be enfranchised.
Do you say that whenever all women wish the ballot they will have it? That time will never come. Not all of any class of men ever wanted to vote till the ballot was put into their hands. When the first woman desired to study medicine, not one school would admit her. Since that time, only half a century ago, 25,000 women have been admitted to the practice of medicine. If a popular vote had been necessary, not one of them would yet have her diploma. We have gained these advantages because we did not have to ask society for them. If woman suffrage were granted in Iowa, women would soon wish to vote, and every home would become a forum of education....
There never had been so many deaths in the ranks as during the past year. The following were among the names presented by Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby as those whom the association would ever hold in reverent memory:
Hannah Tracy Cutler of Illinois, former president of the American Association and one of the earliest and most self-sacrificing of woman suffrage lecturers; Sarah B. Cooper of California, auditor of this association, whose labors for the enfranchisement of the women of the Pacific coast will be remembered and honored equally with her beneficent work in founding and sustaining free kindergartens, and in whatever promoted justice, truth and mercy, so that on the day of her funeral all the flags in San Francisco were placed at half-mast; Mary Grew, who began her work for freedom as corresponding secretary of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1834, one of the founders of the New Century Club of Philadelphia, and of the Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association, of which she was president for twenty-three years; Elizabeth McClintock Phillips, who in 1848 signed the call for the first convention which demanded the ballot for women; J. Elizabeth Jones of New York, a pioneer in anti-slavery and woman suffrage; Judge E. T. Merrick of New Orleans, whose home was ever open to the woman suffrage lecturers in that section, and who by his eminent position as Chief Justice of Louisiana for many years, sustained his wife in work which in earlier days but for him would have been impossible; Eliza Murphy of New Jersey, who bequeathed five hundred dollars to this association; Harriet Beecher Stowe of Connecticut, who, although the apostle of freedom in another field, yet held as firmly and expressed as steadfastly her allegiance to the cause of woman suffrage; Dr. Caroline B. Winslow, the earliest woman physician in the District of Columbia, intrepid as a journalist, successful in practice, a leader in many lines of reform; Maria G. Porter of Rochester, N. Y.; Sarah Hussey Southwick of Massachusetts, a worker in the cause of liberty for more than sixty years; Kate Field of Washington, D. C.; Gov. Frederick T. Greenhalge of Massachusetts; Dr. Hiram Corson of Pennsylvania, who stood for the full opportunities of women in medicine, and secured the opening to them of the conservative medical societies of Philadelphia.
The names of over thirty other tried and true friends who had passed away during the months since the last meeting were given. Mrs. Colby closed the memorial service by saying:
The best that comes to this world comes through the love of liberty. These were souls of noble aspiration and undaunted courage. We enter into their labors; we will enshrine them in the history of the suffrage movement and bear them gratefully in our hearts forever. May our lives be as fruitful as theirs, and when we too pass away may we
"Join the choir invisible
Of these immortal dead who live again,
In minds made better by their presence."
Among letters received was one from Parker Pillsbury (N. H.), now 88 years old, who had spoken so eloquently in early days for the emancipation of the slaves and the freedom of women. One of the many excellent addresses was on the general topic Equal Rights, by Miss Alice Stone Blackwell (Mass.), illustrated by a number of the piquant and appropriate stories for which she is noted and which perhaps leave a more lasting impression than a labored argument. Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch, a practicing lawyer of Chicago, considered the hackneyed phrase All the Rights We Want, showing up in a humorous way the legal disabilities of women in her own State. The wife's earnings may be seized to pay for her husband's clothes; she can not testify against her husband; she can not enter into a business partnership without his consent; a married mother has no right to her children; the age of protection for girls is only fourteen, etc.
President George A. Gates of Iowa College said in part: "I never heard or read a single sound argument against the suffrage of women in a democracy. There are a hundred arguments for it. The question now is one of organization, of agitation, of perseverance. In my judgment he who sneers at suffrage not only proclaims himself a boor and casts discredit on at least four women—his mother, his wife, his sister and his daughter—but he reveals a depth of ignorance that is pitiable. Let the appeal be to experience. Not one of the direful consequences predicted has come to pass where suffrage is enjoyed. Homes have not been deserted, bad women have not flocked to the polls, conjugal strife has not been aroused, bad effects have not come but good effects have. Bad men seek office in vain where women have the ballot. New States are coming into line and the triumph of the cause can not much longer be delayed."
Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Stetson spoke with her usual ability on Duty and Honor:
Underlying the objections to woman suffrage is a reason of which, as an American, I am deeply ashamed. I do not think either men or women have the same honest pride in our democracy that they had fifty years ago. We are becoming a little afraid of what Europe has always told us was an experiment, but one reason it has not yet been all we could wish is that it is not a democracy at all, but a semi-democracy, one-half of the race ruling over the other half.
Another deep-seated feeling is that, while development is the general rule, yet the production of the best men and women requires "the maternal sacrifice," i. e. that the mother shall be sacrificed to her children, and incidentally to her husband. If the sacrifice is necessary, well and good; but how if it is not?... It has been regarded as dangerous to improve the condition of women for fear they would not be as good mothers. If gain to the mother means robbery to the child, let the mother remain as she is. But the standard is the amount of good done to the children, not the amount of evil done to herself....
Grant that it is a woman's business to take care of her children—not merely of her own children. If children anywhere are not under right conditions, women ought to see to it. The trouble is we are too wrapped up in my children to think of our children. We can not keep out disease by shutting our own front door. We have to know and care about the world outside our gates. In order to do our duty to our children we must make this world a better place to live in.
Our children are not born with that degree of brain power that we could wish. They will not be, until our minds are widened by study of the whole duty of a human being.... What is needed for women is an enlargement of their moral sense so as to include social as well as private virtues. We have been taught that there is only one virtue for us. Our morality is high but narrow. It is not wholesome to limit oneself to one virtue, or to six or to ten. Sons resemble their mothers. While mothers limit their interests to their own narrow domestic affairs, regardless of the world outside, their sons will betray the interests of the country for their own private business interests.... Women and men are so connected that we can not improve one without improving the other. Under equal rights we shall raise the moral sense of the community by the natural laws of transmission through the mothers. We shall learn to blame a man as much if he betrays a public trust as we do if he deserts his wife.
Have we done our full duty when we have loved and served and taken care of those that every beast on earth loves and serves and takes care of—our own young? That is the beginning of human duty but not the whole of it. The duty of woman is not confined to the reproduction of the species; it extends to the working of the will of God on earth. The family is a leaf on the tree of the State. It can grow in strength and purity while the State is healthy, but when the State is degraded the family becomes degraded with it. We have not done our full duty to the family till we have done our best to serve the State.
Miss Shaw took up this subject, saying:
The millennium will not come as soon as women vote, but it will not come until they do vote. If a woman has only a little brain, she has a right to the fullest development of all she has.... If we are to keep our children healthy, as Mrs. Stetson says is our duty, pure water is essential. I know a city (Philadelphia) where you can fast for forty