Читать книгу The Women of the Suffrage Movement - Jane Addams - Страница 56

Table of Contents

McFarland-Richardson trial; letter from Catharine Beecher on Divorce; financial struggle; touching letters; Mrs. Hooker offers to help; Alice and Phoebe Gary; prospectus of The Revolution; giving up of the paper; Miss Anthony's letter regarding it; in the lecture field; the little Professor; Miss Anthony's strong summing-up of the Status of Woman Suffrage; rejected by National Labor Congress in Philadelphia; attack of Utica Herald; Second Decade Meeting in New York; Mrs. Davis' History of the Movement for Twenty Years; death of nephew Thomas King McLean; meeting with Phillips.

Immediately after the Suffrage Anniversary in May, 1870, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton decided to call a mass meeting of women to discuss the questions involved in the McFarland-Richardson trial, which had set the country ablaze with excitement. The case in brief was that McFarland was a drunken, improvident husband, and his wife, Abby Sage, was compelled to be the breadwinner for the family, first as an actress and later as a public reader. She was a woman of education, refinement and marked ability, and enjoyed an intimate friendship with some of the best families of New York. Boarding in the same house with her was Albert D. Richardson, a prominent newspaper man, a stockholder in the Tribune and a special favorite of Mr. Greeley. He befriended Mrs. McFarland, protected her against the brutality of her husband and learned to love her. It was understood among their mutual friends that when she was legally free they would be married. She secured her divorce; and a few days later McFarland walked into the Tribune office, shot and fatally wounded Richardson. Some hours before he died, Mrs. McFarland was married to him, Revs. Henry Ward Beecher and O.B. Frothingham officiating, in the presence of Mr. Greeley and several other distinguished persons. McFarland was tried, acquitted on the ground of insanity, given the custody of their little son and allowed to go free.

Press and pulpit were rent with discussions and, although the general verdict was that if McFarland were insane he should be placed under restraint and not permitted to retain the child, Mrs. Richardson was persecuted in the most cruel and unmerciful manner. The women of New York especially felt indignant at the result of the trial. Miss Anthony offered to take the responsibility of a public demonstration, with Mrs. Stanton to make the address. She sent out 3,000 handsome invitations to the leading women of the city. Before the meeting a number of cautionary letters were received, of which this from Miss Catharine Beecher will serve as a sample:

I am anxious for your own sake and for the sake of "our good cause," that you should manage wisely your very difficult task. There is a widespread combination undermining the family state, and we need to protect all the customs as well as the laws that tend to sustain it. In doing this, we need to discriminate between what is in bad taste and evil in its tendencies, and what is in direct violation of a moral law. The custom that requires a man to wait a year after the death of one wife before he takes another, it is usually in bad taste and inexpedient to violate, but there are cases in which such violation is demanded and is lawful.

But the law of marriage demanding that in no case a man shall seek another wife while his first one lives is always imperative. Then the question of divorce arises, and here the Lord of morality and religion, who sees the end from the beginning, has decided that only one crime can justify it. A woman may separate from her husband for abuse or drunkenness and not violate this law, but neither party can marry again without practically saying, "I do not recognize Jesus Christ as the true teacher of morals and religion." If Mrs. McFarland were sure she could prove adultery, she was morally free to marry again; but could she be justified on any other ground without denying the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ? Is not here a point where you need to be very cautious and guarded?

I hope to have the pleasure of meeting you on Tuesday at Apollo Hall. Very truly and affectionately your friend.

The following account is taken from The Revolution:

On May 17, long before the hour appointed, Apollo Hall was filled. Ministers had preached and editors written their ambiguous views on the justice of the McFarland verdict. Reporters had interviewed the murderer and described (probably from imagination) the conduct and statements of Mrs. Richardson. John Graham had informed a gaping public what should be and what was the opinion of every decent woman in New York in regard to the guilt of this heart-broken widow, thus making it extremely difficult to feel the actual state of the public pulse on this all-important subject. Mrs. Stanton's lecture clearly expressed the convictions of the intelligent and right-minded. Never before in the annals of metropolitan history had there been such an assemblage of women, and it was an equally noticeable fact that they were the earnest, deep-thinking women of the times.1

Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton were greeted with the heartiest applause, and as soon as silence was obtained, the former said it was the first time in her life that she had addressed a public audience composed exclusively of women, and it was natural that she should feel somewhat embarrassed under circumstances so peculiar. This quaint observation brought down the house. After a few more of her downright and invigorating remarks, she introduced Mrs. Stanton, who was robed in quiet black, with an elegant lace shawl over her shoulders and her beautiful white hair modestly ornamented with a ribbon. Her appearance was very motherly and winning. Great applause followed her address, and as she took her seat Celia Burleigh read the resolutions adopted on Monday by Sorosis, which were heartily reaffirmed by all present. After remarks by Miss Anthony, Jenny June Croly, Mrs. Robert Dale Owen, Eleanor Kirk and others, a petition to Governor Hoffman, asking that McFarland be placed in an insane asylum, was enthusiastically endorsed.

So great was the desire that a similar meeting was held in Brooklyn. These assemblies threw the newspaper's into convulsions of horror that modest and shrinking women should dare discuss such questions, advocate the same moral standard for both sexes, criticise judge, jury and laws, and demand a different kind of justice from that which men were in the habit of dealing out. Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton came in for their usual lion's share of censure, but they had so long offered themselves as a vicarious sacrifice that they had learned to take criticism and abuse philosophically. For weeks afterwards, however, they received letters from unhappy wives in all parts of the country, thanking them for their attitude in this affair, and pouring out the story of their own wretchedness.

Miss Anthony had little time to think about either the reproof or the approval, for the next day after this meeting saw the beginning of one of the most sorrowful tragedies in her life—the giving up of The Revolution! The favorable financial auspices under which it was launched have been described, and an imperfect idea given of the storm of opposition it encountered because of the alliance with Mr. Train. He put into the paper about $3,000 and severed his connection with it after sixteen months. Mr. Melliss continued his assistance for nearly the same length of time, contributing altogether $7,000. He was its staunch supporter as long as his means would allow, but at length became apprehensive that it never would reach a paying basis and, as he was not a man of wealth, felt unable to advance more money.

From a pecuniary point of view things looked very dark for The Revolution. Every newspaper, in its early days, swallows up money like a bottomless well. The Revolution had started on an expensive basis; its office rent was $1,300 per annum; it was printed on the best of paper, which at that time was very costly; typesetting commanded the highest prices. Partly as a matter of pride and partly for the interest of the paper, Miss Anthony was not willing to reduce expenses. At the end of the first year The Revolution had 2,000, and at the end of the second year 3,000 bona fide, paying subscribers, but these could not sustain it without plenty of advertising, and advertisers never lavish money on a reform paper. Mr. Pillsbury's valuable services were given at a minimum price, Mrs. Stanton received no salary and Miss Anthony drew out only what she was compelled to use for her actual expenses. She was exhausted in mind and body from the long and relentless persecution of those who once had been her co-workers, but to the world she showed still the old indomitable spirit. Her letters to friends and relatives at this time, appealing for funds to carry on the paper, are heart-breaking. A dearly loved Quaker cousin, Anson Lapham, of Skaneateles, loaned her at different times $4,000. To him she wrote:

My paper must not, shall not go down. I am sure you believe in me, in my honesty of purpose, and also in the grand work which The Revolution seeks to do, and therefore you will not allow me to ask you in vain to come to the rescue. Yesterday's mail brought forty-three subscribers from Illinois and twenty from California. We only need time to win financial success. I know you will save me from giving the world a chance to say, "There is a woman's rights failure; even the best of women can't manage business." If I could only die, and thereby fail honorably, I would say "amen," but to live and fail—it would be too terrible to bear.

To Francis G. Shaw, of Staten Island, who sent $100, she wrote: "I wonder why it is that I must forever feel compelled to take the rough things of the world. Why can't I excuse myself from the overpowering and disagreeable struggles? I can not tell, but after such a day as yesterday, my heart fails me—almost. Then I remember that the promise is to those only who hold out to the end—and nerve myself to go forward. I am grateful nowadays for every kind word and every dollar." On the back is inscribed: "My pride would not let me send this, and I substituted merely a cordial note of thanks." Her letters home during this dark period are too sacred to be given to the public. The mother and sisters were distressed beyond expression at the merciless criticism and censure with which she had been assailed, and begged her to withdraw from it all to the seclusion of her own pleasant home, but when she persisted in standing by her ship, they aided her with every means in their power. Her sister Mary loaned her the few thousands she had been able to save by many years' hard work in the schoolroom, and the mother contributed from her small estate.

Her brother Daniel R., a practical newspaper man, assured her that he was ready at any time to be one of a stock company to support the paper, but that it was useless to sink any more money in the shape of individual subscriptions. He urged her to cut down expenses, make it a semi-monthly or monthly if necessary, but not to go any more deeply in debt, saying: "I know how earnest you are, but you stand alone. Very few think with you, and they are not willing to risk a dollar. You have put in your all and all you can borrow, and all is swallowed up. You are making no provision for the future, and you wrong yourself by so doing. No one will thank you hereafter. Although you are now fifty years old and have worked like a slave all your life, you have not a dollar to show for it. This is not right. Do make a change." Her sister Mary spent all her vacation in New York one hot summer looking after the business of the paper, while Miss Anthony went out lecturing and getting subscribers. After returning home she wrote:

You can not begin to know how you have changed, and many times every day the tears would fill my eyes if I allowed myself a moment to reflect upon it. I beg of you for your own sake and for ours, do not persevere in this work unless people will aid you enough to do credit to yourself as you always have done. Make a plain statement to your friends, and if they will not come to your rescue, go down as gracefully as possible and with far less indebtedness than you will have three months from now. It is very sad for all of us to feel that you are working so hard and being so misunderstood, and we constantly fear that, in some of your hurried business transactions, your enemies will delight to pick you up and make you still more trouble.

At this time, in a letter to Martha C. Wright, Mr. Pillsbury said: "Susan works like a whole plantation of slaves, and her example is scourge enough to keep me tugging also." With her rare optimism, Miss Anthony never gives up hoping, and on January 1, 1870, writes to Sarah Pugh: "The year opens splendidly. December brought the largest number of subscriptions of any month since we began, and yesterday the largest of any day. So the little 'rebel Revolution' doesn't feel anything but the happiest sort of a New Year."

A movement was begun for forming a stock company of several wealthy women, on a basis of $50,000, to relieve Miss Anthony of all financial responsibility, making her simply the business manager. Paulina Wright Davis already had given $500, and January 1, 1870, her name appeared as corresponding editor. Isabella Beecher Hooker took the liveliest interest in the paper and was very anxious that it should be continued. She devised various schemes for this purpose and finally decided that her sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and herself would give The Revolution their personal influence and that of their large circle of friends, by putting their names on the staff of editors. Early in December, 1869, she sent the following:

We will give our names as corresponding editors for your paper for one year and agree to furnish at least six articles apiece and also to secure an original article from some friend every other week during the year. We agree to do this without promised compensation, but on the condition that you will change the name of the paper to The True Republic, or something equally satisfactory to us; and that you will pay us equally for this service according to your ability, you yourself being sole judge of that.

H.B. STOWE, I.B. HOOKER.

This was written while they were in New York City, and on her way home Mrs. Hooker wrote, while on board the train, an enthusiastic letter regarding details of the work, ending, after she arrived: "I give you my hand upon it. I have read the above to my two Mentors, and they approve in the main." In a few days, she said in a long letter:

I wish Mrs. Stanton's "editorial welcome" to us might be in the dignified style of her best essays or speeches, not in the least gossipy or familiar, but stately and full of womanly presence. She ought to have a copy of Mrs. Stowe's editorial the moment it is written, for approval and suggestion. If Mr. Pillsbury would stay for a month or two and initiate Phoebe Cary, and we all work well as we mean to, I think she might get on.... I shall go to the Washington convention to work, not to speak. Tilton should be secured by all means—his wife, too. Our parlor needs her demure, motherly, angelic sweetness, as much as our platform needs him. These little, quiet, domestic women are trump cards, nowadays. I wish we had a whole pack of them.... Mr. Burton will hunt up a capital motto or heading, and he will write, I am sure. Mrs. Jewell met me in the street and said, "Is it true that you and Mrs. Stowe are going to help The Revolution?" I told her what we proposed and she was much delighted.

In reply to a letter asking her opinion, Mrs. Stanton wrote: "As for changing the name of The Revolution, I should consider it a great mistake. We are thoroughly advertised under the present title. There is no other like it, never was, and never will be. The establishing of woman on her rightful throne is the greatest of revolutions. It is no child's play. You and I know the conflict of the last twenty years; the ridicule, persecution, denunciation, detraction, the unmixed bitterness of our cup for the last two, when even friends have crucified us. We have so much hope and pluck that none but the Good Father knows how we have suffered. A journal called 'The Rose-bud' might answer for those who come with kid gloves and perfumes to lay immortelle wreaths on the monuments which in sweat and tears we have hewn and built; but for us, and that great blacksmith of ours who forges such red-hot thunderbolts for Pharisees, hypocrites and sinners, there is no name but The Revolution."

Miss Anthony consulted many newspaper men and all advised against the proposed change, saying that experience had shown this to be fatal to a paper. Acting upon this advice, and also upon her own strong convictions, she decided to retain the original title. Meanwhile, tremendous pressure had been brought to bear upon Mrs. Hooker and Mrs. Stowe not to identify themselves with The Revolution. After Mrs. Stowe's salutatory had been prepared, Mrs. Hooker wrote as follows:

I think the name should not be changed. If you change it in deference to our wishes and against good advice, it would lay an obligation on us that we could ill endure. Already I was feeling uneasy under the thought, and Mrs. Stowe actually said to me that she should prefer greatly to write as contributor and would do just as much work as if called editor. She settled down on consenting to be corresponding editor; and Mrs. Davis and I will be assistant editors. I will write for The Revolution and work for it just as hard as I can, sending out a circular through Connecticut asking contributions to it.

Later—Since reading Mrs. Stanton on the Richardson-McFarland case, I feel disinclined to be associated with her in editorial work. I want to say this very gently; but I have no time for circumlocution....

The promised contributions did not materialize, and The Revolution received no aid of any description. The struggle was bravely continued throughout the first five months of 1870. The Cary sisters were devoted friends of Miss Anthony and deeply interested in the paper, and some of their sweetest poems had appeared in its columns. Their beautiful home was just three blocks below The Revolution office, and she spent many hours with them. These frequent calls, breakfasts and luncheons were much more delightful to her than their Sunday evening receptions, although at those were gathered the writers, artists, musicians, reformers and politicians of New York, besides eminent persons who happened to be in the city. It was a literary center which never has been equalled since those lovely and cultured sisters passed away. In her lecture on "Homes of Single Women," Miss Anthony thus describes one of her visits:

I shall never forget the December Sunday morning when a note came from Phoebe asking, "Will you come round and sit with Alice while I go to church?" Of course I was only too glad to go; and it was there in the cheery sick-room, as I sat on a cushion at the feet of this lovely, large-souled, clear-brained woman, that she told me how ever and anon in the years gone by, as she was writing her stories for bread and shelter, her pen would run off into facts and philosophies of woman's servitude that she knew would ruin her book with the publishers, but which, for her own satisfaction, she had carefully treasured, chapter by chapter, as her heart had thus overflowed. "I am now," she said, "financially free, where I could write my deepest and best thought for woman, and now I must die. O, how much of my life I have been compelled to write what men would buy, not what my heart most longed to say, and what a clog to my spirit it has been."

As she sat there, reading from those chapters, her sweet face, her lustrous eyes, her musical voice all aglow as with a live coal from off the altar, I said: "Alice, I must have that story for The Revolution!" "But I may never be able to finish it," she objected. "We'll trust to Providence for that," I replied; and the last five months of The Revolution carried The Born Thrall to thousands of responsive hearts. But, alas, nature gave way and she was never well enough to put the finishing touches to those terribly true-to-life pictures of the pioneer wife and mother.

The poetry for The Revolution was selected by Mrs. Tilton, who had rare literary taste and discrimination. The exquisite child articles, entitled "Dot and I" and signed Faith Rochester, were written by Francis E. Russell. It had a corps of foreign correspondents, among them the English philanthropist, Rebecca Moore. The distinguished list of contributors and the broad scope of The Revolution may be judged from its prospectus for 1870.2 The chances of its paying expenses, however, did not increase, and the hoped-for stock company never was formed. Mr. Pillsbury had been most anxious for the past year to be released from his editorial duties, and had remained only because he could not bear to desert the paper in its distress. Mrs. Stanton, engaged in the lecture field, had sent only an occasional article, and now declined to continue her services longer without a salary. One person who stood by Miss Anthony unflinchingly through all this trying period was the publisher, R.J. Johnston, who never once failed in prompt and efficient service, and gave the most conscientious care to the make-up of the paper. Although her indebtedness to him finally reached the thousands, he remained faithful up to the printing of the very last number, and his was the first debt she paid out of the proceeds of her lyceum lectures.

When Mrs. Phelps had opened the Woman's Bureau and invited The Revolution to take an office therein, Miss Anthony had warned her that it might keep other organizations of women away; but she was willing to take the risk. It resulted as prophesied. Not even the strong-minded Sorosis would have its clubrooms there, nor would any other society of women, and after a year's experiment, she gave up her project, rented the building to a private family and The Revolution moved to No. 27 Chatham street. The generous Anna Dickinson, because of her friendship for Miss Anthony, presented Mrs. Phelps with $1,000, as a recompense for any loss she might have sustained through The Revolution. Mrs. Phelps being very ill that winter, added a codicil to her will giving Miss Anthony $1,000 to show that she had only the kindest feelings for her.

At the beginning of 1870, a stock company was formed and the Woman's Journal established in Boston. Mrs. Livermore merged her Chicago paper, the Agitator, into this new enterprise (as she had proposed to do into The Revolution the year previous) removed to Boston and became editor-in-chief; Lucy Stone was made assistant editor and H.B. Blackwell business manager. This paper secured the patronage of all those believers in the rights of women who were not willing to accept the bold, fearless and radical utterances of The Revolution. The latter had exhausted the finances of its friends and had no further resources. The strain upon Miss Anthony, who alone was carrying the whole burden, was terrible beyond description. Never was there a longer, harder, more persistent struggle against the malice of enemies, the urgent advice of friends, against all hope, than was made by this heroic woman. As the inevitable end approached she wrote of it to Mrs. Stanton, who answered: "Make any arrangement you can to roll that awful load off your shoulders. If Anna Dickinson will be sole editor, I say, glory to God! Leave me to my individual work, the quiet of my home for the summer and the lyceum for the winter.... Tell our glorious little Anna if she only will nail her colors to that mast and make the dear old proprietor free once more, I will sing her praises to the end of time."

Anna Dickinson very wisely concluded that she was not suited for an editor. Laura Curtis Bullard was much interested in reform work, possessed of literary ability and very desirous of securing The Revolution. Theodore Tilton, who was editing the New York Independent and the Brooklyn Daily Union, promised to assist her in managing the paper. Miss Anthony at last agreed to let her have it, and on May 22, 1870, the formal transfer was made. She received the nominal sum of one dollar, and assumed personally the entire indebtedness. She had this dollar alone to show for two and a half years of as hard work as ever was performed by mortal, besides all the money she had earned and begged which had gone directly into the paper. During that time $25,000 had been expended, and the present indebtedness amounted to $10,000 more.

Miss Anthony could not view this giving up of The Revolution so philosophically as did Mrs. Stanton; she was of very different temperament. Into this paper she had put her ambition, her hope, her reputation. The stronger the opposition, the firmer was her determination not to yield, nor was it a relief to be rid of it. She would have counted no cost too great, no work too hard, no sacrifice too heavy, could she but have continued the publication. Not only was it a terrible blow to her pride, but it wrung her heart. She could bear the triumph of her enemies far better than she could the giving up of the means by which she had expected to accomplish a great and permanent good for women and for all humanity. On the evening of the day when the paper passed out of her hands forever, she wrote in her diary, "It was like signing my own death-warrant;" and in a letter to a friend she said, "I feel a great, calm sadness like that of a mother binding out a dear child that she could not support." To the public she kept the same brave, unruffled exterior, but in a private letter, written a short time afterwards, is told in a few sentences a story which makes the heart ache:

My financial recklessness has been much talked of. Let me tell you in what this recklessness consists: When there was need of greater outlay, I never thought of curtailing the amount of work to lessen the amount of cash demanded, but always doubled and quadrupled the efforts to raise the necessary sum; rushing for contributions to every one who had professed love or interest for the cause. If it were 20,000 tracts for Kansas, the thought never entered my head to stint the number—only to tramp up and down Broadway for advertisements to pay for them. If to meet expenses of The Revolution, it was not to pinch clerks or printers, but to make a foray upon some money-king. None but the Good Father can ever begin to know the terrible struggle of those years. I am not complaining, for mine is but the fate of almost every originator or pioneer who ever has opened up a way. I have the joy of knowing that I showed it to be possible to publish an out-and-out woman's paper, and taught other, women to enter in and reap where I had sown.

Heavy debts are still due, every dollar of which I intend to pay, and I am tugging away, lecturing amid these burning suns, for no other reason than to keep pulling down, hundred by hundred, that tremendous pile. I sanguinely hope to cancel this debt in two years of hard work, and cheerfully look forward to the turning of every possible dollar into that channel. If you today should ask me to choose between the possession of $25,000 and the immense work accomplished by my Revolution during the time in which I sank that amount, I should choose the work done—not the cash in hand. So, you see, I don't groan or murmur—not a bit of it; but for the good name of humanity, I would have liked to see the moneyed men and women rally around the seed-sowers.

Parker Pillsbury wrote her after he returned home: "No one could do better than you have done. If any complain, ask them what they did to help you carry the paper. I am glad you are relieved of a load too heavy for you to bear. Worry yourself no more. Work of course you will, but let there be no further anxiety and nervousness. Suffrage is growing with the oaks. The whirling spheres will usher in the day of its triumph at just the right time, but your full meed of praise will have to be sung over your grave."

The motto of The Revolution, "The True Republic—Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less," was succeeded by "What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder." It was transformed into a literary and society journal, established in elegant headquarters at Brooklyn, inaugurated with a fashionable reception, and conducted by Mrs. Bullard for eighteen months, when she tired of it, or her father tired of advancing money, and it passed into other hands.

When Miss Anthony had her accounts audited by an expert, he stated that The Revolution was in a better financial condition than was the New York Independent at the end of its first five years. She had just begun to realize her power as a lyceum lecturer and was in constant demand at large prices. The last two months before giving up the paper, she sent in from her lectures, above all her expenses, $1,300. She always felt that, with this source of revenue, she could have sustained and in time put it on a paying basis, as her subscription list was rapidly increasing, she had learned the newspaper business, and The Revolution was gaining the confidence of the public. But the experience came too late and she was driven to the wall—not a single friend would longer give her money, assistance or encouragement to continue the paper. To this day, she will take up the bound volumes with caressing fingers, touch them with pathetic tenderness, and pore over their pages with loving reverence, as one reads old letters when the hands which penned them are still forever.

Miss Anthony did not waste a single day in mourning over her great disappointment. In fact, between May 18, when she agreed to give up The Revolution, and May 22, when the transfer actually was made, she went to Hornellsville and lectured, receiving $150 for that one evening. There are not many instances on record where a woman starts out alone to earn the money with which to pay a debt of $10,000. Very few of the advocates of woman suffrage contributed a dollar toward the payment of this debt, which had nothing in it of a personal nature but had been made entirely in the effort to advance the cause. Miss Anthony worked unceasingly through winter's cold and summer's heat, lecturing sometimes under private auspices, sometimes under those of a bureau, and herself arranging for unengaged nights. As she had all her expenses to pay and continued to contribute from her own pocket whenever funds were needed for suffrage work, it was six years before "she could look the whole world in the face for she owed not any man."

She started at once on a western tour, lecturing through Ohio, Kansas and Illinois, speaking in the Methodist church at Evanston, June 3, 1870. Dr. E.O. Haven, president of the university, (afterwards Bishop) in presenting her endorsed woman suffrage. At Bloomington she held a debate with a young professor from the State Normal School. The manager asked if she would take $100 instead of half the receipts, as agreed on. She replied that if the prospects were so good as to warrant him in making this offer, she was just Yankee enough to take her chances. This was a shrewd decision, as her half amounted to $250. The professor opposed the enfranchisement of women because they could not fight. As is the case invariably with men who make this objection, he was a very diminutive specimen, and Miss Anthony could not resist observing as she commenced her speech: "The professor talks about the physical disabilities of women; why, I could take him in my arms and lift him on and off this platform as easily as a mother would her baby!" Of course this put the audience in a fine humor.

In every place she was entertained by representative people and received many social courtesies. She returned to Rochester July 27, spent just twelve hours at home, then hastened eastward, travelling by night in order to reach the Saratoga convention on the 28th. This was held under the auspices of the New York State Association, and managed by the secretary, Matilda Joslyn Gage. Miss Anthony was paid $100, for the first time in the history of conventions. Mrs. Gage wrote: "She is heavily burdened with debt, no one has made so great sacrifices all these years, and she deserves the money." During the summer she sent to a friend in England this summing up of the condition of the suffrage movement in the United States:

The secret of the present inaction is that all our best suffrage men are in the Republican party and must keep in line with its interests, make no demands beyond its possibilities, its safety, its sure success. Hence, just now, while that party is trembling lest it should fall into the minority, and thus give place to the Democracy in 1872, it dares not espouse woman suffrage. So our friends quietly drop our demand on Congress for a Sixteenth Amendment, since to press that body to a vote would compel the Republican members to show their hands; and if those who have in private spoken for woman suffrage should not make a false public record, the number in favor would commit the majority of their party to our question; and by so doing give its opponents fresh opportunity to appeal to the ignorant masses, which must inevitably throw it out of power. The extension of the ballot to woman is a question of intelligence and culture, and is sure to have enrolled against it every narrow, prejudiced, small-brained man in all classes. This being the state of things, our movement is at a dead-lock. Practical action, political action, therefore, is almost hopeless until after the presidential election of 1872; and after that for still another four years, unless the Republican party should be defeated and the Democracy come into power.

Just as soon as the Republicans are out of power, they will betake themselves to the study of principles and begin to preach and promise. Hence I devoutly pray without ceasing for the overthrow of that purse-proud, corrupt, cowardly party; not that I expect from the Democracy anything better than their antecedents promise, but that I know such chastisement, such retirement, is the only means by which conscience and courage can be injected into the heads and hearts of the Republicans, the only way to make them see the political necessity of enfranchising the women of the country, and thereby securing their gratitude and through it their vote to place and hold that party in power.

Then as to our woman suffrage organizations: There are first, the Cleveland movement with all the strategy and maneuvering of its semi-Republican managers, assented to and accepted by the women in their train; then the Fifth Avenue Union Committee affair, which seems not less likely to be under Republican man-power. With Mrs. Stanton's utter refusal to stand at the helm of the National, and our merging it into the Union Society, and with my transferring The Revolution to the new company—we, E.C.S. and S.B.A., have let slip from our hands all control of organizations and newspapers; thus leaving them, I fear, to drift together into the management of mere politicians. All are lulled into the strictest propriety of expression, according to the gospel of St. Republican. And unless that saint shall enact some new and more blasphemous law against woman, which shall wake our confiding sisterhood into a sense of their befoolment, you will neither see nor hear a word from suffrage society or paper which will be in the slightest out of line with the plan and policy of the dominant party. Nothing less atrocious to woman than was the Fugitive Slave Law to the negro, can possibly sting the women of this country into a knowledge of their real subserviency, and out of their sickening sycophancy to the Republican politicians associated with them.

So while I do not pray for anybody or any party to commit outrages, still I do pray, and that earnestly and constantly, for some terrific shock to startle the women of this nation into a self-respect which will compel them to see the abject degradation of their present position; which will force them to break their yoke of bondage, and give them faith in themselves; which will make them proclaim their allegiance to woman first; which will enable them to see that man can no more feel, speak or act for woman than could the old slaveholder for his slave. The fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize it. O, to compel them to see and feel, and to give them the courage and conscience to speak and act for their own freedom, though they face the scorn and contempt of all the world for doing it!

Not another woman possessed this strong grasp of the whole situation, this deep comprehension of the abject condition of women, the more hopeless because of their own failure to feel or resent it.

During the summer Miss Anthony attended the National Labor Congress in Philadelphia. A great strike of bookbinders had been in progress in New York and she had advised the women to take the vacant places. They were denied admission to all labor unions and their only chance of securing work was when the men and their employers disagreed. This gave a pretext for those who were opposed to a representation of women in labor conventions, and a bitter fight was made upon accepting her as a delegate. Charges of every description were preferred against her which she refuted in a spirited manner, but her credentials were finally rejected. The newspapers took up the fight on both sides, the opposition to Miss Anthony being led by the New York Star, always abusive where the question of woman's rights was concerned. During this controversy the Utica Herald contained a disgraceful editorial, saying:

Who does not feel sympathy for Susan Anthony? She has striven long and earnestly to become a man. She has met with some rebuffs, but has never succumbed. She has never done any good in the world, but then she doesn't think so. She is sweet in the eyes of her own mirror, but her advanced age and maiden name deny that she has been so in the eyes of others. Boldly she marched, and well, into the presence of 200 horrid male delegates of the Labor Congress, and took somebody's seat.... Susan felt very much like a grizzly bear unable to get at its tormentor. She had gone to the length of her chain and couldn't get her claws into any one's hair. She could only sit and glare.

At length Susan's case came up for consideration, and the congress committed the crowning act of rashness and, without a thought of the consequences, made an everlasting enemy of Susan Anthony by ruling her out of the convention as a delegate. This was the unkindest cut of all. "A lone, lorn old critter," with whom everything "goes contrairie," was denied the solace of being counted the one-two-hundreth part of a man by a labor convention! We may well believe that Susan wept with sorrow at the blindness of man, and our sympathy if not our tears is freely offered. But so goes the world. This is not the first time that "man's inhumanity to woman" has made Miss Anthony mourn and, as it is not her first rebuff, we counsel her to seek admission again to the ranks of her sex, and cease to cast reproach upon it by struggling to be a man.

When some of the women remonstrated, the editor replied that he had not supposed there was one woman in Utica who believed in equal rights.

Paulina Wright Davis had been actively arranging for a great convention in New York to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the first woman's rights convention in Massachusetts, which was held at Worcester, in October, 1850. That one had been managed almost wholly by Mrs. Davis and she had presided over its deliberations, therefore it seemed proper for her to be the central figure in celebrating its second decade. The New England suffrage people declined to take part in this meeting and, for some reason, Mr. Tilton's Union Society was decidedly averse to it. Mrs. Davis finally became ill from anxiety and overwork and joined her entreaties to Mrs. Stanton's that Miss Anthony should drop her lectures and come to New York; so she started for that city September 30, determined that Mrs. Davis' scheme should not be a failure. The entries in her journal give some idea of her energetic and unwearied action:

As soon as I reached New York I went to Dr. Lozier's for lunch, then to see Mrs. Phelps. All in despair about the decade meeting. Went at once to consult Alice and Phoebe Cary; from them to Mrs. Winchester, found her just home from Europe; then to Julia Brown Bemis, and thence to Murray street to see Mr. Studwell; then to Tenafly on the evening train.... Back to New York the next morning, to Tilton's, to Curtis', to Mrs. Wilbour's, and then to Providence to see Mrs. Davis. Beached there late at night, woke her up and we talked till morning. She was terribly distressed at the thought of giving up the decade and in the morning I telegraphed to New York that it must go on.... Went there by first train, had all the newspaper notices of its abandonment countermanded and new ones put in, and an item sent out by Associated Press. Too late for last train to Tenafly and had to hire a carriage to take me there.

Her time was then divided between working on speeches with Mrs. Stanton and rushing over to New York to prepare for this meeting. On October 19 she writes: "Ground out the resolutions, and took the afternoon train for the city. Met Martha Wright and Mrs. Davis at the St. James Hotel."

There was a great reception the next afternoon in the hotel parlors, and the convention met at Apollo Hall, October 21, the whole of the arrangements having been made in three weeks. Mrs. Davis presided, everybody had been brought into line and it was a notable gathering. Cordial and approving letters to Mrs. Davis were read from Jacob Bright, Canon Kingsley, Frances Power Cobbe, Emily Faithfull, Mary Somerville, Emelie J. Meriman (afterwards the wife of Père Hyacinthe), and other distinguished foreigners. Miss Anthony spoke strongly against their identifying themselves with either of the parties until it had declared for woman suffrage, urging them to accept every possible help from both but to form no alliance, as had been proposed. The feature of the occasion was "The History of the Woman's Rights Movement for Twenty Years," carefully prepared by Mrs. Davis.3 In addition to this valuable work, she contributed $300 to the expenses of the meeting. It was an unqualified success and her letters were full of warmest gratitude to Miss Anthony.

In November the latter resumed her lecturing tour which was arranged by Elizabeth Brown, who had been her head clerk in The Revolution office. The first of December she attended the Northwestern Woman Suffrage Convention at Detroit. Here she received a telegram to hasten home and arrived just in time to stand by the death-bed of a dear nephew, Thomas King McLean, twenty-one years old, brother of the beloved Ann Eliza who had died a few years before, and only son of her sister Guelma. He was a senior of brilliant promise in Rochester University. His death was a heavy blow to all the family and one from which his mother never recovered.

With her debts pressing upon her and an array of lecture engagements ahead, Miss Anthony could neither pause to indulge her own grief nor to console and sympathize with the loved ones. The very night of the funeral she again set forth. By the New Year she had lessened her debt $1,600. This trip extended through New York and Pennsylvania, to Washington and into Virginia. Of the last she writes: "A great work to be done here but the lectures can not possibly be made to pay expenses." In Philadelphia she spoke in the Star course, was the guest of Anna Dickinson and was introduced to her audience by Lucretia Mott, then seventy-seven years old. The diary relates that Mrs. Mott came next morning before 8 o'clock to give her $20, saying it was very little but would show her confidence and affection. The lecture given on this tour was entitled "The False Theory" and was highly commended by the press. It never was written and probably never twice delivered in the same words, Miss Anthony always depending largely upon the inspiration of the occasion.

The middle of December she slipped back to Rochester to see her bereaved sister, and speaks of their receiving a letter of sympathy from Rev. J.K. McLean, which, she says, "is the first philosophical word that has been spoken." While at home she was invited to the Hallowells' to see Wendell Phillips, their first meeting since their sad difference of opinion concerning the Fourteenth Amendment. They had a cordial interview and she went with him to his lecture in the evening. The entry in the journal that night closes with the underscored sentence, "Phillips is matchless."

1. On the platform or in the audience were to be seen the beloved Quaker, Mrs. John J. Merrit, of Brooklyn, Margaret E. Winchester, Mrs. Theodore Tilton, Mrs. Edwin A. Studwell, Catharine Beecher—her plain face illuminated with the fire of indignation—Jenny June Croly, writing rapidly for the New York World, Cora Tappan, Hannah Tracy Cutler, president of the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association, Phoebe Couzins, Mrs. Benjamin F. Butler, Mrs. James Parton, better known as Fanny Fern, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Elizabeth B. Phelps, two nieces of Mrs. U. S. Grant, Laura Curtis Bullard. Frances Dietz Hallock, Ella Dietz Clymer, Anne Lynch Botta, Mary F. Gilbert, Mrs. Moses Beach, Julia Ward Howe, and many other well-known women.

2. The demands for woman everywhere today are for a wider range of employment, higher wages, thorough mental and physical education, and an equal right before the law in all those relations which grow out of the marriage state. While we yield to none in the earnestness of our advocacy of these claims, we make a broader demand for the enfranchisement of woman, as the only way in which all her just rights can be permanently secured. By discussing, as we shall incidentally, leading questions of political and social importance, we hope to educate women for an intelligent judgment upon public affairs, and for a faithful expression of that judgment at the polls. As masculine ideas have ruled the race for six thousand years, we especially desire that The Revolution shall be the mouth piece of women, to give the world the feminine thought in politics, religion and social life; so that ultimately in the union of both we may find the truth in all things. On the idea taught by the creeds, codes and customs of the world, that woman was made for man, we declare war to the death, and proclaim the higher truth that, like man, she was created by God for individual moral responsibility and progress here and forever. Our principal contributors this year are: Anna Dickinson, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Alice and Phoebe Cary, Olive Logan, Mary Clemmer, Mrs. Theodore Tilton, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Phoebe Couzins, Elizabeth Boynton and others; and foreign, Rebecca Moore, Lydia E. Becker and Madame Marie Goeg. The Revolution is an independent journal, bound to no party or sect, and those who write for our columns are responsible only for what appears under their own names. Hence, if old Abolitionists and Slaveholders, Republicans and Democrats, Presbyterians and Universalists, Catholics and Protestants find themselves side by side in writing on the question, of woman suffrage, they must pardon each other's differences on all other points, trusting that by giving their own views strongly and grandly, they will overshadow the errors by their side.

3. Frances Wright, from Scotland, in 1828 was the first woman to speak on a public platform in this country. Ernestine L. Rose, from Poland, gave political lectures in 1836; Mary S. Gove, of New York, lectured oil woman's rights in 1837; Sarah and Angelina Grimké, from South Carolina, commenced their anti-slavery speeches in 1837, and Abby Kelly, of Massachusetts, in 1839; Eliza W. Farnham, of New York, lectured in 1843; between 1840 and 1845 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Paulina Wright (afterwards Davis) and Ernestine L. Rose circulated petitions for a bill to secure property rights for married women, and several times addressed committees of the New York Legislature; Margaret Fuller gave lectures in Massachusetts, in 1845; Lucy Stone spoke for the rights of women in 1847. The first woman's rights convention was called by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright and Mary Ann McClintock, at Seneca Falls, N.Y., in 1848; Susan B. Anthony made her first speech on temperance in 1849. From 1850 the number of women speakers rapidly increased.