
of which Mrs. Pankhurst is president. There has never been any
sympathy among American suffragists for the militant suffrage
movement in England, and personally I am wholly opposed to it.
I do not believe in war in any form; and if violence on the part
of men is undesirable in achieving their ends, it is much more
so on the part of women; for women never appear to less
advantage than in physical combats with men. As for militancy
in America, no generation that attempted it could win. No
victory could come to us in any state where militant methods
were tried. They are undignified, unworthy--in other words,
un-American.
The Washington convention of 1910
was graced by the presence of President Taft, who, at the
invitation of Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery, made an address. It was
understood, of course, that he was to come out strongly for
woman suffrage; but, to our great disappointment, the President,
a most charming and likable gentleman, seemed unable to grasp
the significance of the occasion. He began his address with
fulsome praise of women, which was accepted in respectful
silence. Then he got round to woman suffrage, floundered
helplessly, became confused, and ended with the most
unfortunately chosen words he could have uttered: "I am
opposed,'' he said, "to the extension of suffrage to women not
fitted to vote. You would hardly expect to put the ballot into
the hands of barbarians or savages in the jungle!'' The dropping
of these remarkable words into a suffrage convention was
naturally followed by an oppressive silence, which Mr. Taft, now
wholly bereft of his self-possession, broke by saying that the
best women would not vote and the worst women would.
In his audience were many women from
suffrage states--high-minded women, wives and mothers, who had
voted for Mr. Taft. The remarks to which they had just listened
must have seemed to them a poor return. Some one hissed--some
man, some woman--no one knows which except the culprit-- and a
demonstration started which I immediately silenced. Then the
President finished his address. He was very gracious to us when
he left, shaking hands with many of us, and being especially
cordial to Senator Owens's aged mother, who had come to the
convention to hear him make his maiden speech on woman
suffrage. I have often wondered what he thought of that speech
as he drove back to the White House. Probably he regretted as
earnestly as we did that he had made it.
In 1912, at an official board
meeting at Bryn Mawr, Mrs. Stanley McCormack was appointed to
fill a vacancy on the National Board. Subsequently she
contributed $6,000 toward the payment of debts incident to our
temporary connection with the Woman's Journal of Boston, and did
much efficient work for us, To me, personally, the entrance of
Mrs. Stanley McCormack into our work has been a source of the
deepest gratification and comfort. I can truly say of her what
Susan B. Anthony said of me, "She is my right bower.'' At
Nashville, in 1914, she was elected first vice-president, and to
a remarkable degree she has since relieved me of the burden of
the technical work of the presidency, including the oversight of
the work at headquarters. To this she gives all her time, aided
by an executive secretary who takes charge of the routine work
of the association. She has thus made it possible for me to
give the greater part of my time to the field in which such
inspiring opportunities still confront us--campaign work in the
various states.
To Mrs. Medill McCormack also we are
indebted for most admirable work and enthusiastic support. At
the Washington (D.C.) convention in 1913 she was made the
chairman of the Congressional Committee, with Mrs. Antoinette
Funk, Mrs. Helen Gardner of Washington, and Mrs. Booth of
Chicago as her assistants. The results they achieved were so
brilliant that they were unanimously re-elected to the same
positions this year, with the addition of Miss Jeannette Rankin,
whose energy and service had helped to win for us the state of
Montana. It was largely due to the work of this Congressional
Committee, supported by the large number of states which had
been won for suffrage, that we secured such an excellent vote in
the Lower House of Congress on the bill to amend the national
Constitution granting suffrage to the women of the United
States. This measure, known as the Susan B. Anthony bill, had
been introduced into every Congress for forty-three years by the
National Woman Suffrage Association. In 1914, for the first
time, it was brought out of committee, debated, and voted upon
in the Lower House. We received 174 votes in favor of it to 204
against it. The previous spring, in the same Congress, the same
bill passed the Senate by 35 votes for it to 33 votes against
it.
The most interesting features of the
Washington convention of 1913 were the labor mass-meetings led
by Jane Addams and the hearing before the Rules Committee of the
Lower House of Con- gress--the latter the first hearing ever
held before this Committee for the purpose of securing a
Committee on Suffrage in the Lower House to correspond with a
similar committee in the Senate. For many years we had had
hearings before the Judiciary Committee of the Lower House,
which was such a busy committee that it had neither time nor
interest to give to our measure. We therefore considered it
necessary to have a special committee of our own. The hearing
began on the morning of Wednesday, the third of December, and
lasted for two hours. Then the anti-suffragists were given
time, and their hearing began the following day, continued
throughout that day and during the morning of the next day, when
our National Association was given an opportunity for rebuttal
argument in the afternoon. It was the longest hearing in the
history of the suffrage movement, and one of the most important.
During the session of Congress in
1914 another strenuous effort was made to secure the appointment
of a special suffrage committee in the Lower House. But when
success began to loom large before us the Democrats were called
in caucus by the minority leader, Mr. Underwood, of Alabama, and
they downed our measure by a vote of 127 against it to 58 for
it. This was evidently done by the Democrats because of the
fear that the united votes of Republican and Progressive
members, with those of certain Democratic members, would carry
the measure; whereas if this caucus were called, and an
unfavorable vote taken, "the gentlemen's agreement'' which
controls Democratic party action in Congress would force
Democrats in favor of suffrage to vote against the appointment
of the committee, which of course would insure its defeat. The
caucus blocked the appointment of the committee, but it gave
great encouragement to the suffragists of the country, for they
knew it to be a tacit admission that the measure would receive a
favorable vote if it came before Congress unhampered.
Another feature of the 1913
convention was the new method of electing officers, by which a
primary vote was taken on nominations, and afterward a regular
ballot was cast; one officer was added to the members of the
official board, making nine instead of eight, the former
number. The new officers elected were Mrs. Breckenridge of
Kentucky, the great-granddaughter of Henry Clay, and Mrs.
Catherine Ruutz-Rees of Greenwich, Connecticut. The old officers
were re-elected--Miss Jane Addams as first vice-president, Mrs.
Breckenridge and Mrs. Ruutz-Rees as second and third
vice-presidents, Mrs. Mary Ware Dennett as corresponding
secretary, Mrs. Susan Fitzgerald as recording secretary, Mrs.
Stanley McCormack as treasurer, Mrs. Joseph Bowen of Chicago and
Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw of New York City as auditors.
It would be difficult to secure a
group of women of more marked ability, or better-known workers
in various lines of philanthropic and educational work, than the
members composing this admirable board. At the convention of
1914, held in Nashville, several of them resigned, and at
present (in 1914) the "National's'' affairs are in the hands of
this inspiring group, again headed by the much-criticized and
chastened writer of these reminiscences:
Mrs. Stanley McCormack, first
vice-president.
Mrs. Desha Breckenridge, second vice-president.
Dr. Katharine B. Davis, third vice-president.
Mrs. Henry Wade Rogers, treasurer.
Mrs. John Clark, corresponding secretary.
Mrs. Susan Walker Fitzgerald, recording secretary.
Mrs. Medill McCormack, Auditors
Mrs. Walter McNabb Miller, of Missouri
In a book of this size, and covering
the details of my own life as well as the development of the
great Cause, it is, of course, impossible to mention by name
each woman who has worked for us-- though, indeed, I would like
to make a roll of honor and give them all their due. In looking
back I am surprised to see how little I have said about many
women with whom I have worked most closely--Rachel Foster Avery,
for example, with whom I lived happily for several years; Ida
Husted Harper, the historian of the suffrage movement and the
biographer of Miss Anthony, with whom I made many delightful
voyages to Europe; Alice Stone Blackwell, Rev. Mary Saffard,
Jane Addams, Katharine Waugh McCullough, Ella Stewart, Mrs. Mary
Wood Swift, Mrs. Mary S. Sperry, Mary Cogshall, Florence Kelly,
Mrs. Ogden Mills Reid and Mrs. Norman Whitehouse (to mention
only two of the younger "live wires'' in our New York work),
Sophonisba Breck- enridge, Mrs. Clara B. Arthur, Rev. Caroline
Bartlett Crane, Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw, Mrs. Raymond Brown, the
splendidly executive president of our New York State Suffrage
Association, and my benefactress, Mrs. George Howard Lewis of
Buffalo.
To all of them, and to thousands of
others, I make my grateful acknowledgment of indebtedness for
friendship and for help. |
