Susan B. Anthony

The History of the Women's Suffrage: The Flame Ignites


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States. On March 10, the first edition (5,000) of the sixteen-page program was issued; this was followed by five other editions of 5,000 each and a final seventh edition of 7,000 copies. Each edition required revision and the introduction of alterations made necessary by changing conditions. There were written in connection with the preparations about 4,000 letters. Including those concerning railroad rates, there were not less than 10,000 more circulars of various kinds printed and distributed. A low estimate of the number of pages thus issued (circulars, calls, programs, etc.) gives 672,000. During the week of the Council and the following convention of the N. W. S. A., the Woman's Tribune was published by Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby eight times (four days sixteen pages, four days twelve pages), the daily edition averaging 12,500 copies.

      The receipts from contributions and memberships were in round numbers $5,000; from sale of seats and boxes at opera-house $5,000, and from sale of daily Woman's Tribune, photographs and badges, collections, advertisements, etc., $1,500, making a total of nearly $12,000. The largest sums were from Julia T. Foster, $400; Elizabeth Thompson, $250; Mrs. Leland Stanford, $200; Rachel G. Foster, $200; and $100 each from Adeline Thomson, Ellen Clark Sargent, Emma J. Bartol, Margaret Caine, Sarah Knox Goodrich, Mary Hamilton Williams, Lucy Winslow Curtis, Mary Gray Dow, Jane S. Richards, George W. Childs and Henry C. Parsons. The cost of the Tribune (printing, stenographic report, mailing, etc.) was over $3,600; hall rent, $1,800. When one considers the entertainment of so many officers, speakers and delegates, printing, postage, the salary of one clerk for a year (whose board was a contribution from Miss Adeline Thomson and Miss Julia Foster of Philadelphia), and the thousand et ceteras of such a meeting, the total cost of about $12,000 is not surprising. An international convention of men, held in Washington within the year, cost in round numbers $50,000.

      On Pioneers' Evening about forty of the most prominent of the old workers were on the platform.

      CHAPTER IX.

       The National Suffrage Convention of 1889.

       Table of Contents

      The Twenty-first annual convention of the National Association met in the Congregational Church at Washington, Jan. 21-23, 1889, in answer to the official Call:

      Neither among politicians, nor among women themselves, is this in any sense a party movement. While the Prohibition party in Kansas incorporated woman suffrage in its platform, the Republicans made it a fact by extending municipal suffrage to the women of that State. The Democrats of Connecticut on several occasions voted for woman suffrage while Republicans voted against it. In the New York Legislature Republicans and Democrats alike have advocated and voted for the measure. In Congress the last vote in the House stood eighty Republicans for woman suffrage and nearly every Democrat against it, while not a single Democrat voted in favor of it on the floor of the Senate. Both the Labor and Greenback parties have uniformly recognized woman suffrage in their platforms.... Our strength for future action lies in the fact that woman suffrage has some advocates in all parties and that we, as an association, are pledged to none.

      The denial of the ballot to woman is the great political crime of the century, before which tariff, finance, land monopoly, temperance, labor and all economic questions sink into insignificance; for the right of suffrage involves all questions of person and of property.

      While each party in power has refused to enfranchise woman, being skeptical as to her moral influence in government, yet with strange inconsistency they alike seek the aid of her voice and pen in all important political struggles. While not morally bound to obey the laws made without their consent, yet we find women the most law-abiding class