will recognize that what each contributes bears but a small ratio to what each receives from the rest. The different nationalities will recognize their respective dignities in just the proportion in which the whole must transcend any part. Then humanity will exceed national feeling and the unity of the race will exalt the dignity of the individual.
The resolution presented by Mrs. Sewall, member for the United States of the International Peace Union, rejoicing over the approaching Peace Conference at The Hague and assuring the commissioners from the United States of the sympathy of the women of this country, was unanimously adopted.
The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, national vice-president, whose childhood and early girlhood had been spent in Michigan, closed the Saturday evening meeting with a tender address on Working Partners, a graphic description of the pioneer days of this State and the hardships of its women, during which she said: "Women have been faithful partners and have done their full share of the work. A gentleman opposed to their enfranchisement once said to me, 'Women have never produced anything of any value to the world.' I told him the chief product of the women had been the men, and left it to him to decide whether the product was of any value. Is it said that women must not vote because they can not bear arms? Why, women's arms have borne all the arm-bearers of the world. We have no antique art in America, but we have antique laws. We do not look back to the antiquity of the world, but to the babyhood of the world. Who would think of calling a new-born infant antique? Yet laws made in the babyhood of the world are in this day of its manhood quoted for our guidance. Much has been said lately about 'the white man's burden', but the white man will never have a heavier burden to take up than himself."
Twelve churches offered their pulpits, which were filled by the women speakers Sunday morning.117 The regular convention services were held Sunday afternoon in the St. Cecilia building, a large audience being present. The Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell led the devotional exercises, and the Rev. Florence Kollock Crooker gave the sermon from the text: "Whether one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it." Afterwards Mrs. Sewall spoke on the coming Peace Congress at The Hague and, on motion of Melvin A. Root, a resolution was adopted that on May 15, the opening day of the congress, the women of our country assemble in public and send to it the voice of women in favor of peace.
A touching letter from Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was read by Miss Anthony during the convention, in which she said: "We seem to be pariahs alike in the visible and the invisible world, with no foothold anywhere, though by every principle of government and religion we should have an equal place on this planet. We do not hold the ignorant class of men responsible for these outrages against women, but rather the published opinions of men in high positions, judges, bishops, presidents of colleges, editors, novelists and poets—all taught by the common and civil law. It is a sad reflection that the chains of woman's bondage have been forged by her own sires and sons. Every man who is not for us in this prolonged struggle for liberty is responsible for the present degradation of the mothers of the race. It is pitiful to see how few men ever have made our cause their own, but while leaving us to fight our battle alone, they have been unsparing in their criticism of every failure. Of all the battles for liberty in the long past, woman only has been left to fight her own, without help and with all the powers of earth and heaven, human and divine, arrayed against her."
Monday evening Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, national treasurer, told of An Ohio Woman's Experience as Member of a School Board. She gave a lively account of her own nomination and election in Warren, and said in concluding: "It was not a war of women against men, but of liberalism against conservatism, of principle against prejudice, of the new against the old. It does not take any more time to clean up a schoolhouse and keep out scarlet fever than it does to nurse the children through the scarlet fever."
Mrs. Flora Beadle Renkes, School Commissioner of Barry County, Mich., described Some Phases of Public School Work. She advocated industrial and moral as well as intellectual training and all of this equally for both sexes.
Mrs. Minerva Welch, in considering Woman's Possibilities, said: "To my mind it is given to woman to develop the greatest possibilities in all the world. She can direct the character of generations. If woman ever gains the place God intended her to have it must be through the mother element. In Denver we have organized women's clubs for the study of art, literature and political science. We have learned to fraternize. Men have found that women bring their moral influence into politics, and the men also know that they must look to their own morals if they want office. Many questions have been sent to our State asking about the new conditions. Woman suffrage has proved a success, and the women can stand with heads erect, shoulder to shoulder with any one, knowing that they are full, free citizens of the State of Colorado and of the United States."
Miss Anthony then, by special request, gave a recital of all the facts connected with her arrest, trial and conviction for voting in 1872. Miss Shaw introduced her as a criminal, and Miss Anthony retorted, "Yes, a criminal out of jail, just like a good many of the brethren." With marvelous power she recalled all the details of that dramatic episode.
Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway (Ore.) gave an address on How to Win the Ballot, containing much sound sense. It was published in full by the Grand Rapids Democrat. Mrs. Evelyn H. Belden, president of the Iowa Equal Suffrage Association, spoke on Women and War, saying:
Did you ever have to live with heroes—with men who have survived the hardships and dangers of war? One of the reasons for my mildness in public is that I have to be mild at home. I live with the heroes of two wars. The elder put down the rebellion—so he tells me. The younger, for whom I am responsible, has accomplished an even more perilous feat; he met in mortal combat every day for six months the product of the commissary department of our late war. He is still alive, but "kicking"—and so is his mother!
Note that there were no women on the War Investigating Commission. Brutal officers, incompetent quartermasters and ignorant doctors were tried before a jury of their peers. Every department which was conducted without the help of women has been for months writhing under the probe of an official investigation, and is still writhing under the lash of public opinion.
When the war broke out, the women of Iowa, with the suffragists at their head, cheerfully consecrated themselves to the service of a State which does not recognize them as the equals of their own boys. I have one old trunk that made six trips to Chickamauga Park, filled with delicacies for the soldiers. About August I made up my mind to go and see things for myself. My husband was told it was no place for a woman there among 60,000 men and 1,500 animals; but he had business at home which he did not think I could attend to, and he thought I could go to Chickamauga just as well as he....
If there had been women on the commission, would they have pitched the camp five miles from water? Or provided only one horse and one mule to bring the water for two companies? Or ordered the soldiers to filter and boil their drinking water, without furnishing any filters or any vessels to boil it in? It is said that suffragists do not know how to keep house. If so, the men who managed the war must all be suffragists.
But Clara Barton and the women nurses have won golden opinions from every one. If any man had given a tithe of what Helen Gould did, he could have had any office in the gift of the administration. So could she, if she had been a voter. She might even have been Secretary of War.
We raise our sons to die not for their country—no woman grudges her sons to her country—but to die unnecessarily of disease and neglect, because of red tape....
History furnishes no parallel to the women of America during the last year's war. They were fully alive to its issues, intelligently conversant with its causes, its purposes and possibilities; they studied camp locations, conditions and military rules; and through the hand the heart found constant expression, as many a company of grateful boys can testify. The experience of this war ought to have effectually destroyed the last trace of mediæval sentiment concerning the propriety of women mixing in the affairs of government, and also the last shadow of doubt as to the expediency of recognizing them as voters.
Mrs. Josephine K. Henry (Ky.) made an address sparkling with the epigrams for which she was noted, entitled A Plea for the Ballot: