phrase without either sense or reason." He then proceeded to say that if woman had a sphere the privilege of voting was clearly within its limitations. There was no doubt in his mind as to woman's moral superiority, and the politics of the country was in need of her purifying touch. In its present distracted and unhappy condition, the adoption of the woman suffrage platform and the incorporation of equal rights into the supreme law of the land was the only hope of its ultimate salvation....
J. Colton Lynes of Georgia, taking for his subject Women to the Front, gave a valuable historical review of their progress during the last half century. Mrs. Josephine K. Henry was introduced as "the daughter of Kentucky," and the Constitution said the next day: "If the spirit of old Patrick Henry could have heard the eloquent plea of his namesake, he would have had no reason to blush for a decadence of the oratory which gave the name to the world." In considering Woman Suffrage in the South, Mrs. Henry said:
It is asserted on all sides that the women of the South do not want the ballot. The real truth is the women of the South never have been asked what they want. When Pundita Ramabai was in this country she saw a hen carried to market with its head downward. This Christian method of treating a poor, dumb creature caused the heathen woman to cry out, "Oh, how cruel to carry a hen with its head down!" and she quickly received the reply, "Why, the hen does not mind it"; and in her heathen innocence she inquired, "Did you ask the hen?" Past civilization has not troubled either dumb creatures or women by consulting them in regard to their own affairs. For woman everything in sociology, law or politics has been arranged without consulting her in any way, and when her rights are trampled on and money extorted from her by the votes of the vicious and ignorant, the glib tongue of tyranny says, "Tax her again, she has no wish or right to tell what she wants." ...
Where the laws rob her in marriage of her property, she does want possession and control of her inheritance and earnings. Where she is a mother, she wants co-guardianship of her own children. Where she is a breadwinner she wants equal pay for equal work. She wants to wipe out the law that in its savagery protects brutality when it preys upon innocent, defenseless girlhood. She wants the streets and highways of the land made safe for the child whose life cost her a hand to hand conflict with death. She wants a single standard of morals established, where a woman may have an equal chance with a man in this hard, old world, and it may not be possible to crowd a fallen woman out of society and close against her every avenue whereby she can make an honest living, while the fallen man runs for Congress and is heaped with honors. More than all, she needs and wants the ballot, the only weapon for the protection of individual rights recognized in this government.
In short, this New Woman of the New South wants to be a citizen queen as well as a queen of hearts and a queen of home, whose throne under the present regime rests on the sandy foundation of human generosity and human caprice. It should be remembered that the women of the South are the daughters of their fathers, and have as invincible a spirit in their convictions in the cause of liberty and justice as had those fathers.
We come asking the men of our section for the right of suffrage, not that it be bestowed on us as a gift on a suppliant, but that our birthright, bequeathed to us by the immortal Jefferson, be restored to us....
The most pathetic picture in all history is this great conflict which women are waging for their liberty. Men armed with all the death-dealing weapons devised by human ingenuity, and with the wealth of nations at their backs, have waged wars of extermination to gain freedom; but women with no weapon save argument, and no wealth save the justice of their cause, are carrying on a war of education for their liberty, and no earthly power can keep them from winning the victory.
The Next Phase of the Woman Question was considered by Miss Mary C. Francis (O.) from the standpoint of a practical newspaper woman. Mrs. Chapman Catt, chairman of the national organization committee, made the last address, taking for a subject Eternal Justice. The Constitution said: "As a rapid, logical and fluent speaker it is doubtful if America ever has produced one more gifted, and the suffrage movement is fortunate in having so brilliant a woman for its champion."
Henry B. Blackwell urged the South to adopt woman suffrage as one solution of the negro problem:
Apply it to your own State of Georgia, where there are 149,895 white women who can read and write, and 143,471 negro voters, of whom 116,516 are illiterates.
The time has come when this question should be considered. An educational qualification for suffrage may or may not be wise, but it is not necessarily unjust. If each voter governed only himself, his intelligence would concern himself alone, but his vote helps to govern everybody else. Society in conceding his right has itself a right to require from him a suitable preparation. Ability to read and write is absolutely necessary as a means of obtaining accurate political information. Without it the voter is almost sure to become the tool of political demagogues. With free schools provided by the States, every citizen can qualify himself without money and without price. Under such circumstances there is no infringement of rights in requiring an educational qualification as a pre-requisite of voting. Indeed, without this, suffrage is often little more than a name. "Suffrage is the authoritative exercise of rational choice in regard to principles, measures and men." The comparison of an unintelligent voter to a "trained monkey," who goes through the motion of dropping a paper ballot into a box, has in it an element of truth. Society, therefore, has a right to prescribe, in the admission of any new class of voters, such a qualification as every one can attain and as will enable the voter to cast an intelligent and responsible vote.
In the development of our complex political society we have to-day two great bodies of illiterate citizens: In the North, people of foreign birth; in the South, people of the African race and a considerable portion of the native white population. Against foreigners and negroes, as such, we would not discriminate. But in every State, save one, there are more educated women than all the illiterate voters, white and black, native and foreign.
The convention proper closed on Saturday night, but the exercises Sunday afternoon may be said to have been a continuation of it. The official report said:
The services began at 3 o'clock and more than half an hour before this time the theatre was filled almost to its fullest capacity. When the opening hour arrived there was not an empty chair in the house, every aisle was crowded, and people anxious to hear the sermon of the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw had invaded the stage. So dense became the crowd that the doors were ordered closed and people were refused admission even before the services began. After the doors were closed the disappointed ones stood on the stairs and many of them remained in the streets. The vast congregation was made up of all classes of citizens. Every chair that could be found in the theatre had been either placed in the aisles or on the stage, and then boxes and benches were pressed into service. Many of the most prominent professional and business men were standing on the stage and in different parts of the house.
Miss Shaw gave her great sermon The Heavenly Vision. She told of the visions of the man which it depended upon himself to make reality; of the visions of the woman which were forever placed beyond her reach by the church, by society and by the laws, and closed with these words: "We ask for nothing which God can not give us. God created nature, and if our demands are contrary to nature, trust nature to take care of itself without the aid of man. It is better to be true to what you believe, though that be wrong, than to be false to what you believe, even if that belief is correct."
Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby (D. C.) preached to more than a thousand people at the Bethel (colored) Church; Mrs. Meriwether at the Unitarian Church; Miss Yates and Miss Emily Howland (N. Y.) also occupied pulpits.
The evening programs with their formal addresses naturally attracted the largest audiences and occupied the most space in the newspapers, but the morning and afternoon sessions, devoted to State and committee reports and the business of the association, were really the life and soul of this as of all the conventions. Among the most interesting of the excellent State reports presented to the Atlanta meeting were those of New York and Kansas, because during the previous year suffrage campaigns had been carried on in those States. The former, presented by Mrs. Jean Brooks Greenleaf, State president, said in part:
The New York Constitutional Convention before whom we hopefully carried our cause—"so old, so new, so ever true"—is a thing