The History of the Women's Suffrage: The Flame Ignites. Susan B. Anthony
Catt, the leading orators of the country, have addressed Chautauquas in all parts of the United States, as well as countless other large gatherings which have no connection with suffrage, being thus enabled to propagate the principle over a vast area. It can be seen from the above résumé that the ground of effort is widely extended and that the harvest is ripening, but alas, there is a constant repetition of the old, old cry, "The laborers are few." One can only repeat what has often been said, that never before were such results as can be seen on every hand in the improved conditions for women and the advanced public sentiment in favor of a full equality of rights, accomplished by so small a number of workers and under such adverse conditions. Perhaps this will continue to be said even unto the end, but their labors will know neither faltering nor cessation until the original object, as announced over fifty years ago, has been attained, viz.: the full enfranchisement of women.
147 See Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, p. 723.
148 For the names of the women who have addressed the National Conventions and Resolutions Committees of the various parties in the effort to obtain an indorsement of woman suffrage, and for a full account of their reception, of the memorials presented and the results which followed, the reader is referred to the History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, pp. 340 and 517; Vol. III, pp. 22 and 177; and for many personal incidents, to the Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony in the chapters devoted to the years of the various presidential nominating conventions, beginning with 1868.
Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake, from the National Suffrage Association, and Henry B. Blackwell and Mrs. J. Ellen Foster, as Republicans, presented the question to the Resolutions Committee of the National Republican Convention of 1896 in St. Louis, above referred to; Dr. Julia Holmes Smith, accompanied by a committee of ladies, to that of the National Democratic Convention in Chicago that year.
149 Miss Anthony sent a special letter to each of these bodies worded to appeal particularly to the interests it represented.
150 For the answer to this petition see Chap. XIX.
CHAPTER XXIV.
The Rights of Women in the States.
The preceding chapters have been devoted principally to efforts made in behalf of women by the National-American Suffrage Association through its conventions, committees, officers, speakers, organizers and members. Contemporaneous with this line of action there has been for a number of years a similar movement in the respective States carried forward through their associations auxiliary to the National, their committees, officers, speakers, organizers and individual membership. Each of the two divisions has been largely dependent upon the other, the States forming the strength of the national body, the latter extending assistance to the States whenever a special campaign has been at hand or help has been needed in organizing, convention or legislative work. The following chapters are confined wholly to the situation in the various States and are subdivided into Organization, Legislative Action, Laws, Suffrage, Office-Holding, Occupations and Education. Their object is to give a general idea of the status of woman at the close of the nineteenth century and the manifold changes of which it is the result. It is desired also to put on record the part which women themselves have had in the steady advance which will be observed.
The account of only the past seventeen years is given, as the three preceding volumes of this History relate in detail the pioneer work and the gains made previous to 1884. Unfortunately it is inevitable in a recital of this kind that many names should be omitted which are quite as worthy of mention as those that find place, for in some instances the records are imperfectly kept and in others the list is so long as to forbid reproduction.151 It has been necessary to bar compliments in order to avoid unjust discrimination and to meet the demands of limited space. To posterity the work is of more importance than the workers, and those who have engaged in the efforts to improve the condition of women necessarily have had to possess a spirit of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice which neither expected nor desired personal rewards.
The subject of Organization in most of the States is treated in the briefest possible manner, the intention being merely to show that in every State and Territory there has been some attempt to gather into a working force the scattered individuals who believe in the justice of woman suffrage and wish to obtain it. More extended mention of course is due to the older States, where there has been continuous organized work for many years, and where the societies have remained intact and held their regular meetings in spite of such defeats and discouragements as never have had to be faced by any other cause. It is most difficult to form and maintain an association which has not a concrete object to labor for, and when a campaign for an amendment is not actually in progress, the suffrage in the distant future appears largely as an abstraction. The early days of the movement necessarily had to be given to creating the sentiment which would later be organized, and it is only within the past decade that the time has seemed ripe for systematic effort in this direction. The lack of effective organization has been a serious but unavoidable weakness which henceforth will be remedied as speedily and thoroughly as possible.
It is a favorite argument of the opponents of woman suffrage that the many gains of various kinds have not been due to the efforts of women themselves. Under the head of Legislative Action will be found the dates and figures to prove that, year after year, in almost every State, women have gone to the Legislatures with appeals for every concession which has been granted and many more which have been refused. The bills presented by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union have not been specifically included because they are fully recorded in the publications of that body, and because this volume is confined almost exclusively to the one subject of enfranchisement. While the Suffrage Associations have directed their legislative efforts principally to secure action for this purpose, individual members have joined the W. C. T. U. innumerable times in its attempts to obtain other bills of advantage to women and children, and in some instances this has been done officially by the associations.
Among various measures in which the two organizations have united may be mentioned the raising of the "age of protection" for girls; the securing of women physicians in all institutions where women and children are confined, and women on the boards of all such; women city physicians; matrons at jails and station houses; better conditions for working women; the abolition of child-labor; industrial schools for girls. Measures which have been especially championed by the W. S. A., but which the W. C. T. U. has aided officially or individually, have been those asking for every form of suffrage; equal property laws for wives; the opening of all educational institutions to women; their admission to all professions and occupations; the repeal of laws barring them from office; the enactment of laws giving father and mother equal guardianship of children.152
The W. C. T. U. alone has secured temperance measures of many kinds, including a law in every State requiring scientific temperance instruction in the public schools; in many States curfew laws, and statutes prohibiting the sale of cigarettes and of liquor on or near fair grounds, Soldiers' Homes and school-houses, and preventing gambling devices, immoral exhibits, etc. The Federation of Women's Clubs has obtained laws for free traveling libraries and has united with other organizations in various States in efforts for equal guardianship of children, school suffrage, women on school and library boards and the abolishing of child labor. Other associations have joined in one or more of the above lines of work and have had independent measures of their own, such as prison reform, social purity, the assistance of different races—as the negro and the Indian—village improvement, kindergartens, public playgrounds, etc.
It would not be possible