immense revolution and evolution of the past twenty-five years, and I thank you for this cordial greeting."
The meetings were held in the large and well-arranged Christian Church, with an auditorium seating 1,500. The four daily papers gave full and fair reports and, although there was no editorial endorsement, there was no adverse comment. The Leader thus described the opening session, Tuesday afternoon:
It is doubtful if the church ever before held so many people. They poured in at all the doors, and the great audience room, with the balconies and the windows, the choir and the aisles, the platform and every foot of available space, was early occupied. There were many gentlemen in the audience, but probably four of every five were women. The men had come, apparently, to see and hear Miss Anthony; and when she was done many of them left. It was such an audience as is not often seen. The ladies were generally elderly, the great majority beyond middle-age; they had braved the cold and wind to hear the leader whom they had known and loved for many years, but whom most of them had never seen. Their bright faces framed in silvery hair, with brighter eyes upturned to the speakers, must have been an inspiration to those on the platform; in the case of Miss Anthony it was plain that she was indeed inspired by her audience.
There was much rejoicing over the enfranchisement of the women of Idaho by an amendment to the State constitution during the past year; and much sorrow over the defeat of a similar amendment in California. In her president's address Miss Anthony said in part:
The year 1896 witnessed greater successes than any since the first pronunciamento was made at Seneca Falls, N. Y., July 19, 1848. On January 6 President Cleveland proclaimed Utah to be a State, with a constitution which does not discriminate against women. With Utah and Wyoming we have two States coming into the Union with the principle of equal rights to women guaranteed by their constitutions.
On November 3 the men of Idaho declared in favor of woman suffrage, and for the first time in the history of judicial decisions upon the enlargement of women's rights, civil and political, a Supreme Court gave a broad interpretation of the constitution. The Supreme Court of Idaho—Isaac N. Sullivan, Joseph W. Huston, John T. Morgan—unanimously decided that the amendment was carried constitutionally. This decision is the more remarkable because the Court might as easily have declared that the constitution requires amendments to receive a majority of the total vote cast at the election, instead of a majority of the votes cast on the amendment itself. By the former construction it would have been lost, notwithstanding two to one of all who expressed an opinion were in favor.
If anyone will study the history of our woman suffrage movement since the days of reconstruction and the adoption of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Federal Constitution—taking the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in the cases of Mrs. Myra Bradwell for the protection of her civil rights; of Mrs. Virginia L. Minor for the protection of her political rights; of the law granting Municipal Suffrage to women in Michigan; on giving women the right to vote for County School Commissioners in New York, and various other decisions—he will find that in every case the courts have put the narrowest possible construction upon the spirit and the letter of the constitution. The Judges of Idaho did themselves the honor to make a decision in direct opposition to judicial precedent and prejudice. The Idaho victory is a great credit not only to the majority of men who voted for the amendment, but to the three Judges who made this broad and just decision.
After sketching the situation in California, and relating the part taken by the National Association in these two campaigns, she concluded:
In every county which was properly organized, with a committee in every precinct, who visited every voter and distributed leaflets in every family, the amendment received a majority vote. This ought to be sufficient to teach the women of all the States that what we need is house-to-house educational work throughout every voting precinct. We may possibly carry amendments with education short of this, but we are not likely to. I believe if the slums of San Francisco and Oakland had been thus organized, even the men there could have been made to see that it was for their interest and that of their wives and daughters to vote for the amendment. But, while the suffragists had no committees whatever in those districts, the "liquor men" had an active committee in every saloon, "dive" and gambling house. I am, therefore, more and more convinced that it is educational work which needs to be done. It is of little use for us to make our appeals to political party conventions, State Legislatures or Congress for resolutions in favor of woman's enfranchisement, while no appeal comes up to them from the rank and file of the voters.
Until we do this kind of house-to-house work we can never expect to carry any of the States in which there are large cities. If Idaho had had San Francisco, with all its liquor interests and foreigners banded together, she would probably have been defeated as was California.
So, friends, I am not in any sense disheartened, and while I rejoice exceedingly over Idaho, I also rejoice exceedingly over the grand work done in California, and over the 110,000 votes given for woman suffrage in that State. It was vastly more than was ever done in any other amendment campaign. Study then the methods of California and Idaho and improve on them as much as you possibly can.
The Des Moines Leader thus finished its report:
It was not difficult for one who saw Miss Anthony for the first time to understand why she is so well beloved by her associates. Seventy-seven years old, she is the most earnest worker of them all; she is not only their leader but their counsellor and friend. While she occupied the platform the utmost solicitude was manifested for her on the part of everybody. Once a glass of water was sent for but did not come as soon as it should, and everyone on the stage was visibly concerned except Miss Anthony herself, who calmly observed, by way of apology for a trifling difficulty with her voice, that she was not accustomed to speak in public, at which a laugh went round.... Her silvery hair was parted in the middle and brushed down over her ears. Her eyes have the deep-set appearance which is characteristic of elderly people who have been hard mental laborers, but on the whole she did not look all her years, though older than most of her hearers had expected to see her. But those beaming, earnest eyes, taking in her whole audience as she talked, told of a nature tenacious of purpose and not to be daunted by any obstacle—the qualities which in her many years' work in the cause Miss Anthony has so many times manifested.
The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw devoted the most of her report as vice-president-at-large to the California campaign, as she had spent the greater part of the past year in that State. She closed by saying: "Our reception by the Californians was such as to make them forever dear to us. I wish you could have seen Miss Anthony for once walking ankle-deep in roses. It showed that the sentiment for suffrage had reached the point where its advocates not only were tolerated but honored. I used to like to see her sitting in a chair all adorned with flowers and with a laurel crown suspended over her head, and to feel that it was woman suffrage that was crowned. The work was hard, but we all came back from California better in health and stronger in hope."
On Wednesday evening the crowd was so great it became necessary to hold an overflow meeting, which was attended by five hundred persons. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, who was introduced as "one of Iowa's own daughters," was received with great applause. She said in part:
I have a deep and tender love for Iowa. When I cross her boundary, I always feel that I am coming home. In my travels through the West I meet many men and women who give me a warmer hand-shake because they too are from Iowa. But this State no longer occupies the first place in my heart. There are four that I love better, and every woman here feels the same. The first is Wyoming. Many pass through that State and see only a barren plain covered with sage brush, but when I cross her border, I feel a thrill as sacred as ever the crusaders felt in visiting the Holy Land. The second State is Colorado, the third Utah, and the fourth Idaho. All of us Iowa women will love these States better than our own until it shall arouse and place its laws and institutions on an equality for women and men....
We ask suffrage in order to make womanhood broader and motherhood nobler. Men and women are inextricably bound together. If we are to have a great race, we must have a great motherhood. Do you ask why people can not see this? In all history no class has been enfranchised without some selfish motive underlying. If to-day we could prove to Republicans or Democrats that every woman would vote for their party,