not passed when women are bought and sold. Social custom makes the world a market-place in which women are bought and sold, and sometimes they are given away. In the marriage ceremony woman loses her name, and under the old Common Law a married woman had no legal rights. She occupied the same position to her husband as the slave to his master. These things degraded marriage, but the home would be the holiest of spots if the wife asserted her individuality and worked hand-in-hand with her husband, each uplifting the other. Women are robbed of the right of conscience. Their silence and subjection in the church have been the curse not only of womanhood but of manhood. No other human being should decide for us in questions pertaining to our own moral and spiritual welfare. Women are beginning to believe that God will listen to a woman as quickly as to a man. The time has come when councils of women will gather and do their work in their quiet way without regard to men.
No person is human who may not "will" to be anything he can be. When the woman says "I will," there is not anything this side of the throne of God to stop her, and the girls of the present day should learn this lesson. Now there is placed upon women the obligation of service without the responsibility of their actions. The man who leads feels the responsibility of his acts, and this urges him to make them noble. Women should have this same responsibility and be made to feel it. The most dangerous thing in the world is power without responsibility....
Monday night's session was designated "president's evening" and many short, clever talks were given.99 James L. Hughes, Superintendent of Schools in Toronto and president of the Equal Suffrage Association of that city, told how the women of Canada voted, sat on the public and High School boards and even served as president of the Toronto board.
At the Tuesday evening meeting Miss Anthony introduced Senator W. A. Peffer and Representatives Jerry Simpson, John C. Davis, Case Broderick and Charles Curtis of Kansas, and Henry A. Coffeen of Wyoming. Ex-Senator Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi was invited to the platform and responded by saying he hoped to see the day when every qualified woman could exercise the suffrage. The Hon. Simon Wolf, commissioner of the District, urged equality of rights for women.
Grace Greenwood was presented as one of the pioneer woman suffragists. Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell (N. Y.), the heroine of many campaigns, in a stirring speech related her varied experiences and said: "Ours is one of the greatest wars of the centuries. Indeed, it is a continuation of the same battle which has been waged almost since the world began but carried on with different tactics. It stands unique. No cannon is heard. No smoke tells of defeat or victory. No bloody battlefields lift their blushing faces to the heavens. It is a battle of ideas, a battle of prejudices, the right and the wrong, the new and the old, meeting in close contact. It is the 'war of the roses,' if you so please to call it. It is the motherhood of the republic asking for full political recognition."
The last address of the convention was made by the Rev. Ida C. Hultin, on the Crowning Race, whose men and women should be equally free. Gov. Davis H. Waite of Colorado sent a letter in relation to the enfranchising of women the previous year, in which he said:
The Populists more than any other political party in Colorado favored equal suffrage, but many Republicans and Democrats also voted for it, and in my opinion the result may be considered as due to the enlightened public sentiment of the common people of the State. The more I consider the matter the more it grows upon me in importance, and the more I realize the fact that all the patriotism, all the intelligence and all the virtue of the commonwealth are necessary to preserve it from the corrupt and mercenary attacks made upon it from all points by corporate trusts and monopolies. Equal suffrage can not fail to encourage purity in both private and public life, and to elevate the official standard of fitness.
A letter from Mrs. May Wright Sewall, regretting her enforced absence, closed by saying:
Many of you know that the last few months I have spent in editing the papers presented at the World's Congress of Representative Women, held in Chicago last May. It is a remarkable and to me quite an unexpected fact that the papers upon the subject of Civil and Political Reform are hardly more earnest appeals for political equality than are the addresses to be found in every other chapter. Hereafter if one asserts that the interest in the woman suffrage movement is not growing, let him be cited to this galaxy of witnesses, whose testimony is all the more valuable because in the large majority of instances it proceeds from women who never have identified themselves with it, and are not at all known as advocates of political equality. The meaning of the entire report is equality, co-operation, organization; that is, the demand made by the National Suffrage Association is the demand borne to us by the echoes of that great congress.
Among the committee reports that of Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery, Chairman of Columbian Exposition Work, attracted especial attention and was in part as follows:
There is a most valuable and interesting bit of unpublished history which seems to me to form an integral part of your committee's report. It concerns the origin of the Board of Lady Managers, and this association should be proud to be able to feel that to our president is largely due the recognition of women in official capacity at the World's Fair. The fact that women were not officially recognized during the Centennial Exposition in 1876 was a great disappointment to all interested in the advancement of womankind, and while it was suggested on every side that women must have a voice in the management of the World's Fair in 1893, it remained for Susan B. Anthony to take the initiatory step which led to the creation of the Board of Lady Managers. She had invitations sent to women of official and social position to meet in the Riggs House parlors to consider this matter, in December, 1889. At this meeting Mrs. Conger, wife of Senator Omar D. Conger of Michigan, was made chairman, and Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, secretary. Miss Anthony was not present, fearing lest her well-known radical views might hinder the progress of affairs in the direction she wished them to take, but she restlessly walked about her room in the hotel anxiously awaiting the result.
Several meetings followed this and a committee was appointed to wait upon Congress, asking that the commission should consist of both men and women. Meanwhile the World's Fair Bill had been brought before the House and Miss Anthony soon saw that there would not be time for this committee to act. She therefore prepared petitions, sent them to women in official life and asked them to obtain signatures of official people.100 On the strength of these petitions there was added to the bill, in March, 1890, an amendment providing for the appointment of women on the Board.
Miss Anthony's self-effacement was perhaps the wisest thing under the circumstances, for the Board, as appointed, being unconnected with woman suffrage, proved an immense source of education to the conservative women of the whole world—an education not needed by the radical women of our own ranks. I think the time has surely come when the truth of this history should be known to all.
The election of officers resulted in Miss Anthony's receiving for president 139 out of 140 possible votes; Miss Shaw for vice-president-at-large, 130; Rachel Foster Avery for corresponding secretary, unanimous; Alice Stone Blackwell for recording secretary, 136; Harriet Taylor Upton for treasurer, unanimous.
During the convention the death of Miss Anna Ella Carroll was announced. A resolution of sympathy with her sister was adopted and a collection was taken up, as had been done for Miss Carroll a number of times during the past twenty-five years, which resulted in over forty dollars.
Mrs. Sallie Clay Bennett (Ky.), the faithful champion of Federal Suffrage, insisted that, instead of asking for an amendment to confer suffrage, we should demand protection in the right already guaranteed by the U. S. Constitution: "Even when asking for Municipal Suffrage, we never should fail to assert that it is already ours under the Constitution, and that there is strength enough in our national government to protect every woman in the Union provided the men had interpreted the laws right." Miss Sara Winthrop Smith (Conn.) supported Mrs. Bennett, saying: "It is useless labor to petition for a Sixteenth Amendment—we do not need it. Our fundamental institutions most adequately protect the rights of all citizens of the United States, irrespective of sex. In the twenty-four years since the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, 300 amendments to the Constitution have been introduced into Congress which never met with any approval from either House.