and the other party to the other half. As long as women have no votes, any one of them who will make a speech either for gold or silver or for any party issue is lacking in self-respect.
Miss Blackwell: Miss Clay seems to have understood the question presented for discussion in a different sense from what I did. I do not believe in making suffrage a tail to any party kite, of course; but women as well as men are bound to do what they can to promote good government, and hence to promote by all legitimate means the party which they believe to be in the right. They will inevitably do this more and more as they become more interested in public questions. See how many women took part in the late campaign, making speeches for gold or silver, not with any eye to woman suffrage—for neither party was committed to it—but purely for the sake of the welfare of the country, as they understood it. I can not agree that they were lacking in self-respect....
Miss Shaw: I have made only one party speech in my life. That was ten years ago, for the Prohibition Party; and if the Lord will forgive me, I will never do it again till women vote.
In spite of the lively difference of opinion, the meeting adjourned in great good humor and amid considerable laughter.
The last session of the convention was a celebration of the suffrage victory in Idaho, conducted by representatives of what the association liked to call "the free States." Mrs. Colby said in behalf of Wyoming:
....No matter if we fill the field of blue with stars, one will always shine with peculiar lustre, the star of Wyoming, who opened the door of hope for women.
There is a beautiful custom in Switzerland among the Alpine shepherds. He who, tending his flock among the heights, first sees the rays of the rising sun gild the top of the loftiest peak, lifts his horn and sounds forth the morning greeting, "Praise the Lord." Soon another shepherd catches the radiant gleam, and then another and another takes up the reverent refrain, until mountain, hill and valley are vocal with praise and bathed in the glory of a new day.
So the dawn of the day that shall mean freedom for woman and the ennobling of the race was first seen by Wyoming, on the crest of our continent, and the clarion note was sounded forth, "Equality before the law." For a quarter of a century she was the lone watcher on the heights to sound the tocsin of freedom. At last Colorado, from her splendid snow-covered peaks, answered back in grand accord, "Equality before the law." Then on Utah's brow shone the sun, and she, too, exultantly joined in the trio, "Equality before the law." And now Idaho completes the quartette of mountain States which sing the anthem of woman's freedom. Its echoes rouse the sleepers everywhere, until from the rock-bound coast of the Atlantic to the golden sands of the Pacific resounds one resolute and jubilant demand, "Equality before the law," and lo, the whole world wakes to the sunlight of liberty!
Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford, in speaking for Colorado, said:
Civilization means self-realization. The level is being slowly but surely raised and the atmosphere improved. Freedom for the individual, properly guarded, is the ideal to-day. When woman is free, the eternal feminine shows itself to be also the truly human. Witness Wyoming, with its magnificent school system, its equal pay for equal work. Witness Colorado, where women cast 52 per cent. of the total vote though the State contains a large majority of men. What does this show if not that women wish to vote? We women believe that election day administers to each of us the sacrament of citizenship, and we go, most of us, prayerfully and thankfully to partake in this outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace....
The first time I went to vote I was out of the house just nine minutes. The second time I took my little girl along to school, stopped in to vote, and then went down town and did my marketing; and I was gone twenty minutes. While I was casting my vote the men gave my little one a flower. They always decorate the polling-places with flowers now, for they know women love beauty.
The tone of political conventions has improved since suffrage was granted to women. So has the character of the candidates.... There is no character-builder like responsibility. Every woman's club in the State has been turned into a study club, and the women are examining public questions for themselves. This is one of the best results of equal suffrage.
When women obtained the ballot they wanted to know about public affairs, and so they asked their husbands at home (every woman wants to believe that her husband knows everything), and the husbands had to inform themselves in order to answer their wives' questions. Equal suffrage has not only educated women and elevated the primaries, but it has given back to the State the services of her best men, large numbers of whom had got into the habit of neglecting their political duties....
Mrs. Emmeline B. Wells said in describing the conditions in Utah:
After the ballot was given to women the men soon came to us and asked us to help them. We divided on party lines but not rigidly so. We helped not only the good men and women of our own party, but those of the other. If they put up a Republican or a Democrat who is not fit for the position, the women vote against him. In all the work I do for the Republicans, I never denounce the Democrats....
This year the men were more willing to have us go to the primaries than we were to go. Even the women who had not wished for suffrage voted. I do not mind going to the primaries. I am not afraid of men—not the least in the world. I have often been on committees with men. I don't think it has hurt me at all, and I have learned a great deal. They have always been very good to me. We must stand up for the men. We could not do without them. Certainly we could not have settled Utah without them. They built the bridges and killed the bears; but I think the women worked just as hard, in their way....
When Mrs. Mell C. Woods came forward to speak for Idaho the audience arose and received her with cheers and the waving of handkerchiefs. She brought letters of greeting from most of the women's clubs of that State, and in a long and beautiful address she said:
With her head pillowed in the lap of the North, her feet resting in the orchards of the South, her snowy bosom rising to the clouds, Idaho lies serene in her beauty of glacier, lake and primeval forest, guarding in her verdure-clad mountains vast treasures of precious minerals, with the hem of her robe embroidered in sapphires and opals.... As representing Idaho, first I wish to express the heartfelt gratitude of every equal suffragist in our proud and happy State to the National Association for the most generous help afforded us in our two years' campaign. Without the aid of the devoted women, Mrs. DeVoe, Mrs. Chapman Catt, Mrs. Bradford and Mrs. Johns, who made the arduous journey to organize our clubs, plead our cause and teach us how to work and win, we should not be celebrating Idaho's victory to-night....
After describing the great output of the mines and the fruit-producing value of the State, she continued:
I fancy few of you know much of the conditions existing in the mining country, dotted with camps in every gulch; the preponderance of the adult males over the women of maturity; the power of the saloon element, and the cosmopolitan character of the people—men from all parts of the world, ignorant and cultured, depraved and respectable, seeking fame and fortune in the far West—no reading-rooms, no lectures, no lyceums, no spelling-bees or corn-huskings, the relaxation of the farm hand; single men away from home and its influences, forced from the draughty lobby of the hotel or tavern to the warmth and comfort of the well-appointed saloon.
The missionary suffrage work in such places was obliged to be quietly done, without any apparent advocacy on the part of men who were in reality ardent supporters of our cause, lest the saloon element should organize and, by concerted action, crush the movement as they did in the State of Washington in 1889; and California, too, owes her defeat of the amendment at least partially to this cause. Yet you may go far to find nobler men than we have in Idaho, and we did not lack able champions. Our amendment was carried by more than a two-thirds majority of the votes cast upon it.
The last address, by the Rev. Ida C. Hultin (Ills.), The Point of View, was a masterly effort. She said in part:
Before any woman is a wife, a sister or a mother she is a human being. We ask nothing as women but everything as human beings. The sphere of woman is any path that she can tread, any work that she can do. Let no one imagine that we wish to be men. In the beginning God created them male and female. The principle of co-equality is recognized in all of