associations of Denver. The social science department of the Denver Woman's Club has just voted unanimously to the same effect, and the Colorado Legislature lately passed a similar resolution by a vote of 45 to 3 in the House and 30 to 1 in the Senate. On the other hand, during the six years that equal suffrage has prevailed in Colorado the opponents have not yet found six respectable men who assert over their own names and addresses that it has had any bad results.
Whereas, At the Congressional hearing it was asserted that equal suffrage had led to no improvements in the laws of Colorado; therefore,
Resolved, That we call attention to the fact that Colorado owes to equal suffrage the laws raising the age of protection for girls to eighteen years; establishing a State Home for Dependent Children and a State Industrial School for Girls; making fathers and mothers joint guardians of their children; removing the emblems from the Australian ballot; prohibiting child labor; also city ordinances in Denver providing drinking fountains in the streets; forbidding expectoration in public places, and requiring the use of smoke-consuming chimneys on all public and business buildings.
This anecdote was related the next day: "Miss Anthony's love of the beautiful leads her always to clothe herself in good style and fine materials, and she has an eye for the fitness of things as well as for the funny side. 'Girls,' she said yesterday, after returning from the Capitol, 'those statesmen eyed us very closely, but I will wager that it was impossible after we got mixed together to tell an anti from a suffragist by her clothes. There might have been a difference, though, in the expression of the faces and the shape of the heads,' she added drily."
On Tuesday afternoon about two hundred members of the convention were received by President McKinley in the East Room of the White House. Miss Anthony stood at his right hand and, after the President had greeted the last guest, he invited her to accompany him upstairs to meet Mrs. McKinley, who was not well enough to receive all of the ladies. Giving her his arm he led her up the old historic staircase, "as tenderly as if he had been my own son," she said afterward. When she was leaving, after a pleasant call, Mrs. McKinley expressed a wish to send some message to the convention and she and the President together filled Miss Anthony's arms with white lilies, which graced the platform during the remainder of the meetings.
120 The statistics used in this paper were taken from the report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education for 1899.
121 See chapter on Louisiana.
122 The address of Miss Laughlin created a sensation. A member of the United States Labor Commission was in the audience, and was so much impressed with the power of this young woman that shortly afterwards she was made a member of this commission to investigate the condition of the working women of the United States. Her valuable report was published in pamphlet form.
123 See chapter on Kansas.
124 Immediately after the convention, the New York Times published an alleged interview with Mrs. Paul, in which she was made to say that she was not a believer in suffrage for women. She at once denied this emphatically over her own signature, saying that the interview was a fabrication and that she was an advocate of the enfranchisement of women especially because of the need of their ballot in city government.
125 This was held the first week in December, 1901, and netted about $8,000 for the association.
126 It will be noticed in this pamphlet that all but one of the favorable reports from congressional committees were made during the years when Miss Anthony had a winter home at the Riggs House, through the courtesy of its proprietors, Mr. and Mrs. C. W. Spofford, and was able to secure them through personal attention and influence. There were always some members of these committees who were favorable to woman suffrage, but with the great pressure on every side from other matters, this one was apt to be neglected unless somebody made a business of seeing that it did not go by default. This Miss Anthony did for many years, and during this time secured the excellent reports of 1879, 1882, 1883, 1884, 1886 and 1890. The great speech of Senator T. W. Palmer, made February 6, 1885, was in response to her insistence that he should keep his promise to speak in favor of the question. In 1888-90 Mrs. Upton, who was residing in Washington with her father, Ezra B. Taylor, M. C., did not permit the Judiciary Committee to forget the report for that year, which was the first and only favorable House Report.
127 For account of the work of the association before Congress see Chap. I.
128 George W. Ray, N. Y., chairman; John J. Jenkins, Wis.; Richard Wayne Parker, N. J.; Jesse Overstreet, Ind.; De Alva S. Alexander, N. Y.; Vespasian Warner, Ill.; Winfield S. Kerr, O.; Charles E. Littlefield, Me.; Romeo H. Freer, W. Va.; Julius Kahn, Calif.; William L. Terry, Ark.; David A. De Armond, Mo.; Samuel W. T. Lanham, Tex.; William Elliott, S. C.; Oscar W. Underwood, Ala.; David H. Smith, Ky.; William H. Fleming, Ga.
129 That this was a mistaken courtesy was proved by subsequent events, as afterwards Mrs. Dodge came out with a card in the New York Sun denying that they were admitted through the intervention of Miss Anthony.
130 In the official Senate report of the hearing the arguments of the suffragists filled forty pages; those of the "antis" five pages. They consisted of brief papers by Mrs. Dodge and Miss Bissell. The former took the ground that the Congress should leave this matter to be decided by the States; that women are not physically qualified to use the ballot; and that its use by them would render "domestic tranquillity" a byword among the people. Miss Bissell began by saying, "It is not the tyranny but the chivalry of men that we have to fear," and opposed the suffrage principally because the majority of women do not want it, saying, "I have never yet been so situated that I could see where a vote could help me. If I felt that it would, I might become a suffragist perhaps."
CHAPTER XXI.
The National-American Convention of 1900 Continued.
It had been known for some time before the suffrage convention of Feb. 8-14, 1900, that Miss Anthony intended to resign the presidency of the national association at that time, when she would be eighty years old, but her devoted adherents could not resist urging that she would reconsider her decision. When they assembled, however, they found it impossible to persuade her to continue longer in the office. The Washington Post of February 8 said:
Miss Susan B. Anthony has resigned. The woman who for the greater part of her life has been the star that guided the National Woman Suffrage Association through all of its vicissitudes until it stands to-day a living monument to her wonderful mental and physical ability has turned over the leadership to younger minds and hands, not because this great woman feels that she is no longer capable of exercising it, but because she has a still larger work to accomplish before her life's labors are at an end. In a speech which was characteristic of one who has done so much toward the uplifting of her sex, Miss Anthony tendered her resignation during the preliminary meeting of the executive committee, held last night at the headquarters in the parlors of the Riggs House.