The History of the Women's Suffrage: The Flame Ignites. Susan B. Anthony
instead of it people are coming to think that government is good to do anything that it can do best—just as they have already learned that it is proper for woman to do anything that she can do well. In a word, as Mrs. Howe said the other evening, the ballot is a means of getting things done which we want done.
When your good friend with a kind and prosperous husband, a pleasant home and nothing lacking which better laws could secure for her, says she thinks women are already pretty well treated and she doesn't know that she would care for the ballot, ask her how she would feel if she were a teacher and were expected to work beside a man, equal work and equal time, he to get $60 and she $40 a month? Ask her whether she would not want to have a vote then? Isn't this a case, kind mistress of a home, where you should remember those in bonds as bound with them? I very much fear there never will be a time when all the good people in this world can dispense with any effective weapon against wrong.
And, beyond this, there are all the offensive, aggressive uses of the ballot. We want a sewer here, a bridge there, a lamp-post or a hydrant yonder. A woman's nose will scent a defective drain where ten men pass it by, but votes get these things looked after. We want a new schoolhouse, or more brains or more fresh air in an old one. Don't you know that women will attend to such needs sooner than men?
Mr. Foulke said in part:
It is said that woman suffragists are dreamers. There was a time within our memory when human flesh in this our free America was sold at auction. In those days a few earnest men dreamed of a time when our flag should no longer unfurl itself over a slave. Inspired by this great vision they bore the persecution and contumely of their fellows. In season and out of season they preached their glorious gospel of immediate and unconditional emancipation. Wild visionaries they, incendiaries whose very writings, like the heresies of old, must be consigned to the flames; impracticable enthusiasts, seditious citizens. But lo! the flame of war passed over us and their dream is true; and in the clearer light which shines upon us to-day, we can hardly realize that this great blot upon our civilization could have existed, the time seems so far away.
And we of America, we who have reached the summit of the prophecies of centuries past, we dream of new and loftier mountains in the distance. We who have realized in our political institutions a universal equality of men before the law, find that we have only reached the foothills of the greater range beyond. There are men in our midst who are dreaming to-day of a time when mere political equality shall be based upon that broader social and economic equality which is so necessary to maintain it. They dream of a time when each man's reward shall be proportioned to his own exertions and his own desert, and nothing at all shall be due to the accident of birth; dream of a time when bitter, grinding poverty, save as a punishment for idleness, shall no longer exist in a world so full of the bounty of heaven. Is it wilder than the dream of him who, under the despotism of the Bourbons, could dream of a great people whose birth should be heralded by the cry that all men are created equal? Is it wilder than the dream of him who, oppressed by the tyranny of Alva, could dream of a day of perfect religious toleration? Men talk with contemptuous pity of the dreamer. But he rather is the object of pity who bars the windows and draws the curtains of his soul to shut out the light of heaven that would smile in upon him. Let us rather pity the man who fears to utter the divine thought which fills him. Let us pity rather that man or that nation which lives in the complacent consciousness of its own virtue and blessedness, and dreams of no higher good than it possesses. He that has a dream of something better than he sees around him, let him tell it though the world smile. He that has a prophecy to utter, let him speak, though men account it his folly as much as they will. God bless the dreamers of all just and perfect dreams! The great wheel of the ages with ever-increasing motion is sure to roll out their accomplishment.
The Rev. Louis A. Banks, lately of Washington Territory, spoke of woman suffrage there. He said:
The first fact proved by experience is that women do vote. Before the law was enacted, the old objection used to meet us on every hand, "The women do not want to vote"—as though that, if true, were a valid reason. They ought to want to. It is my business to urge men to repent, and I have never supposed it a reason to cease preaching to them because they did not want to repent; they ought to want to. But our experience has proved that women do want to vote. It was universally conceded that in our first general Territorial election fully as many women voted in proportion to their numbers as men....
Woman's influence as a citizen has been of equal value in the jury-box. Experience shows that she is peculiarly fitted for that duty. Woe to the gambler who enriches himself by the folly or innocence of the ignorant, and the rum-seller who lures boys into his backroom! Woe to the human vultures who prey upon young lives, when they fall into the hands of a jury of mothers!...
You who have not hitherto been woman suffragists, why not espouse this cause now, when it is in the full flush of its heroic struggle? When John Adams went courting Abigail Smith, her proud father said to her: "Who is this young Adams? Where did he come from?" Abigail answered: "I do not know where he came from and I do not care, but I know where he is going and I am going with him." Ladies and gentlemen, you know where we are going; we invite your company for the journey.
State Senator R. W. Blue said: "One of the greatest questions of the day is how to counteract the influence of the vicious vote cast every year in the large cities. I believe the only way to do that is to enfranchise the women." He added that he had worked for the Municipal Suffrage Bill in the preceding Legislature, and should do so in the next. President Foulke complimented him on his bold and outspoken remarks, and said he thought a man in politics never lost anything by telling the people exactly where he stood on vital issues.141
James G. Clark, associate editor of the Minneapolis Spectator, was a delegate, and delighted the audience with his equal rights songs. A letter was received from Dr. Mary F. Thomas and, by a rising vote of the convention, it was decided to send her a telegram of greeting and congratulations on her seventieth birthday.
Letters were read from Chief-Justice Greene of Washington Territory, and from Mrs. Margaret Bright Lucas of England, sister of John and Jacob Bright; also telegrams from the Minnesota W. S. A., from Major and Mrs. Pickler of South Dakota, and from others, and reports from the different State societies.
Chancellor J. A. Lippincott, of the State University, invited the association to visit that institution, and Mrs. Howe and Mrs. Stone to address the students. Mrs. Stone wrote in the Woman's Journal: "It was worth the journey to receive the warm welcome which greeted us on every hand, and still more to see the progress the cause has made in the nineteen years that have passed since the first suffrage campaign in Kansas. It would not be surprising if Municipal Suffrage should be secured in this State at the next session of the Legislature.142 The very air was full of suffrage, even in the midst of the political contest."
1887.—The Nineteenth annual meeting was held in Association Hall, Philadelphia, October 31, November 1, 2. The platform had been beautifully decorated with tropical plants and foliage by Miss Elizabeth B. Justice and other Pennsylvania friends. The weather was fine, the audience sympathetic and the speaking excellent.
State Senator A. D. Harlan gave the address of welcome in behalf of the Pennsylvania W. S. A. President Wm. Dudley Foulke in responding paid a tribute to the Senator's good service in the Legislature in behalf of a constitutional amendment for equal suffrage. A letter of welcome was read from the venerable and beloved president of the association, Miss Mary Grew, who was kept away by illness. Col. T. W. Higginson said:
I have the sensations of a Revolutionary veteran, almost, in coming back to Philadelphia and remembering our early suffrage meetings here in that time of storm, in contrasting the audiences of to-day with the audiences of that day, and in thinking what are the difficulties that come before us now as compared with those of our youth. The audiences have changed, the atmosphere of the community has changed; nothing but the cause remains the same, and that remains because it is a part of the necessary evolution of democratic society and is an immortal thing.
I recall those early audiences; the rows of quiet faces in Quaker bonnets in the foreground;