Mrs. Meriwether: Tennessee caps the climax in taxation without representation. In Shelby County there are two young women, sisters, who own farms. Both are married, and both were sensible enough to have their farms secured to themselves and their children. In one case, at least, it proved a wise precaution. One of these young women asked the other, when she went to town, to pay a few bills for her and settle her taxes. Accordingly she went to the tax office, and as she handed in the papers she noticed written at the foot of her sister's tax bill, "Poll tax, $1.00." She exclaimed, "Oh, when did Mrs. A. become a voter? I am so glad Tennessee has granted suffrage to women!" "Oh, she hasn't; it doesn't," said the young clerk with a smile. "That is her husband's poll tax." "And why is she required to pay her husband's poll tax?" "It is the custom," he said. She replied, "Then Tennessee will change its custom this time. I will see the tax collector dead and very cold before I will pay Mr. A.'s poll tax out of my sister's property in order that he may vote, while she is not allowed to do so!"
Miss Anthony: It seems to me that these Southern women are in a state of chronic rebellion.
Mrs. Meriwether: We are.
In closing this meeting Miss Anthony said: "Now, don't all of you come to me to tell me how glad you are that I have worked for fifty years, but say rather that you are going to begin work yourselves."
The delegates were eloquently welcomed in behalf of the South by Bennett J. Conyers of Atlanta, who declared that "suffrage for women is demanded by the divine law of human development." He said in part:
The work of Miss Anthony needs no apology. She has blazed a way for advanced thought in her lonely course over the red-hot plowshares of resistance. Now almost at the summit she looks back to see following her an army with banners. May she long worship where she stands at Truth's mountain altar, as, with the royal sunset flush upon her brow, she catches the beckoning of the lights twinkling on the heavenly shore.... The South is a maiden well worthy of the allegiance of this cause, and when her aid is given it will be as devoted as it has been reserved. The South is the land where has lingered latest on earth the chivalry which idealized its objects of worship. What though it may have meant repression? Is it any wonder that the tender grace of a day that is dead even now lingers and makes men loath to welcome change? Perhaps it can not be told how much it has cost men to surrender the ideal, even though it be to change it for the perfected womanhood....
The address of welcome for the State was made by Mrs. Mary L. McLendon, who spoke earnestly in favor of equal suffrage, saying:
If Georgia women could vote, this National Convention could hold its session in our million dollar capitol, which rears its grand proportions on yonder hill. Crowning its loftiest pinnacle is the statue of a woman representing Liberty, and on its front the motto, "Justice, Wisdom and Moderation." It was built with money paid into our State's treasury by women as well as men, both white and black; but men alone, white and black, have the privilege of meeting in legislative session to make laws to govern women. Men are also allowed to hold their Democratic, Republican, Prohibition and Populist Conventions in its halls. It is with difficulty that women can secure a hearing before a legislative committee to petition for laws to ameliorate their own condition, or to secure compulsory training in the public schools, that their children may be brought up in the way they should go, and become sober, virtuous citizens.
Major Charles W. Hubner extended the welcome of the city, saying in conclusion: "Reason and right are with you, and these, in the name of God, will at last prevail." Afterwards he contributed the poem, "Thank God that Thought is Free." Miss Anthony was presented by Miss H. Augusta Howard and, after a speech complimentary to Southern women, introduced Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.), who eulogized Southern Chivalry, and Mrs. Lida A. Meriwether (Tenn.), who spoke in behalf of Motherhood. Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates (Me.) made the closing address, in which she said: "As surely as I want to vote—and nothing is more certain—the man for whom I have most wished to vote was your own beloved Henry W. Grady. There is something else for women to do than to sit at home and fan themselves, 'cherishing their femininity.' Womanliness will never be sacrificed in following the path of duty and service."
One of the principal addresses of the convention was that of Gen. Robert R. Hemphill of South Carolina, who began by saying that in 1892 he introduced a woman suffrage resolution in his State Senate, which received fourteen out of thirty-five votes. He closed as follows: "The cause is making headway, though slowly it is true, for it has the prejudices of hundreds of years to contend against. The peaceful revolution is upon us. It will not turn backward but will go on conquering until its final triumph. Woman will be exalted, she will enjoy equal rights; pure politics and good government will be insured, the cause of morality advanced, and the happiness of the people established."
Miss Alice Stone Blackwell (Mass.) discussed The Strongholds of Opposition, showing what they are and how they must be attacked. Woman as a Subject was presented by Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick (La.), who said in part:
Women are, and ever will be, loyal, tender, true and devoted to their well beloved men; for they naturally love them better than they do themselves. It is the brave soldier submissive to authority who deserves promotion to rank and honor; so woman, having proved herself a good subject, is now ready for her promotion and advancement. She is urgently asking, not to rule over men, but to take command of herself and all her rightful belongings....
As a self-respecting, reasonable being, she has grave responsibilities, and from her is required an accountability strict and severe. If she owns stock in one of your banks, she has an influence in the management of the institution which takes care of her money. The possession of children makes her a large stockholder in public morality, but her self-constituted agents act as her proxy without her authorization, as though she were of unsound mind, or not in existence.
The great truths of liberty and equality are dear to her heart. She would die before she would imperil the well-being of her home. She has no design to subvert church government, nor is she organized to tear up the social fabric of polite society. But she has now come squarely up to a crisis, a new epoch in her history here in the South, and asks for a womanly right to participate by vote in this representative government.
Gentlemen, you value the power and privilege which the right of suffrage has conferred upon you, and in your honest, manly souls you can not but disdain the meanness and injustice which might prompt you to deny it to women. Language utterly fails me when I try to describe the painful humiliation and mortification which attend this abject condition of total disfranchisement, and how anxiously and earnestly women desire to be taken out of the list of idiots, criminals and imbeciles, where they do not belong, and placed in the respectable company of men who choose their lawmakers, and give an intelligent consent to the legal power which controls them.
Do women deserve nothing? Are they not worthy? They have a noble cause, and they beg you to treat it magnanimously.
Mrs. Elizabeth Lyle Saxon (La.) described in an interesting manner Club Life among the Women of the South. Mrs. Blake gave a powerful address on Wife, Mother and Citizen. Miss Shaw closed the meeting with an impromptu speech in which, according to the reporter, she said: "It is declared that women are too emotional to vote; but the morning paper described a pugilistic encounter between two members of Congress which looked as if excitability were not limited to women. It is said that 'the legal male mind' is the only mind fit for suffrage." Miss Shaw then made her wit play around the legal male mind like chain lightning. "It is said that women are illogical, and jump to their conclusions, flea-like. I shall not try to prove that women are logical, for I know they are not, but it is beyond me how men ever got it into their heads that they are. When we read the arguments against woman suffrage, we see that flea-like jumping is by no means confined to women."
On one evening the Hon. Henry C. Hammond of Georgia made the opening address, which was thus reported:
After declaring that the atmosphere of the nineteenth century is surcharged with the sentiment of woman's emancipation, he traced the gradual evolution of this sentiment, showing that one by one the shackles had been stricken from the limbs of woman until now she was making her final protest against tyranny and her last appeal for liberty. "What is meant," said he, "by this mysterious dictum, 'Out of her sphere?' It is merely