I would that you could all go out to Colorado and see how subtly, yes, and how swiftly, the social transformation is going on. It is the home transforming the State, not the State destroying the home. A Denver paper lately said the men had found out that in determining all questions of morality, sanitation, etc., if the women were consulted, better results were obtained. We have more intelligent homes because of equal suffrage. Where children see their father and mother go to the polls together, and hear them talk over public questions, and occasionally express different views, they learn tolerance. A party slave will not come out from such a home. The children will grow up seeing that it is un-American to say that everybody in the opposite party is either a fool or a knave. The two best features of equal suffrage are the improvement of the individual woman and the prospective abolition of the political "boss."
Introducing Henry B. Blackwell (Mass.) to report on Presidential Suffrage, Miss Anthony said: "Here is a man who has the virtue of having stood by the woman's cause for nearly fifty years. I can remember him when his hair was not white, and when he was following up our conventions assiduously because a bright, little, red-cheeked woman attracted him. She attracted him so strongly that he still works for woman suffrage, and will do so as long as he lives, not only because of her who was always so true and faithful to the cause—Lucy Stone—but also because he has a daughter, a worthy representative of the twain who were made one."
On Friday evening Mrs. Ida Husted Harper gave a portion of her paper, The Training of the Woman Journalist, which she had presented at the International Congress in London. Miss Anna Barrows (Mass.), literary editor of The American Kitchen Magazine, spoke on New Professions for Women Centering in the Home:
The main objection made by conservative people to definite occupations or professions for women has been that such callings would inevitably tend to destroy the home. Once let women prove that they can follow a trade or profession and yet make a home for themselves and others, and such objectors have no ground left.... The fear is sometimes expressed that the club movement is drawing women away from home interests; but the general attention now given to household economics by all the women's clubs proves that women are realizing that knowledge of history, art and science is needed to give the broad culture necessary for the proper conduct of the home life. Although as yet few women's colleges offer adequate courses in home economics, nevertheless after marriage the college women begin to study household problems with all the energy brought out by the college training.
A very general comment on woman's desire for a share in municipal and national government is that the servant question is yet unsolved; that, since she has not succeeded in governing her own domain, she has no rights outside of it. By going outside of her home as an employee herself she is learning to deal with this problem. It has been necessary for women to have thorough business training in other directions before they could discover how unbusinesslike were the methods pursued in the average household. The more women have gone out of their homes into new occupations, the more they have realized that the home is dependent upon the same principles as the business world. The business woman understands human nature, and therefore can deal successfully with the butcher, the baker and other tradespeople. She has a power of adapting herself to new conditions which is impossible to her sister accustomed only to the narrow treadmill of housework.
Specialization is the tendency of the age, and by wise attention to this in the household, as elsewhere, enough time should be saved to each community for the world's work to be done in fewer hours, and for men and women to have time besides to be homemakers and good citizens. Little by little one art and craft after another has been evolved into the dignity of a profession, while housework as a whole has been left to untrained workers. Needle work, cookery and cleaning are dependent on the fundamental principles of all the natural sciences.... There is need also of trained women to lead public sentiment to recognize the dignity of manual labor.
The statesmanlike paper of Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker (Conn.) on the Duty of Woman Citizens of the United States in the Present Political Crisis, was read by Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell (N. Y.), who enforced its sentiments by earnest and stirring remarks of her own. Mrs. Mary Church Terrell, A. M. of Oberlin College, president of the National Association of Colored Women and a member of the Washington School Board, considered the Justice of Woman Suffrage:
....To assign reasons in this day and time why it is unjust to deprive one-half of the human race of rights and privileges freely accorded to the other, which is neither more deserving nor more capable of exercising them, seems like a reflection upon the intelligence of the audience. As a nation we professed long ago to have abandoned the principle that might makes right. Before the world we pose to-day as a government whose citizens have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And yet, in spite of these lofty professions and noble sentiments, the present policy of this government is to hold one-half of its citizens in legal subjection to the other, without being able to assign good and sufficient reasons for such a flagrant violation of the very principles upon which it was founded.
When one observes how all the most honorable and lucrative positions in Church and State have been reserved for men, according to laws which they themselves have made so as to debar women; how, until recently, a married woman's property was under the exclusive control of her husband; how, in all transactions where husband and wife are considered one, the law makes the husband that one—man's boasted chivalry to the disfranchised sex is punctured beyond repair.
These unjust discriminations will ever remain, until the source from which they spring—the political disfranchisement of woman—shall be removed. The injustice involved in denying woman the suffrage is not confined to the disfranchised sex alone, but extends to the nation as well, in that it is deprived of the excellent service which woman might render....
The argument that it is unnatural for woman to vote is as old as the rock-ribbed and ancient hills. Whatever is unusual is called unnatural, the world over. Whenever humanity takes a step forward in progress, some old custom falls dead at our feet. Nothing could be more unnatural than that a good woman should shirk her duty to the State.
If you marvel that so few women work vigorously for political enfranchisement, let me remind you that woman's success in almost everything depends upon what men think of her. Why the majority of men oppose woman suffrage is clear even to the dullest understanding. In all great reforms it is only the few brave souls who have the courage of their convictions and who are willing to fight until victory is wrested from the very jaws of fate.
In treating of Women in the Ministry, the Rev. Ida C. Hultin (Mass.) considered what is known as "the woman movement" from a broad and philosophical standpoint, which carried conviction and disarmed opposition.
At the opening of the Saturday evening meeting a telegram was read from the Executive Committee of the National Anti-Trust Conference, in session at Chicago: "Hearty congratulations to the distinguished president of the Woman Suffrage Association, and hopes that Miss Anthony may enjoy many years of added happiness and honor. This cordial salutation includes Elizabeth Cady Stanton and all of the noble souls who have wrought so great a work in the liberation and advancement of the women of this country." A letter was read also from Frank Morrison, secretary of the American Federation of Labor, with the following resolution, which was passed by the convention held in Detroit, Mich., the previous December:
Whereas, Disfranchised labor, like that of the enslaved, degrades all free and enfranchised labor; therefore,
Resolved, That the American Federation of Labor earnestly appeals to Congress to pass a resolution submitting to the Legislatures of the several States a proposition for a Sixteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution that shall prohibit the States from disfranchising United States citizens on account of sex.
Miss Anthony expressed her satisfaction that equal suffrage was endorsed by "the hard-working, wage-earning men of the country, each of them with a good solid ballot in his hand."
Mrs.