Читать книгу The Women of the Suffrage Movement - Jane Addams - Страница 53

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Mr. Train and David M. Melliss furnish funds for starting Woman Suffrage newspaper, The Revolution; comments of press; Mr. Train in Dublin jail; Mrs. Stanton defends The Revolution; how women were sacrificed; bright description of paper and editors; Equal Rights Association divided between claims of woman and negro; Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton delegates to Democratic National Convention at Tammany Hall; their reception; Miss Anthony represents Workingwomen's Association at National Labor Congress in New York; her suffrage resolution rejected; her advice to women typesetters; sad case of Hester Vaughan; S. C. Pomeroy and George W. Julian present Woman Suffrage Amendments in Senate and House of Representatives.

The first entry in the diary of 1868, January 1, reads: "All the old friends, with scarce an exception, are sure we are wrong. Only time can tell, but I believe we are right and hence bound to succeed." Immediately after the meeting at Steinway Hall, Mr. Train had brought with him to call on Miss Anthony, David M. Melliss, financial editor of the New York World, and they entered into an agreement by which the two men were to supply the funds for publishing a paper until it was on a paying basis. It was to be conducted by Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton in the interests of women, and Mr. Train and Mr. Melliss were to use such space as they desired for expressing their financial and other opinions. The first number was issued January 8, a handsome quarto of sixteen pages.

Ten thousand copies were printed and, under the congressional frank of Representative James Brooks, of New York, were sent to all parts of the country. The advent of this element in the newspaper world created a sensation such as scarcely ever has been equalled by any publication. From hundreds of clippings a few characteristic examples are selected. The New York Sunday Times said:

THE LADIES MILITANT.—It is out at last. If the women as a body have not succeeded in getting up a revolution, Susan B. Anthony, as their representative, has. Her Revolution was issued last Thursday as a sort of New Year's gift to what she considered a yearning public, and it is said to be "charged to the muzzle with literary nitre-glycerine." If Mrs. Stanton would attend a little more to her domestic duties and a little less to those of the great public, perhaps she would exalt her sex quite as much as she does by Quixotically fighting windmills in their gratuitous behalf, and she might possibly set a notable example of domestic felicity. No married woman can convert herself into a feminine Knight of the Rueful Visage and ride about the country attempting to redress imaginary wrongs without leaving her own household in a neglected condition that must be an eloquent witness against her. As for the spinsters, we have always said that every woman has a natural and inalienable right to a good husband and a pretty baby. When, by proper "agitation," she has secured this right, she best honors herself and her sex by leaving public affairs behind her, and endeavoring to show how happy she can make the little world of which she has just become the brilliant center.

The New York Independent, the great organ of the Congregationalists, had this breezy editorial:

The Revolution is the martial name of a bristling and defiant new weekly journal, the first number of which has just been laid on our table. When we mention that it is edited by Mr. Parker Pillsbury and Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, all the world will immediately know what to expect from it. Those two writers can never be accused of having nothing to say, or of backwardness in saying it. Each has separately long maintained a striking individuality of tongue and pen. Working together, they will produce a canvas of the Rembrandt school—Mrs. Stanton painting the high lights and Mr. Pillsbury the deep darks. In fact, the new journal's real editors are Hope and Despair. Beaumont and Fletcher were intellectually something alike; but Mrs. Stanton and Mr. Pillsbury are totally different. The lady is a gay Greek, come forth from Athens; the gentleman is a sombre Hebrew, bound back to Jerusalem. We know of no two more striking, original, and piquant writers. What keen criticisms, what knife-blade repartees, what lacerating sarcasms we shall expect from the one! What solemn, reverberating, sanguinary damnations we shall hear from the other!

Conspicuous among the new journal's contributors is that great traveller, hotel-builder, epigrammatist and kite-flyer, Mr. George Francis Train. So The Revolution, from the start, will arouse, thrill, edify, amuse, vex and nonplus its friends. But it will compel attention; it will conquer a hearing. Its business management is in the good hands of Miss Susan B. Anthony, who has long been known as one of the most indefatigable, honest, obstinate, faithful, cross-grained and noble-minded of the famous women of America. It only remains to add that, as "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance," so the price of The Revolution is two dollars a year.

The Cincinnati Enquirer in a complimentary notice said: "Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Revolution grows with each additional number more spicy, readable and revolutionary. It hits right and left, from the shoulder and overhand, at every body and thing that opposes the granting of suffrage to females as well as males. The Revolution is mourning over no lost cause, but is aggressive, bold and determined to win one dear to its heart." New York's society paper, the Home Journal, commented: "The Revolution is plucky, keen and wide awake, and although some of its ways are not at all to our taste, we are glad to recognize in it the inspiration of the noblest aims, and the sagacity and talent to accomplish what it desires. It is on the right track, whether it has taken the right train or not;" while the Chicago Workingman's Advocate declared: "We have no doubt it will prove an able ally of the labor reform movement." The Boston Commonwealth observed approvingly: "It is edited by Mrs. E.C. Stanton and Parker Pillsbury, whose names are guarantees of ability and character. Their effusions are able, pertinent and courageous."

To quote from Mrs. Stanton: "Radical and defiant in tone, it awoke friends and foes alike to action. Some denounced it, some ridiculed it, but all read it. It needed just such clarion notes, sounded forth long and loud each week, to rouse the friends of the movement from the apathy into which they had fallen after the war." Miss Anthony went to Washington to introduce the paper and returned with a list of distinguished subscribers, including President Johnson himself! The following from Mrs. Stanton will show how criticising letters usually were answered:

I know that you would feel that we were right if I could talk with you. If George Francis Train had done for the negro all that he has done for woman the last three months, the Abolitionists would enshrine him as a saint. The attacks on Susan and me by a few persons have been petty and narrow, but we are right and this nine days' wonder will soon settle itself. Of course, people turn up the whites of their eyes, but time will bring them all down again. We have reason to congratulate ourselves that we have shocked more friends of the cause into life than we ever dreamed we had—persons who never gave a cent or said a word for our movement are the most concerned lest Susan and I should injure it. Mr. Train has some extravagances and idiosyncrasies, but he is willing to devote his energies to our cause when no other man is, and we should be foolish not to accept his aid. To think of Boston women holding a festival to aid the Anti-Slavery Standard, while their own petitions are ignored in the Senate of the United States! Women have been degraded so long they have lost all self-respect. If we love the black man as well as ourselves we shall fulfill the Bible injunction. The anti-slavery requirement to love him better is a little too much for human nature.

A few members of the executive board of the Equal Rights Association made a strong attempt to prevent the editors of The Revolution from occupying the room at No. 37 Park Row, used for their headquarters. Miss Anthony soon showed, however, that she had made herself personally responsible for the rent, that while she was overwhelmed with the work of the Kansas campaign letters were continually sent her asking if she could not somehow get the money to pay it, and that as soon as she returned, she borrowed $100 on her own note and paid it in full. So she held possession and the committee, after voting itself out at one session, voted itself back at the next, and finally abandoned the room.

On the very day the first copy of The Revolution appeared, Mr. Train announced that he was going to England immediately. Miss Anthony says in her diary: "My heart sank within me; only our first number issued and our strongest helper and inspirer to leave us! This is but another discipline to teach us that we must stand on our own feet." Mr. Train gave her $600 and assured her that he had arranged with Mr. Melliss to supply all necessary funds during his short absence, but she felt herself invested with a heavy responsibility. A few days later Mrs. Stanton said in a letter to a friend:

Our paper has a monied basis of $50,000 and men who understand business to push it. Train is engaging writers and getting subscribers in Europe. It will improve in every way when we are thoroughly started. Just now we are fighting for our life among reformers; they pitch into us without mercy. We are trying to make the Democrats take up our question, for that is the only way to move the Republicans. Subscribers come in rapidly, beyond our most sanguine expectations. The press in the main is cordial, but looks askance at a political paper edited by a woman. If we had started a "Lily" or a "Rosebud" and remained in the region of sentiment, we should have been eulogized to the skies, but here is something dangerous.

Instead of Mr. Train's securing writers and subscribers in Europe, he was arrested for complicity with the Fenians the moment he made his first speech, and spent the year in a Dublin jail. He wrote that the finding of fifty copies of The Revolution in his possession was an additional reason for his arrest, as the officials did not stop to read a word, the name was sufficient. While Mr. Train continued his contributions to the paper during his residence in jail, he was not able to meet his financial obligations to it. Mr. Melliss made heroic efforts to pay in his quota, but the days were full of anxiety for everybody connected with The Revolution. Miss Anthony was used to such care. She had been the financial burden-bearer of every reform with which she had been connected, but to this crushing weight was added such a persecution as she never had experienced before, even in the days of pro-slavery mobs. Then the attacks had been made by open and avowed enemies, and she had had a host of staunch supporters to share them and give her courage; now her persecutors were in ambush and were those who had been her nearest and dearest friends; and now she was alone except for Mrs. Stanton and Mr. Pillsbury. Even they were labored with, and besought to renounce one who seemed to have complete mastery over them and was leading them to destruction, but nothing could shake their allegiance. The excuse for this persecution was that the Equal Rights Association was injured by the publication of The Revolution.

That there should be a paper published in the interest of the rights of women had been the dream of the advocates for many years. Antoinette Blackwell had written Miss Anthony several years before: "I wish we had the contemplated paper for Mrs. Stanton's especial benefit. I am afraid it will be too late for her when we get it fairly established, which does not promise to be very soon. Lucy believes her own talents lie in other directions, and gives no approval to the plan for herself." Lucy Stone had written: "We must have a paper and dear, brave, sensible Mrs. Stanton must be the editor." And at another time: "I feel very proud of Mrs. Stanton, she is so strong and noble. When we have a new paper she must be the editor."

Mrs. Stanton, with her house and her large family, had no desire for this position. Miss Anthony herself was not a writer, and many times of late years had agitated the question of raising money to have Lucy Stone and her husband at the head of a paper, they having now signified their willingness to hold such a place. The founding of The Revolution was totally unexpected and its editors accepted it only because of the great need of a medium through which the cause of woman might be thoroughly advocated. There was not the slightest desire to enter into rivalry with anybody or to antagonize the Republicans. If the latter had been willing to furnish the money to start a paper, or had allowed space in their own publications, the favor would have been most gladly accepted. Had the members of the Equal Rights Association raised a fund to establish an organ, so much the better, but although the subject had been talked of for years, the capital had not been forthcoming. There was no attempt to make the association responsible for the opinions of The Revolution, as this letter from Mrs. Stanton indicates:

Susan and I, though members of the Equal Rights Association, do many things outside that body for which no one is responsible. The idea of starting a paper under its auspices, or as an organ for it, never entered our minds. We went to Kansas as individuals; personal friends outside that association gave us money to go and contributed the funds to start a paper. We object to that resolution of censure, first, because we were outside its province; second, because it was an outrage to repudiate Susan and me, who have labored without cessation for twenty years and had just returned from a hard three months' campaign. For any one to question our devotion to this cause is to us amazing. The treatment of us by Abolitionists also is enough to try the souls of better saints than we. The secret of all this furor is Republican spite. They want to stave off our question until after the presidential campaign. They can keep all the women still but Susan and me. They can't control us, therefore the united effort of Republicans, Abolitionists and certain women to crush us and our paper.

In showing how the women were sacrificed, The Revolution said:

Charles Sumner, Horace Greeley, Gerrit Smith and Wendell Phillips, with one consent, bid the women of the nation stand aside and behold the salvation of the negro. Wendell Phillips says, "One idea for a generation," to come up in the order of their importance. First negro suffrage, then temperance, then the eight-hour movement, then woman suffrage. Three generations hence, woman suffrage will be in order! What an insult to the women who have labored thirty years for the emancipation of the slave, now when he is their political equal, to propose to lift him above their heads. Gerrit Smith, forgetting that our great American idea is "individual rights," on which Abolitionists have ever based their strongest arguments for emancipation, says: "This is the time to settle the rights of races; unless we do justice to the negro we shall bring down on ourselves another bloody revolution, another four years' war, but we have nothing to fear from woman, she will not avenge herself!" Woman not avenge herself? Look at your asylums for the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the insane, and there behold the results of this wholesale desecration of the mothers of the race! Woman not avenge herself? Go into the streets of your cities at the midnight hour, and there behold those whom God meant to be queens in the moral universe giving your sons their first lessons in infamy and vice. No, you can not wrong the humblest of God's creatures without making discord and confusion in the whole social system.

In regard to the bitter persecution waged upon the two women, Ellen Wright Garrison said in a letter to Miss Anthony: "This sitting in judgment upon those whose views differ from our own, pouring vials of wrath on their heads and calling in the outside and prejudiced public to help condemn, is unwise and un-Christian." Her mother, Martha Wright, who at first was inclined to blame, wrote in the spring of 1868: "As regards the paper, its vigorous pages are what we need. I regret the idiosyncrasies of Mr. Train, as they give occasion to the sons and daughters of the Philistines to rejoice, and the children of the uncircumcised only wanted a good excuse to triumph. Shall you be at the May meeting? I will not be there under any circumstances without you and Susan and our good friend Parker; so whatever may become of Mr. Train or of the paper, count me now and ever as your true and unswerving friend."

The following graphic description, by the correspondent, Nellie Hutchinson, was published in the Cincinnati Commercial:

There's a peculiarly resplendent sign at the head of the third flight of stairs, and obeying its directions I march into the north corridor and enter The Revolution office. Nothing so very terrible after all. The first face that salutes my vision is a youthful one—fresh, smiling, bright-eyed, auburn-crowned. It belongs to one of the employes of the establishment, and its owner conducts me to a comfortable sofa, then trips lightly through a little door opposite to inform Miss Anthony of my presence.

I glance about me. What editorial bliss is this! Actually a neat carpet on the floor, a substantial round table covered by a pretty cloth, engravings and photographs hung thickly over the clear white walls. Here is Lucretia Mott's saintly face, beautiful with eternal youth; there Mary Wollstonecraft looking into futurity with earnest eyes. In an arched recess are shelves containing books and piles of pamphlets, speeches and essays of Stuart Mill, Wendell Phillips, Higginson, Curtis. Two screens extend across the front of the room, inclosing a little space around the two large windows which give light, air and glimpses of City Hall park. Glancing around the corner we see editor Pillsbury seated at his desk by the further window. Opposite is another desk covered with brown wrappers and mailing books. Close against the screen stands yet another, at which sits the bookkeeper, an energetic young woman who ably manages all the business affairs of The Revolution. There's an atmosphere of womanly purity and delicacy about the place; everything is refreshingly neat and clean, and suggestive of reform.

Ah! here comes Susan—the determined—the invincible, the Susan who is possibly destined to be Vice-President or Secretary of State some of these days! What a delicious thought! I tremble as she steps rapidly toward me and I perceive in her hand a most statesmanlike roll of MSS. The eyes scan me coolly and interrogatively but the pleasant voice gives me a yet pleasanter greeting. There's something very attractive, even fascinating in that voice—a faint echo of the alto vibration—the tone of power. Her smile is very sweet and genial, and lights up the pale, worn face rarely. She talks awhile in her kindly, incisive way. "We're not foolishly or blindly aggressive," says she, tersely; "we don't lead a fight against the true and noble institutions of the world. We only seek to substitute for various barbarian ideas, those of a higher civilization—to develop a race of earnest, thoughtful, conscientious women." And I thought as I remembered various newspaper attacks, that here was not much to object to. The world is the better for thee, Susan.

She rises; "Come, let me introduce you to Mrs. Stanton." And we walk into the inner sanctum, a tiny bit of a room, nicely carpeted, one-windowed and furnished with two desks, two chairs, a little table—and the senior editor, Mrs. Stanton. The short, substantial figure, with its handsome black dress and silver crown of curls, is sufficiently interesting. The fresh, girlish complexion, the laughing blue eyes and jolly voice are yet more so. Beside her stands her sixteen-year-old daughter, who is as plump, as jolly, as laughing-eyed as her mother. We study Cady Stanton's handsome face as she talks on rapidly and facetiously. Nothing little or mean in that face; no line of distrust or irony; neither are there wrinkles of care—life has been pleasant to this woman.

We hear a bustle in the outer room—rapid voices and laughing questions—then the door is suddenly thrown open and in steps a young Aurora, habited in a fur-trimmed cloak, with a jaunty black velvet cap and snowy feather set upon her dark clustering curls. What sprite is this, whose eyes flash and sparkle with a thousand happy thoughts, whose dimples and rosy lips and white teeth make so charming a picture? "My dear Anna," says Susan, starting up, and there's a shower of kisses. Then follows an introduction to Anna Dickinson. As we clasp hands for a moment, I look into the great gray eyes that have flashed with indignation and grown moist with pity before thousands of audiences. They are radiant with mirth now, beaming as a child's, and with graceful abandon she throws herself into a chair and begins a ripple of gay talk. The two pretty assistants come in and look at her with loving eyes; we all cluster around while she wittily recounts her recent lecturing experience. As the little lady keeps up her merry talk, I think over these three representative women. The white-haired, comely matron sitting there hand-in-hand with her daughter, intellectual, large-hearted, high-souled—a mother of men; the grave, energetic old maid—an executive power; the glorious girl, who, without a thought of self, demands in eloquent tones justice and liberty for all, and prophesies like an oracle of old.

May we not hope that America's coming woman will combine these salient qualities, and with all the powers of mind, soul and heart vivified and developed in a liberal atmosphere, prove herself the noblest creature in the world? And so I leave them there—the pleasant group—faithful in their work, happy in their hopes.

On May 14, 1868, the American Equal Rights Association held its second anniversary in Cooper Institute. Mrs. Stanton, who had a wholesome dread of anything disagreeable, was determined not to go, but Miss Anthony declared that to stay away would be showing the "white feather" and that, as their enemies had been many weeks working up a sentiment against them, their presence would prove they had nothing to fear. When the convention assembled, Lucretia Mott, the president, being absent on account of the recent death of her husband, Colonel Higginson said to Miss Anthony: "Now we want everything pleasant and peaceable here, do we not?" "Certainly," she replied. "Well then, we must have Lucy Stone open this meeting." "Why so," asked Miss Anthony, "when Mrs. Stanton is first vice-president? It would be not only an insult to her but a direct violation of parliamentary usage. I shall never consent to it." Finding that, nevertheless, there was a scheme to carry out this plan, she put Mrs. Stanton on the alert and, as the officers filed on the platform, gave her a gentle push to the front, whereupon she opened the convention with the utmost suavity.

It was here that these pioneers of the movement for woman suffrage had the humiliation of hearing Frederick Douglass announce that it was women's duty to take a back seat and wait till the negro was enfranchised before they put in their claim. Rev. Olympia Brown and Lucy Stone both declared the Republican party false to its principles unless it protected women as well as colored men in their right to vote, and in his report on the Kansas campaign, Mr. Blackwell, after speaking of the splendid work of Lucy Stone, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Brown, said: "Their eloquence and determination gave great promise of success; but, in an inopportune moment, Horace Greeley and others saw fit in the Constitutional Convention to report adversely to woman suffrage in New York, which influenced the sentiment in the younger western State and its enterprise was crushed. Even the Republicans in Kansas set their faces against the extension of suffrage to women."

Throughout the entire convention there was much resentment on the part of the women at the manner in which they had been abandoned in favor of the negro. During the same week, at the anti-slavery meeting in Steinway Hall, Anna Dickinson, in the midst of an impassioned speech, declared: "The position of the black woman today is no better than before her emancipation from slavery. She has simply changed masters from a white owner to a black husband in many cases." She demanded freedom and franchise for woman as for man, irrespective of color; and, while giving Mr. Phillips credit for his years of service in the cause of woman, took occasion to enter her protest against the tenor of a portion of his morning address—in effect, that woman's rights must be set aside until the rights of the black man were fully secured.

As there was so much cavilling and faultfinding on the part of many of the Equal Rights Association at every forward and radical step taken by Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, they formed an independent committee of themselves, Elizabeth Smith Miller, daughter of Gerrit Smith, Mrs. Horace Greeley and Abby Hopper Gibbons, daughter of Isaac T. Hopper, the noted Abolitionist, and wife of a prominent banker. These ladies sent a memorial to the Republican National Convention, which met in Chicago and nominated General Grant, but it never saw the light after reaching there. Snubbed on every hand by the Republicans, they determined to appeal to the Democrats. On June 27 Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton attended a mass convention addressed by Governor Seymour, calling out the following editorial from the New York Sun:

The fact that Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Miss Susan B. Anthony were the only ladies admitted upon the platform at Cooper Institute, may be regarded as not only committing them to Governor Seymour's views, but as committing the approaching Democratic convention, in whose behalf he spoke, to the doctrine of woman suffrage. Therefore, whether Miss Anthony is received as a delegate to the July convention, it is clear that female suffrage must be incorporated among the planks of the national Democratic platform; and if Governor Seymour, who is a remarkably fine-looking man, is nominated, he will receive the undivided support of the women of the North, which will more than compensate for the loss of the negro vote of the South.

At the meeting of the Equal Rights Committee, held in New York, a half-sarcastic resolution was offered by Theodore Tilton and adopted by the committee declaring that as "Miss Susan B. Anthony, through various published writings in The Revolution, had given the world to understand that the hope of the woman's rights cause rests more largely with the Democratic party than with any other portion of the people; therefore she be requested to attend the approaching National Democratic Convention in New York for the purpose of fulfilling this cheerful hope by securing in the Democratic platform a recognition of woman's right to the elective franchise."

Miss Anthony ignored the sarcasm, and with Mrs. Stanton at once prepared a memorial.1 The convention met and dedicated Tammany Hall on July 4, 1868. This was the first time since the war that the southern Democrats had joined with the northern in national convention and, conservative as they naturally were and separated as they had been from all the woman's rights agitation which had kept the North stirred up for the past decade, one can imagine their amazement when Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton and a few other ladies walked into the great hall and occupied reserved seats at the left of the platform. Their memorial was sent to the president, Horatio Seymour, and by him handed to the secretary, who read it amid jeers and laughter. It was then referred to the resolution committee where it slept the sleep of death. The special correspondent of the Chicago Republican thus describes the scene when the memorial was presented:

Susan B. Anthony appeared to the convention like Minerva, goddess of wisdom. Her advent was with thunders, not of applause, but of the scorn of a degenerate masculinity. The great Horatio said, with infinite condescension, that he held in his hand a memorial of the women of the United States. The name of Miss Anthony was greeted with a yell such as a Milton might imagine to rise from a conclave of the damned. "She asked to plead the cause of her sex; to demand the enfranchisement of the women of America—the only class of citizens not represented in the government, the only class without a vote, and their only disability, the insurmountable one of sex." As these last significant words, with more than significant accent and modulation, came from the lips of the knightly, the courtly Horatio, a bestial roar of laughter, swelling now into an almost Niagara chorus, now subsiding into comparative silence, and again without further provocation rising into infernal sublimity, shook the roof of Tammany. Sex—the sex of women—was the subject of this infernal scorn; and the great Democratic gathering, with yells and shrieks and demoniac, deafening howls, consigned the memorial of Susan B. Anthony to the committee on resolutions.

The World, the Herald, the Democratic press generally, spoke of this incident in satirical and half-contemptuous tones, and the few papers which treated it seriously declared in effect that, if they had to take the "nigger," they might as well add woman to the unpalatable dose. A petition from the Workingmen's Association to this same convention, demanding a "greenback plank" in the platform, was received with great respect and the plank put in as requested—offering the very strongest object lesson of the superiority of an enfranchised over a disfranchised class. It was not that the convention had more respect for the workingman, per se, but they feared his vote and so adopted the greenback plank in order to placate him, and then nominated for President the most ultra of gold bond-paying advocates.

The Revolution took up with great earnestness the cause of workingwomen, investigated their condition and published many articles in regard to it. A meeting was called at the office of The Revolution and a Workingwoman's Association formed, with officers chosen from the various occupations represented, which ranged from typesetters to ragpickers. In September the National Labor Union Congress was held in Germania Hall, New York, and Miss Anthony was selected to represent this association. Mr. J. C. C. Whaley, a master workman from the great iron mills of Philadelphia, presided and she was cordially received. A committee on female labor was formed with her as chairman, and reported a strong set of resolutions, urging the organization of women's trades unions, demanding an eight-hour law and equal pay in all positions, and pledging support to secure the ballot for women.

After an extended discussion the words "to secure the ballot" were stricken out, and a resolution adopted that "by accepting Miss Anthony as a delegate, the Labor Congress did not commit itself to her position on female suffrage." Here was this great body of men, honestly anxious to do something to ameliorate the condition of workingwomen, and yet denying to them the ballot, the strongest weapon which the workingman possessed for his own protection; unable to see that by placing it in the hands of women, they would not only give to them immense power but would double the strength of all labor organizations.

Miss Anthony gave a large amount of time to the cause of workingwomen, taught them how to organize among themselves, stirred up the newspapers to speak in their behalf, and interested in them many prominent women and also "Sorosis," that famous club, which had just been formed. In addressing women typesetters she said: "The four things indispensable to a compositor are quickness of movement, good spelling, correct punctuation and brains enough to take in the idea of the article to be set up. Therefore, let no young woman think of learning the trade unless she possesses these requisites. Without them there will be only hard work and small pay. Make up your minds to take the 'lean' with the 'fat,' and be early and late at the case precisely as men are. I do not demand equal pay for any women save those who do equal work in value. Scorn to be coddled by your employers; make them understand that you are in their service as workers, not as women."

The diary says in October, "Blue days these." Mr. Train was still in the Dublin jail. Mr. Melliss was doing his part manfully, subscribers were constantly coming in, but no paper can be sustained by its subscription-list. Miss Anthony wrote hundreds of letters in its interests, and walked many a weary mile and had many an unpleasant experience soliciting advertisements, but the Republicans were hostile and the Democrats had no use for The Revolution. Invariably the more liberal-minded men would say: "We advertise in the Tribune and Independent, and your paper will reach few homes where one or the other is not taken;" which was true. All the business and financial management devolved upon Miss Anthony, and she was untrained in this department. She labored all the day and late into the night over these details, longing to be in the field and pushing the cause by means of the platform, as she had been accustomed to do, and yet feeling that through the paper she could reach a larger audience. Her diary shows that, notwithstanding past differences, she still visited at Phillips', Garrison's, Greeley's and very often at Tilton's. In August she tells of attending the funeral of the baby in the family of the last, the departure from the usual customs, the house filled with sunshine, the mother dressed in white, and the inspired words of Mr. Beecher.

She is invited to Flushing, Owego and various places to address teachers' institutes and occasionally to give a lyceum lecture and, regardless of all fatigue, goes wherever a few dollars may be gathered. Mrs. Stanton finishes her new home at Tenafly, N. J., and Miss Anthony enjoys slipping over there for a quiet Sunday. Mrs. Stanton did most of her editorial work at home and Mr. Pillsbury stayed in the office.

The last battle for 1868 was made in what was known as the Hester Vaughan case. When Anna Dickinson lectured in New York before the Workingwoman's Association she told the story of Hester Vaughan: A respectable English girl, twenty years old, married and came to Philadelphia only to find that the husband had another wife. She then secured employment at housework and was seduced by a man who deserted her as soon as he knew she was to become a mother. She wandered about the streets and finally, in the dead of winter, after being alone and in labor three days, her child was born in a garret and she lay on the floor twenty-four hours without fire or food. When discovered the child was dead and the mother had nearly perished. Circumstances indicated that she might have killed the child. Four days after its birth, she was taken to prison, where she was kept for five months, then tried, found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. She had now been in jail ten months.

The Revolution and the Workingwoman's Association, headed by Miss Anthony, took up the case, not so much because of the individual as to call attention to the wrongs constantly perpetrated against woman. They created such a public sentiment that a great meeting was held in Cooper Institute, where Horace Greeley presided and a number of well-known men and women took part, including Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Rose, Dr. Lozier and Eleanor Kirk.2 Speaking briefly but to the point Miss Anthony submitted resolutions demanding that women should be tried by a jury of their peers, have a voice in making the laws and electing the officers who execute them; and declaring for the abolition of capital punishment. These were adopted with enthusiasm and the meeting, by unanimous vote, asked the governor of Pennsylvania for an unconditional pardon for the girl, while over $300 were subscribed for her benefit. Through Miss Anthony arrangements were made for Mrs. Stanton and Elizabeth Smith Miller to carry to Governor Geary a memorial from the Workingwoman's Association in behalf of Hester Vaughan. During their interview the governor declared emphatically that justice never would be done in such cases until women were in the jury-box. These efforts, supplemented by others afterwards made in Philadelphia, resulted in his granting the pardon, and the girl was assisted back to her home in England.

Although The Revolution suffered the anxieties inseparable from the launching of a new paper, it found much reason for encouragement. A number of prominent men and newspapers, during the year, had come out boldly in favor of woman suffrage and there seemed to be a considerable public sentiment drifting in that direction; but there were signs even more hopeful than these. Immediately upon the assembling of Congress, in December, 1868, Senator S. C. Pomeroy, of Kansas, presented a resolution as an amendment to the Federal Constitution providing that "the basis of suffrage in the United States shall be that of citizenship; and all native or naturalized citizens shall enjoy the same rights and privileges of the elective franchise; but each State shall determine by law the age," etc.

A few days later George W. Julian, of Indiana, offered a similar amendment in the House of Representatives, as follows: "The right of suffrage in the United States shall be based upon citizenship, and shall be regulated by Congress; and all citizens of the United States, whether native or naturalized, shall enjoy this right equally, without any distinction or discrimination whatever founded on sex."

The last of December Senator Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, and Mr. Julian introduced bills to enfranchise women in the District of Columbia, the latter including also the women in the Territories. A review of the situation in The Revolution of December 31, said:

In our political opinions, we have been grossly misunderstood and misrepresented. There never was a time, even in the re-election of Lincoln, when to differ from the leading party was considered more inane and treasonable. Because we made a higher demand than either Republicans or Abolitionists, they in self-defense revenged themselves by calling us Democrats; just as the church at the time of its apathy on the slavery question revenged the goadings of Abolitionists by calling them "infidels." If claiming the right of suffrage for every citizen, male and female, black and white, a platform far above that occupied by Republicans or Abolitionists today, is to be a Democrat, then we glory in the name, but we have not so understood the policy of modern Democracy. Though The Revolution and its founders may have been open to criticism in many respects, all admit that we have galvanized the people into life and slumbering friends to action on this question.

1. On the Sunday before, the two ladies were invited to breakfast at the home of Mr. Melliss, with the president of the National Labor Union and a number of prominent men from Wall street, to talk over their prospects in the convention.

2. Dr. Clemence Lozier and Mrs. Eleanor Kirk went to Moyamensing prison to see the unfortunate girl. In passing the different cells they noticed many women prisoners and one of the ladies asked the inspector if he could give any idea of the cause of the downfall of these women. "Yes," he replied, "faith in men."