the early years, with the inbred desire to add to the labor of her profession all the so-called feminine duties, which, fulfilled to-day, are yet to be done to-morrow, which bring to her neither comfort, gain nor reputation, and which by their perpetual demand diminish her powers for a higher quality of work....
Everywhere there is too much housekeeping. It is not economy of time or money for every little family of moderate means to undertake alone the expensive and wearing routine. The married woman of the future will be set free by co-operative methods, half the families on a square, perhaps, enjoying one luxurious, well-appointed dining-room with expenses divided pro rata. In many other ways housekeeping will be simplified. Homes have no longer room for people—they are consecrated to things. Parlors and bedrooms are full of the cheap and incongruous or expensive and harmonious belongings of a junk shop. Plush gods hold the fort. All the average house needs to make it a museum is the sign, "Hands off." ...
The girl of the future will select her own avocation and take her own training for it. If she be a houseworker, and many will prefer to be, she will be so valuable in that line as to command much respect and good wages. If she be an architect, a jeweler, an electrical engineer, she will not rob a cook by mutilating a dinner, or a dressmaker by amateur cutting and sewing, or a milliner by creating her own bonnet. The house helper will not be incompetent, because the development and training of woman for her best and truest work will have extended to her also, and she will do housework because she loves it and is better adapted to it than to any other employment. She will preside in the kitchen with skill and science.
The service girl of the future will be paid perhaps double or treble her present wages, with wholesome food, a cheerful room, an opportunity to see an occasional cousin and some leisure for recreation. At present this would be ruinous, and why? Because too frequently the family has but one producer. The wife, herself a consumer, produces more consumers. Daughters grow up around a man like lilies of the field, which toil not, neither do they spin. Every member of every family in the future will be a producer of some kind and in some degree. The only one who will have the right of exemption will be the mother, for a child can hardly be born with cheerful views of living whose mother's life has been, for its sake, a double burden. From this root spring melancholy, insanity, suicide. The production of human souls is the highest production of all, the one which requires most preparation, truest worth, gravest care and holiest consecration. If the girl of the future recognizes this truth, she will have made an advance indeed. But apart from the mother every member of the family should be a material producer; and then there will be means sufficient for the producer in the kitchen to get such remuneration for her skill as will eliminate the incompetent, shirking, migratory creature of today....
I hardly need say to this audience that the girl of the future will vote. She will not plead for the privilege—she will be urged to exercise the right, and no one will admit that he ever opposed it, or remember that there was a time when woman's ballot was despised and rejected of men. She will not be told that she needs the suffrage for her own protection, but she will be urged to exercise it for the good of her country and of humanity. It will not be known that the Declaration of Independence was once a dead letter. No one will believe that it ever was declared that the Constitution did not protect this right. It will be incredible that women were once neither people nor citizens, and yet were the mothers, and in so much the creators, of the men who governed them.
Mrs. Mary S. Lockwood (D. C.), member-at-large of the World's Fair Board of Lady Managers, read a carefully prepared statement of the methods and aims of that body, which began: "The Board of Lady Managers owe their existence to Susan B. Anthony and her co-workers. It was these women who went before Congress and not only asked but demanded that women should have a place in the management of this Columbian Exposition—and they got it"!92 She closed as follows:
I have been greatly impressed as I have come into this hall from day to day, and have looked upon the sweet representative face in marble of Lucretia Mott and the benign, glorified face of Mrs. Stanton, with Susan B. Anthony as the central figure of the trio, and have thought of the years they have lifted up their voices praying they might see the glory of the coming of the Lord; and I have felt if only I could bring before them the sheaves which we are gathering from the women of the earth for this great exposition; if only I could show them how their work has put the women of this nation in touch with the women of every other country, awakening them to new aspirations, new hopes, new efforts, to whom the dawn of a brighter day is visible—these pioneers would say, "Our eyes are indeed opened; a handful of corn planted on the top of the mountain has been made to shake all Lebanon."
Miss Mary H. Williams (Neb.) reported that, as chairman of a committee for this purpose, she had sent letters to forty-nine Governors of States and Territories; twenty-one replies had been received—nine in favor of full suffrage for women, two of school suffrage only, three were totally opposed and the others made evasive replies. The nine in favor were Governors Barber of Wyoming, Routt of Colorado, Mellette of South Dakota, Winans of Michigan, Thomas of Utah, Burke of North Dakota, Humphrey of Kansas, Colcord of Nevada, Knapp of Alaska. All of these were Western men and all Republicans but Winans. Tillman of South Carolina and Willey of Idaho favored school suffrage alone. Stone of Mississippi and Fleming of West Virginia answered "no". Gov. James E. Boyd of Nebraska was opposed, although he would allow women to vote on school questions. Governor Boyd's election had been contested on the ground that his father had not been properly naturalized.
Gov. Thomas M. Holt of North Carolina replied: "I am utterly opposed to woman suffrage in any shape or form. I have a wife and three daughters, all married, who are as much opposed to women going into politics as I am, and they reflex the sentiment of our Southern women generally."
Gov. Francis P. Fleming of Florida gave nine reasons why he was opposed, but concluded: "The above objections would not as a rule apply to church or school elections, and as women are usually much more pious than men and take more interest in church matters, I am inclined to think it would be well for them to vote at church elections, and am not aware of any particular objection to their voting at school elections."
The address of Mrs. Orra Langhorne (Va.) was read by her niece, Miss Henderson Dangerfield. It gave a charming picture of the oldtime Southern woman, her responsible social position, her care for her great household in her own small world; described how she was handicapped by tradition and lack of intellectual training; depicted the changed conditions since the war and her gradual awakening to the demands of modern life and the need of larger rights.
Lucy Stone was not able to be present and a letter from her was read by her husband, Mr. Blackwell:
Dear Friends:—Wherever woman suffragists are gathered together in the name of equal rights, there am I always in spirit with them. Although unable to be present in person, my glad greeting goes to you, every one, to those who have borne the heat and burden of the day, and to the strong, brave, younger workers who have come to lighten the load and help bring the victory. The work still calls for patient perseverance and ceaseless endeavor; but we have every reason to rejoice when there are so many gains and when favorable conditions abound on every hand. The end is not yet in sight, but it can not be far away. The road before us is shorter than the road behind.
This was her last message to the association. She passed away in October of this year, having labored nearly half a century for the enfranchisement of women.
Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, in an address entitled Comparisons Are Odious, showed the contrast between the Government's treatment of the Sioux Indians, exempted from taxation and allowed to vote, and of law-abiding, intelligent women in the same section of the country, compelled to pay taxes and not allowed to vote.93 Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates closed the evening with a brilliant address.
Before adjourning Miss Anthony read Gov. Roswell P. Flower's certificate appointing her a member of the Board of Managers of the State Industrial School at Rochester, N. Y. She took considerable satisfaction in pointing out that it referred to her as "him," because she had always contended that, if the masculine pronoun in an official document is sufficient to send a woman to the jail or the gallows, it is sufficient